Israel’s continuing air strikes may have already forced as many as one million people from their homes across Lebanon, the country’s prime minister has said.

“It is the largest displacement movement that may have happened,” Najib Mikati said.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported more than 50 people killed in Sunday’s strikes – two days after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired more rockets into northern Israel.

In a separate development, Israel said it had carried out “large-scale” air strikes on military targets of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen.

Hezbollah confirmed on Sunday that top military commander Ali Karaki and a senior cleric, Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, had also been killed in the Israeli air strikes.

“We need to keep hitting Hezbollah hard,” Israel’s military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said.

Another Israeli strike in the central Beirut neighbourhood of Kola early on Monday killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the group said in a statement.

The PFLP is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a coalition recognised at the UN as the official representative of the Palestinians. The group is also considered a terrorist organisation by both the US and EU.

The statement named those killed as military security chief Mohammad Abdel-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh, and fighter Abdel Rahman Abdel-Aal.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Mikati said the wave of air strikes had forced people to flee from Beirut and other parts of the country, including the southern border areas.

The local authorities are struggling to assist everyone in need, with shelters and hospitals under growing pressure, BBC correspondents in Lebanon report.

Aya Ayoub, aged 25, told the BBC she had to flee her house in Beirut’s southern Tahweetet al-Ghadir suburb with her family of six as it was too dangerous to stay.

Around her house, she said, “all the buildings are completely destroyed”, and she was currently staying with another 16 people in a house in Beirut.

“We left on Friday and had no place to go. We stayed until 02:00 in the streets until a group of people helped us get into a residential building that was under construction. We are living on candles at night, and have to get water and food from outside”.

Sara Tohmaz, a 34-year-old journalist, told the BBC she had left her house near Beirut with her mother and two siblings last Friday.

It took them almost 10 hours to reach Jordan through Syria by car, she said.

“I think we are lucky enough to have a place to stay in Jordan, where my mother’s relatives are based. We don’t know what will happen next, and don’t know when we will be back,” Tohmaz added.

The previously sporadic cross-border fighting escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Since then hundreds of people, including many Hezbollah fighters, have been killed, while tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Also on Sunday, Israel said it carried out air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, striking power plants and a port in Ras Isa and Hudaydah.

Footage later emerged showing a huge explosion at the port.

Israel says it targeted the sites in response to recent missile attacks from the Houthis, as well as to destroy facilities being used to transport Iranian weapons.

The Houthis, a Shia group controlling large areas of Yemen, condemned the Israeli strikes as a “brutal aggression”.

They said four people were killed and 33 injured, vowing revenge.

There are mounting international fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Washington warned Israel against an all-out war with Hezbollah or Iran, saying a major conflict would leave Israelis unable to return to their homes in the north.

In the hills of the Bekaa Valley – as in swathes of Lebanon – death can come from the sky these days, at any moment.

Israel has been bombing the area through the day, with more 30 air strikes in just an hour.

Forty-six people are confirmed dead – and that toll is expected to rise.

Others are in critical condition in hospital, after Israeli attacks earlier this week.

Noor Mossawi is among them. The six-year-old is lying unconscious in a paediatric intensive care unit, in Rayak Hospital, with bandages wrapped around her fractured skull.

Her mother Rima is sitting by her bedside, holding a copy of the Quran and praying.

She tells us her daughter is very bright and very sociable.

“She creates such a fun atmosphere at home. The house feels empty when she’s not around. She loves meeting new people.”

All that changed last Monday, with an Israeli strike.

She shows us another video of her daughter – this time praying, shortly before the attack.

“I was soothing her, telling her not to be afraid, that nothing would happen. She was calling on God and the prophets for help,” Rima says.

As the bombing was getting closer, Rima was hunkering by her front door with Noor and her twin brother Mohammed.

“We weren’t brave enough to go inside,” she says, “because we thought the building would collapse on us if it was hit.

“When it got more intense, I picked up Noor and her brother and was about to take them in, but the missile was much faster than I was.”

That missile left Mohammed lightly wounded, and Noor fighting for her life.

As we speak, suddenly there is danger overhead. We hear a plane, and then an explosion which rattles the windows and knocks out the power for a few seconds.

It’s another air strike. Rima barely reacts.

Noor’s father Abdallah comes to visit, and is burning with rage.

“Please film my child,” he says.

“She doesn’t know what weapons are. She doesn’t know how to fight. She was playing at home when the bombing started. They [Israel] wanted to terrorise the people and get them to flee.”

Israel says its strikes are targeting Hezbollah sites, including weapons stores and ammunition dumps.

Abdallah begs to differ.

“We have nothing to do with weapons. I am not involved with the resistance [Hezbollah]. But now I wish I was so that I could protect my children,” he tells us.

Minutes later, a few floors down, sirens wail as an ambulance brings in wounded from the latest strike.

Medical staff are rushing back and forward. The emergency department fills with tension. There are angry shouts, and shocked friends and relatives. We are asked to stop filming.

The hospital has admitted 400 casualties of Israeli strikes since Monday – all civilians – according to Dr Basil Abdallah, the medical director.

Of those, more than 100 have died, and several families had lost more than one person.

Dr Abdallah tells us there is trauma among the staff, as well as the patients.

“Seeing children bombed, seeing elderly patients and women bombed, it’s difficult,” he says. “Most of the nurses and the doctors are depressed. We have emotions. We are human.”

Most of the staff remain at the hospital around the clock as it is too dangerous to risk the journey home.

Israel is striking far and wide in Lebanon. There’s no-one to stop it.

For now, Hezbollah is putting up a limited fight, firing rockets across the border.

Its backer, Iran, is remaining on the sidelines.

Dr Abdallah is already worried about running out of drugs and essential supplies.

He fears this will be a long war.

At least 30 people have died and scores more are unaccounted for in just one county in North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene tore across the state and caused catastrophic flooding.

A clearer image of the damage the storm inflicted after barrelling through Florida and Georgia emerged throughout Sunday, with Buncombe County appearing to be the hardest hit area.

“We have biblical devastation,” said Ryan Cole, an emergency official in the county, which contains the mountain city of Asheville. “This is the most significant natural disaster that any one of us has ever seen.”

At least 105 people have died nationwide since the hurricane made landfall in Florida on Thursday, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS, and that figure is expected to rise as officials reach more areas.

Helene began as a hurricane – the most powerful on record to hit Florida’s Big Bend, and moved north into Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The majority of deaths have been confirmed in North and South Carolina where Helene landed as a tropical storm.

On Sunday evening, officials in North Carolina said 30 people had died in Buncombe County alone. Crews across the state are battling power and mobile service outages, downed trees and hundreds of closed roads.

Some residents returned to find their homes entirely destroyed on Sunday. And with some 1,000 people still unaccounted for in Buncombe County, relatives are working to locate family members with limited mobile service.

“This storm has brought catastrophic devastation… of historic proportions,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said.

The American Red Cross has opened more than 140 shelters for those in south-eastern states who evacuated their homes. More than 2,000 people are currently using the shelters, the organisation said on Sunday.

Erin Quevedo, the owner of a flooded salon in Buncombe County, spoke to The Asheville Citizen Times while ankle-deep in mud.

“The salon was completely destroyed. It looks like the water came up to about five feet inside,” she said. “Right now, all we’re doing is we’re trying to salvage what we can.”

Rescue operations are ongoing in North Carolina and supplies, including food and water, are being delivered by air to affected areas that cannot be reached due to closed roads.

“People are desperate for help and we are pushing to get it to them – [it is] a massive effort,” Governor Cooper said.

The North Carolina National Guard has rescued more than 119 people – including one infant, according to Major General Todd Hunt. He said the largest rescue was of 41 people north of Asheville.

Many petrol stations are closed throughout North Carolina with long queues of cars at those that are still open. Meanwhile, the few open supermarkets have been crowded by customers attempting to buy bottled water.

• In pictures: Hurricane Helene destruction

The damage from the storm is estimated at between $95bn and $110bn (£71bn-£82bn) nationwide. The scale of the destruction will become clearer in the coming days.

The search for survivors is ongoing and federal emergencies have been declared in six states, including Florida and Georgia.

“The devastation we’re witnessing in Hurricane Helene’s wake has been overwhelming,” President Joe Biden said on Saturday.

He was briefed by Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who he directed to speed up support to storm survivors, including deployment of extra teams to North Carolina.

Although Helene has weakened significantly, forecasters warn that high winds, flooding and the threat of tornadoes could continue.

There could be as many as 25 named storms in 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned earlier this year.

Between eight and 13 of those storms could develop into hurricanes and a handful already have including Helene. More storms could be on the horizon, officials warned, as the official end of hurricane season is not until 30 November.

Kris Kristofferson, the award-winning country singer and actor who worked with Johnny Cash and Martin Scorsese, has died aged 88.

A representative said he passed away “peacefully” at his home in Hawaii on Saturday, surrounded by family.

The statement described Kristofferson as “a peacenik, a revolutionary, an actor, a superstar, a sex symbol, and a family man.”

The multi-award winner was known for his songwriting, notably credited for Me and Bobby McGee, and Help Me Make It Through the Night, among others. He also acted in the hit movie A Star Is Born.

A message from his family said they were all “so blessed” for the time they had with him.

“Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all,” said the message, quoted by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Born in Brownsville, Texas, on 22 June, 1936, Kristofferson became a leading figure in country music.

“When I got started, I was one of the people hoping to bring respect to country music,” he said, according to the family message.

“Some of the songs I had that got to be hits did that. I imagine that’s why somebody might vote me into a Hall of Fame. I know it’s not because of my golden throat.”

Kristofferson studied writing at Pomona College in California and later went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He earned his masters from Oxford in 1960, then returned to the US and joined the army.

He was assigned by the military to teach literature, which he said “sounded like hell”.

In 1965 he visited Nashville, and within two weeks had resigned from his army post and moved to the country music hub to pursue his music career.

The head of the Country Hall of Fame and Museum said he left behind “a resounding legacy”.

“Kris Kristofferson believed creativity is God-given, and those who ignore such a gift are doomed to unhappiness,” Kyle Young wrote on X. “He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and his work gave voice not only to his soul but to ours.”

He won three Grammys for best country song, Help Me Make It Through the Night in 1972, and two separate duets with Rita Coolidge (1974, 1976), to whom he was married in the 1970s.

In 1971 Kristofferson debuted as an actor, going on to win a Golden Globe for his portrayal of John Norman Howard in A Star Is Born (1976) opposite Barbra Streisand’s Ester Hoffman.

His acting career saw him take on numerous roles, including in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Lone Star, and the Blade franchise.

In 1985 Kristofferson joined friends Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to form a supergroup called The Highwaymen.

“Every time I look at a picture of Willie and me and John and Waylon, I find it amazing that they let the janitor in there,” he told journalist Mikal Gilmore, referring to his former job at CBS’s Nashville studio.

In 2003, Kristofferson received the Free Speech Award from the Americana Music Association.

A year later, he became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He also received multiple lifetime achievement honours, including from The Recording Academy, the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music.

Kristofferson is survived by his wife Lisa, his eight children, and seven grandchildren.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has opened the door to a new era, its leader Herbert Kickl has told supporters, as they celebrated an unprecedented election victory.

Projected results gave Kickl’s party 28.8% – more than two points ahead of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.

Kickl’s victory is only the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe and he praised voters for their “optimism, courage and trust” in delivering a “piece of history”.

The FPÖ has been in coalition before, but the second-placed ÖVP has refused to take part in a government led by him.

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

There was a high turnout of 78% as Austria’s 6.3 million voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

As half the map of Austria turned dark blue, FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said “the men and women of Austria have made history today”, although he refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

An analysis of voters suggested those aged 35-59 were most likely to vote for the far right, and marginally more women than men.

Kickl’s party is on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.

The Freedom Party’s fiery leader had promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace, and he has aligned himself closely with Viktor Orban in neighbouring Hungary.

Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler warned that Austria must not go the same way as Hungary.

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

The party was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video singing an SS song at a funeral.

As the FPÖ’s victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners.

Forming a coalition is likely to prove complicated for Kickl, who is a divisive figure.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Neos have all ruled out a partnership with the far right.

The only possible coalition Kickl’s party could form is with the conservatives, although the FPÖ would have to find a solution to the ÖVP’s refusal to have Kickl as chancellor.

When Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party won the Netherlands’ election last November, he dropped his bid to become prime minister so that three other parties would agree to form a coalition. However, Kickl is keen to lead his country, promising Austrians to act as their “servant and protector”.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer told the BBC it was by no means clear that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of government, would give Kickl a “direct mandate to form a coalition”.

The ÖVP could in theory scrape together a coalition with the Social Democrats if the latest projections are correct, and could attract the liberal Neos party or the Greens.

Equally, Karl Nehammer may come under pressure from within the ÖVP to drop his objection. One leading FPÖ figure said after such a historic defeat he should resign, although that was rejected by the general secretary of Nehammer’s party.

President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPÖ because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria’s neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

Kickl’s projected victory is the latest in almost a year of vote successes for radical right-wing parties in Europe.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni heads a right-wing coalition as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Germany’s AfD topped the polls in the eastern state of Thuringia last month. France’s National Rally won the vote in European elections last June.

Unlike Kickl, Italy’s prime minister has given her full backing to the EU’s defence of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel congratulated Kickl, posting a picture of the two together, and Marine le Pen of the National Rally said “this groundswell carrying the defence of national interests”, after the votes elsewhere in Europe, confirmed the “people’s triumphs everywhere”.

Geert Wilders said times were changing, and that “identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum” was what millions of Europeans were longing for.

Kickl has tapped into fears about immigration in Austria and he has made the most of anger at the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, embracing conspiracy theories about obscure treatments for the virus.

For Kickl and his party, Sunday’s election victory represents a significant recovery from 2019, when they came a distant third in the wake of a video sting scandal that engulfed their former leader.

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.

Nikunj Tank, a worker in the world’s diamond polishing capital Surat in western India, had been desperate since losing his job in May.

The unit he worked at for seven years was facing a financial squeeze and closed down, leaving him and over a dozen others unemployed.

Tank was the family’s sole breadwinner – he was supporting his parents, wife and daughter and had no savings.

‘‘He couldn’t find a job and unable to bear the loss, he took the extreme step,” said his retired father Jayanti Tank.

Tank died by suicide in August.

The last few years have been tough for India’s recession-hit diamond industry. Surat, in Gujarat state, processes 90% of the world’s diamonds in over 5,000 units and employs more than 800,000 polishers. The city has 15 big polishing units with an annual turnover of more than $100m (£75m).

India’s exports of cut and polished stones fell from $23bn in 2022 to $16bn in 2023 and are expected to drop further to $12bn in 2024.

• The revolution underway in India’s diamond industry
• Debt-ridden India labourer digs up diamond worth $95,000

The price of polished diamonds dipped by 5%,s to 27% in 2023, due to lower demand and oversupply, say analysts. Mahesh Virani of Star Gems explained that oversupply occurred because polishing units continued production despite limited demand to keep operations running, ultimately increasing their losses.

The state’s Diamond Workers’ Union, a group representing polishers, told BBC Gujarati that more than 30,000 have lost their jobs in the past six months alone due to the downturn.

The union says that as per their data collected from victims’ families, police records and news reports, 65 workers have died by suicide in the state over one-and-a-half years due to this slowdown. The BBC could not independently verify this figure.

Experts say the Covid-19 lockdown, the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars, and falling demand in key markets have adversely impacted India’s diamond industry.

“The business of polished diamonds has gone down by more than 25-30% due to global recession,” said Vallabh Lakhani, chairman of Kiran Gems, a leading manufacturer.

India imports 30% of its rough diamonds from Russian mines – now under Western sanctions due to the war – and cuts and polishes them, then sells them mostly in Western markets.

In March, the European Union and G7 countries imposed a fresh ban on the import of Russian unpolished diamonds, including those processed in India and sold in the West via third countries.

After the fresh ban, India publicly raised concerns, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stating in April that such measures hurt those lower in the supply chain more than Russia, as producers usually find alternative routes.

Traders in Surat echo that.

“India is at the low end of the value chain of the diamond industry. The country is highly dependent on the global market, both for raw materials as well as for final sales,” said exporter Kirti Shah.

• Ukraine war: Russian diamonds set for ban under new EU sanctions

Additionally, an economic downturn in G7 countries and the UAE and Belgium – India’s key export destinations – has impacted business.

The downturn is also attributed to a rise in demand for lab-grown diamonds, a cheaper alternative to natural diamonds, and to the war in Gaza, as the gems form a sizeable chunk of India’s trade with Israel.

“The diamond sector in Surat is passing through a bad phase,” said Kumar Kanani, a lawmaker from the state’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He said the police were investigating the suicide cases attributed to job losses.

“The government is ready to provide all possible help to polishers, traders and businessmen,” he said.

But the families of at least nine workers, who recently took their lives, said they had received little help from the government.

• Will a Russian diamond ban be effective?

The majority of layoffs have occurred in small and medium-sized units, which typically hire workers for quality checks of rough diamonds and for polishing and shaping them.

But bigger players are impacted too. Last month, Kiran Gems asked its 50,000 employees to go on a 10-day vacation, citing the slowdown as a reason.

In July, the Diamond Workers’ Union started a helpline which received over 1,600 distress calls from polishers seeking jobs or financial help.

But there have been others who couldn’t get help in time.

Vaishali Patel, 38, lost her husband Nitin two years back. The polishing unit he worked for had laid off a majority of its staff because of a lack of business.

Brokers and traders too are facing the brunt.

“We have been sitting idle for days. There is hardly any sale or purchase,” said Dilip Sojitra, one of the 5,000 brokers in Surat who sell diamonds to customers, traders and other brokers.

• India’s jobs crisis is more serious than it seems

Lab-grown diamonds, once in high demand, have also seen prices drop from $300 to $78 per carat due to overproduction, impacting the market. Surat Diamond Brokers Association president Nandlal Nakrani believes the situation will improve when rough diamond prices decrease and polished diamond prices rise.

Despite the slowdown, some hope the industry will recover, as it did after the 2008 Great Recession, which shut hundreds of polishing units and left thousands jobless.

Mr Sojitra says he believes the upcoming festival season, including Diwali, Christmas, and New Year, will help boost business momentum.

“This too shall pass,” he says.

For Daniel Guerra, an aspiring Brazilian sailor keen to travel the world, the job ad was a dream come true.

A British yacht owner was seeking two deck-hands to help sail his boat from Brazil across the Atlantic, one of the great ocean journeys.

There would be no salary, but all expenses paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would gain some of the sailing experience he needed to qualify as a sea captain.

“My dream was to become a captain and go work in Europe,” remembers the 43-year-old, who saw the advert from an online sailing recruitment agency.

“So I was super happy, knowing that my path to my dream was beginning.”

Things looked even better when Mr Guerra and his fellow recruit, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.

They had feared he might be some snobbish yachtie or posing Instagrammer, who would make sure they knew who was boss.

But no. George Saul was a smiling, friendly figure, who did not insist on formalities. The sailors, he said, could even call him by his nickname – “Fox”.

“I used to work on some boats and the owners were old, super demanding, super rude and talked down to me,” adds Mr Dantas. “He was like, very cool, very friendly.”

Fox even passed the approval test of Mr Dantas’s parents, who were worried about their son doing such a long journey on a yacht owned by a total stranger, and asked to meet him for themselves.

To borrow the old sailing expression, they liked the cut of his jib. They learned that Fox had brought the Rich Harvest over to Brazil for renovations, and wanted a competent crew to sail it back to Europe on his behalf.

As well as the rookies, Mr Dantas and Mr Guerra, there would be two others, including a qualified captain.

“I said: ‘Look, watch out for my son’,” remembers Mr Dantas’s father, João. “He said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Rodrigo.’”

As it turned out, his parents were not the only ones who wanted to check that all was well on board the Rich Harvest.

Before the departure from Brazil, local police spent around six hours searching the yacht for drugs, with the help of a sniffer dog.

They did not find what they were looking for, though, and the sailors assumed it was just a routine check.

They had heard stories about cocaine being planted on boats, and now at least knew they were in the clear.

“When you travel through an airport… your bags go through the X-ray machine,” says Mr Dantas. “So I thought, well, it’s an international trip and they’re coming to inspect the boat.”

Such worries were far from their mind when they eventually embarked on their epic journey on 4 August 2017, the Brazilian coastline slowly receding behind them.

With them were an additional crew member, Daniel Dantas (no relation of Rodrigo Dantas) and the yacht’s newly hired captain, Frenchman Olivier Thomas, 56, a replacement for a previous British captain whose sailing skills had not proved up to scratch.

Fox, meanwhile, had made his way back to Europe by plane two days before.

“It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, sun,” recalls Mr Guerra, who posted a message of thanks to Fox on his Facebook page.

It read: “I’m really grateful, Fox, for this… chance to learn and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”

After two weeks of sailing, the yacht developed engine problems, forcing it to stop in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

Once more, Mr Guerra and Mr Dantas found reasons to look on the bright side. The islands are a tourist paradise, and Fox said he would wire them money to enjoy themselves while repairs were done at a local marina.

And when yet more police came to search the vessel, Mr Guerra was not worried.

“They didn’t find anything in Brazil,” he thought to himself. “They won’t find anything in Cape Verde either.”

The Cape Verdean police were even more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, using specialist cutting equipment to open up the yacht’s innards.

Hidden inside below false floors, they found nearly 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – worth an estimated £100m ($134m) if sold on Europe’s streets.

“I felt that all my freedom was going down the drain,” said Mr Guerra. “I was furious, couldn’t accept what was happening, you know? I’d been really fooled.”

Finding Mr Fox – a BBC investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.

Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)

In March 2018, the crew went on trial in Cape Verde, protesting their innocence.

They had never even heard of Rich Harvest or its owner until they answered the job advert, they insisted.

They were sentenced, however, to 10 years in jail each – in what was hailed as one of the country’s biggest busts.

But while the haul was impressive, the man Brazilian police regarded as the big catch got away.

They believed that the mastermind of the operation was Fox, whose yacht was first drawn to their attention by a tip-off from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

Brazilian police believe he was the leader of the operation to smuggle the drugs.

In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, where Brazilian police filed extradition proceedings. They wanted him to be returned to Brazil to answer the allegations against him.

But the paperwork arrived too late, and he was freed – much to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.

He feared that Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.

“We were left with that feeling that after all our work, we’d never get to the bottom of it,” he told the BBC. “It was very, very frustrating.”

Mr Gonçalves said his team had kept both Fox and the yacht under surveillance in Brazil. They believe the “renovations” on the boat were partly to fit it with secret compartments, and that the drugs were loaded on to the vessel before the sailors were hired.

Mr Gonçalves admits that at first, he presumed the four sailors were involved too.

“If someone is on a boat that’s full of drugs, you think that person must have something to do with it,” he said.

But as he dug into their backgrounds, he could find nothing previously linking them to the drug world or to Fox.

“The deeper I went I still couldn’t find a connection… but at the same time it strengthened the evidence we had against Fox.”

The sailors’ pleas of innocence also got backing from an unlikely source – fellow Briton Robert Delbos, a man who was alleged to be an accomplice of Fox.

Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker, having been jailed for 12 years in 1988 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cannabis into the UK.

Before the Rich Harvest left Brazil, Mr Gonçalves’s team observed Delbos supervising the first stages of the yacht’s renovations.

They initially suspected he was fitting secret compartments, and filed successful extradition proceedings for him around the same time as those against Fox.

Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax prison awaiting trial, but he too said the drugs were later planted without his knowledge.

He was acquitted after the judge in his case ruled it could not be proved that he knew about the smuggling plan.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them by using innocent sailors as mules rather than hiring professional smugglers.

“This is completely beyond the pale. I mean, you don’t do this,” he said.

“He was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting himself a professional, bloody smuggling crew – he hired four innocent guys.”

As doubts about the sailors’ guilt grew, their families began a campaign on their behalf, which became a cause célèbre in Brazil.

In 2019 their convictions in Cape Verde were overturned, and they were allowed to go home.

Fox, meanwhile, has never faced trial, and returned to the UK.

The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in eastern England where he grew up, attended college locally, and was an accomplished amateur yachtsman – sailing off the nearby Norfolk coast.

Today, he resides in a Norwich suburb and runs a property firm.

He belonged to a local business networking association, and on his social media feed last March, posted photos of himself with the city’s then Lord Mayor, James Wright.

There is no suggestion that Mr Wright was aware of the accusations against Fox.

The BBC tracked Fox down as he arrived at one of his networking association’s weekly business breakfasts, at a Norwich hotel.

He declined to comment on the Rich Harvest and the sailors’ ordeal.

Asked about the allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I’m not.”

An NCA spokesperson said if Brazilian police still wished to pursue the case, they would have to file an extradition request.

Brazil’s ministry of justice said it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra are trying to rebuild their lives in Brazil, their dreams of becoming yacht captains abandoned.

Mr Dantas says he struggled to find sailing work on his return home, with some employers assuming he must have been guilty after all.

Mr Guerra’s round-the-world sailing ambitions “stayed locked up in Cape Verde”.

He says he lost his ability to trust people, vital during the challenges on any long yacht voyage.

Even now, he still wonders who Fox really was – that “cool” British guy he once felt so grateful to, whose job advert then turned his life upside down.

He says that he would “really like to see justice done”, but has no wish to meet Fox ever again.

“If I meet him, it won’t be me who’s going to talk. It will be another Daniel. All the bad feelings I had in jail will come up and I won’t be able to be a civilised person.”

Coming in October World of Secrets, Season 5: Finding Mr Fox.

A joint BBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets podcast investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.

• Kidnapped and trafficked twice – a sex worker’s life in Sierra Leone
• Apartheid era mass killer dies as victims still demand justice
• How a Malawi WhatsApp group helped save women trafficked to Oman
• ‘Terrible things happened’ – inside TB Joshua’s church of horrors

Signs that modern slavery victims were being forced to work at a McDonald’s branch and a factory supplying bread products to major supermarkets were missed for years, the BBC has found.

A gang forced 16 victims to work at either the fast-food restaurant or the factory – which supplied Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

Well-established signs of slavery, including paying the wages of four men into one bank account, were missed while the victims from the Czech Republic were exploited over more than four years.

McDonald’s UK said it had improved systems for spotting “potential risks”, while the British Retail Consortium said its members would learn from the case.

Six members of a family-run human trafficking network from the Czech Republic have been convicted in two criminal trials, which were delayed by the Covid pandemic.

Reporting restrictions have prevented coverage of much of the case, but BBC England can now reveal the full scale of the gang’s crimes – and the missed opportunities to stop them.

Nine victims were forced to work at the McDonald’s branch in Caxton, Cambridgeshire. Nine worked at the pitta bread company, with factories in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and Tottenham in north London, which made supermarket own-brand products. There were 16 victims in total across both sites, as two worked at both McDonald’s and the factory.

The victims – who were all vulnerable, most having experienced homelessness or addiction – earned at least the legal minimum wage, but nearly all of their pay was stolen by the gang.

While they lived on a few pounds a day in cramped accommodation – including a leaking shed and an unheated caravan – police discovered their work was funding luxury cars, gold jewellery and a property in the Czech Republic for the gang.

On several occasions, victims escaped and fled home only to be tracked down and trafficked back to the UK.

The exploitation ended in October 2019 after victims contacted police in the Czech Republic, who then tipped off their British counterparts.

But warning signs had been missed for at least four years, the BBC has discovered by reviewing legal documents from the gang’s trial and interviewing three victims.

The undetected red flags include:

• Victims’ wages were paid into bank accounts in other people’s names. At the McDonald’s, at least four victims’ wages – totalling £215,000 – were being paid into one account, controlled by the gang

• Victims were unable to speak English, and job applications were completed by a gang member, who was even able to sit-in on job interviews as a translator

• Victims worked extreme hours at the McDonald’s – up to 70 to 100 a week. One victim worked a 30-hour shift. The UN’s International Labour Organization says excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour

• Multiple employees had the same registered address. Nine victims lived in the same terraced home in Enfield in north London while working at the bakery

“It really concerns me that so many red flags were missed, and that maybe the companies didn’t do enough to protect vulnerable workers,” said Dame Sara Thornton, the former independent anti-slavery commissioner, who reviewed the BBC’s findings.

Det Sgt Chris Acourt, who led the Cambridgeshire Police investigation, said there were “massive opportunities” that were missed to detect the slavery and alert authorities sooner.

“Ultimately, we could have been in a situation to end that exploitation much earlier had we been made aware,” he said.

Slavery on the High Street

For seven years, vulnerable victims of trafficking were forced to make food for major high street chains. How did their exploitation go undetected for so long?

Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only)

Like many of the victims, Pavel – who has waived his legal right to anonymity – was homeless in the Czech Republic when he was approached by the gang in 2016.

He says he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK, where he could at the time work legally.

But the reality of what he experienced has left lasting scars, he said.

“You can’t undo the damage to my mental health, it will always live with me.”

He was given just a few pounds a day in cash by his exploiters, despite working 70-hour weeks at the McDonald’s branch, he said.

The gang – led by brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak – confiscated the passports of all their victims and controlled them through fear and violence, police found.

“We were afraid,” Pavel said. “If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.”

The gang “treated their victims like livestock” feeding them just enough “to keep them going”, according to the Met’s Det Insp Melanie Lillywhite.

She said victims were controlled by “invisible handcuffs” – monitored by CCTV, prevented from using phones or the internet and unable to speak English.

“They really were cut off from the outside world,” she said.

While the gang has been convicted in court, Pavel believes McDonald’s also shares some responsibility.

“I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act,” he said.

“I thought if I was working for McDonalds, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.”

Two former colleagues told the BBC the extreme hours the men worked – and the impact it had on them – was plain to see.

Like most McDonald’s, the Caxton outlet – on the A428 – is a franchise, which means an independent business pays the fast-food giant to allow it to run the restaurant.

While victims worked there between 2015 and 2019, it was run by two different franchise-holders. We contacted both, but they did not respond.

McDonald’s UK declined our offer of an interview, but provided a statement on behalf of the corporation and its franchisees.

It said the current franchisee – Ahmet Mustafa – had only been “exposed to the full depth of these horrific, complex and sophisticated crimes” in the course of his co-operating with police and the prosecution.

The company said it cares “deeply” about all employees and promised that – working with franchisees – it would “play our part alongside government, NGOs [Non-governmental organisations] and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery”.

It also said it commissioned an independent review in October 2023 and had taken action to improve its ability to “detect and deter potential risks, such as: shared bank accounts, excessive working hours, and reviewing the use of interpreters in interviews”.

The bakery company – Speciality Flatbread Ltd – ceased trading and went into administration in 2022.

None of the supermarkets detected the slavery while victims worked at the factory between 2012 and 2019.

Dame Sara said she would have expected the retailers to be doing “pretty thorough due diligence”, adding that they normally “take much greater care about their own brand products because that’s their reputation that’s on the line”.

Sainsbury’s said it stopped using the company as an own-brand supplier in 2016.

The others only stopped sometime after police rescued the victims in 2019.

Asda told the BBC it was “disappointed that a historic case has been found in our supply chain”, adding that it would “review every case identified and act upon the learnings”.

It said it had made three site visits, but focused solely on food safety, and had stopped using the factory in 2020.

Tesco said inspections – supported by information from anti-slavery charity Unseen – “revealed concerning working practices” and the company “ceased all orders from the supplier” in 2020.

Waitrose said it pulled out in 2021 after its audits led to “concerns about factory standards and working conditions”.

The Co-op said it made “a number” of unannounced inspections, including worker interviews, but found no signs of modern slavery, adding that the company “actively work to tackle the shocking issue… both in the UK and abroad”.

M&S said it suspended and delisted the company in 2020 after it “became aware of potential breaches of ethical labour standards via the modern slavery helpline”.

The British Retail Consortium said workers’ welfare was “fundamental” to retailers, who it said acted quickly when concerns are raised.

“Nonetheless, it is important that the retail industry learns from cases like this to continually strengthen due diligence,” it said.

Speciality Flatbreads’ director Andrew Charalambous did not respond to written requests for comment, but in a phone call from the BBC said he had supported the police and prosecution, adding that the company had been “thoroughly audited by top law firms” and “everything we were doing was legal”.

He added: “From our perspective we didn’t break the law in any way, having said that, yes, maybe you’re right in that maybe there were certain telltale signs or things like that, but that would have been for the HR department who were dealing with it on the front line.”

The Modern Slavery Act requires larger companies – including McDonald’s and the supermarkets, but not the factory – to publish annual statements outlining what they will do to tackle the issue.

Former Prime Minister Baroness Theresa May, who introduced the act as home secretary in 2015, accepted the law failed to protect victims in this case, and believes it needs to be “beefed up”.

The former PM – who now leads the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking – said the case was “frankly shocking” and shows “large companies not properly looking into their supply chains”.

She said the global commission was reviewing what new laws are needed “to ensure action is being taken by companies”.

Responding to the case, the government said it would “set out next steps on the issue of modern slavery in due course”.

It said it was “committed to tackling all forms of modern slavery” and would “pursue gangs and employers with every lever at our disposal while ensuring that victims are provided with the support they need”.

Details of organisations offering support for victims of modern slavery are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

A SpaceX capsule sent to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) has docked.

The Dragon capsule, which has two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, docked at 17:30 eastern time (22:30 BST).

The pair arrived at the station on Boeing’s new Starliner capsule for an eight-day mission in June, but were forced to remain there because of a fault discovered during the flight.

They are now expected to return to Earth in February.

The Dragon capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday carrying Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov.

Hague, who has done a previous stint on the ISS, and Gorbunov will join the space station’s crew before taking Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

The launch had been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed because of Hurricane Helene, which has caused huge destruction across the south-eastern US, including Florida, in recent days.

The docking occurred as the space station flew 265 miles (426km) above Botswana in southern Africa.

Footage from inside the ISS showed Hague and Gorbunov smiling and posing for photos with the rest of the crew after their arrival.

The original Starliner flight, which launched on 5 June, was that capsule’s first test flight with astronauts on board and Boeing’s first attempt to take astronauts to the ISS.

During the flight it experienced a number of problems, including leaks of helium – which is used in its propulsion system – and issues with several of its thrusters.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa spent months investigating, but in late August Nasa decided that it would not be safe to try to bring Wilmore and Williams home aboard the Starliner.

The capsule had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks during its development, as well as issues discovered during uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2022.

Nasa retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving it reliant on Russia’s Soyuz craft to get to and from the ISS.

Having two American companies to perform the missions has been a key goal of the agency’s for some time, and in 2014 Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts worth $4.2bn (£3.2bn) and $2.6bn (£2bn) respectively.

In 2020, SpaceX – founded by billionaire Elon Musk – became the first private company to take astronauts to the ISS.

Major floods and landslides in Nepal have killed at least 148 people and injured more than 100 across the Himalayan nation, police have reported.

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

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

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

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

But flash floods and landslides have caused a growing number of 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 reported on Saturday.

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.

The governor of California Gavin Newsom has blocked a landmark artificial intelligence (AI) safety bill, which had faced strong opposition from major technology companies.

The proposed legislation would have imposed some of the first regulations on AI in the US.

Mr Newsom said the bill could stifle innovation and prompt AI developers to move out of the state.

Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the bill, said the veto allows companies to continue developing an “extremely powerful technology” without any government oversight.

The bill would have required the most advanced AI models to undergo safety testing.

It would have forced developers to ensure their technology included a so-called “kill switch”. A kill switch would allow organisations to isolate and effectively switch off AI systems if they were they became a threat.

It would also have made official oversight compulsory for the development of so-called “Frontier Models” – or the most powerful AI systems.

In his statement, Mr Newsom said the bill “does not take into account whether an Al system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data.”

“Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions – so long as a large system deploys it,” he added.

At the same time, Mr Newsom announced plans to protect the public from the risks of AI and asked leading experts to help develop safeguards for the technology.

Over the last few weeks, Mr Newsom has also signed 17 bills, including legislation aimed at cracking down on misinformation and so-called deep fakes, which include images, video, or audio content created using generative AI.

California is home to many of the world’s largest and most advanced AI companies, including the ChatGPT maker, OpenAI.

The state’s role as a hub for many of the world’s largest tech firms means that any bill regulating the sector would have a major national and global impact on the industry.

Mr Wiener said the decision to veto the bill leaves AI companies with “no binding restrictions from US policy makers, particularly given Congress’s continuing paralysis around regulating the tech industry in any meaningful way.”

Efforts by Congress to impose safeguards on AI have stalled.

OpenAI, Google and Meta were among several major tech firms that voiced opposition to the the bill and warned it would hinder the development of a crucial technology.

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,” Alaa 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”.

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

“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.”

Nadine, another UK national, broke down in tears as she told the BBC: “We couldn’t sleep, we were so worried about our families and friends and we couldn’t even find flights for them to come here.”

She travelled from her home in London to Heathrow to meet her two teenage daughters who had landed from Beirut that morning.

Lea, 17, and Yasmina, 15, are UK nationals but up until now have lived in Beirut with their grandparents.

The family asked for their surnames not to be used.

As Israeli airstrikes escalated in the country, the family decided to get the girls out. They had left behind most of their belongings, as well as their friends and school.

Lea said: “It was all unexpected. Just got the tickets, two days later we’re at the airport.

“It’s really scary and sad not knowing when you’re going to come back to your home country, not knowing what’s going to happen to your family and friends there.”

Lea added: “I don’t really want to experience the sleepless nights anymore. I hope I feel better here and forget about the trauma.”

Nadine said she was relieved to know her girls had arrived safely, but was in fear for those left behind.

“My sister, their kids are traumatised. They’re seeing the bombs from their balconies, from the streets.”

The family say the girls’ grandparents plan to leave Beirut on Monday to find someplace safe.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.”

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.”

In 2010 the Gulf state of Qatar bought luxury department store Harrods for £1.5bn, via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.

It should have been the jewel in the Qatari crown. However, Harrods now faces serious sexual abuse allegations over the actions of its former boss, Mohamed Al Fayed.

Many of these claims were uncovered in a recent BBC investigation, but multiple legal experts have said Qatar either missed or dismissed much of what was already known about Al Fayed at the time of the purchase.

This includes a 2008 police investigation into the alleged assault of a 15-year-old girl in a Harrods boardroom.

Harrods has told the BBC it is “utterly appalled” by the allegations and has apologised to the victims.

It now looks as if the scandal could cost the company and its owner millions.

So what, if anything, was known by Qatar about the allegations?

When a company buys another company, the process of looking to see if there are any skeletons in the cupboard is known as due diligence.

The buyers will hire advisers who will ask the seller’s advisers questions about any issues they should know about. They may also do their own independent research.

When the owner is someone like Mohamed Al Fayed, who had several allegations surrounding him at the time of the deal, the buyer’s due diligence process should be lengthy.

“I think it would be sensible to ask detailed questions about number of claims, number of complaints – informal or formal – even if not upheld, subject of the complaints even if they were not upheld, number and value of settlements, number of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements),” says Beth Hale, a partner at law firm CM Murray.

In “exceptional cases” this information might scupper a deal, though she believes it is more likely the buyer would ask the seller to compensate them for any losses that might come from the alleged behaviour.

This is what Ms Hale says a business should do if it were buying a company like Harrods in 2024, but she says that 2010 was a different time.

She says this pre-#MeToo era was a “world away in terms of attitudes and approaches to sexual harassment”.

“Sexual harassment claims did not form as big a part of due diligence then as they do now.”

She says it appears that either Qatar’s due diligence was “not adequate” or that the process did bring up certain claims and it decided to continue in any event, perhaps imagining that they might not end up hurting the company too badly.

“Pre-#MeToo, with a couple of sexual harassment claims, a company might settle them, get an NDA, and move on.”

• Police to explore if anyone can be pursued over Al Fayed claims
• Harrods worker says ‘monster’ Al Fayed raped her at 16
• How Al Fayed built a corrupt system of enablers to carry out his sexual abuse

Catriona Watt, partner at Fox & Partners, says it looks as if Qatar may have known about the allegations but went ahead anyway.

“It seems to me that it wasn’t a complete secret. It was probably a calculated risk,” she says, adding the due diligence process “depends on the questions you ask”.

“You might say, ‘I only want to know about this if it has a value of X,”‘ she says.

Virginia Albert, former marketing professor and current account director at advertising agency DeVito/Verdi, also believes the Qatari government’s views on women’s rights are relevant.

She questions whether it would have considered sexual abuse allegations as something sufficiently serious enough to warrant dropping the deal

“You could argue that brands align with brand values during mergers,” she says, adding the Gulf state would have considered if its values “aligned with what they knew, if they knew, about the values of this department store”.

Lazard, which represented the Al Fayed Trust during the deal, told the BBC: “We strongly condemn the behaviour these reports have brought to light.”

Harrods and the Qatar Investment Authority did not reply to multiple requests for comment on the due diligence process when the company was bought. In its previous response to the BBC, Harrods said it had been settling claims “since new information came to light” last year.

Meanwhile, Harrods’ managing director Michael Ward said on Thursday: “While it is true that rumours of [Al Fayed’s] behaviour circulated in the public domain, no charges or allegations were ever put to me by the police, the [Crown Prosecution Service], internal channels or others.

“Had they been, I would of course have acted immediately.”

Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, represented the Qatar Investment Authority in the deal and declined to comment.

Whatever Qatar knew during the deal, the impact of the allegations is likely to be substantial.

First, there is the total cost of payments to the survivors of the alleged sexual abuse by Al Fayed, which multiple legal experts have told the BBC could be in the millions, with each individual claim likely to cost the firm a six-figure sum.

Harrods has accepted vicarious liability for some of the claims, a legal term meaning it accepts ultimate responsibility for Al Fayed’s alleged actions.

It could potentially be liable for alleged failings as an employer, including for claims such as negligence or failing to provide a safe working environment, experts predicted.

Defending the legal case and hiring an independent investigator to look into the claims are also expected to be six-figure sums.

However, the real damage is expected to be reputational.

“People are going to be really, really pissed,” says Ms Albert, adding that many will want to see Harrods dealing with the serious allegations from the survivors swiftly and thoroughly.

“There’s so much more visibility now than there was.”

What might save Harrods, she says, is the loyalty of its long-time shoppers, but the high-price point will make it much easier for casual customers who dislike the way the retailer is perceived to have treated women to go elsewhere.

She predicts boycotts and says the business may struggle to recover unless customers see action, rather than just words.

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

Watch Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods on BBC iPlayer now

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

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.”

“I saw five people smiling, looking forward to their journey.”

That was Renata Rojas’ recollection of her time on a support ship with five people bound for the Titanic wreck. They were about to climb into a submersible made by Oceangate.

Just 90 minutes later, these five would become the victims of a deep sea disaster: an implosion. Images from the depths of the Atlantic show the wreckage of the sub crushed, mangled, and scattered across the sea floor.

The photos were released by the US Coast Guard during an inquiry to establish what led to its catastrophic failure in June 2023.

The inquiry finished on Friday and over the past two weeks of hearings, a picture has emerged of ignored safety warnings and a history of technical problems. We have also gained new insight into the final hours of those on board.

It has shown us that this story won’t go away any time soon.

British explorer Hamish Harding and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, who’d brought his 19-year-old son Suleman along, had paid Oceangate for a dive to see the Titanic which lies 3,800m down.

The sub was piloted by the company’s CEO Stockton Rush with French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet as co-pilot.

Once the craft had slipped beneath the waves, it could send short text messages to the surface. A message sent from about 2,300m said “All good here”.

About an hour and a half into the dive, from 3,346m, Titan’s final message reported it had released two weights to slow its descent as it neared the sea floor.

Communications were then lost – the sub had imploded.

The US Coast Guard said nothing in the messages that indicated that the passengers knew their craft was failing.

The implosion was instantaneous. There would have been no time to even register what was happening.

Mr Rush proudly described the Titan as “experimental”. But others had voiced their concerns to him about its unconventional design in the years prior to the dive.

At the hearing David Lochridge, Oceangate’s former director of marine operations, described Titan as an “abomination”.

In 2018, he’d compiled a report highlighting multiple safety issues, but said these concerns were dismissed and he was fired.

Titan had several unusual features.

The shape of its hull – the part where the passengers were – was cylindrical rather than spherical so the effects of the pressure were not distributed evenly.

A window was installed but only considered safe down to 1,300m. The US Coast Guard also heard about problems with the joins between different parts of the sub.

The hull’s material attracted the most attention – it was made from layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

Roy Thomas from the American Bureau of Shipping said carbon fibre was not approved for deep sea subs because it can weaken with every dive and fail suddenly without warning.

The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) presented an analysis of samples of Titan’s hull left over from its construction.

It showed areas where the carbon fibre layers had separated – a known problem called delamination – as well as wrinkles, waviness and voids within its structure.

This suggests the material contained imperfections before the sub had even made a dive.

The NTSB team also saw this delamination in wreckage found on the seafloor.

Most of the hull was destroyed, but in the pieces that survived, the carbon fibre has split into layers and in some places had cracked.

Officials are not currently saying the hull’s failure caused the implosion, but it’s a key focus of the investigation.

A place on the sub cost up to $250,000 (£186,000) – and over the course of 2021 and 2022 Titan made 23 dives, 12 of which successfully reached the wreck of the Titanic.

But these descents were far from problem free. A dive log book recorded 118 technical faults, ranging from thrusters failing, to batteries dying – and once the front dome of the sub fell off.

The investigation focused on a dive that took place in 2022, when paying passenger Fred Hagen heard an “alarming” noise as the sub was returning to the surface.

“We were still underwater and there was a large bang or cracking sound,” he said.

“We were all concerned that maybe there was a crack in the hull.”

He said Mr Rush thought the noise was the sub shifting in the metal frame that surrounded it.

The US Coast Guard inquiry was shown new analysis of data from the sub’s sensors, suggesting the noise was caused by a change in the fabric of the hull.

This affected how Titan was able to respond to the pressures of the deep.

Phil Brooks, Oceangate’s former Engineering Director, said the craft wasn’t properly checked after that dive because the company was struggling financially, and instead it was left for months on the dockside in Canada.

“I’m not dying. No-one is dying on my watch – period.”

These were the words of Mr Rush in a 2018 transcript of a meeting at Oceangate HQ.

When questioned about Titan’s safety, he replied: “I understand this kind of risk, and I’m going into it with eyes open and I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

According to some witnesses Mr Rush had an unwavering belief in his sub. They described a dominating personality who wouldn’t tolerate dissenting views.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted… and he wouldn’t give an inch much at all,” said Tony Nissen, a former engineering director.

“Most people would just eventually back down from Stockton.”

Passenger Fred Hagen disagreed, describing Mr Rush as a “brilliant man”.

“Stockton made a very conscious and astute effort to maintain a perceptible culture of safety around a high risk environment.”

Former employee David Lochridge was so worried about Titan that he went to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

This is the US government body that sets and enforces workplace safety standards.

Correspondence reveals that he provided extensive information about the sub’s problems – and was placed on OSHA’s whistleblower witness protection scheme.

But he said OSHA were slow and failed to act, and after increasing pressure from Oceangate’s lawyers, he dropped the case and signed a non disclosure agreement.

He told the hearing: “I believe that if OSHA had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions this tragedy may have been prevented.”

Deep-sea subs can undergo an extensive safety assessment by independent marine organisations such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) or DNV (a global accreditation organisation based in Norway).

Almost all operators complete this certification process, but Oceangate chose not to for Titan. At the hearing, some industry experts called for it to become compulsory.

“I think as long as we insist on certification as a requirement for continued human occupied exploration in the deep sea we can avoid these kinds of tragic outcomes,” said Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton submarines.

Witnesses at the hearing included former Oceangate employees, paying passengers who’d made dives in the sub, industry experts and those involved in the search and rescue effort.

But some key people were noticeably missing.

Mr Rush’s wife Wendy, who was Oceangate’s communications director and played a central role in the company, did not appear. Nor did director of operations and sub pilot Scott Griffith or former US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Lockwood, who was on Oceangate’s board.

The reasons for their absences were not given and their version of events remain unheard.

The US Coast Guard will now put together a final report with the aim of preventing a disaster like this from ever happening again.

But the story will not end there.

Criminal prosecutions may follow. And private lawsuits too – the family of French diver PH Nargeolet is already suing for more than $50 million.

The ripples from this deep sea tragedy are likely to continue for many years.

The Irish economy has been increasingly attracting Chinese investment, but does it come with a reputational cost?

In 2020, 25 Chinese companies had operations in the Republic of Ireland. By this year the number had jumped to 40.

For some this new flood of yuan into the country offers Ireland an opportunity to reduce its reliance on being the European base for US tech giants such as Apple and Alphabet. And it creates additional jobs.

But for an increasing number of critics, Ireland being home to Chinese firms links the country to the human rights abuse allegations levelled against some such companies. These include Chinese clothing firm Shein, which since May 2023 has had its European headquarters in Dublin.

Shein has long been attacked for how the workers who makes its clothes are treated. And earlier this year it had to admit that it found child labour in its supply chain.

The Irish government is also in the diplomatically awkward position of luring many of the very Chinese companies that the US has sanctioned.

Two cases in point – telecoms firm Huawei and drugs company WuXi Biologics.

In May, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, welcomed a report celebrating how Huawei was contributing €800m ($889m; £668m) per year to the Irish economy. The firm has three research and development centres in Ireland.

This is the same Huawei whose telecoms network equipment the US has banned since 2022 due to concerns over national security. The UK has moved in the same direction, ordering phone networks to remove Huawei components. And mobile phone networks in many Western nations, including Ireland, no longer offer Huawei handsets.

Meanwhile, WuXi has, since 2018, invested more than €1bn in a facility in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month the US House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict US firms’ ability to work with WuXi, again citing national security concerns. The bill now has to go to the US Senate.

Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority is the government agency whose mandate is to attract foreign investment into the country. It has three offices in China, and says it seeks “to promote Ireland as a gateway to Europe for Chinese investors”.

Another Chinese firm that has its European headquarters in Ireland is social media video app TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based parent firm ByteDance. And the parent of Chinese online retailer Temu moved its global headquarters from China to Ireland last year.

Prominent critics of Ireland rolling out a “green carpet” to Chinse firms include Barry Andrews, one of Ireland’s members of the European Parliament. “Human rights and environmental abuses should not be allowed in Irish shopping baskets,” says the Fianna Fáil MEP.

He points to a US Congress report from last year, which said there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labour”.

Temu had told the investigation that it had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.

“One person’s bargain is another’s back-breaking work for poverty wages,” adds Mr Andrews, whose party is part of the current Irish government coalition.

Critics also argue that there are substantial differences between US tech firms operating in Ireland and Chinese ones – for example, about openness.

For instance, Huawei and WuXi declined an opportunity to be interviewed for this article. Shein provided a spokesperson who was only prepared to speak off the record, then did not reply to follow-up questions.

Some leading economists question whether Ireland even needs the few thousand jobs that the Chinese firms provide.

“Ireland’s economy has been running at near full employment for the best part of a decade,” says Dan O’Brien, chief economist at Ireland’s Institute of International and European Affairs.

Irish unemployment was 4.3% in August 2024, only slightly above its all-time low of 3.90% in October 2020. Economists generally consider an unemployment rate of around 4 to 5% to represent full employment.

Mr O’Brien also points to the fact that a fifth of Ireland’s private-sector employment is directly, or indirectly, attributable to foreign direct investment (FDI), according to official figures. He says this is too high.

It is so elevated because Ireland has one of the lowest standard corporation tax rates in Europe, at 12.5%. This is the tax that all but the very biggest firms have to pay on their profits. By comparison, the UK rate is 25%.

Mr O’Brien says that Ireland’s level of FDI was already too high without the Chinese investment on top. “Given we are already overly dependent on FDI in a world that is at risk of deglobalisation, we don’t need another major source of FDI on top of that from the United States.”

He adds EU rules should be “actively used to discourage Chinese FDI” in Ireland.

The Irish government tells the BBC that it “supports the common EU approach to China on de-risking… [but] the government has been clear that de-risking is not decoupling”.

Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke adds: “In an era of continuous global uncertainty, Ireland offers a stable and pro-business environment. Multinational companies, including Chinese companies, recognise these opportunities.”

Given how much Ireland’s economy does depend on FDI, some economists say Chinese investment in Ireland can be seen as a welcome insurance policy in case some US firms pull out.

“There is a huge pressure on US tech companies to re-domicile and re-invest in the US,” says Constantin Gurdgiev, an economist at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Northern Colorado.

Meanwhile, other European countries, such as Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, and Malta, have made inroads in courting US investments, presenting Ireland with new competition from countries with cheaper housing and less rain.

Dr Gurdgiev also points to “the forever-looming threat of global corporate tax reforms”, further eroding Ireland’s low corporation tax. The country has already signed up to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development rules, and as a result, this year introduced a 15% corporation tax rate for firms with an annual turnover of more than €750m ($835m; £625m).

And earlier this month, the European Court of Justice ruled that Apple had to pay Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes. It followed after the European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages.

Dublin consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid, but said it would respect the ruling.

Dr Gurdgiev adds that Ireland is acting “with some strategic foresight” in courting Beijing. And that even if Dublin is welcoming the likes of Huawei, he says that the strength and influence of the Irish diaspora in the US means that Washington will turn something of a blind eye.

He argues that this is why the US authorities have been “largely laissez-faire in their approach to chasing tax optimization schemes that Dublin has been developing over decades”.

Plus, he says Ireland provides the US, EU and China with a useful “neutral ground” where both US and Chinese tech firms can operate.

Dr Gurdgiev adds that by putting itself in such a position, Ireland is playing a “dangerous geopolitical game” for a small economy.

However, he says its diplomatic closeness to the US should make its position “relatively safe”.

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 8bn 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.

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 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”.

Nestled in the mountains of Indian-administered Kashmir, Shopian – once a hotbed of militancy – sees a steady stream of voters entering a polling booth.

The former state of Jammu and Kashmir – now divided into two federally administered territories – is holding its first assembly election in a decade. The third and last phase of voting is on Tuesday and results will be declared on 8 October.

Since the 1990s, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the region has claimed thousands of lives, including those of civilians and security forces.

Earlier, elections were marred by violence and boycotts as separatists saw polls as a means for Delhi to try and legitimise its control. The high voter turnout now signals a change – people here say they have waited long to be heard.

“The level of poverty in our area is severe,” says 52-year-old Mohammad Yusuf Ganai after casting his vote. He laments that the lack of jobs has forced educated young Kashmiris to “sit at home”.

The last elections a decade ago resulted in a coalition government that collapsed in 2018. Before new polls could be held, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked the region’s autonomy and statehood, sparking widespread discontent among Kashmiris.

For five years, Jammu and Kashmir has been under federal control with no local representation, and this election offers people a long-awaited chance to voice their concerns.

“We will finally be able to go to the elected official with our problems,” says 65-year-old Mohammad Abdul Dar.

Nearly 150km (93 miles) away in Uri, the last town near the Line of Control – the de facto border with Pakistan-administered Kashmir – newly elected MP from the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Engineer Rashid addresses a frenzied crowd. In jail since 2019 on terror funding charges that he denies, Rashid was granted interim bail to campaign for the election.

People flock to his motorcade, one seeking a selfie, another offering a jacket, as Rashid’s personal struggles appear to resonate deeply with voters.

• Why Engineer Rashid’s return from jail has ruffled feathers

“I want development and a resolution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue,” Rashid says. Being part of the system now as a lawmaker, he adds, will help him raise these issues in Delhi.

Civil engineer Tanvir Chalkoo, 29, listens intently to Rashid.

Calling the scrapping of autonomy the “worst kind of injustice”, Tanvir asks why as an Indian he should be treated any differently.

“People have been deprived of their rights for the last 10 years,” he says.

The BJP government insists that scrapping the region’s special status and placing it under direct rule has brought peace and development, with Prime Minister Modi announcing $700m (£523m) in projects during a visit in March. It’s now up to BJP candidate Engineer Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk to convince voters of this message.

“Previously, no one would go door to door [to campaign]. Today, they are. This is our achievement, isn’t it?” says Aijaz.

He points to the increased voter turnout as proof of faith in the election process, with the recent parliamentary elections seeing record participation. Yet, despite these claims, the BJP did not contest those elections and is now only fielding candidates in 19 of the 47 assembly seats in the Kashmir valley.

The party’s stronghold remains the Hindu-dominated Jammu region with 43 seats, where it is hoping to score well.

“Our organisation is weak in other constituencies,” admits Aijaz.

The Hindu nationalist BJP has been trying to make inroads in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, where it has had little presence.

• ‘Any story could be your last’ – India’s crackdown on Kashmir press

Aijaz’s cavalcade of nearly 50 BJP-flagged cars drove through Srinagar’s narrow lanes, a show of strength unimaginable in Kashmir just a few years ago.

While some come out of their homes to greet Aijaz with sweets, others refrain. The BJP is still seen by many here as the party in Delhi which took away their autonomy.

Maleha Sofi, 24, is disillusioned with the BJP, believing the touted peace has come at the cost of personal liberties, and has decided not to vote. “We are not allowed to say anything,” she says.

Legacy parties like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have made this central to their campaign.

“This election is an act of self-preservation for Kashmiris,” says Waheed Para, the party’s candidate from Pulwama. “It’s a step to reclaim what was lost and preserve what we have.”

In 2020, Para was jailed for nearly two years, accused of aiding banned separatist groups. India has long faced accusations of human rights violations in Kashmir – it denies this – but critics say this has intensified in the past few years.

Ahead of the assembly election, Amnesty International accused the government of fostering a “climate of fear” and urged an end to arbitrary detentions under strict anti-terror laws used to silence dissent on Jammu and Kashmir.

But the BJP government in Delhi has always taken a hard line on this. Aijaz says “all those people who are with separatists will be dealt with very seriously”.

While regional political parties promise change and say they are fighting for the rights of Kashmiris, how much influence will they have after these elections?

Lawyer Zafar Shah anticipates friction between the federal administration and the elected government which will soon assume charge.

Before 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was a state, the chief minister could enact laws with the consent of the governor, who was bound by the state cabinet’s recommendations.

Now, as a federal territory under a Lieutenant Governor (LG), the chief minister must get the LG’s approval, especially on sensitive issues like public order, appointments and prosecutions. Power has shifted, says Mr Shah, as the LG won’t act without clearance from the federal home ministry.

“Whether the LG can create hurdles in the government’s working, that’s a matter to be seen when an actual situation arises,” adds Mr Shah.

Despite the challenges, many in Kashmir hope these elections will give them a chance to finally have their own representatives to voice their concerns.

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.

The last remaining blast furnace in Port Talbot will stop producing steel on Monday, ending the traditional method of steelmaking in south Wales.

Tata Steel is expected to remove the last usable liquid iron from blast furnace 4 on Monday afternoon.

The closure of the heavy end at the UK’s largest steelworks is part of a restructure that will cut 2,800 jobs.

Future steelmaking in Port Talbot will rely on imports until an electric furnace, which melts scrap steel, is built.

Owen Midwinter, who’s from Port Talbot, has already finished his last shift in the blast furnace control room.

He wants to stay with Tata, but said he is “in limbo” while he finds out if he will be matched to a job in another part of the company.

“Every day there are rumours, it plays on your mind a bit,” he said.

Owen said he accepts he may have to move away to find the kind of work he wants.

“If the worst comes to the worst and I do get made redundant, I’d want to stay around here,” he added.

“I’ve got my family, I’ve got the football club. But that might not be a possibility.”

He said there are mixed emotions amongst employees. For some, the significance “has hit home a bit”.

“They’re feeling it now, they’ve been there for years and years, and now it’s finally coming to an end.”

But a lot of people are “just getting on with it”, he said.

“It’s been a long process now and they’re counting down the days for it to be off and they can start a new beginning elsewhere, either in the company or on their own.”

Blast furnaces produce molten iron by splitting rocks containing iron ore. It is a chemical reaction that requires intense heat, and which emits high levels of carbon into the atmosphere.

It is known as primary steelmaking, or virgin steelmaking, as it extracts iron from its original source and can be purified and treated to make all types of steel.

The BBC was given permission to record inside the blast furnace during its final days of operation.

James Raleigh, who has been involved in operating both blast furnaces in Port Talbot, said: “I have been in there quite a few times, but it is still very impressive to me.”

The works technical manager for the coke, sinter and iron department added: “Working in this industry, the scale of it is absolutely huge. It is still very impressive every time I go in there.”

Temperatures inside the furnace reach over 2,000C (3,632F) with liquid iron “tapped” by workers flowing out at a temperature of around 1,500C (2,732F).

The first of Port Talbot’s two blast furnaces was taken out of service in July, while the closure of the second will mark the end of primary steelmaking in Wales.

Tata Steel UK has consistently said that its blast furnace operations were losing £1m a day, and it will invest £1.25bn in an electric arc furnace which would reduce emissions and secure the future of steelmaking.

The UK government has committed £500m towards the cost of the new technology, with construction set to begin in August 2025.

In the meantime imported steel slab will be milled in Port Talbot to continue supplying customers and Tata’s downstream sites in Trostre, Llanwern and Shotton.

Prof Geraint Williams from Swansea University said the end of blast furnace production was “a turning-point in steelmaking” in the UK.

“You are removing the capacity of the UK to be able to produce its own primary steel,” he said.

“What is produced in an electric arc furnace isn’t primary steel. What you’re doing is recycling steel. You’re re-melting it.”

Prof Williams said the closure of Port Talbot’s furnaces, and the expected closure of the UK’s last remaining blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, signalled a major change in the country’s industrial history.

“Great Britain is the birthplace of the industrial revolution, so it’s very surprising that – eventually – we will lose the ability to produce steel from scratch.”

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.

Israel’s continuing air strikes may have already forced as many as one million people from their homes across Lebanon, the country’s prime minister has said.

“It is the largest displacement movement that may have happened,” Najib Mikati said.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported more than 50 people killed in Sunday’s strikes – two days after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired more rockets into northern Israel.

In a separate development, Israel said it had carried out “large-scale” air strikes on military targets of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen.

Hezbollah confirmed on Sunday that top military commander Ali Karaki and a senior cleric, Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, had also been killed in the Israeli air strikes.

“We need to keep hitting Hezbollah hard,” Israel’s military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said.

Another Israeli strike in the central Beirut neighbourhood of Kola early on Monday killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the group said in a statement.

The PFLP is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a coalition recognised at the UN as the official representative of the Palestinians. The group is also considered a terrorist organisation by both the US and EU.

The statement named those killed as military security chief Mohammad Abdel-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh, and fighter Abdel Rahman Abdel-Aal.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Mikati said the wave of air strikes had forced people to flee from Beirut and other parts of the country, including the southern border areas.

The local authorities are struggling to assist everyone in need, with shelters and hospitals under growing pressure, BBC correspondents in Lebanon report.

Aya Ayoub, aged 25, told the BBC she had to flee her house in Beirut’s southern Tahweetet al-Ghadir suburb with her family of six as it was too dangerous to stay.

Around her house, she said, “all the buildings are completely destroyed”, and she was currently staying with another 16 people in a house in Beirut.

“We left on Friday and had no place to go. We stayed until 02:00 in the streets until a group of people helped us get into a residential building that was under construction. We are living on candles at night, and have to get water and food from outside”.

Sara Tohmaz, a 34-year-old journalist, told the BBC she had left her house near Beirut with her mother and two siblings last Friday.

It took them almost 10 hours to reach Jordan through Syria by car, she said.

“I think we are lucky enough to have a place to stay in Jordan, where my mother’s relatives are based. We don’t know what will happen next, and don’t know when we will be back,” Tohmaz added.

The previously sporadic cross-border fighting escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Since then hundreds of people, including many Hezbollah fighters, have been killed, while tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Also on Sunday, Israel said it carried out air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, striking power plants and a port in Ras Isa and Hudaydah.

Footage later emerged showing a huge explosion at the port.

Israel says it targeted the sites in response to recent missile attacks from the Houthis, as well as to destroy facilities being used to transport Iranian weapons.

The Houthis, a Shia group controlling large areas of Yemen, condemned the Israeli strikes as a “brutal aggression”.

They said four people were killed and 33 injured, vowing revenge.

There are mounting international fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Washington warned Israel against an all-out war with Hezbollah or Iran, saying a major conflict would leave Israelis unable to return to their homes in the north.

Kris Kristofferson, the award-winning country singer and actor who worked with Johnny Cash and Martin Scorsese, has died aged 88.

A representative said he passed away “peacefully” at his home in Hawaii on Saturday, surrounded by family.

The statement described Kristofferson as “a peacenik, a revolutionary, an actor, a superstar, a sex symbol, and a family man.”

The multi-award winner was known for his songwriting, notably credited for Me and Bobby McGee, and Help Me Make It Through the Night, among others. He also acted in the hit movie A Star Is Born.

A message from his family said they were all “so blessed” for the time they had with him.

“Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all,” said the message, quoted by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Born in Brownsville, Texas, on 22 June, 1936, Kristofferson became a leading figure in country music.

“When I got started, I was one of the people hoping to bring respect to country music,” he said, according to the family message.

“Some of the songs I had that got to be hits did that. I imagine that’s why somebody might vote me into a Hall of Fame. I know it’s not because of my golden throat.”

Kristofferson studied writing at Pomona College in California and later went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He earned his masters from Oxford in 1960, then returned to the US and joined the army.

He was assigned by the military to teach literature, which he said “sounded like hell”.

In 1965 he visited Nashville, and within two weeks had resigned from his army post and moved to the country music hub to pursue his music career.

The head of the Country Hall of Fame and Museum said he left behind “a resounding legacy”.

“Kris Kristofferson believed creativity is God-given, and those who ignore such a gift are doomed to unhappiness,” Kyle Young wrote on X. “He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and his work gave voice not only to his soul but to ours.”

He won three Grammys for best country song, Help Me Make It Through the Night in 1972, and two separate duets with Rita Coolidge (1974, 1976), to whom he was married in the 1970s.

In 1971 Kristofferson debuted as an actor, going on to win a Golden Globe for his portrayal of John Norman Howard in A Star Is Born (1976) opposite Barbra Streisand’s Ester Hoffman.

His acting career saw him take on numerous roles, including in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Lone Star, and the Blade franchise.

In 1985 Kristofferson joined friends Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to form a supergroup called The Highwaymen.

“Every time I look at a picture of Willie and me and John and Waylon, I find it amazing that they let the janitor in there,” he told journalist Mikal Gilmore, referring to his former job at CBS’s Nashville studio.

In 2003, Kristofferson received the Free Speech Award from the Americana Music Association.

A year later, he became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He also received multiple lifetime achievement honours, including from The Recording Academy, the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music.

Kristofferson is survived by his wife Lisa, his eight children, and seven grandchildren.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has opened the door to a new era, its leader Herbert Kickl has told supporters, as they celebrated an unprecedented election victory.

Projected results gave Kickl’s party 28.8% – more than two points ahead of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.

Kickl’s victory is only the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe and he praised voters for their “optimism, courage and trust” in delivering a “piece of history”.

The FPÖ has been in coalition before, but the second-placed ÖVP has refused to take part in a government led by him.

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

There was a high turnout of 78% as Austria’s 6.3 million voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

As half the map of Austria turned dark blue, FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said “the men and women of Austria have made history today”, although he refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

An analysis of voters suggested those aged 35-59 were most likely to vote for the far right, and marginally more women than men.

Kickl’s party is on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.

The Freedom Party’s fiery leader had promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace, and he has aligned himself closely with Viktor Orban in neighbouring Hungary.

Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler warned that Austria must not go the same way as Hungary.

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

The party was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video singing an SS song at a funeral.

As the FPÖ’s victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners.

Forming a coalition is likely to prove complicated for Kickl, who is a divisive figure.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Neos have all ruled out a partnership with the far right.

The only possible coalition Kickl’s party could form is with the conservatives, although the FPÖ would have to find a solution to the ÖVP’s refusal to have Kickl as chancellor.

When Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party won the Netherlands’ election last November, he dropped his bid to become prime minister so that three other parties would agree to form a coalition. However, Kickl is keen to lead his country, promising Austrians to act as their “servant and protector”.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer told the BBC it was by no means clear that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of government, would give Kickl a “direct mandate to form a coalition”.

The ÖVP could in theory scrape together a coalition with the Social Democrats if the latest projections are correct, and could attract the liberal Neos party or the Greens.

Equally, Karl Nehammer may come under pressure from within the ÖVP to drop his objection. One leading FPÖ figure said after such a historic defeat he should resign, although that was rejected by the general secretary of Nehammer’s party.

President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPÖ because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria’s neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

Kickl’s projected victory is the latest in almost a year of vote successes for radical right-wing parties in Europe.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni heads a right-wing coalition as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Germany’s AfD topped the polls in the eastern state of Thuringia last month. France’s National Rally won the vote in European elections last June.

Unlike Kickl, Italy’s prime minister has given her full backing to the EU’s defence of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel congratulated Kickl, posting a picture of the two together, and Marine le Pen of the National Rally said “this groundswell carrying the defence of national interests”, after the votes elsewhere in Europe, confirmed the “people’s triumphs everywhere”.

Geert Wilders said times were changing, and that “identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum” was what millions of Europeans were longing for.

Kickl has tapped into fears about immigration in Austria and he has made the most of anger at the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, embracing conspiracy theories about obscure treatments for the virus.

For Kickl and his party, Sunday’s election victory represents a significant recovery from 2019, when they came a distant third in the wake of a video sting scandal that engulfed their former leader.

A SpaceX capsule sent to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) has docked.

The Dragon capsule, which has two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, docked at 17:30 eastern time (22:30 BST).

The pair arrived at the station on Boeing’s new Starliner capsule for an eight-day mission in June, but were forced to remain there because of a fault discovered during the flight.

They are now expected to return to Earth in February.

The Dragon capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday carrying Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov.

Hague, who has done a previous stint on the ISS, and Gorbunov will join the space station’s crew before taking Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

The launch had been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed because of Hurricane Helene, which has caused huge destruction across the south-eastern US, including Florida, in recent days.

The docking occurred as the space station flew 265 miles (426km) above Botswana in southern Africa.

Footage from inside the ISS showed Hague and Gorbunov smiling and posing for photos with the rest of the crew after their arrival.

The original Starliner flight, which launched on 5 June, was that capsule’s first test flight with astronauts on board and Boeing’s first attempt to take astronauts to the ISS.

During the flight it experienced a number of problems, including leaks of helium – which is used in its propulsion system – and issues with several of its thrusters.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa spent months investigating, but in late August Nasa decided that it would not be safe to try to bring Wilmore and Williams home aboard the Starliner.

The capsule had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks during its development, as well as issues discovered during uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2022.

Nasa retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving it reliant on Russia’s Soyuz craft to get to and from the ISS.

Having two American companies to perform the missions has been a key goal of the agency’s for some time, and in 2014 Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts worth $4.2bn (£3.2bn) and $2.6bn (£2bn) respectively.

In 2020, SpaceX – founded by billionaire Elon Musk – became the first private company to take astronauts to the ISS.

For Daniel Guerra, an aspiring Brazilian sailor keen to travel the world, the job ad was a dream come true.

A British yacht owner was seeking two deck-hands to help sail his boat from Brazil across the Atlantic, one of the great ocean journeys.

There would be no salary, but all expenses paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would gain some of the sailing experience he needed to qualify as a sea captain.

“My dream was to become a captain and go work in Europe,” remembers the 43-year-old, who saw the advert from an online sailing recruitment agency.

“So I was super happy, knowing that my path to my dream was beginning.”

Things looked even better when Mr Guerra and his fellow recruit, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.

They had feared he might be some snobbish yachtie or posing Instagrammer, who would make sure they knew who was boss.

But no. George Saul was a smiling, friendly figure, who did not insist on formalities. The sailors, he said, could even call him by his nickname – “Fox”.

“I used to work on some boats and the owners were old, super demanding, super rude and talked down to me,” adds Mr Dantas. “He was like, very cool, very friendly.”

Fox even passed the approval test of Mr Dantas’s parents, who were worried about their son doing such a long journey on a yacht owned by a total stranger, and asked to meet him for themselves.

To borrow the old sailing expression, they liked the cut of his jib. They learned that Fox had brought the Rich Harvest over to Brazil for renovations, and wanted a competent crew to sail it back to Europe on his behalf.

As well as the rookies, Mr Dantas and Mr Guerra, there would be two others, including a qualified captain.

“I said: ‘Look, watch out for my son’,” remembers Mr Dantas’s father, João. “He said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Rodrigo.’”

As it turned out, his parents were not the only ones who wanted to check that all was well on board the Rich Harvest.

Before the departure from Brazil, local police spent around six hours searching the yacht for drugs, with the help of a sniffer dog.

They did not find what they were looking for, though, and the sailors assumed it was just a routine check.

They had heard stories about cocaine being planted on boats, and now at least knew they were in the clear.

“When you travel through an airport… your bags go through the X-ray machine,” says Mr Dantas. “So I thought, well, it’s an international trip and they’re coming to inspect the boat.”

Such worries were far from their mind when they eventually embarked on their epic journey on 4 August 2017, the Brazilian coastline slowly receding behind them.

With them were an additional crew member, Daniel Dantas (no relation of Rodrigo Dantas) and the yacht’s newly hired captain, Frenchman Olivier Thomas, 56, a replacement for a previous British captain whose sailing skills had not proved up to scratch.

Fox, meanwhile, had made his way back to Europe by plane two days before.

“It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, sun,” recalls Mr Guerra, who posted a message of thanks to Fox on his Facebook page.

It read: “I’m really grateful, Fox, for this… chance to learn and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”

After two weeks of sailing, the yacht developed engine problems, forcing it to stop in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

Once more, Mr Guerra and Mr Dantas found reasons to look on the bright side. The islands are a tourist paradise, and Fox said he would wire them money to enjoy themselves while repairs were done at a local marina.

And when yet more police came to search the vessel, Mr Guerra was not worried.

“They didn’t find anything in Brazil,” he thought to himself. “They won’t find anything in Cape Verde either.”

The Cape Verdean police were even more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, using specialist cutting equipment to open up the yacht’s innards.

Hidden inside below false floors, they found nearly 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – worth an estimated £100m ($134m) if sold on Europe’s streets.

“I felt that all my freedom was going down the drain,” said Mr Guerra. “I was furious, couldn’t accept what was happening, you know? I’d been really fooled.”

Finding Mr Fox – a BBC investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.

Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)

In March 2018, the crew went on trial in Cape Verde, protesting their innocence.

They had never even heard of Rich Harvest or its owner until they answered the job advert, they insisted.

They were sentenced, however, to 10 years in jail each – in what was hailed as one of the country’s biggest busts.

But while the haul was impressive, the man Brazilian police regarded as the big catch got away.

They believed that the mastermind of the operation was Fox, whose yacht was first drawn to their attention by a tip-off from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

Brazilian police believe he was the leader of the operation to smuggle the drugs.

In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, where Brazilian police filed extradition proceedings. They wanted him to be returned to Brazil to answer the allegations against him.

But the paperwork arrived too late, and he was freed – much to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.

He feared that Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.

“We were left with that feeling that after all our work, we’d never get to the bottom of it,” he told the BBC. “It was very, very frustrating.”

Mr Gonçalves said his team had kept both Fox and the yacht under surveillance in Brazil. They believe the “renovations” on the boat were partly to fit it with secret compartments, and that the drugs were loaded on to the vessel before the sailors were hired.

Mr Gonçalves admits that at first, he presumed the four sailors were involved too.

“If someone is on a boat that’s full of drugs, you think that person must have something to do with it,” he said.

But as he dug into their backgrounds, he could find nothing previously linking them to the drug world or to Fox.

“The deeper I went I still couldn’t find a connection… but at the same time it strengthened the evidence we had against Fox.”

The sailors’ pleas of innocence also got backing from an unlikely source – fellow Briton Robert Delbos, a man who was alleged to be an accomplice of Fox.

Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker, having been jailed for 12 years in 1988 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cannabis into the UK.

Before the Rich Harvest left Brazil, Mr Gonçalves’s team observed Delbos supervising the first stages of the yacht’s renovations.

They initially suspected he was fitting secret compartments, and filed successful extradition proceedings for him around the same time as those against Fox.

Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax prison awaiting trial, but he too said the drugs were later planted without his knowledge.

He was acquitted after the judge in his case ruled it could not be proved that he knew about the smuggling plan.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them by using innocent sailors as mules rather than hiring professional smugglers.

“This is completely beyond the pale. I mean, you don’t do this,” he said.

“He was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting himself a professional, bloody smuggling crew – he hired four innocent guys.”

As doubts about the sailors’ guilt grew, their families began a campaign on their behalf, which became a cause célèbre in Brazil.

In 2019 their convictions in Cape Verde were overturned, and they were allowed to go home.

Fox, meanwhile, has never faced trial, and returned to the UK.

The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in eastern England where he grew up, attended college locally, and was an accomplished amateur yachtsman – sailing off the nearby Norfolk coast.

Today, he resides in a Norwich suburb and runs a property firm.

He belonged to a local business networking association, and on his social media feed last March, posted photos of himself with the city’s then Lord Mayor, James Wright.

There is no suggestion that Mr Wright was aware of the accusations against Fox.

The BBC tracked Fox down as he arrived at one of his networking association’s weekly business breakfasts, at a Norwich hotel.

He declined to comment on the Rich Harvest and the sailors’ ordeal.

Asked about the allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I’m not.”

An NCA spokesperson said if Brazilian police still wished to pursue the case, they would have to file an extradition request.

Brazil’s ministry of justice said it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra are trying to rebuild their lives in Brazil, their dreams of becoming yacht captains abandoned.

Mr Dantas says he struggled to find sailing work on his return home, with some employers assuming he must have been guilty after all.

Mr Guerra’s round-the-world sailing ambitions “stayed locked up in Cape Verde”.

He says he lost his ability to trust people, vital during the challenges on any long yacht voyage.

Even now, he still wonders who Fox really was – that “cool” British guy he once felt so grateful to, whose job advert then turned his life upside down.

He says that he would “really like to see justice done”, but has no wish to meet Fox ever again.

“If I meet him, it won’t be me who’s going to talk. It will be another Daniel. All the bad feelings I had in jail will come up and I won’t be able to be a civilised person.”

Coming in October World of Secrets, Season 5: Finding Mr Fox.

A joint BBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets podcast investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.

• Kidnapped and trafficked twice – a sex worker’s life in Sierra Leone
• Apartheid era mass killer dies as victims still demand justice
• How a Malawi WhatsApp group helped save women trafficked to Oman
• ‘Terrible things happened’ – inside TB Joshua’s church of horrors

Nikunj Tank, a worker in the world’s diamond polishing capital Surat in western India, had been desperate since losing his job in May.

The unit he worked at for seven years was facing a financial squeeze and closed down, leaving him and over a dozen others unemployed.

Tank was the family’s sole breadwinner – he was supporting his parents, wife and daughter and had no savings.

‘‘He couldn’t find a job and unable to bear the loss, he took the extreme step,” said his retired father Jayanti Tank.

Tank died by suicide in August.

The last few years have been tough for India’s recession-hit diamond industry. Surat, in Gujarat state, processes 90% of the world’s diamonds in over 5,000 units and employs more than 800,000 polishers. The city has 15 big polishing units with an annual turnover of more than $100m (£75m).

India’s exports of cut and polished stones fell from $23bn in 2022 to $16bn in 2023 and are expected to drop further to $12bn in 2024.

• The revolution underway in India’s diamond industry
• Debt-ridden India labourer digs up diamond worth $95,000

The price of polished diamonds dipped by 5%,s to 27% in 2023, due to lower demand and oversupply, say analysts. Mahesh Virani of Star Gems explained that oversupply occurred because polishing units continued production despite limited demand to keep operations running, ultimately increasing their losses.

The state’s Diamond Workers’ Union, a group representing polishers, told BBC Gujarati that more than 30,000 have lost their jobs in the past six months alone due to the downturn.

The union says that as per their data collected from victims’ families, police records and news reports, 65 workers have died by suicide in the state over one-and-a-half years due to this slowdown. The BBC could not independently verify this figure.

Experts say the Covid-19 lockdown, the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars, and falling demand in key markets have adversely impacted India’s diamond industry.

“The business of polished diamonds has gone down by more than 25-30% due to global recession,” said Vallabh Lakhani, chairman of Kiran Gems, a leading manufacturer.

India imports 30% of its rough diamonds from Russian mines – now under Western sanctions due to the war – and cuts and polishes them, then sells them mostly in Western markets.

In March, the European Union and G7 countries imposed a fresh ban on the import of Russian unpolished diamonds, including those processed in India and sold in the West via third countries.

After the fresh ban, India publicly raised concerns, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stating in April that such measures hurt those lower in the supply chain more than Russia, as producers usually find alternative routes.

Traders in Surat echo that.

“India is at the low end of the value chain of the diamond industry. The country is highly dependent on the global market, both for raw materials as well as for final sales,” said exporter Kirti Shah.

• Ukraine war: Russian diamonds set for ban under new EU sanctions

Additionally, an economic downturn in G7 countries and the UAE and Belgium – India’s key export destinations – has impacted business.

The downturn is also attributed to a rise in demand for lab-grown diamonds, a cheaper alternative to natural diamonds, and to the war in Gaza, as the gems form a sizeable chunk of India’s trade with Israel.

“The diamond sector in Surat is passing through a bad phase,” said Kumar Kanani, a lawmaker from the state’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He said the police were investigating the suicide cases attributed to job losses.

“The government is ready to provide all possible help to polishers, traders and businessmen,” he said.

But the families of at least nine workers, who recently took their lives, said they had received little help from the government.

• Will a Russian diamond ban be effective?

The majority of layoffs have occurred in small and medium-sized units, which typically hire workers for quality checks of rough diamonds and for polishing and shaping them.

But bigger players are impacted too. Last month, Kiran Gems asked its 50,000 employees to go on a 10-day vacation, citing the slowdown as a reason.

In July, the Diamond Workers’ Union started a helpline which received over 1,600 distress calls from polishers seeking jobs or financial help.

But there have been others who couldn’t get help in time.

Vaishali Patel, 38, lost her husband Nitin two years back. The polishing unit he worked for had laid off a majority of its staff because of a lack of business.

Brokers and traders too are facing the brunt.

“We have been sitting idle for days. There is hardly any sale or purchase,” said Dilip Sojitra, one of the 5,000 brokers in Surat who sell diamonds to customers, traders and other brokers.

• India’s jobs crisis is more serious than it seems

Lab-grown diamonds, once in high demand, have also seen prices drop from $300 to $78 per carat due to overproduction, impacting the market. Surat Diamond Brokers Association president Nandlal Nakrani believes the situation will improve when rough diamond prices decrease and polished diamond prices rise.

Despite the slowdown, some hope the industry will recover, as it did after the 2008 Great Recession, which shut hundreds of polishing units and left thousands jobless.

Mr Sojitra says he believes the upcoming festival season, including Diwali, Christmas, and New Year, will help boost business momentum.

“This too shall pass,” he says.

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.”

Signs that modern slavery victims were being forced to work at a McDonald’s branch and a factory supplying bread products to major supermarkets were missed for years, the BBC has found.

A gang forced 16 victims to work at either the fast-food restaurant or the factory – which supplied Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

Well-established signs of slavery, including paying the wages of four men into one bank account, were missed while the victims from the Czech Republic were exploited over more than four years.

McDonald’s UK said it had improved systems for spotting “potential risks”, while the British Retail Consortium said its members would learn from the case.

Six members of a family-run human trafficking network from the Czech Republic have been convicted in two criminal trials, which were delayed by the Covid pandemic.

Reporting restrictions have prevented coverage of much of the case, but BBC England can now reveal the full scale of the gang’s crimes – and the missed opportunities to stop them.

Nine victims were forced to work at the McDonald’s branch in Caxton, Cambridgeshire. Nine worked at the pitta bread company, with factories in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and Tottenham in north London, which made supermarket own-brand products. There were 16 victims in total across both sites, as two worked at both McDonald’s and the factory.

The victims – who were all vulnerable, most having experienced homelessness or addiction – earned at least the legal minimum wage, but nearly all of their pay was stolen by the gang.

While they lived on a few pounds a day in cramped accommodation – including a leaking shed and an unheated caravan – police discovered their work was funding luxury cars, gold jewellery and a property in the Czech Republic for the gang.

On several occasions, victims escaped and fled home only to be tracked down and trafficked back to the UK.

The exploitation ended in October 2019 after victims contacted police in the Czech Republic, who then tipped off their British counterparts.

But warning signs had been missed for at least four years, the BBC has discovered by reviewing legal documents from the gang’s trial and interviewing three victims.

The undetected red flags include:

• Victims’ wages were paid into bank accounts in other people’s names. At the McDonald’s, at least four victims’ wages – totalling £215,000 – were being paid into one account, controlled by the gang

• Victims were unable to speak English, and job applications were completed by a gang member, who was even able to sit-in on job interviews as a translator

• Victims worked extreme hours at the McDonald’s – up to 70 to 100 a week. One victim worked a 30-hour shift. The UN’s International Labour Organization says excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour

• Multiple employees had the same registered address. Nine victims lived in the same terraced home in Enfield in north London while working at the bakery

“It really concerns me that so many red flags were missed, and that maybe the companies didn’t do enough to protect vulnerable workers,” said Dame Sara Thornton, the former independent anti-slavery commissioner, who reviewed the BBC’s findings.

Det Sgt Chris Acourt, who led the Cambridgeshire Police investigation, said there were “massive opportunities” that were missed to detect the slavery and alert authorities sooner.

“Ultimately, we could have been in a situation to end that exploitation much earlier had we been made aware,” he said.

Slavery on the High Street

For seven years, vulnerable victims of trafficking were forced to make food for major high street chains. How did their exploitation go undetected for so long?

Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only)

Like many of the victims, Pavel – who has waived his legal right to anonymity – was homeless in the Czech Republic when he was approached by the gang in 2016.

He says he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK, where he could at the time work legally.

But the reality of what he experienced has left lasting scars, he said.

“You can’t undo the damage to my mental health, it will always live with me.”

He was given just a few pounds a day in cash by his exploiters, despite working 70-hour weeks at the McDonald’s branch, he said.

The gang – led by brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak – confiscated the passports of all their victims and controlled them through fear and violence, police found.

“We were afraid,” Pavel said. “If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.”

The gang “treated their victims like livestock” feeding them just enough “to keep them going”, according to the Met’s Det Insp Melanie Lillywhite.

She said victims were controlled by “invisible handcuffs” – monitored by CCTV, prevented from using phones or the internet and unable to speak English.

“They really were cut off from the outside world,” she said.

While the gang has been convicted in court, Pavel believes McDonald’s also shares some responsibility.

“I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act,” he said.

“I thought if I was working for McDonalds, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.”

Two former colleagues told the BBC the extreme hours the men worked – and the impact it had on them – was plain to see.

Like most McDonald’s, the Caxton outlet – on the A428 – is a franchise, which means an independent business pays the fast-food giant to allow it to run the restaurant.

While victims worked there between 2015 and 2019, it was run by two different franchise-holders. We contacted both, but they did not respond.

McDonald’s UK declined our offer of an interview, but provided a statement on behalf of the corporation and its franchisees.

It said the current franchisee – Ahmet Mustafa – had only been “exposed to the full depth of these horrific, complex and sophisticated crimes” in the course of his co-operating with police and the prosecution.

The company said it cares “deeply” about all employees and promised that – working with franchisees – it would “play our part alongside government, NGOs [Non-governmental organisations] and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery”.

It also said it commissioned an independent review in October 2023 and had taken action to improve its ability to “detect and deter potential risks, such as: shared bank accounts, excessive working hours, and reviewing the use of interpreters in interviews”.

The bakery company – Speciality Flatbread Ltd – ceased trading and went into administration in 2022.

None of the supermarkets detected the slavery while victims worked at the factory between 2012 and 2019.

Dame Sara said she would have expected the retailers to be doing “pretty thorough due diligence”, adding that they normally “take much greater care about their own brand products because that’s their reputation that’s on the line”.

Sainsbury’s said it stopped using the company as an own-brand supplier in 2016.

The others only stopped sometime after police rescued the victims in 2019.

Asda told the BBC it was “disappointed that a historic case has been found in our supply chain”, adding that it would “review every case identified and act upon the learnings”.

It said it had made three site visits, but focused solely on food safety, and had stopped using the factory in 2020.

Tesco said inspections – supported by information from anti-slavery charity Unseen – “revealed concerning working practices” and the company “ceased all orders from the supplier” in 2020.

Waitrose said it pulled out in 2021 after its audits led to “concerns about factory standards and working conditions”.

The Co-op said it made “a number” of unannounced inspections, including worker interviews, but found no signs of modern slavery, adding that the company “actively work to tackle the shocking issue… both in the UK and abroad”.

M&S said it suspended and delisted the company in 2020 after it “became aware of potential breaches of ethical labour standards via the modern slavery helpline”.

The British Retail Consortium said workers’ welfare was “fundamental” to retailers, who it said acted quickly when concerns are raised.

“Nonetheless, it is important that the retail industry learns from cases like this to continually strengthen due diligence,” it said.

Speciality Flatbreads’ director Andrew Charalambous did not respond to written requests for comment, but in a phone call from the BBC said he had supported the police and prosecution, adding that the company had been “thoroughly audited by top law firms” and “everything we were doing was legal”.

He added: “From our perspective we didn’t break the law in any way, having said that, yes, maybe you’re right in that maybe there were certain telltale signs or things like that, but that would have been for the HR department who were dealing with it on the front line.”

The Modern Slavery Act requires larger companies – including McDonald’s and the supermarkets, but not the factory – to publish annual statements outlining what they will do to tackle the issue.

Former Prime Minister Baroness Theresa May, who introduced the act as home secretary in 2015, accepted the law failed to protect victims in this case, and believes it needs to be “beefed up”.

The former PM – who now leads the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking – said the case was “frankly shocking” and shows “large companies not properly looking into their supply chains”.

She said the global commission was reviewing what new laws are needed “to ensure action is being taken by companies”.

Responding to the case, the government said it would “set out next steps on the issue of modern slavery in due course”.

It said it was “committed to tackling all forms of modern slavery” and would “pursue gangs and employers with every lever at our disposal while ensuring that victims are provided with the support they need”.

Details of organisations offering support for victims of modern slavery are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

At least 30 people have died and scores more are unaccounted for in just one county in North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene tore across the state and caused catastrophic flooding.

A clearer image of the damage the storm inflicted after barrelling through Florida and Georgia emerged throughout Sunday, with Buncombe County appearing to be the hardest hit area.

“We have biblical devastation,” said Ryan Cole, an emergency official in the county, which contains the mountain city of Asheville. “This is the most significant natural disaster that any one of us has ever seen.”

At least 105 people have died nationwide since the hurricane made landfall in Florida on Thursday, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS, and that figure is expected to rise as officials reach more areas.

Helene began as a hurricane – the most powerful on record to hit Florida’s Big Bend, and moved north into Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The majority of deaths have been confirmed in North and South Carolina where Helene landed as a tropical storm.

On Sunday evening, officials in North Carolina said 30 people had died in Buncombe County alone. Crews across the state are battling power and mobile service outages, downed trees and hundreds of closed roads.

Some residents returned to find their homes entirely destroyed on Sunday. And with some 1,000 people still unaccounted for in Buncombe County, relatives are working to locate family members with limited mobile service.

“This storm has brought catastrophic devastation… of historic proportions,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said.

The American Red Cross has opened more than 140 shelters for those in south-eastern states who evacuated their homes. More than 2,000 people are currently using the shelters, the organisation said on Sunday.

Erin Quevedo, the owner of a flooded salon in Buncombe County, spoke to The Asheville Citizen Times while ankle-deep in mud.

“The salon was completely destroyed. It looks like the water came up to about five feet inside,” she said. “Right now, all we’re doing is we’re trying to salvage what we can.”

Rescue operations are ongoing in North Carolina and supplies, including food and water, are being delivered by air to affected areas that cannot be reached due to closed roads.

“People are desperate for help and we are pushing to get it to them – [it is] a massive effort,” Governor Cooper said.

The North Carolina National Guard has rescued more than 119 people – including one infant, according to Major General Todd Hunt. He said the largest rescue was of 41 people north of Asheville.

Many petrol stations are closed throughout North Carolina with long queues of cars at those that are still open. Meanwhile, the few open supermarkets have been crowded by customers attempting to buy bottled water.

• In pictures: Hurricane Helene destruction

The damage from the storm is estimated at between $95bn and $110bn (£71bn-£82bn) nationwide. The scale of the destruction will become clearer in the coming days.

The search for survivors is ongoing and federal emergencies have been declared in six states, including Florida and Georgia.

“The devastation we’re witnessing in Hurricane Helene’s wake has been overwhelming,” President Joe Biden said on Saturday.

He was briefed by Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who he directed to speed up support to storm survivors, including deployment of extra teams to North Carolina.

Although Helene has weakened significantly, forecasters warn that high winds, flooding and the threat of tornadoes could continue.

There could be as many as 25 named storms in 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned earlier this year.

Between eight and 13 of those storms could develop into hurricanes and a handful already have including Helene. More storms could be on the horizon, officials warned, as the official end of hurricane season is not until 30 November.