Israel and Hezbollah appear to be spiralling towards an all-out war that could spread to the wider region, after a week of significant escalation in their long-running conflict.

After several days of air strikes against Beirut and across southern Lebanon, Israel announced its army had begun “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah.

On Friday, Israel dealt a devastating blow against the Shia Islamist group by killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah in a huge air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israel has gone on the offensive after almost a year of cross-border hostilities sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of residents of border areas who have been displaced by Hezbollah attacks.

Although Hezbollah has been weakened, it has not been defeated. The group is continuing to fire barrages of rockets into northern Israel and is still believed to possess a formidable arsenal of long-range missiles.

Here’s a brief guide to the many developments which have unfolded in recent days.

In a statement posted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at 02:00 local time on Tuesday morning, Israel confirmed what had been widely expected – that it was launching a ground incursion across the border into Lebanon.

The IDF said that its planned targets are “located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel”.

The announcement was preceded by Israeli tanks being seen close to the Lebanese border and the mobilisation of reservists.

The head of the military’s Northern Command is said to favour the creation of a buffer zone inside southern Lebanon, to clear Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure away from the border, and allow Israel to return 60,000 civilians to homes evacuated almost a year ago.

US media reported earlier that small teams of Israeli commandos had been mounting brief raids across the border.

Israel has inflicted huge damage on Hezbollah in recent weeks, killing more than a dozen top commanders and apparently destroying thousands of weapons in air strikes. It was also blamed for the exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks that left thousands of Hezbollah members maimed, blinded or killed. However, BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen says the killing of Hassan Nasrallah is the biggest blow of all.

For more than 30 years, he was the beating heart of Hezbollah. With the help of Iranian funding, training and weapons, he turned it into a military force whose attacks led Israel to end a 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 and which fought Israel to a standstill during a month-long war in 2006.

For Israel, Nasrallah’s killing is a huge victory. In a defiant speech at the UN on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that Israel was “winning” the war against enemies who wanted to destroy it. By then, he had authorised the strike that killed Nasrallah.

Bowen: West left powerless as Israel claims its biggest victory yet against Hezbollah

Who was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah?

The Lebanese health ministry said on Saturday that Israeli attacks had killed more than 1,000 people in the previous two weeks, including 87 children and 56 women.

There was no let-up in the Israeli bombardment on Sunday, as another 100 people were killed and Prime Minister Najib Mikati warned that as many as one million people – a fifth of the population – might have fled their homes.

Authorities are struggling to assist everyone, with shelters and hospitals under pressure.

Israel says it is hitting Hezbollah sites, including weapons stores and ammunition dumps, and accused the group of using civilians as human shields.

But BBC senior international correspondent Orla Guerin says that is disputed by residents of the central Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold that has been bombed repeatedly in the past week.

The medical director of the local Rayaq hospital also told her that all of the casualties it had treated had been civilians.

Young Lebanese girl left fighting for life after Israeli strikes

‘I grabbed my grandchildren and ran’: Lebanon families flee Israeli strikes

US President Joe Biden welcomed Hassan Nasrallah’s killing. However, BBC state department correspondent Tom Bateman says the Israeli decision to escalate sharply the conflict with Hezbollah struck a potentially fatal blow to his entire strategy of the last 11 months – to try to stop the war in Gaza engulfing the region.

Biden has said he is boosting the US defensive posture in the Middle East, while the Pentagon has warned Iran-backed militias not to try to use this moment to attack US bases.

Despite the earlier US attempts to rein in the Israeli leader and coax Hezbollah to a truce, Netanyahu has signalled strongly that he will act as he sees fit, whatever the pressure from Washington.

Can diplomacy bring Middle East ceasefire? Early signs don’t bode well

In a speech on Monday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassam, described its current rocket, drone and missile attacks on Israel as “the bare minimum” and said it would “emerge victorious” after an Israeli ground offensive.

The group still has thousands of fighters, many of them veterans of combat in neighbouring Syria’s civil war, as well as a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided missiles that could reach Tel Aviv and other cities.

BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner says there will be pressure within its ranks to use those missiles before they get destroyed, but that a mass attack on Israel that kills civilians could trigger a devastating response.

The assassination of Nasrallah was also a huge blow to Iran, hitting at the heart of the regional network of allied, heavily armed militias known as the “Axis of Resistance” that is key to its deterrent strategy against Israel.

On Sunday, Israeli jets struck infrastructure in Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hudaydah in response to recent missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi movement.

Iran could ask the Houthis and other groups to step up their attacks on both Israel and US bases in the region. But whatever response it chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a regional war that would draw in the US and which it could not win.

What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?

Iran warns Hezbollah leader’s death ‘will not go unavenged’

The UK government has chartered a commercial flight out of Lebanon to assist British nationals trying to flee the fighting, the foreign secretary has announced.

The situation was “volatile” and had the potential to “deteriorate quickly”, David Lammy said, just hours before Israel announced the start of a “localised and targeted” ground operation in southern Lebanon.

British nationals and their spouse or partner, and children under the age of 18 are eligible to take the flight, with vulnerable people a priority.

The plane is scheduled to leave on Wednesday from Beirut, which was hit by fresh Israeli air strikes overnight.

Live updates: ‘Ground raids’ under way against Hezbollah

What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?

Israel tells US it plans to launch limited ground incursion into Lebanon

What to know about the Israel-Hezbollah conflict

The UK government will pay to charter the flight, which will depart from Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, but British nationals will be expected to pay a fee of £350 per seat.

British nationals and dependants will be eligible to request a space on the flight. Any non-British dependants boarding the flight will require a visa, granted for at least six months, to enter the UK.

Any further flights in the coming days will depend on demand and the security situation on the ground, the Foreign Office said.

As of last week, there were thought to be between 4,000 and 6,000 UK nationals including dependents in Lebanon.

“The safety of British nationals in Lebanon continues to be our utmost priority,” Lammy stressed.

Speaking to reporters, he added: “I urge them to leave because the situation on the ground is fast-moving and of course whilst we will do everything we can to protect British nationals, and those plans are in place to do so, we cannot anticipate the circumstances and the speed with we can do that if things escalate in a major way over the coming hours and days.”

A few hours later the Israeli military said a “limited, localised and targeted” ground operation was under way against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group which dominates the country.

Air strikes hit a southern suburb of Beirut, after the Israeli military warned residents there to evacuate.

The Israeli government says the aim of its military operation is to enable 60,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes. Hezbollah says its fighters are ready to confront an Israeli invasion.

According to officials in Lebanon, more than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks, while up to a million may now be displaced.

Lammy and his US counterpart Antony Blinken spoke by phone on Monday. He said they had seen the media reports and were both urging “de-escalation”.

He added the UK would be keeping in touch with Iran, and reiterated the call for a 21-day ceasefire to enhance the prospect of a political solution.

His comments come after Sir Keir Starmer last week told British nationals in Lebanon to “leave immediately” as fighting intensified between Israel and Hezbollah.

Britons had previously been advised to book flights out of the country – but there were limited options available, with most airlines except the national carrier having cancelled flights.

The Ministry of Defence has sent nearly 700 troops to nearby Cyprus to prepare for the possible evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon and the government “continues to advise against all travel to Lebanon”.

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

The Israel military campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

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

Hezbollah has launched more than 8,000 rockets at northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It has also fired anti-tank missiles at armoured vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.

Families of hostages in Gaza held a news conference in London, along with the relatives of other British-Israelis killed on 7 October, following a memorial event at Downing Street.

They said they felt let down and called on the government to do more to free their relatives. Earlier, they met Sir Keir and Lammy.

China’s sputtering economy has its worried leaders pulling out all the stops.

They have unveiled stimulus measures, offered rare cash handouts, held a surprise meeting to kickstart growth and tried to shake up an ailing property market with a raft of decisions – they did all of this in the last week.

On Monday, Xi himself spoke of “potential dangers” and being “well-prepared” to overcome grave challenges, which many believe was a reference to the economy.

What is less clear is how the slowdown has affected ordinary Chinese people, whose expectations and frustrations are often heavily censored.

But two new pieces of research offer some insight. The first, a survey of Chinese attitudes towards the economy, found that people were growing pessimistic and disillusioned about their prospects. The second is a record of protests, both physical and online, that noted a rise in incidents driven by economic grievances.

Although far from complete, the picture neverthless provides a rare glimpse into the current economic climate, and how Chinese people feel about their future.

Beyond the crisis in real estate, steep public debt and rising unemployment have hit savings and spending. The world’s second-largest economy may miss its own growth target – 5% – this year.

That is sobering for the Chinese Communist Party. Explosive growth turned China into a global power, and stable prosperity was the carrot offered by a repressive regime that would never loosen its grip on the stick.

The slowdown hit as the pandemic ended, partly driven by three years of sudden and complete lockdowns, which strangled economic activity.

And that contrast between the years before and after the pandemic is evident in the research by American professors Martin Whyte of Harvard University and Scott Rozelle of Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy.

They conducted their surveys in 2004 and 2009, before Xi Jinping became China’s leader, and during his rule in 2014 and 2023. The sample sizes varied, ranging between 3,000 and 7,500.

In 2004, nearly 60% of the respondents said their families’ economic situation had improved over the past five years – and just as many of them felt optimistic about the next five years.

The figures jumped in 2009 and 2014 – with 72.4% and 76.5% respectively saying things had improved, while 68.8% and 73% were hopeful about the future.

However in 2023, only 38.8% felt life had got better for their families. And less than half – about 47% – believed things would improve over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the proportion of those who felt pessimistic about the future rose, from just 2.3% in 2004 to 16% in 2023.

While the surveys were of a nationally representative sample aged 20 to 60, getting access to a broad range of opinions is a challenge in authoritarian China.

Respondents were from 29 Chinese provinces and administrative regions, but Xinjiang and parts of Tibet were excluded – Mr Whyte said it was “a combination of extra costs due to remote locations and political sensitivity”. Home to ethnic minorities, these tightly controlled areas in the north-west have long bristled under Beijing’s rule.

Those who were not willing to speak their minds did not participate in the survey, the researchers said. Those who did shared their views when they were told it was for academic purposes, and would remain confidential.

Their anxieties are reflected in the choices that are being made by many young Chinese people. With unemployment on the rise, millions of college graduates have been forced to accept low-wage jobs, while others have embraced a “lie flat” attitude, pushing back against relentless work. Still others have opted to be “full-time children”, returning home to their parents because they cannot find a job, or are burnt out.

Analysts believe China’s iron-fisted management of Covid-19 played a big role in undoing people’s optimism.

“[It] was a turning point for many… It reminded everyone of how authoritarian the state was. People felt policed like never before,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Many people were depressed and the subsequent pay cuts “reinforced the confidence crisis,” he added.

Moxi, 38, was one of them. He left his job as a psychiatrist and moved to Dali, a lakeside city in southwestern China now popular with young people who want a break from high-pressure jobs.

“When I was still a psychiatrist, I didn’t even have the time or energy to think about where my life was heading,” he told the BBC. “There was no room for optimism or pessimism. It was just work.”

Work, however, no longer seems to signal a promising future, according to the survey.

In 2004, 2009 and 2014, more than six in 10 respondents agreed that “effort is always rewarded” in China. Those who disagreed hovered around 15%.

Come 2023, the sentiment flipped. Only 28.3% believed that their hard work would pay off, while a third of them disagreed. The disagreement was strongest among lower-income families, who earned less than 50,000 yuan ($6,989; £5,442) a year.

Chinese people are often told that the years spent studying and chasing degrees will be rewarded with financial success. Part of this expectation has been shaped by a tumultuous history, where people gritted their teeth through the pain of wars and famine, and plodded on.

Chinese leaders, too, have touted such a work ethic. Xi’s Chinese Dream, for example, echoes the American Dream, where hard work and talent pay off. He has urged young people to “eat bitterness”, a Chinese phrase for enduring hardship.

But in 2023, a majority of the respondents in the Whyte and Rozelle study believed people were rich because of the privilege afforded by their families and connections. A decade earlier, respondents had attributed wealth to ability, talent, a good education and hard work.

This is despite Xi’s signature “common prosperity” policy aimed at narrowing the wealth gap, although critics say it has only resulted in a crackdown on businesses.

There are other indicators of discontent, such as an 18% rise in protests in the second quarter of 2024, compared with the same period last year, according to the China Dissent Monitor (CDM).

The study defines protests as any instance when people voice grievances or advance their interests in ways that are in contention with authority – this could happen physically or online. Such episodes, however small, are still telling in China, where even lone protesters are swiftly tracked down and detained.

A least three in four cases are due to economic grievances, said Kevin Slaten, one of the CDM study’s four editors.

Starting in June 2022, the group has documented nearly 6,400 such events so far.

They saw a rise in protests led by rural residents and blue-collar workers over land grabs and low wages, but also noted middle-class citizens organising because of the real estate crisis. Protests by homeowners and construction workers made up 44% of the cases across more than 370 cities.

“This does not immediately mean China’s economy is imploding,” Mr Slaten was quick to stress.

Although, he added, “it is difficult to predict” how such “dissent may accelerate if the economy keeps getting worse”.

Chinese leaders are certainly concerned.

Between August 2023 and Janaury 2024, Beijing stopped releasing youth unemployment figures after they hit a record high. At one point, officials coined the term “slow employment” to describe those who were taking time to find a job – a separate category, they said, from the jobless.

Censors have been cracking down on any source of financial frustration – vocal online posts are promptly scrubbed, while influencers have been blocked on social media for flaunting luxurious tastes. State media has defended the bans as part of the effort to create a “civilised, healthy and harmonious” environment. More alarming perhaps are reports last week that a top economist, Zhu Hengpeng, has been detained for critcising Xi’s handling of the economy.

The Communist Party tries to control the narrative by “shaping what information people have access to, or what is perceived as negative”, Mr Slaten said.

CDM’s research shows that, despite the level of state control, discontent has fuelled protests – and that will worry Beijing.

In November 2022, a deadly fire – which killed at least 10 people who were not allowed to leave the building during a Covid lockdown – brought thousands onto the streets in different parts of China to protest against crushing zero-Covid policies.

Professors Whyte and Rozelle don’t think their findings suggest “popular anger about… inequality is likely to explode in a social volcano of protest.”

But the economic slowdown has begun to “undermine” the legitimacy the Party has built up through “decades of sustained economic growth and improved living standards”, they write.

The pandemic still haunts many Chinese people, said Yun Zhou, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan. Beijing’s “stringent yet mercurial responses” during the pandemic have heightened people’s insecurity about the future.

And this is particularly visceral among marginalised groups, she added, such as women caught in a “severely discriminatory” labour market and rural residents who have long been excluded from welfare coverage.

Under China’s contentious “hukou” system of household registration, migrant workers in cities are not allowed to use public services, such as enrolling their children in government-run schools.

But young people from cities – like Moxi – have flocked to remote towns, drawn by low rents, picturesque landscapes and greater freedom to chase their dreams.

Moxi is relieved to have found a slower pace of life in Dali. “The number of patients who came to me for depression and anxiety disorders only increased as the economy boomed,” he said, recalling his past work as a psychiatrist.

“There’s a big difference between China doing well, and Chinese people doing well.”

Whyte, Rozelle and Alisky’s research is based on four sets of academic surveys conducted between 2004 and 2023.

In-person surveys were conducted together with colleagues at Peking University’s Research Center on Contemporary China (RCCC) in 2004, 2009 and 2014. Participants ranged in age from 18-70 and came from 29 provinces. Tibet and Xingiang were excluded.

In 2023, three rounds of online surveys, at the end of the second, third and fourth quarters, were conducted by the Survey and Research Centre for China Household Finance (CHFS) at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China. Participants ranged in age from 20-60.

The same questions were used in all surveys. To make responses comparable across all four years, the researchers excluded participants aged 18-19 and 61-70 and reweighted all answers to be nationally representative. All surveys contain a margin of error.

The study has been accepted for publication by The China Journal and is expected to be published in 2025.

Researchers for the China Dissent Monitor (CDM) have collected data on “dissent events” across China since June 2022 from a variety of non-government sources including news reports, social media platforms operating in the country and civil society organisations.

Dissent events are defined as instances where a person or persons use public and non-official means of expressing their dissatisfaction. Each event is highly visible and also subject to or at risk of government response, through physical repression or censorship.

These can include viral social media posts, demonstrations, banner drops and strikes, among others. Many events are difficult to independently verify.

Three people died and 15 others were injured after a man went on a stabbing rampage inside a Walmart supermarket in Shanghai on Monday night.

Chinese police said they arrested a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin at the scene, adding that he had come to Shanghai to “vent his anger due to a personal economic dispute”. Further investigations are continuing.

The incident took place at a shopping mall in Songjiang, a densely populated district in the city’s south-west, which is also home to several universities.

Police said the three people who died succumbed to their injuries at hospital. The others “did not sustain life-threatening wounds” and are not believed to be in danger.

Discussions about the incident now appear to have been censored on Chinese social media.

The supermarket located in Ludu International Commercial Plaza was open for business on Tuesday but with additional security.

Firearms are banned in China but the country has seen a spate of knife attacks in recent months.

Last month, a 10-year-old Japanese student died a day after he was stabbed near his school in southern China.

In June this year, four US college instructors were stabbed in a public park in the northeast city of Jilin. In May, a man stabbed dead two people and wounded 21 others at a hospital in the southern province of Yunnan.

A dockworkers’ strike is set to shut down ports across much of the US indefinitely, threatening significant trade and economic disruption ahead of the presidential election and the busy holiday shopping season.

Tens of thousands of members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) are preparing to walk out on Tuesday at 14 major ports along the east and gulf coasts, halting container traffic from Maine to Texas.

Barring a last-minute intervention, the action will mark the first shutdown in almost 50 years.

President Joe Biden has the power to suspend the strike for 80 days for further negotiations, but the White House has said he is not planning to act.

The two sides are fighting over a six-year master contract that covers about 25,000 port workers employed in container and roll-on/roll-off operations, according to the US Maritime Alliance, known as USMX, which represents shipping firms, port associations and marine terminal operators.

Talks have been stalled for months and the current contract between parties expires on Monday.

Union boss Harold Daggett has called for significant pay increases for his members, while voicing concerns about threats from automation.

USMX has accused the union of refusing to bargain, filing a complaint with labour regulators that asked them to order the union back to the table.

Under the previous contract, starting wages ranged from $20 to $39 per hour, depending on a worker’s experience. Workers also receive other benefits, such as bonuses connected to container trade.

Mr Daggett has indicated the union wants to see per-hour pay increase by five dollars per year over the life of the six-year deal, which he estimated amounted to about 10% per year.

The ILA said workers are owed after shipping firm profits soared during the Covid pandemic, while inflation hit salaries. It has warned to expect a wider strike of its members, including those not directly involved in this dispute, though the exact numbers are unclear.

The union has said it represents more than 85,000 people; it claimed about 47,000 active members in its annual report to the Labor Department.

Time-sensitive imports, such as food, are likely to be among the goods first impacted.

The ports involved handle about 14% of agricultural exports shipped by sea and more than half of imports, including a significant share of trade in bananas and chocolate, according to the Farm Bureau.

Other sectors exposed to disruption include tin, tobacco and nicotine, Oxford Economics said. Clothing and footwear firms, and European carmakers, which route many of their shipments through the Port of Baltimore, will also take a hit.

Imports in the US surged over the summer, as many businesses took steps to rush shipments ahead of the strike.

“I don’t think we will see immediate, significant economic impacts…but over the course of weeks, if the strike lasts that long, we can begin to see prices rise and for there to be some shortages in goods,” said Seth Harris, a professor at Northeastern University and a former White House adviser on labour issues.

More than a third of exports and imports could be affected by the strike, hitting US economic growth to the tune of at least $4.5bn each week of the strike, according to Grace Zemmer, an associate US economist at Oxford Economics, though others have estimated the economic hit could be higher.

She said more than 100,000 people could find themselves temporarily out of work as the impact of the stoppage spreads.

“This is really a trigger event, one that will see dominoes fall over the coming months,” said Peter Sand, chief analyst at ocean freight analytics firm Xeneta, warning that the stand-off also has the potential push up wider shipping costs.

That would hit consumers and businesses which tend to rely on so-called “just-in-time” supply chains for goods, he added.

The stand-off injects uncertainty into the US economy at a delicate time.

The economy has been slower and the unemployment rate is ticking higher as the US election approaches in six weeks.

The strike risks putting President Biden in a tricky spot.

US presidents can intervene in labour disputes that threaten national security or safety by imposing an 80-day cooling-off period, forcing workers back on the job while negotiations continue.

In 2002, Republican President George W Bush intervened to open ports after 11 days of a strike action by dockworkers on the west coast.

The US Chamber of Commerce business group has called on President Biden to take action.

“Americans experienced the pain of delays and shortages of goods during the pandemic-era supply chain backlogs in 2021. It would be unconscionable to allow a contract dispute to inflict such a shock to our economy,” said Suzanne P. Clark, president and chief executive of the business group.

The ILA’s Mr Daggett endorsed Democrat Biden in 2020, but has been critical of the president more recently, citing pressure on west coast dockworkers to reach a deal a year ago. He met with Donald Trump in July.

Although any strike chaos is likely to hurt Democrats, the cost of alienating allies in the labour movement just weeks before the election would be greater, said William Brucher, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.

But public support of strikes could be tested by the dispute, which has been championed by Mr Daggett, who was acquitted of having links to organised crime in a 2004 case by federal prosecutors. A related civil suit remains unresolved.

Films such as the 1954 classic On the Waterfront once defined the dockworkers union’s image, but Prof Brucher said he thought that historical memory had largely faded and many people shared the dockworkers’ concerns about cost-of living and automation.

“As much as it could sway public opinion against the ILA, a strike by ILA members is their decision and I don’t think they will be swayed by public opinion in any meaningful way,” he said.

“What is more likely to happen is the pressure of a strike will likely force the employers back to the table with a much more substantial offer.”

On Monday, Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons found himself at the epicentre of a disaster zone.

His town of Weaverville, North Carolina, had no electricity and no power. Only one grocery store was operational, utility poles had gone down, the town’s water plant had flooded and people had been without safe drinking water for four days, he told the BBC.

In the larger Buncombe County, where Weaverville is located, at least 35 people are dead and 600 are unaccounted for, a local CBS News affiliate reported.

Mr Fitzsimmons said the county set up a website where people can inquire about missing persons. Officials have so far received 11,000 requests.

Across the US south-east, millions of residents were thrown into chaos by storm Helene. It slammed into Florida as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday before barrelling across the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, leaving flooding, power loss and death in its wake.

In the days since, the true scale of the destruction is coming into sharper relief as residents begin to return home to survey the damage.

At least 116 people have died nationwide, officials have said.

One of those people was Madison Shaw’s mother.

“Her last words to me were… ‘I love you, be safe. I’ll see you later,’” the resident of Anderson, South Carolina told CBS News. “And I said, ‘I love you. I’ll see you later as well.’”

“I can’t even describe it,” Ms Shaw told CBS News. “My mom was my best friend.”

A White House spokeswoman said on Monday that two million people are currently without power. President Joe Biden called the storm “history-making.”

Some of the most dire reports are coming from North Carolina, where the state’s governor Roy Cooper said that communities had been “wiped off the map” and that dozens of rescue teams had been deployed.

Buncombe County and the western corner of North Carolina endured some of the worst of Helene’s wrath.

The county includes Asheville, a city located in the Blue Ridge Mountains famed for its arts and music scene. Helene inundated the city with flood waters, drove people from their homes and left residents scrambling for basic resources. Trucks and trees smashed into buildings while downed power and telephone lines hung dangerously over the streets.

“Homes have been destroyed, flattened,” said 21-year-old Josh Griffith who lives just outside of Asheville in the town of Leicester.

“When it hit, we watched semi-trucks and storage crates and dumpsters and propane tanks floating down the river just rushing through parking lots, destroying everything in its path,” he told the BBC.

The apartment he shares with his fiancée sits high up on a hill and was safe from any serious damage. But on Saturday afternoon, by then without power or food, they decided to make their escape, taking rain-drenched roads out to north-east Georgia.

At one point, Mr Griffith and his partner were forced to drive straight through flood water, 6 inches deep of running water on top of 6 inches deep of mud. Emergency officials generally caution people against driving into flood waters of any depth during a storm.

“It was really scary,” he said. “Any time you’re driving over rushing water like that, there’s a fear your tires might slide out from underneath you.”

They made it out, stopping overnight in Georgia before driving back North Carolina, armed with food, water and supplies for their neighbours in Buncombe.

“People are just scrambling to get any resources they can,” he said.

Buncombe County officials opened four water distribution sites throughout the county on Monday.

Last week, before Helene arrived, 28-year-old Jesse Ross wondered whether the storm would be as destructive as some had forecasted.

“It turned out to be massive,” he said.

Mr Ross witnessed a “torrent of water” tear through his town of Waynesville, North Carolina, on Friday. The bridges were uncrossable. He couldn’t get in touch with anyone. His family is safe, he told the BBC, but they spent several days under a boil water advisory.

As residents begin to pick up the pieces, their futures remain uncertain.

Grayson Barnette, a lifelong resident who grew up in Lenoir, North Carolina, and now lives nearby, said a lot of the residents have spent their entire lives in these storm-ravaged communities.

“Some people are just poor and have lived in the same places for generations,” he said. “This was just unconscionable for a lot of people.”

Mr Barnette feared that residents’ deep ties to their communities may have led some to stay and weather the storm despite warnings.

“Entire communities have just been wiped off,” Mr Barnette said. “And people may or may not come back.”

On a quiet Sunday evening in November 2005, a journalist in India’s Bihar state received a panicked phone call at home.

“The Maoists have attacked the prison. People are being killed! I’m hiding in the toilet,” an inmate gasped into the mobile phone, his voice trembling. The sound of gunshots echoed in the background.

He was calling from a jail in Jehanabad, a poverty-stricken district and, at the time, a stronghold of left-wing extremism.

The crumbling, red-brick, colonial-era prison overflowed with inmates. Spread across an acre, its 13 barracks and cells were described in official reports as “dark, damp, and filthy”. Originally designed for around 230, it held up to 800 prisoners.

The Maoist insurgency, which began in Naxalbari, a hamlet in West Bengal state in the late 1960s, had spread to large parts of India, including Bihar. For nearly 60 years, the guerrillas – also called Naxalites – have fought the Indian state to establish a communist society, the movement claiming at least 40,000 lives.

The Jehanabad prison was a powder keg, housing Maoists alongside their class enemies – vigilantes from upper caste Hindu private armies. All awaited trial for mutual atrocities. Like many Indian prisons, some inmates had access to mobile phones, secured through bribing the guards.

“The place is swarming with rebels. Many are simply walking out,” the inmate – one of the 659 prisoners at the time – whispered to Mr Singh.

On the night of 13 November 2005, 389 prisoners, including many rebels, escaped from Jehanabad prison in what became India’s – and possibly Asia’s – largest jailbreak. At least two people were killed in the prison shootout, and police rifles were looted amid the chaos. The United States Department of State’s 2005 report on terrorism said the rebels had even “abducted 30 inmates” who were members of an anti-Maoist group.

In a tantalising twist, police said the “mastermind” of the jail break was Ajay Kanu, a fiery rebel leader who was among the prisoners. Security was so lax in the decrepit prison that Kanu stayed in contact with his outlawed group on the phone and through messages, helping them come in, police alleged. Kanu says this is not true.

Hundreds of rebels wearing police uniforms had crossed a drying stream behind the prison, climbed up and down the tall walls using bamboo ladders and crawled in, opening fire from their rifles.

The cells were open as food was being cooked late in the kitchen. The rebels walked to the main gates and opened them. Guards on duty looked on helplessly. Prisoners – only 30 of the escapees were convicts, while the rest were awaiting trial – escaped by simply walking out of the gates, and disappeared into the darkness. It was all over in less than an hour, eyewitnesses said.

The mass jail break exposed the crumbling law and order in Bihar and the intensifying Maoist insurgency in one of India’s most impoverished regions. The rebels had timed their plan perfectly: security was stretched thin due to the ongoing state elections.

—

Rajkumar Singh, the local journalist, remembers the night vividly.

After getting the phone call, he rode his motorbike through a deserted town, trying to reach his office. He remembers the air was thick with gunshots ringing in the distance. The invading rebels were also trying to attack a neighbouring police station.

As he turned onto the main road, dim streetlights revealed a chilling sight – dozens of armed men and women in police uniforms blocking the way, shouting through a megaphone.

“We are Maoists,” they declared. “We’re not against the people, only the government. The jailbreak is part of our protest.”

The rebels had planted bombs along the road. Some were already detonating, collapsing nearby shops and spreading fear through the town.

Mr Singh says he pressed on, reaching his fourth-floor office, where he received a second call from the same prisoner.

“Everyone’s running. What should I do?,” the inmate said.

“If everyone’s escaping, you should too,” Mr Singh said.

Then he rode to the prison through the eerily empty streets. When he reached, he found the gates open. Rice pudding was strewn all over the kitchen, the cell doors were ajar. There was no jailor or policeman in sight.

In a room, two wounded policemen lay on the floor. Mr Singh says he also saw the bloodied body of Bade Sharma, the leader of the feared upper caste vigilante army of landlords called Ranvir Sena and a prisoner himself, lying on the floor. The police later said the rebels had shot him while leaving.

Lying on the floor and stuck to the walls were blood-stained handwritten pamphlets left behind by the rebels.

“Through this symbolic action, we want to warn the state and central governments that if they arrest the revolutionaries and the struggling people and keep them in jail, then we also know how to free them from jail in a Marxist revolutionary way,” one pamphlet said.

—

A few months ago, I met Kanu, the 57-year-old rebel leader the police accuse of masterminding the jailbreak, in Patna, Bihar’s chaotic capital.

At the time of the incident, media reports painted him as “Bihar’s most wanted”, a figure commanding both fear and respect from the police.

Officers recounted how the rebel “commander” instantly took control during the prison break once he was handed an AK-47 by his comrades.

In a dramatic turn, the reports said, he “expertly” handled the weapon, swiftly changing magazines before allegedly targeting and shooting Sharma. Fifteen months later, in February 2007, Kanu was arrested from a railway platform while he was travelling from Dhanbad in Bihar to the city of Kolkata.

Almost two decades later, Kanu has been acquitted in all but six of the original 45 criminal cases against him. Most of the cases stem from the jailbreak, including that of the murder of Sharma. He has served seven years in prison for one of the cases.

Despite his fearsome reputation, Kanu is unexpectedly talkative. He speaks in sharp, measured bursts, downplaying his role in the mass escape that made headlines. Now, this once-feared rebel is subtly shifting his gaze toward a different battle – a career in politics, “fighting for poor, backward castes”.

As a child, Kanu spent his days and nights listening to stories from his lower-caste farmer father about Communist uprisings in Russia, China, and Indonesia. By eighth grade, his father’s comrades were urging him to embrace revolutionary politics. He says his defiance took root early – after scoring a goal against the local landlord’s son in a football match, armed upper-caste men stormed their home.

“I locked myself inside,” he recalls. “They came for me and my sister, ransacking the house, destroying everything. That’s how the upper castes kept us in check -through fear.”

In college, while studying political science, Kanu ironically led the student wing of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has waged a war against Maoism. After graduation, he co-founded a school, only to be forced out by the owner of the building. Upon returning to his village, tensions with the local landlord escalated. When a local strongman was murdered, Kanu, just 23, was named in the police complaint – and he went into hiding.

“Since then I have been on the run, most of my life. I left home early to mobilise workers and farmers, joined and went underground as a Maoist rebel,” he said. He joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), a radical communist group.

“My profession was liberation – the liberation of the poor. It was about standing up against the atrocities of the upper castes. I fought for those enduring injustice and oppression.”

—

In August 2002, with a feared reputation as a rebel leader and a three million rupees bounty on his head – an incentive for people to report his whereabouts if they spotted him – Kanu was on his way to meet underground leaders and plan new strategies.

He was about to reach his destination in Patna when a car overtook him at a busy intersection. “Within moments, men in plainclothes jumped out, guns drawn, ordering me to surrender. I didn’t resist – I gave up,” he said.

Over the next three years, Kanu was shuffled between jails as police feared his escape. “He had a remarkable reputation, the sharpest of them all,” a senior officer told me. In each jail, Kanu says he formed prisoner unions to protest against corruption – stolen rations, poor healthcare, bribery. In one prison, he led a three-day hunger strike. “There were clashes,” he says, “but I kept demanding better conditions”.

Kanu paints a stark picture of the overcrowding in Indian prisons, describing Jehanabad, which held more than double its intended capacity.

“There was no place to sleep. In my first barrack, 180 prisoners were crammed into a space meant for just 40. We devised a system to survive. Fifty of us would sleep for four hours while the others sat, waiting and chatting in the dark. When the four hours were up, another group would take their turn. That’s how we endured life inside those walls.”

In 2005, Kanu escaped during the infamous jailbreak.

“We were waiting for dinner when gunfire erupted. Bombs, bullets – it was chaos,” he recalls. “The Maoists stormed in, yelling for us to flee. Everyone ran into the darkness. Should I have stayed behind and been killed?”

Many doubt the simplicity of Kanu’s claims.

“It wasn’t as simple as he makes it sound,” said a police officer. “Why was dinner being prepared late in the evening when it was usually cooked and served at dusk, with the cells locked up early? That alone raised suspicions of inside collusion.”

Interestingly many of of the prisoners who escaped were back in jail by mid-December – some voluntarily, others not. None of the rebels returned.

When I asked Kanu whether he masterminded the escape, he smiled. “The Maoists freed us – it’s their job to liberate,” he said.

But when pressed again, Kanu fell silent.

The irony deepened as he finally shared a story from prison.

A police officer had once asked him if he was planning another escape.

“Sir, does a thief ever tell you what he’s going to steal?” Kanu replied wryly.

His words hung in the air, coming from a man who insists he had no part in planning the jailbreak.

The UK is about to stop producing any electricity from burning coal – ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel.

The country’s last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, finishes operations on Monday after running since 1967.

This marks a major milestone in the country’s ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt.

Minister for Energy Michael Shanks said: “We owe generations a debt of gratitude as a country.”

The UK was the birthplace of coal power, and from tomorrow it becomes the first major economy to give it up.

“It’s a really remarkable day, because Britain, after all, built her whole strength on coal, that is the industrial revolution,” said Lord Deben – the longest serving environment secretary.

The first coal-fired power station in the world, the Holborn Viaduct power station, was built in 1882 in London by the inventor Thomas Edison – bringing light to the streets of the capital.

From that point through the first half of the twentieth century, coal provided pretty much all of the UK’s electricity, powering homes and businesses.

In the early 1990s, coal began to be forced out of the electricity mix by gas, but coal still remained a crucial component of the UK grid for the next two decades.

In 2012, it still generated 39% of the UK’s power.

But the science around climate change was growing – it was clear that the world’s greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced and as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal was a major target.

In 2008, the UK established its first legally binding climate targets and in 2015 the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the world the UK would be ending its use of coal power within the next decade.

Dave Jones, director of global insights at Ember, an independent energy think tank, said this really helped to “set in motion” the end of coal by providing a clear direction of travel for the industry.

But it also showed leadership and set a benchmark for other countries to follow, according to Lord Deben.

“I think it’s made a big difference, because you need someone to point to and say, ‘There, they’ve done it. Why can’t we do it?'”, he said.

In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50% – a new record.

The rapid growth of green power meant that coal could even be switched off completely for short periods, with the first coal-free days in 2017.

The growth of renewables has been so successful that the target date for ending coal power was brought forward a year, and on Monday, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, was set to close.

Chris Smith has worked at the plant for 28 years in the environment and chemistry team. She said: “It is a very momentous day. The plant has always been running and we’ve always been doing our best to keep it operating….It is a very sad moment.”

Lord Deben served in former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s government when many of the UK’s coal mines were closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. He said lessons had to be learnt from that for current workers in the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m particularly keen on the way in which this Government, and indeed the previous Government, is trying to make sure that the new jobs, of which there are very many green jobs, go to the places which are being damaged by the changes.

“So in the North Sea oil areas, that’s exactly where we should be doing carbon capture and storage, it’s where we should be putting wind and solar power,” he said.

Although coal is a very polluting source of energy, its benefit has been in being available at all times – unlike wind and solar which are limited by weather conditions.

Kayte O’Neill, the chief operating officer at the Energy System Operator – the body overseeing the UK’s electricity system – said: “There is a whole load of innovation required to help us ensure the stability of the grid. Keeping the lights on in a secure way.”

A crucial technology providing that stability Kayte O’Neill spoke of is battery technology.

Dr Sylwia Walus, research programme manager at the Faraday Institution, said that there has been significant progress in the science of batteries.

“There is always scope for a new technology, but more focus these days is really how to make it more sustainable and cheaper in production,” she said.

To achieve this the UK needs to become more independent of China in producing its own batteries and bringing in skilled workers for this purpose, she explained.

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Mount Everest is 15-50m taller than it would otherwise be because a river is eroding rock and soil at its base, helping push it upwards, according to a new study.

Loss of landmass in the Arun river basin 75km (47 miles) away is causing the world’s highest peak to rise by up to 2mm a year, University College London (UCL) researchers said.

“It’s a bit like throwing a load of cargo off a ship,” study co-author Adam Smith told the BBC. “The ship becomes lighter and so floats a little higher. Similarly, when the crust becomes lighter… it can float a little higher.”

Pressure from the collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates 40-50 million years ago formed the Himalayas and plate tectonics remains the major reason for their continued rise.

But the Arun river network is a contributing factor to the mountains’ rise, the UCL team said.

As the Arun flows through the Himalayas it carves away material – the river bed in this case – from the Earth’s crust. This reduces the force on the mantle (the next layer under the crust), causing the thinned crust to flex and float upward.

It’s an effect called the isostatic rebound. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, adds that this upward pushing force is causing Everest and other neighbouring summits, including the world’s fourth and fifth highest peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, to move upward.

“Mount Everest and its neighbouring peaks are growing because the isostatic rebound is raising them up faster than erosion is wearing them down,” fellow co-author of the study Dr Matthew Fox told the BBC.

“We can see them growing by about two millimetres a year using GPS instruments and now we have a better understanding of what’s driving it.”

Some geologists not involved in the study said the theory was plausible but there was much in the research that was still uncertain.

Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal, and its northern part is on the Chinese side. The Arun river flows down from Tibet into Nepal and then merges with two other rivers to become the Kosi which then enters northern India to meet the Ganges.

It is a very high silt-yielding river given the steepness of the mountains it flows through and the force it has, allowing it to carve off so much rock and soil on its way.

But the UCL researchers say it most likely earned its real strength when it “captured” another river or water body in Tibet 89,000 years ago, which in geological timescales is a recent event.

A Chinese academic, Dr Xu Han of China University of Geosciences, was the lead author in the study during a scholarship visit at the UCL.

“The changing height of Mount Everest really highlights the dynamic nature of the Earth’s surface,” he said.

“The interaction between the erosion of the Arun river and the upward pressure of the Earth’s mantle gives Mount Everest a boost, pushing it up higher than it would otherwise be.”

The UCL study says the Arun river most likely gained the capacity to carve off an extraordinary amount of rocks and other materials after it captured another river or water system in Tibet.

Professor Hugh Sinclair with the School of Geosciences at University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, said the underlying process identified by the UCL team was perfectly reasonable.

But, he added, the exact amounts and timescales of river incision (or how the river cuts downward into its bed and deepens its channel) and the consequent surface uplift of surrounding peaks had large uncertainties.

“Firstly, predicting river incision of such large catchments in response to drainage capture (one river capturing another river or lake) is challenging,” he said.

This uncertainty is something the authors have acknowledged in the study.

Secondly, said Prof Sinclair, the distance over which mountains uplift from a point of intensive localised erosion is extremely hard to predict.

“However, even accounting for these reservations, the possibility that some of Everest’s exceptional elevation is linked to the river, represents an exciting insight.”

Kris Kristofferson was always modest about his talent.

He disliked being called a poet and preferred it when other people performed his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told record producer Fred Foster.

“Yeah,” Foster replied, “but a bullfrog who communicates.”

Kristofferson’s plainspoken vocals may have lacked range but they carried something more important – conviction.

When he sang of loss and love and sorrow and drunken nights and regret-filled mornings, you believed every word.

That is partly because he never forced a song into existence – “I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it,” he once said – but also because he could dig into the simple truth of a sentiment.

His songwriting was not especially complex but what he could do with a few chords and a well turned phrase caused a revolution in country music.

“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

To mark his death, at the age of 88, here’s a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson’s most enduring songs, Me and Bobby McGee, started out as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster had a crush on his secretary, Barbara “Bobbie” McKee, and wanted a song that would impress her.

Kristofferson accepted the assignment – but finding inspiration took time.

“I avoided him [Foster] for three or four months because there were only thoughts running through my head,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night, the windshield wipers were going, and it started falling together.”

He based the song on the last scene of the Fellini film La Strada (The Road), in which a broken, inebriated man stares at the sea in despair at what his life has become, and the love he has lost.

Kristofferson turned that tale into the story of two drifters, who find love on the road and are separated, eventually, by death.

It contains one of his greatest lyrics:

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, it became a number-one hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it weeks before her death in 1970.

The desolation of Kristofferson’s downbeat delivery tells you this song is about much more than a bad hangover.

And, as it progresses, the protagonist slowly reveals more about the causes of his booze-soaked existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “something that I’d lost”.

And he stops outside a Sunday school just to hear the children singing.

The loneliness and self-loathing are expressed vividly – and Kristofferson said he had written the lyrics as a struggling musician living in a tenement after his parents had disowned him and his wife and child moved to California without him.

“Sunday was the worst day of the week if you didn’t have a family,” he said.

According to legend, Kristofferson got the song into Johnny Cash’s hands by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he had listened to his demo tape.

Cash was impressed enough to play the song on his US TV programme.

And the Country Music Association named his recording song of the year 1970.

Kristofferson’s own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Along with artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Kristofferson was part of the “outlaw country” scene that fought Nashville’s commercial and creative control.

Discussing his place in the country firmament, in 1970, he told the New York Times: “I’m nobody’s best friend.

“People kept telling me that I’d never make it in Nashville, that I ought to head for California or New York.”

He had upset the establishment, with songs such as Blame It on the Stones and The Law Is for the Protection of the People, which took a swipe at American conservatism.

His most famous song also ruffled feathers for its unadorned depiction of sexual desire, especially when recorded (and taken to number one) by female country star Sammi Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics had been inspired by a Frank Sinatra interview.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes had responded: “Booze, broads, or a bible… whatever helps me make it through the night.”

Smith’s sensuous delivery was a subversive step forward for country music but Kristofferson’s own version – croaky-voiced and dripping with hunger – is just as much of a thrill.

“The first good song I wrote,” Kristofferson said of Jody and the Kid, which he composed while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like Me and Bobby McGee, it is steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl who used to walk everywhere with him, “her little blue jeans rolled up to her knees”.

Over time, they fall in love, and grow old, still walking hand in hand everywhere they go.

As the song ends, the narrator traces their old paths with their daughter – but when the locals greet them, he laments his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson’s sombre, emotional vocal is both spellbinding and heartbreaking.

It is also worth out checking out his 1999 re-recording of the song (on the album The Austin Sessions), where his older, craggier voice lends it added pathos.

If the character in Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down was at a low point, this represents them at rock bottom.

““

Kristofferson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmie Snow’s church in Nashville.

“Everybody was kneeling down and Jimmy said something like, ‘If anybody’s lost, raise their hand,'” he said.

“I don’t go to church a lot and the notion of raising my hand was out of the question.

“I thought, ‘I can’t imagine who’s doing this,’ when all of a sudden I felt my hand going up.”

After talking to the preacher, Kristofferson said, “I found myself weeping in public” and felt a “forgiveness that I didn’t even know I needed”.

The song works as a reaction to that moment – a slow, mournful realisation of his past behaviour, and a soul-cry for forgiveness.

Recorded with his soon-to-be wife Rita Cooolidge, the gospel-infused ballad struck a chord with audiences in 1973, giving the star his only number one on the country charts.

6) I Hate Your Ugly Face – The first song Kristofferson wrote, aged 11. A sarcastic rejection of country tropes, it reveals the early development of his storytelling talent.

7) They Killed Him – A lament for Kristofferson’s heroes – Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “Having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play,” Kristofferson said.

8) Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again) – One of his most romantic songs and Kristofferson’s first chart hit, in 1971. He later re-recorded it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of outlaw country artists that also featured Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) Here Comes that Rainbow Again – Inspired by a scene in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this touching ballad is about small acts of kindness being repaid. Cash once said it “might be my favourite song by any writer”.

10) Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends – Two lovers spend one last night together, clinging on to their memories (and to one another) in the hope the inevitable break-up never comes. Written in the early 1970s, Kristofferson initially gave it to Bobby Bare but later remade it with Rita Coolidge, just as their marriage was dissolving. Their duet is devastating.

Luxury carmaker Aston Martin’s share price sank more than 20% after it said profits will be lower than expected this year.

The company, famed for its links to fictional superspy James Bond, has been hit by supply chain issues and falling sales in China.

The share price of Stellantis, the owner of brands such as Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and Jeep, also plummeted on Monday after a profit warning.

Carmakers across Europe have been suffering lately, with disappointing sales and increased competition from abroad taking a heavy toll on earnings.

Aston Martin is a prestige brand which makes upmarket cars in relatively small quantities.

Last year, it sold 6,620 vehicles, with about a fifth of those going to the Asia-Pacific region.

However, the company says it has been hit by a fall in demand in China, where a slowing economy has affected sales of luxury cars.

It has also been affected by problems at a number of suppliers, which have affected its ability to build a number of new models.

As a result, Aston says it will make about 1,000 fewer cars than originally planned this year.

Sales, which had originally been forecast to rise, are now expected to be lower than in 2023, and earnings will fall short of current market expectations.

Adrian Hallmark, who became Aston Martin’s chief executive a few weeks ago, said it had become clear that “decisive action” was needed to adjust output.

But he added that he was “even more convinced than before” about the brand’s potential for growth.

Meanwhile, Stellantis has become the latest large-scale carmaker to revise its financial forecasts, thanks to a deterioration in the industry outlook.

The company has been struggling with weak demand in the US, a key market, where it has been forced to offer discounts in order to shift unsold stock.

It has also been facing increased competition from Chinese brands, which have been expanding aggressively abroad.

As a result, it said it expects its profit margins to be significantly lower than previously thought this year.

The announcement sent its shares tumbling. By lunchtime on Monday, the price was down more than 14%.

The problems at Stellantis and Aston Martin reflect a wider malaise in the European car industry.

On Friday, Volkswagen issued its second profit warning in three months, while it has also suggested it might have to close plants in Germany for the first time in its history.

Its German rivals Mercedes-Benz and BMW have also downgraded their profit forecasts in recent weeks.

Among the common issues are falling sales in China – until recently a highly lucrative market for expensive and profitable high-end models – coupled with growing competition from Chinese brands in other markets.

According to Matthias Schmidt of Schmidt Automotive Research, European firms have been caught out by a wave of “unsustainable” discounting by Chinese brands in their home market, which has affected sales of high-priced vehicles.

“German brands, and VW in particular, have been caught off-guard by the pace of change in China” he explains.

Sales of electric cars, which manufacturers have invested huge sums in developing, have been faltering badly in Europe.

According to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, sales of battery-powered cars were down nearly 44% in August compared to the same period a year ago, while their share of the market dropped to 14.4%, compared to 21% in 2023.

The decline has followed the removal or reduction of incentives for electric car buyers in a number of European markets, including France and Germany.

On Friday, EU nations are due to vote on plans to impose steep tariffs on imports of electric vehicles from China.

The measures are designed to protect local producers from unfair competition. The European Commission claims Chinese manufacturers benefit from illegal subsidies from the Chinese government – and believes tariffs will create a level playing field.

But the plan is controversial, and has received a mixed reception from manufacturers.

The man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course has pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal court.

Prosecutors say Ryan Routh, 58, was spotted with a rifle as he hid in the bushes near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach earlier this month.

A Secret Service officer protecting the former president allegedly spotted his rifle barrel poking through a fence and opened fire. Routh fled and was later arrested on Interstate 95, a main highway through the state.

In addition to the attempted assassination of Trump, Routh has been charged with firearms offences and assaulting an officer.

On Monday, Routh appeared in court handcuffed and wearing a brownish prison jumpsuit, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

After each count was read to him, he shook his head in acknowledgment of the charges.

His attorneys entered a plea of not guilty and requested a trial by jury. The hearing lasted around five minutes.

If convicted, Routh faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on the assassination charge.

An earlier court filing showed that Routh had written a note months ago saying he intended to kill Trump.

In a pre-written letter addressed to “The World” and sent to an unnamed witness months earlier, Routh appears to pre-empt a failed assassination attempt on the former president.

“I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster,” the letter reads, with the offer of a cash reward to anyone “who can complete the job”.

Routh has been held in prison in Florida since his arrest on 15 September.

He has a long criminal record, including a felony gun conviction for owning a fully automatic machine gun, and was barred from owning firearms as a result.

He was active in recruiting volunteers to fight in Ukraine’s war against Russia, and had a range of eclectic political views, although he was registered as a Democrat and made anti-Trump posts online.

Routh’s alleged plot was the second attempt on Trump’s life after Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old armed with an AR-style rifle, opened fire on the former president during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.

Crooks was shot dead by counter-snipers.

The Secret Service, the government agency tasked with protecting the president and other politicians and their family members, came under heavy criticism for allowing a gunman to get so close to the former president.

Trump and his allies have complained about his Secret Service detail. On Monday the former president said that his protection had been scaled back, forcing him to hold an event in Wisconsin over the weekend inside, instead of outdoors in a venue with a larger capacity.

The Secret Service said it was shortstaffed due to the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The agency is responsible for protecting foreign leaders during US visits, and more than 140 were expected at last week’s UN meeting.

On Monday, Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons found himself at the epicentre of a disaster zone.

His town of Weaverville, North Carolina, had no electricity and no power. Only one grocery store was operational, utility poles had gone down, the town’s water plant had flooded and people had been without safe drinking water for four days, he told the BBC.

In the larger Buncombe County, where Weaverville is located, at least 35 people are dead and 600 are unaccounted for, a local CBS News affiliate reported.

Mr Fitzsimmons said the county set up a website where people can inquire about missing persons. Officials have so far received 11,000 requests.

Across the US south-east, millions of residents were thrown into chaos by storm Helene. It slammed into Florida as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday before barrelling across the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, leaving flooding, power loss and death in its wake.

In the days since, the true scale of the destruction is coming into sharper relief as residents begin to return home to survey the damage.

At least 116 people have died nationwide, officials have said.

One of those people was Madison Shaw’s mother.

“Her last words to me were… ‘I love you, be safe. I’ll see you later,’” the resident of Anderson, South Carolina told CBS News. “And I said, ‘I love you. I’ll see you later as well.’”

“I can’t even describe it,” Ms Shaw told CBS News. “My mom was my best friend.”

A White House spokeswoman said on Monday that two million people are currently without power. President Joe Biden called the storm “history-making.”

Some of the most dire reports are coming from North Carolina, where the state’s governor Roy Cooper said that communities had been “wiped off the map” and that dozens of rescue teams had been deployed.

Buncombe County and the western corner of North Carolina endured some of the worst of Helene’s wrath.

The county includes Asheville, a city located in the Blue Ridge Mountains famed for its arts and music scene. Helene inundated the city with flood waters, drove people from their homes and left residents scrambling for basic resources. Trucks and trees smashed into buildings while downed power and telephone lines hung dangerously over the streets.

“Homes have been destroyed, flattened,” said 21-year-old Josh Griffith who lives just outside of Asheville in the town of Leicester.

“When it hit, we watched semi-trucks and storage crates and dumpsters and propane tanks floating down the river just rushing through parking lots, destroying everything in its path,” he told the BBC.

The apartment he shares with his fiancée sits high up on a hill and was safe from any serious damage. But on Saturday afternoon, by then without power or food, they decided to make their escape, taking rain-drenched roads out to north-east Georgia.

At one point, Mr Griffith and his partner were forced to drive straight through flood water, 6 inches deep of running water on top of 6 inches deep of mud. Emergency officials generally caution people against driving into flood waters of any depth during a storm.

“It was really scary,” he said. “Any time you’re driving over rushing water like that, there’s a fear your tires might slide out from underneath you.”

They made it out, stopping overnight in Georgia before driving back North Carolina, armed with food, water and supplies for their neighbours in Buncombe.

“People are just scrambling to get any resources they can,” he said.

Buncombe County officials opened four water distribution sites throughout the county on Monday.

Last week, before Helene arrived, 28-year-old Jesse Ross wondered whether the storm would be as destructive as some had forecasted.

“It turned out to be massive,” he said.

Mr Ross witnessed a “torrent of water” tear through his town of Waynesville, North Carolina, on Friday. The bridges were uncrossable. He couldn’t get in touch with anyone. His family is safe, he told the BBC, but they spent several days under a boil water advisory.

As residents begin to pick up the pieces, their futures remain uncertain.

Grayson Barnette, a lifelong resident who grew up in Lenoir, North Carolina, and now lives nearby, said a lot of the residents have spent their entire lives in these storm-ravaged communities.

“Some people are just poor and have lived in the same places for generations,” he said. “This was just unconscionable for a lot of people.”

Mr Barnette feared that residents’ deep ties to their communities may have led some to stay and weather the storm despite warnings.

“Entire communities have just been wiped off,” Mr Barnette said. “And people may or may not come back.”

“Higher,” the little girl demands, her eyes bright with excitement. “Higher, higher.”

Zeina’s being pushed on a swing in a small playground in the suburbs of the northern Italian city of Padua.

A normal scene anywhere in the world.

But Zeina, two, can’t move her head properly. And the right side of her face, neck and scalp are marked with deep, still angry, scars.

Right now, though, she’s safe and fed. And she feels like she’s flying.

Zeina is one of the 5,000 people who have been allowed to leave Gaza for specialist treatment abroad since the war broke out in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on 7 October in southern Israel.

The World Health Organization says more than 22,000 Gazans have suffered life-changing injuries as a result of the conflict – but very few have been allowed to leave the strip since the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was closed in May.

“It was a day of nightmares,” says Zeina’s mother, Shaimaa, describing the moments leading up to her daughter’s injury as she was playing in their family’s tent in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, on 17 March.

The family had already fled twice from their home in Khan Younis, first to Rafah and then to the sprawling “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, where they thought they would be safe.

Zeina and her four-year-old sister Lana had been playing together, hugging and telling each other “I love you, I love you” – Shaimaa recalls – when there was a huge air strike nearby.

Zeina, terrified, ran clutching at her mother, who was holding a pot of boiling soup which spilled all over her daughter.

“Her face and skin were melting in front of me,” Shaimaa says. “I picked her up and went barefoot into the street.”

Medical services were stretched, she says, but Zeina was eventually treated by Red Cross doctors at Gaza’s European hospital, where she underwent a skin graft from her father’s leg, followed by a more successful graft from the skin on her own leg after she reached Egypt.

Earlier this month she was flown from Egypt to Italy to access more specialised treatment.

Zeina was joined by Alaa, a 17-year-old who was severely injured in an air strike on her home in Gaza City late last year. When the two girls met, they formed a bond straight away.

“I took to her immediately,” Alaa says. “She’s endured so much pain for such a small child. I’m older and sometimes the pain was too much for me. So what about her?”

Alaa was trapped for 16 hours under rubble and, when she was rescued, she discovered her father, a tailor, was dead. So too were her brothers, Nael, who was a university student, and Wael, a nurse.

Their bodies have never been recovered from the ruins of their four-storey building.

“I was awake the whole time under the rubble,” she tells me.

“I couldn’t breathe properly because of the weight on my chest and body. I couldn’t move. I was just thinking about the rest of my family and what had happened to them.”

As well as her father and brothers, she also lost her grandparents and an aunt. She says they had nothing to do with Hamas.

“I lost the people most precious to my heart,” she says. “I’m happy to be in Italy for treatment but inside I’m sad for Gaza and its people.”

In a statement to the BBC, the Israel Defense Forces has denied targeting civilians and says it takes “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm” in its operation to dismantle Hamas military capabilities.

More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began nearly a year ago, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly called for “multiple medical evacuation corridors” for injured Palestinians. It says that only 219 patients have been allowed to leave since May.

Zeina and Alaa were evacuated thanks to the persistence of a British-based charity, Save a Child, and the US-based Kinder Relief. They worked for months to get them out – petitioning Israel, Egypt and the US state department for help.

“If I’m being honest, Zeina and Alaa are amongst the lucky ones who got out,” says Nadia Ali of Kinder Relief, who accompanied the girls from Egypt to Italy. “We have children who were referred to us who have died waiting to leave.”

It’s hard to speak of luck when you realise the repercussions of their injuries.

Months of painful physiotherapy lie ahead for both girls, followed by many rounds of surgery.

Zeina and Alaa are both under the care of one of Italy’s top burns specialists.

Dr Bruno Azzena is kind and gentle with them, but he has to break to them the most brutal of news – that the burns on Alaa’s legs are so deep that she will never walk normally again. And the hair on Zeina’s scarred scalp will not grow back.

Her mum, Shaimaa, is devastated. She had left Gaza hoping for a miracle.

Zeina has started to realise she is different from her sisters. And, when she asks Shaimaa to tie up her hair for her, like other girls, her mother doesn’t know what to do or say.

Looking after her girls alone – her husband wasn’t authorised for evacuation with them – is tough, physically and emotionally. But Shaimaa dotes on Zeina, calling her “princess,” hiding her tears – and her fears for the future – from her.

She is also grieving for her own mother who died of cancer which had spread, unchecked and untreated, through her body in the months after the war.

“The war has cost me so much,” she says. “Thank God we were able to leave. We left by a miracle. I hope that other injured Palestinians can leave for treatment. I always pray for God to protect them and the war to stop.”

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
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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.

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”.

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 from Brazil and the yacht’s newly hired French captain, 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 than $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.

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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.

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.

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

Passengers on a cruise ship are hoping to set sail on Monday and finally wave goodbye to Belfast after four months of being stuck on shore.

The Villa Vie Residences’ Odyssey, which docked in Belfast to be outfitted, was scheduled to depart on 30 May but it was held up for repairs, leaving passengers stranded in Belfast.

On Sunday, some of them celebrated what they hoped would be their final night in the city by taking in the sights on a beer bike tour.

A total of 125 passengers are hoping to depart on the ship on Monday evening.

The cruisers are hoping it will be plain sailing from here on in and they can finally start to enjoy their round-the-world trip which will see them sailing international waters for the next three years.

Melody and John Hennessee, from Palm Beach in Florida, did not waste any time while docked in Belfast.

“As a result of being here so long in Belfast, we were able to build the largest suite on the ship,” Melody told BBC News NI.

“It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and the time here has allowed us to complete the project.”

Both Melody and John plan to stay on the ship for the rest of their lives.

“This will be our home now,” John said.

Melody said the people of Belfast had been amazing and “so kind and generous” during their time here.

“While we have been happy here, we can’t wait to hopefully set sail on Monday,” she added.

Another couple who put their time in Belfast to good use was Andy and Alicia Lewis from Alaska.

“We retraced my roots while here in Belfast,” Andy said.

“We went to Larne alongside my 89-year-old mother as it was such a great opportunity for us all.

“We will absolutely come back and when we do, we will love Belfast just as much as we do now,” Alicia said.

Surprisingly, the couple enjoyed the Northern Irish weather.

“Being from Alaska, I think the weather is great here, I love it,” Andy said.

“I’m looking forward to getting on the road again, it’s been a long wait.”

Canadian couple, Monica and John Frim, are eager to start their journey across the world on board the Odyssey.

“I’m absolutely happy to be leaving, we have been eager to go from the start,” Monica told BBC News NI.

“I think the atmosphere will be fantastic once we set sail and it’s been pretty upbeat even with all the delays.”

Monica’s husband John found the delay a disappointing start to their life on the cruise.

“It’s disheartening that things weren’t fixed faster,” he said.

“However, the communication with the management has been efficient.

Monica said everyone had “been in this together”.

“It’s not about the journey or the destinations we are going to, it’s about the new friends we have made along the way,” she said.

“We want to say thank you to Belfast, the locals will always have a place in our hearts.”

Suga from K-pop boy band BTS has been fined 15 million won ($11,500; £8,600) for driving an electric scooter while intoxicated, according to media reports.

The singer, whose real name is Min Yoon-gi, was indicted in August after police found him trying to get up after falling off the scooter near his Seoul home and discovered he was drunk.

His blood alcohol level was 0.227%, far exceeding the 0.08% threshold, say local media reports quoting police.

A district court in Seoul imposed the fine last Friday.

The rapper, who also had his licence revoked, apologised in August, saying he had driven home in Seoul “thinking it was a close distance” and “[forgot] that you can’t use an electric scooter under the influence”.

“Although no one was harmed and no property was damaged, this is entirely my responsibility with no excuses.

“I apologise to those who have been hurt by my carelessness and wrongful behaviour, and I will ensure that this does not happen again in the future,” he had said in a statement.

Suga faced backlash in the days that followed, with some asking him to leave BTS. K-pop idols in South Korea are generally expected to project a squeaky clean image, though in this case, many of Suga’s fans had also rallied in his defence.

The 31-year-old is currently serving as a social service agent in the military as he had been ruled unfit for regular combat duty.

Oasis have announced they will ditch dynamic pricing for the American leg of their reunion tour, after it caused “an unacceptable experience” for UK fans.

The system raises the price of concert tickets at times of high demand. When Oasis’ UK dates went on sale, some fans were charged more than £350 for tickets with an initial face value of £150.

The band faced significant backlash, and the UK’s competition regulator launched an investigation into whether Ticketmaster breached consumer protection law.

In a statement announcing dates in the US, Canada and Mexico, the group’s managers said they wanted to “avoid a repeat of the issues” faced by fans in the UK and Ireland.

“It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable,” they wrote.

“But, when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.”

Previously, Noel and Liam Gallagher said they had not been aware that dynamic pricing would be used for their UK stadium shows next summer.

In a statement earlier this month, the band said: “It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management.”

The band’s reunion shows next summer follow a break of almost 16 years.

The Britpoppers broke up at a gig in Paris in 2009 after an altercation that began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother’s head.

The siblings kept their distance for more than a decade, engaging instead in an arms-length war of words in the press, on stage and on social media.

Liam repeatedly called Noel a “massive potato” on Twitter and accused him of deliberately missing the One Love concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Noel responded by saying Liam was a “village idiot” who “needs to see a psychiatrist”.

“He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet,” he added. “He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

The brothers have yet to give an interview explaining how they repaired their relationship, and fans are waiting to see whether tensions will boil over again when they return to the stage.

For now, however, they are due to play seven concerts at Wembley Stadium next summer, as well as shows in Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin.

Dates were announced on Monday for the band to play in Canada, Mexico and the US, as follows:

• Rogers Stadium in Toronto, Canada, on 24 August
• Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, on 28 August
• MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on 31 August
• Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on 6 September
• Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City, Mexico, on 12 September

Announcing the concerts, the band said: “America. Oasis is coming. You have one last chance to prove that you loved us all along.”

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change.

Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts.

Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border are determined by glacier ridgelines or areas of perpetual snow, but melting glaciers have caused these natural boundaries to shift, leading to both countries seeking to rectify the border.

Switzerland officially approved the agreement on the change on Friday, but Italy is yet to do the same. This follows a draft agreement by a joint Swiss-Italian commission back in May 2023.

Statistics published last September showed that Switzerland’s glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second biggest loss ever after 2022’s record melt of 6%.

An annual report is issued each year by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), which attributed the record losses to consecutive very warm summers, and 2022 winter’s very low snowfall. Researchers say that if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.

On Friday, Switzerland said that the redefined borders had been drawn up in accordance with the economic interests of both parties.

It is thought that clarifying the borders will help both countries determine which is responsible for the upkeep of specific natural areas.

Swiss-Italian boundaries will be changed in the region of Plateau Rosa, the Carrel refuge and Gobba di Rollin – all are near the Matterhorn and popular ski resorts including Zermatt.

The exact border changes will be implemented and the agreement published once both countries have signed it.

Switzerland says that the approval process for signing the agreement is under way in Italy.

Last year, Glamos warned that some Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved, even if global temperatures are kept within the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target rise.

Experts say that without a reduction in greenhouse gases linked to global warning, bigger glaciers like the Aletsch – which is not on the border – could disappear within a generation.

A number of discoveries have been made on Swiss glaciers in recent years due to their melting and rapid shrinking.

Last July, human remains found close to Matterhorn were confirmed to be those of a German climber missing since 1986.

Climbers crossing the Theodul glacier above Zermatt noticed a hiking boot and crampons emerging from the ice.

In 2022, the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 emerged from the Aletsch glacier.

And the body of missing British climber Jonathan Conville was discovered in 2014 by a helicopter pilot who spotted something unusual while delivering supplies to a mountain refuge on the Matterhorn.

Hillary Clinton has told the BBC that Joe Biden was right to stand aside in the US presidential election after his stumbling debate performance against Donald Trump earlier this year.

“Once that debate happened, he could not recover and he did the right thing,” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.

She also said Democrats had not been effective in telling Trump supporters what they were doing to address their economic concerns.

In 2016, the former US secretary of state was unexpectedly defeated by Trump, who now faces Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in November’s election, which polls suggest is extremely tight.

She said she saw Joe Biden a week before the debate and saw no reason then why he should step down but that all changed.

Clinton also said the future of democracy is at stake in this election and called on Harris to “defeat Donald Trump to break the fever that he has caused in our political system”.

“The two candidates have presented extremely different agendas for where they want to take our country,” Clinton said in the BBC interview, which came as she promotes her new memoir.

Trump has rejected the notion that he is a threat and said the real threat comes from the Democratic Party.

The election, Clinton said, would have repercussions far beyond the US including “whether or not we continue supporting Ukraine, whether we can get some kind of workable resolution in the Middle East and so much else”.

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Trump has previously indicated that he would cut US aid for Ukraine. After meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Friday, the former US president said he had “a very good relationship” with both Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

“We both want to see a fair deal made,” Trump said. The war, he added, “should stop and the president (Zelensky) wants it to stop, and I’m sure President Putin wants it to stop and that’s a good combination.”

Clinton, who served as secretary of state in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, also criticised Trump’s promise to begin a mass deportation of illegal immigrants if elected.

“Let’s start with one million,” his vice-presidential pick JD Vance said of the plan in August. “That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there.”

“He is going to have a military presence [in US cities] to achieve his goals,” Clinton said on Monday. “If you look a certain way, if you talk a certain way, you will be subject to these Draconian measures.”

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When asked what drives Trump’s support, she told the BBC that “people support him for different reasons” including feeling “overlooked” and “unseen” or that the “economy doesn’t work for them”.

“I think our problem is frankly we are not the most effective messengers,” she said of the Democratic Party. “About what we see and what we’re trying to do to address these real and legitimate concerns that people have. I recognise and accept my share of the responsibility.”

The expectation upon politicians to be entertaining or outrageous in a social media age makes it harder to “do the hard, boring work of actually getting things done,” she added.

Polling suggests Trump is more trusted on the election’s biggest issue, the economy.

The election will be held on 5 November and the new president will take office in January.

Polls are currently very tight in the seven states considered as crucial in the contest, with just one or two percentage points separating the two candidates.

Clinton, 76, was the first woman nominee for president from a major political party when she ran against Trump in 2016. Her husband, Bill Clinton, whom she married in 1975, was president from 1993 until 2001.

A mere three days after being elected as the new leader of Japan’s ruling party, incoming Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced plans for a snap election on 27 October.

Ishiba, 67, replaced outgoing prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as chief of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Friday, following a tight race that saw him securing more votes than any of the other eight candidates.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, Ishiba will be approved as prime minister by parliament on Tuesday.

“It is important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible,” Ishiba said at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, according to Reuters.

The election, which is set to take place more than a year before it is due, will decide which party controls parliament’s lower house.

Earlier in the day Ishiba began picking government and party officials who will contest the upcoming general election with him, including two influential former prime ministers: Taro Aso, as adviser, and Yoshihide Suga, as vice-president.

Ishiba also asked Shinjiro Koizumi, a popular rival in Friday’s leadership race who enjoys a favourable standing with the Japanese public, to serve as election strategy chief.

However, Sanae Takaichi, the hardline female conservative that Ishiba closely beat in the runoff to Friday’s poll, was not included in Ishiba’s picks.

After winning Friday’s leadership election, Ishiba said he would revitalise Japan’s economy, address security threats and clean up the LDP, whose approval ratings have plummeted in recent months amid public scandals and internal conflicts.

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

The latter controversy fuelled mass public outrage and wounded then Prime Minister Kishida’s political standing, leading to his announcement in August that he would not seek re-election as LDP leader.

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

“For this, transparent and open elections and free and vigorous debate are important.”

Shortly after taking up the mantle on Friday, Ishida echoed his predecessor’s words.

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

Despite the scandals, the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era, remains the country’s most popular political party.

The last two weeks of campaigning for its leadership were also seen by experts as an audition for the general election – meaning candidates presented themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

Three people died and 15 others were injured after a man went on a stabbing rampage inside a Walmart supermarket in Shanghai on Monday night.

Chinese police said they arrested a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin at the scene, adding that he had come to Shanghai to “vent his anger due to a personal economic dispute”. Further investigations are continuing.

The incident took place at a shopping mall in Songjiang, a densely populated district in the city’s south-west, which is also home to several universities.

Police said the three people who died succumbed to their injuries at hospital. The others “did not sustain life-threatening wounds” and are not believed to be in danger.

Discussions about the incident now appear to have been censored on Chinese social media.

The supermarket located in Ludu International Commercial Plaza was open for business on Tuesday but with additional security.

Firearms are banned in China but the country has seen a spate of knife attacks in recent months.

Last month, a 10-year-old Japanese student died a day after he was stabbed near his school in southern China.

In June this year, four US college instructors were stabbed in a public park in the northeast city of Jilin. In May, a man stabbed dead two people and wounded 21 others at a hospital in the southern province of Yunnan.

China’s sputtering economy has its worried leaders pulling out all the stops.

They have unveiled stimulus measures, offered rare cash handouts, held a surprise meeting to kickstart growth and tried to shake up an ailing property market with a raft of decisions – they did all of this in the last week.

On Monday, Xi himself spoke of “potential dangers” and being “well-prepared” to overcome grave challenges, which many believe was a reference to the economy.

What is less clear is how the slowdown has affected ordinary Chinese people, whose expectations and frustrations are often heavily censored.

But two new pieces of research offer some insight. The first, a survey of Chinese attitudes towards the economy, found that people were growing pessimistic and disillusioned about their prospects. The second is a record of protests, both physical and online, that noted a rise in incidents driven by economic grievances.

Although far from complete, the picture neverthless provides a rare glimpse into the current economic climate, and how Chinese people feel about their future.

Beyond the crisis in real estate, steep public debt and rising unemployment have hit savings and spending. The world’s second-largest economy may miss its own growth target – 5% – this year.

That is sobering for the Chinese Communist Party. Explosive growth turned China into a global power, and stable prosperity was the carrot offered by a repressive regime that would never loosen its grip on the stick.

The slowdown hit as the pandemic ended, partly driven by three years of sudden and complete lockdowns, which strangled economic activity.

And that contrast between the years before and after the pandemic is evident in the research by American professors Martin Whyte of Harvard University and Scott Rozelle of Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy.

They conducted their surveys in 2004 and 2009, before Xi Jinping became China’s leader, and during his rule in 2014 and 2023. The sample sizes varied, ranging between 3,000 and 7,500.

In 2004, nearly 60% of the respondents said their families’ economic situation had improved over the past five years – and just as many of them felt optimistic about the next five years.

The figures jumped in 2009 and 2014 – with 72.4% and 76.5% respectively saying things had improved, while 68.8% and 73% were hopeful about the future.

However in 2023, only 38.8% felt life had got better for their families. And less than half – about 47% – believed things would improve over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the proportion of those who felt pessimistic about the future rose, from just 2.3% in 2004 to 16% in 2023.

While the surveys were of a nationally representative sample aged 20 to 60, getting access to a broad range of opinions is a challenge in authoritarian China.

Respondents were from 29 Chinese provinces and administrative regions, but Xinjiang and parts of Tibet were excluded – Mr Whyte said it was “a combination of extra costs due to remote locations and political sensitivity”. Home to ethnic minorities, these tightly controlled areas in the north-west have long bristled under Beijing’s rule.

Those who were not willing to speak their minds did not participate in the survey, the researchers said. Those who did shared their views when they were told it was for academic purposes, and would remain confidential.

Their anxieties are reflected in the choices that are being made by many young Chinese people. With unemployment on the rise, millions of college graduates have been forced to accept low-wage jobs, while others have embraced a “lie flat” attitude, pushing back against relentless work. Still others have opted to be “full-time children”, returning home to their parents because they cannot find a job, or are burnt out.

Analysts believe China’s iron-fisted management of Covid-19 played a big role in undoing people’s optimism.

“[It] was a turning point for many… It reminded everyone of how authoritarian the state was. People felt policed like never before,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Many people were depressed and the subsequent pay cuts “reinforced the confidence crisis,” he added.

Moxi, 38, was one of them. He left his job as a psychiatrist and moved to Dali, a lakeside city in southwestern China now popular with young people who want a break from high-pressure jobs.

“When I was still a psychiatrist, I didn’t even have the time or energy to think about where my life was heading,” he told the BBC. “There was no room for optimism or pessimism. It was just work.”

Work, however, no longer seems to signal a promising future, according to the survey.

In 2004, 2009 and 2014, more than six in 10 respondents agreed that “effort is always rewarded” in China. Those who disagreed hovered around 15%.

Come 2023, the sentiment flipped. Only 28.3% believed that their hard work would pay off, while a third of them disagreed. The disagreement was strongest among lower-income families, who earned less than 50,000 yuan ($6,989; £5,442) a year.

Chinese people are often told that the years spent studying and chasing degrees will be rewarded with financial success. Part of this expectation has been shaped by a tumultuous history, where people gritted their teeth through the pain of wars and famine, and plodded on.

Chinese leaders, too, have touted such a work ethic. Xi’s Chinese Dream, for example, echoes the American Dream, where hard work and talent pay off. He has urged young people to “eat bitterness”, a Chinese phrase for enduring hardship.

But in 2023, a majority of the respondents in the Whyte and Rozelle study believed people were rich because of the privilege afforded by their families and connections. A decade earlier, respondents had attributed wealth to ability, talent, a good education and hard work.

This is despite Xi’s signature “common prosperity” policy aimed at narrowing the wealth gap, although critics say it has only resulted in a crackdown on businesses.

There are other indicators of discontent, such as an 18% rise in protests in the second quarter of 2024, compared with the same period last year, according to the China Dissent Monitor (CDM).

The study defines protests as any instance when people voice grievances or advance their interests in ways that are in contention with authority – this could happen physically or online. Such episodes, however small, are still telling in China, where even lone protesters are swiftly tracked down and detained.

A least three in four cases are due to economic grievances, said Kevin Slaten, one of the CDM study’s four editors.

Starting in June 2022, the group has documented nearly 6,400 such events so far.

They saw a rise in protests led by rural residents and blue-collar workers over land grabs and low wages, but also noted middle-class citizens organising because of the real estate crisis. Protests by homeowners and construction workers made up 44% of the cases across more than 370 cities.

“This does not immediately mean China’s economy is imploding,” Mr Slaten was quick to stress.

Although, he added, “it is difficult to predict” how such “dissent may accelerate if the economy keeps getting worse”.

Chinese leaders are certainly concerned.

Between August 2023 and Janaury 2024, Beijing stopped releasing youth unemployment figures after they hit a record high. At one point, officials coined the term “slow employment” to describe those who were taking time to find a job – a separate category, they said, from the jobless.

Censors have been cracking down on any source of financial frustration – vocal online posts are promptly scrubbed, while influencers have been blocked on social media for flaunting luxurious tastes. State media has defended the bans as part of the effort to create a “civilised, healthy and harmonious” environment. More alarming perhaps are reports last week that a top economist, Zhu Hengpeng, has been detained for critcising Xi’s handling of the economy.

The Communist Party tries to control the narrative by “shaping what information people have access to, or what is perceived as negative”, Mr Slaten said.

CDM’s research shows that, despite the level of state control, discontent has fuelled protests – and that will worry Beijing.

In November 2022, a deadly fire – which killed at least 10 people who were not allowed to leave the building during a Covid lockdown – brought thousands onto the streets in different parts of China to protest against crushing zero-Covid policies.

Professors Whyte and Rozelle don’t think their findings suggest “popular anger about… inequality is likely to explode in a social volcano of protest.”

But the economic slowdown has begun to “undermine” the legitimacy the Party has built up through “decades of sustained economic growth and improved living standards”, they write.

The pandemic still haunts many Chinese people, said Yun Zhou, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan. Beijing’s “stringent yet mercurial responses” during the pandemic have heightened people’s insecurity about the future.

And this is particularly visceral among marginalised groups, she added, such as women caught in a “severely discriminatory” labour market and rural residents who have long been excluded from welfare coverage.

Under China’s contentious “hukou” system of household registration, migrant workers in cities are not allowed to use public services, such as enrolling their children in government-run schools.

But young people from cities – like Moxi – have flocked to remote towns, drawn by low rents, picturesque landscapes and greater freedom to chase their dreams.

Moxi is relieved to have found a slower pace of life in Dali. “The number of patients who came to me for depression and anxiety disorders only increased as the economy boomed,” he said, recalling his past work as a psychiatrist.

“There’s a big difference between China doing well, and Chinese people doing well.”

Whyte, Rozelle and Alisky’s research is based on four sets of academic surveys conducted between 2004 and 2023.

In-person surveys were conducted together with colleagues at Peking University’s Research Center on Contemporary China (RCCC) in 2004, 2009 and 2014. Participants ranged in age from 18-70 and came from 29 provinces. Tibet and Xingiang were excluded.

In 2023, three rounds of online surveys, at the end of the second, third and fourth quarters, were conducted by the Survey and Research Centre for China Household Finance (CHFS) at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China. Participants ranged in age from 20-60.

The same questions were used in all surveys. To make responses comparable across all four years, the researchers excluded participants aged 18-19 and 61-70 and reweighted all answers to be nationally representative. All surveys contain a margin of error.

The study has been accepted for publication by The China Journal and is expected to be published in 2025.

Researchers for the China Dissent Monitor (CDM) have collected data on “dissent events” across China since June 2022 from a variety of non-government sources including news reports, social media platforms operating in the country and civil society organisations.

Dissent events are defined as instances where a person or persons use public and non-official means of expressing their dissatisfaction. Each event is highly visible and also subject to or at risk of government response, through physical repression or censorship.

These can include viral social media posts, demonstrations, banner drops and strikes, among others. Many events are difficult to independently verify.

Mount Everest is 15-50m taller than it would otherwise be because a river is eroding rock and soil at its base, helping push it upwards, according to a new study.

Loss of landmass in the Arun river basin 75km (47 miles) away is causing the world’s highest peak to rise by up to 2mm a year, University College London (UCL) researchers said.

“It’s a bit like throwing a load of cargo off a ship,” study co-author Adam Smith told the BBC. “The ship becomes lighter and so floats a little higher. Similarly, when the crust becomes lighter… it can float a little higher.”

Pressure from the collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates 40-50 million years ago formed the Himalayas and plate tectonics remains the major reason for their continued rise.

But the Arun river network is a contributing factor to the mountains’ rise, the UCL team said.

As the Arun flows through the Himalayas it carves away material – the river bed in this case – from the Earth’s crust. This reduces the force on the mantle (the next layer under the crust), causing the thinned crust to flex and float upward.

It’s an effect called the isostatic rebound. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, adds that this upward pushing force is causing Everest and other neighbouring summits, including the world’s fourth and fifth highest peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, to move upward.

“Mount Everest and its neighbouring peaks are growing because the isostatic rebound is raising them up faster than erosion is wearing them down,” fellow co-author of the study Dr Matthew Fox told the BBC.

“We can see them growing by about two millimetres a year using GPS instruments and now we have a better understanding of what’s driving it.”

Some geologists not involved in the study said the theory was plausible but there was much in the research that was still uncertain.

Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal, and its northern part is on the Chinese side. The Arun river flows down from Tibet into Nepal and then merges with two other rivers to become the Kosi which then enters northern India to meet the Ganges.

It is a very high silt-yielding river given the steepness of the mountains it flows through and the force it has, allowing it to carve off so much rock and soil on its way.

But the UCL researchers say it most likely earned its real strength when it “captured” another river or water body in Tibet 89,000 years ago, which in geological timescales is a recent event.

A Chinese academic, Dr Xu Han of China University of Geosciences, was the lead author in the study during a scholarship visit at the UCL.

“The changing height of Mount Everest really highlights the dynamic nature of the Earth’s surface,” he said.

“The interaction between the erosion of the Arun river and the upward pressure of the Earth’s mantle gives Mount Everest a boost, pushing it up higher than it would otherwise be.”

The UCL study says the Arun river most likely gained the capacity to carve off an extraordinary amount of rocks and other materials after it captured another river or water system in Tibet.

Professor Hugh Sinclair with the School of Geosciences at University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, said the underlying process identified by the UCL team was perfectly reasonable.

But, he added, the exact amounts and timescales of river incision (or how the river cuts downward into its bed and deepens its channel) and the consequent surface uplift of surrounding peaks had large uncertainties.

“Firstly, predicting river incision of such large catchments in response to drainage capture (one river capturing another river or lake) is challenging,” he said.

This uncertainty is something the authors have acknowledged in the study.

Secondly, said Prof Sinclair, the distance over which mountains uplift from a point of intensive localised erosion is extremely hard to predict.

“However, even accounting for these reservations, the possibility that some of Everest’s exceptional elevation is linked to the river, represents an exciting insight.”

The UK is about to stop producing any electricity from burning coal – ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel.

The country’s last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, finishes operations on Monday after running since 1967.

This marks a major milestone in the country’s ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt.

Minister for Energy Michael Shanks said: “We owe generations a debt of gratitude as a country.”

The UK was the birthplace of coal power, and from tomorrow it becomes the first major economy to give it up.

“It’s a really remarkable day, because Britain, after all, built her whole strength on coal, that is the industrial revolution,” said Lord Deben – the longest serving environment secretary.

The first coal-fired power station in the world, the Holborn Viaduct power station, was built in 1882 in London by the inventor Thomas Edison – bringing light to the streets of the capital.

From that point through the first half of the twentieth century, coal provided pretty much all of the UK’s electricity, powering homes and businesses.

In the early 1990s, coal began to be forced out of the electricity mix by gas, but coal still remained a crucial component of the UK grid for the next two decades.

In 2012, it still generated 39% of the UK’s power.

But the science around climate change was growing – it was clear that the world’s greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced and as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal was a major target.

In 2008, the UK established its first legally binding climate targets and in 2015 the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the world the UK would be ending its use of coal power within the next decade.

Dave Jones, director of global insights at Ember, an independent energy think tank, said this really helped to “set in motion” the end of coal by providing a clear direction of travel for the industry.

But it also showed leadership and set a benchmark for other countries to follow, according to Lord Deben.

“I think it’s made a big difference, because you need someone to point to and say, ‘There, they’ve done it. Why can’t we do it?'”, he said.

In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50% – a new record.

The rapid growth of green power meant that coal could even be switched off completely for short periods, with the first coal-free days in 2017.

The growth of renewables has been so successful that the target date for ending coal power was brought forward a year, and on Monday, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, was set to close.

Chris Smith has worked at the plant for 28 years in the environment and chemistry team. She said: “It is a very momentous day. The plant has always been running and we’ve always been doing our best to keep it operating….It is a very sad moment.”

Lord Deben served in former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s government when many of the UK’s coal mines were closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. He said lessons had to be learnt from that for current workers in the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m particularly keen on the way in which this Government, and indeed the previous Government, is trying to make sure that the new jobs, of which there are very many green jobs, go to the places which are being damaged by the changes.

“So in the North Sea oil areas, that’s exactly where we should be doing carbon capture and storage, it’s where we should be putting wind and solar power,” he said.

Although coal is a very polluting source of energy, its benefit has been in being available at all times – unlike wind and solar which are limited by weather conditions.

Kayte O’Neill, the chief operating officer at the Energy System Operator – the body overseeing the UK’s electricity system – said: “There is a whole load of innovation required to help us ensure the stability of the grid. Keeping the lights on in a secure way.”

A crucial technology providing that stability Kayte O’Neill spoke of is battery technology.

Dr Sylwia Walus, research programme manager at the Faraday Institution, said that there has been significant progress in the science of batteries.

“There is always scope for a new technology, but more focus these days is really how to make it more sustainable and cheaper in production,” she said.

To achieve this the UK needs to become more independent of China in producing its own batteries and bringing in skilled workers for this purpose, she explained.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week.

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Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance will meet for their one and only vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night in New York City.

While the stakes in these kind of running-mate face-offs are typically low – an undercard to the presidential main event – this one might be different.

In a tight race that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, every opportunity to generate positive attention and political momentum is precious.

At the very least, the debate will be a fascinating contrast between two men with very different styles and political beliefs and two campaigns with distinct strategies for winning the White House.

Donald Trump announced his selection of Vance back in July, at the start of the Republican National Convention and just a day after his near-assassination.

The former president was riding high in the polls, and his pick of the 40-year-old Ohio senator was viewed not only as a play to the white working class in the industrial Midwest – a key demographic in a region that is a top electoral battleground – but also as a way to establish his political legacy.

Unlike Trump’s first vice-president, Mike Pence, Vance is an ideological kindred spirit, whose focus on trade and immigration match Trump’s top political priorities.

If Vance was a front-runner to be Trump’s running-mate, Walz’s path to the Democratic number-two spot was considerably more unlikely. After Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid, Vice-President Kamala Harris stepped in as the standard bearer and shortly thereafter began her ticket-mate search.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, was not a leading contender for the job, but his viral appearances on television, deriding Republicans as “weird”, and his ability to defend liberal policies in moderate-friendly language won Harris over.

On the campaign trail, both men have sought to put the political skills that earned them the running-mate jobs to work.

Vance is polished and practiced – a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist with an Ivy League pedigree that belies his rural Appalachian roots. Walz is a high-school teacher turned politician with a penchant for folksy midwestern humour.

Vance has been a frequent advocate for the Trump campaign on mainstream media news programmes. He’s also rallied potential supporters in rural areas of the Midwestern battleground states, part of the Trump campaign’s strategy of engaging sympathetic voters who may not have participated in previous elections.

Last week in Traverse City, Michigan, Vance gave his standard stump speech, which is focused on immigration, the economy and trade.

“We’re going to pursue some common sense tax and economic policies,” he told the crowd of a few thousand cheering supporters gathered in a local fair grounds. “We will do it with American workers rather than foreign slave laborers.”

While many of the rally attendees didn’t know much about Vance prior to his selection as vice-president, they said they liked what they had heard so far – even as Vance has frequently flirted with controversy. His amplification of untrue rumours that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets in Ohio is a recent example.

The Democrat has been a regular fixture in more rural areas of the battleground states – often appearing in places that are traditionally more conservative. As a former high school football coach, he’s sought to play up his background and links to America’s most popular sport. On Saturday, he was at the Michigan-Minnesota college football game which was played in front of a crowd of 110,000.

When Harris introduced Walz as her vice-presidential pick at a Philadelphia rally in early August, she repeatedly referred to him as “Coach Walz” – and highlighted his high-school educator background.

The Democrats may be hoping his plainspoken, salt-of-the-earth appeal could cut into the Republican margins outside major metropolitan areas.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbours and their personal choices that they make,” Walz said in Philadelphia. “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

During Tuesday night’s debate, Vance is likely to continue to hammer Democrats on the economy, immigration and crime – areas where polls show Trump and the Republicans are favoured.

He could accuse Walz of being slow to react to the sometimes violent demonstrations in Minnesota following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and highlight some of the more controversial liberal policies Walz enacted as governor, including around transgender rights.

He may also point to Walz’s sometimes contradictory statements about his record serving in the Minnesota National Guard.

Walz may counter by highlighting Vance’s past controversial statements – on Ohio Haitians and his derisive remarks about Democratic women who don’t have children being “childless cat ladies”.

He may also note Vance’s connections to people who oversaw Project 2025, the proposed governing agenda advanced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He is also sure to shift the focus onto the social issues where Democrats are stronger – such as healthcare, the environment and, most prominently, abortion rights.

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

Both men had relatively low profiles in national politics prior to their elevation to their respective presidential tickets. Vance, who has served less than two years in the US Senate, is best known for best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Walz has a longer political record, serving as governor and as a congressman from a rural area of Minnesota, but he was never in the top ranks of party leadership.

The two will have the opportunity to introduce themselves to millions of Americans for the first time on Tuesday night – and their performance could reflect on the judgement and decision-making skill of the presidential nominees who selected them.

The spotlight on Vance may be particularly sharp, given that Trump, if he wins, will be the oldest person ever elected president. Vance could also take the opportunity to provide ideological depth and detail to Trump’s conservative populism, as he did during his July Republican convention speech.

For Walz, it’s a chance not only to help Americans learn more about him as a candidate, but about a Democratic ticket that did not exist two months ago – one that, according to polls, many Americans still are uncertain of. If he can do that in a way that appeals to moderate and independent voters – his touted strength – all the better for the Harris camp.

Typically, the vice-presidential debate happens in the midst of a series of presidential debates – an interlude between the candidate showdowns that really matter.

With no further presidential debates scheduled this year, however, the running-mate face-off could be the last chance for American voters to see the two tickets represented in direct contrast before they cast their ballots.

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

On Monday, Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons found himself at the epicentre of a disaster zone.

His town of Weaverville, North Carolina, had no electricity and no power. Only one grocery store was operational, utility poles had gone down, the town’s water plant had flooded and people had been without safe drinking water for four days, he told the BBC.

In the larger Buncombe County, where Weaverville is located, at least 35 people are dead and 600 are unaccounted for, a local CBS News affiliate reported.

Mr Fitzsimmons said the county set up a website where people can inquire about missing persons. Officials have so far received 11,000 requests.

Across the US south-east, millions of residents were thrown into chaos by storm Helene. It slammed into Florida as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday before barrelling across the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, leaving flooding, power loss and death in its wake.

In the days since, the true scale of the destruction is coming into sharper relief as residents begin to return home to survey the damage.

At least 116 people have died nationwide, officials have said.

One of those people was Madison Shaw’s mother.

“Her last words to me were… ‘I love you, be safe. I’ll see you later,’” the resident of Anderson, South Carolina told CBS News. “And I said, ‘I love you. I’ll see you later as well.’”

“I can’t even describe it,” Ms Shaw told CBS News. “My mom was my best friend.”

A White House spokeswoman said on Monday that two million people are currently without power. President Joe Biden called the storm “history-making.”

Some of the most dire reports are coming from North Carolina, where the state’s governor Roy Cooper said that communities had been “wiped off the map” and that dozens of rescue teams had been deployed.

Buncombe County and the western corner of North Carolina endured some of the worst of Helene’s wrath.

The county includes Asheville, a city located in the Blue Ridge Mountains famed for its arts and music scene. Helene inundated the city with flood waters, drove people from their homes and left residents scrambling for basic resources. Trucks and trees smashed into buildings while downed power and telephone lines hung dangerously over the streets.

“Homes have been destroyed, flattened,” said 21-year-old Josh Griffith who lives just outside of Asheville in the town of Leicester.

“When it hit, we watched semi-trucks and storage crates and dumpsters and propane tanks floating down the river just rushing through parking lots, destroying everything in its path,” he told the BBC.

The apartment he shares with his fiancée sits high up on a hill and was safe from any serious damage. But on Saturday afternoon, by then without power or food, they decided to make their escape, taking rain-drenched roads out to north-east Georgia.

At one point, Mr Griffith and his partner were forced to drive straight through flood water, 6 inches deep of running water on top of 6 inches deep of mud. Emergency officials generally caution people against driving into flood waters of any depth during a storm.

“It was really scary,” he said. “Any time you’re driving over rushing water like that, there’s a fear your tires might slide out from underneath you.”

They made it out, stopping overnight in Georgia before driving back North Carolina, armed with food, water and supplies for their neighbours in Buncombe.

“People are just scrambling to get any resources they can,” he said.

Buncombe County officials opened four water distribution sites throughout the county on Monday.

Last week, before Helene arrived, 28-year-old Jesse Ross wondered whether the storm would be as destructive as some had forecasted.

“It turned out to be massive,” he said.

Mr Ross witnessed a “torrent of water” tear through his town of Waynesville, North Carolina, on Friday. The bridges were uncrossable. He couldn’t get in touch with anyone. His family is safe, he told the BBC, but they spent several days under a boil water advisory.

As residents begin to pick up the pieces, their futures remain uncertain.

Grayson Barnette, a lifelong resident who grew up in Lenoir, North Carolina, and now lives nearby, said a lot of the residents have spent their entire lives in these storm-ravaged communities.

“Some people are just poor and have lived in the same places for generations,” he said. “This was just unconscionable for a lot of people.”

Mr Barnette feared that residents’ deep ties to their communities may have led some to stay and weather the storm despite warnings.

“Entire communities have just been wiped off,” Mr Barnette said. “And people may or may not come back.”

On a quiet Sunday evening in November 2005, a journalist in India’s Bihar state received a panicked phone call at home.

“The Maoists have attacked the prison. People are being killed! I’m hiding in the toilet,” an inmate gasped into the mobile phone, his voice trembling. The sound of gunshots echoed in the background.

He was calling from a jail in Jehanabad, a poverty-stricken district and, at the time, a stronghold of left-wing extremism.

The crumbling, red-brick, colonial-era prison overflowed with inmates. Spread across an acre, its 13 barracks and cells were described in official reports as “dark, damp, and filthy”. Originally designed for around 230, it held up to 800 prisoners.

The Maoist insurgency, which began in Naxalbari, a hamlet in West Bengal state in the late 1960s, had spread to large parts of India, including Bihar. For nearly 60 years, the guerrillas – also called Naxalites – have fought the Indian state to establish a communist society, the movement claiming at least 40,000 lives.

The Jehanabad prison was a powder keg, housing Maoists alongside their class enemies – vigilantes from upper caste Hindu private armies. All awaited trial for mutual atrocities. Like many Indian prisons, some inmates had access to mobile phones, secured through bribing the guards.

“The place is swarming with rebels. Many are simply walking out,” the inmate – one of the 659 prisoners at the time – whispered to Mr Singh.

On the night of 13 November 2005, 389 prisoners, including many rebels, escaped from Jehanabad prison in what became India’s – and possibly Asia’s – largest jailbreak. At least two people were killed in the prison shootout, and police rifles were looted amid the chaos. The United States Department of State’s 2005 report on terrorism said the rebels had even “abducted 30 inmates” who were members of an anti-Maoist group.

In a tantalising twist, police said the “mastermind” of the jail break was Ajay Kanu, a fiery rebel leader who was among the prisoners. Security was so lax in the decrepit prison that Kanu stayed in contact with his outlawed group on the phone and through messages, helping them come in, police alleged. Kanu says this is not true.

Hundreds of rebels wearing police uniforms had crossed a drying stream behind the prison, climbed up and down the tall walls using bamboo ladders and crawled in, opening fire from their rifles.

The cells were open as food was being cooked late in the kitchen. The rebels walked to the main gates and opened them. Guards on duty looked on helplessly. Prisoners – only 30 of the escapees were convicts, while the rest were awaiting trial – escaped by simply walking out of the gates, and disappeared into the darkness. It was all over in less than an hour, eyewitnesses said.

The mass jail break exposed the crumbling law and order in Bihar and the intensifying Maoist insurgency in one of India’s most impoverished regions. The rebels had timed their plan perfectly: security was stretched thin due to the ongoing state elections.

—

Rajkumar Singh, the local journalist, remembers the night vividly.

After getting the phone call, he rode his motorbike through a deserted town, trying to reach his office. He remembers the air was thick with gunshots ringing in the distance. The invading rebels were also trying to attack a neighbouring police station.

As he turned onto the main road, dim streetlights revealed a chilling sight – dozens of armed men and women in police uniforms blocking the way, shouting through a megaphone.

“We are Maoists,” they declared. “We’re not against the people, only the government. The jailbreak is part of our protest.”

The rebels had planted bombs along the road. Some were already detonating, collapsing nearby shops and spreading fear through the town.

Mr Singh says he pressed on, reaching his fourth-floor office, where he received a second call from the same prisoner.

“Everyone’s running. What should I do?,” the inmate said.

“If everyone’s escaping, you should too,” Mr Singh said.

Then he rode to the prison through the eerily empty streets. When he reached, he found the gates open. Rice pudding was strewn all over the kitchen, the cell doors were ajar. There was no jailor or policeman in sight.

In a room, two wounded policemen lay on the floor. Mr Singh says he also saw the bloodied body of Bade Sharma, the leader of the feared upper caste vigilante army of landlords called Ranvir Sena and a prisoner himself, lying on the floor. The police later said the rebels had shot him while leaving.

Lying on the floor and stuck to the walls were blood-stained handwritten pamphlets left behind by the rebels.

“Through this symbolic action, we want to warn the state and central governments that if they arrest the revolutionaries and the struggling people and keep them in jail, then we also know how to free them from jail in a Marxist revolutionary way,” one pamphlet said.

—

A few months ago, I met Kanu, the 57-year-old rebel leader the police accuse of masterminding the jailbreak, in Patna, Bihar’s chaotic capital.

At the time of the incident, media reports painted him as “Bihar’s most wanted”, a figure commanding both fear and respect from the police.

Officers recounted how the rebel “commander” instantly took control during the prison break once he was handed an AK-47 by his comrades.

In a dramatic turn, the reports said, he “expertly” handled the weapon, swiftly changing magazines before allegedly targeting and shooting Sharma. Fifteen months later, in February 2007, Kanu was arrested from a railway platform while he was travelling from Dhanbad in Bihar to the city of Kolkata.

Almost two decades later, Kanu has been acquitted in all but six of the original 45 criminal cases against him. Most of the cases stem from the jailbreak, including that of the murder of Sharma. He has served seven years in prison for one of the cases.

Despite his fearsome reputation, Kanu is unexpectedly talkative. He speaks in sharp, measured bursts, downplaying his role in the mass escape that made headlines. Now, this once-feared rebel is subtly shifting his gaze toward a different battle – a career in politics, “fighting for poor, backward castes”.

As a child, Kanu spent his days and nights listening to stories from his lower-caste farmer father about Communist uprisings in Russia, China, and Indonesia. By eighth grade, his father’s comrades were urging him to embrace revolutionary politics. He says his defiance took root early – after scoring a goal against the local landlord’s son in a football match, armed upper-caste men stormed their home.

“I locked myself inside,” he recalls. “They came for me and my sister, ransacking the house, destroying everything. That’s how the upper castes kept us in check -through fear.”

In college, while studying political science, Kanu ironically led the student wing of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has waged a war against Maoism. After graduation, he co-founded a school, only to be forced out by the owner of the building. Upon returning to his village, tensions with the local landlord escalated. When a local strongman was murdered, Kanu, just 23, was named in the police complaint – and he went into hiding.

“Since then I have been on the run, most of my life. I left home early to mobilise workers and farmers, joined and went underground as a Maoist rebel,” he said. He joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), a radical communist group.

“My profession was liberation – the liberation of the poor. It was about standing up against the atrocities of the upper castes. I fought for those enduring injustice and oppression.”

—

In August 2002, with a feared reputation as a rebel leader and a three million rupees bounty on his head – an incentive for people to report his whereabouts if they spotted him – Kanu was on his way to meet underground leaders and plan new strategies.

He was about to reach his destination in Patna when a car overtook him at a busy intersection. “Within moments, men in plainclothes jumped out, guns drawn, ordering me to surrender. I didn’t resist – I gave up,” he said.

Over the next three years, Kanu was shuffled between jails as police feared his escape. “He had a remarkable reputation, the sharpest of them all,” a senior officer told me. In each jail, Kanu says he formed prisoner unions to protest against corruption – stolen rations, poor healthcare, bribery. In one prison, he led a three-day hunger strike. “There were clashes,” he says, “but I kept demanding better conditions”.

Kanu paints a stark picture of the overcrowding in Indian prisons, describing Jehanabad, which held more than double its intended capacity.

“There was no place to sleep. In my first barrack, 180 prisoners were crammed into a space meant for just 40. We devised a system to survive. Fifty of us would sleep for four hours while the others sat, waiting and chatting in the dark. When the four hours were up, another group would take their turn. That’s how we endured life inside those walls.”

In 2005, Kanu escaped during the infamous jailbreak.

“We were waiting for dinner when gunfire erupted. Bombs, bullets – it was chaos,” he recalls. “The Maoists stormed in, yelling for us to flee. Everyone ran into the darkness. Should I have stayed behind and been killed?”

Many doubt the simplicity of Kanu’s claims.

“It wasn’t as simple as he makes it sound,” said a police officer. “Why was dinner being prepared late in the evening when it was usually cooked and served at dusk, with the cells locked up early? That alone raised suspicions of inside collusion.”

Interestingly many of of the prisoners who escaped were back in jail by mid-December – some voluntarily, others not. None of the rebels returned.

When I asked Kanu whether he masterminded the escape, he smiled. “The Maoists freed us – it’s their job to liberate,” he said.

But when pressed again, Kanu fell silent.

The irony deepened as he finally shared a story from prison.

A police officer had once asked him if he was planning another escape.

“Sir, does a thief ever tell you what he’s going to steal?” Kanu replied wryly.

His words hung in the air, coming from a man who insists he had no part in planning the jailbreak.

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

The two candidates went head to head in a televised debate in Pennsylvania on 10 September that just over 67 million people tuned in to watch.

A majority of national polls carried out in the week after suggested Harris’s performance had helped her make some small gains, with her lead increasing from 2.5 percentage points on the day of the debate to 3.3 points just over a week later.

That marginal boost was mostly down to Trump’s numbers though. His average had been rising ahead of the debate, but it fell by half a percentage point in the week afterwards.

You can see those small changes in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing how the averages have changed and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election with just one or two percentage points separating the candidates.

That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven states and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in these seven states.

One thing to note is that there are fewer state polls than national polls being carried out at the moment so we have less data to go on and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

But looking at the trends since Harris joined the race does help highlight the states in which she seems to be in a stronger position, according to the polling averages.

In the chart below you can see that Harris has been leading in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin since the start of August.

All three had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other in battleground states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Luxury carmaker Aston Martin’s share price sank more than 20% after it said profits will be lower than expected this year.

The company, famed for its links to fictional superspy James Bond, has been hit by supply chain issues and falling sales in China.

The share price of Stellantis, the owner of brands such as Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and Jeep, also plummeted on Monday after a profit warning.

Carmakers across Europe have been suffering lately, with disappointing sales and increased competition from abroad taking a heavy toll on earnings.

Aston Martin is a prestige brand which makes upmarket cars in relatively small quantities.

Last year, it sold 6,620 vehicles, with about a fifth of those going to the Asia-Pacific region.

However, the company says it has been hit by a fall in demand in China, where a slowing economy has affected sales of luxury cars.

It has also been affected by problems at a number of suppliers, which have affected its ability to build a number of new models.

As a result, Aston says it will make about 1,000 fewer cars than originally planned this year.

Sales, which had originally been forecast to rise, are now expected to be lower than in 2023, and earnings will fall short of current market expectations.

Adrian Hallmark, who became Aston Martin’s chief executive a few weeks ago, said it had become clear that “decisive action” was needed to adjust output.

But he added that he was “even more convinced than before” about the brand’s potential for growth.

Meanwhile, Stellantis has become the latest large-scale carmaker to revise its financial forecasts, thanks to a deterioration in the industry outlook.

The company has been struggling with weak demand in the US, a key market, where it has been forced to offer discounts in order to shift unsold stock.

It has also been facing increased competition from Chinese brands, which have been expanding aggressively abroad.

As a result, it said it expects its profit margins to be significantly lower than previously thought this year.

The announcement sent its shares tumbling. By lunchtime on Monday, the price was down more than 14%.

The problems at Stellantis and Aston Martin reflect a wider malaise in the European car industry.

On Friday, Volkswagen issued its second profit warning in three months, while it has also suggested it might have to close plants in Germany for the first time in its history.

Its German rivals Mercedes-Benz and BMW have also downgraded their profit forecasts in recent weeks.

Among the common issues are falling sales in China – until recently a highly lucrative market for expensive and profitable high-end models – coupled with growing competition from Chinese brands in other markets.

According to Matthias Schmidt of Schmidt Automotive Research, European firms have been caught out by a wave of “unsustainable” discounting by Chinese brands in their home market, which has affected sales of high-priced vehicles.

“German brands, and VW in particular, have been caught off-guard by the pace of change in China” he explains.

Sales of electric cars, which manufacturers have invested huge sums in developing, have been faltering badly in Europe.

According to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, sales of battery-powered cars were down nearly 44% in August compared to the same period a year ago, while their share of the market dropped to 14.4%, compared to 21% in 2023.

The decline has followed the removal or reduction of incentives for electric car buyers in a number of European markets, including France and Germany.

On Friday, EU nations are due to vote on plans to impose steep tariffs on imports of electric vehicles from China.

The measures are designed to protect local producers from unfair competition. The European Commission claims Chinese manufacturers benefit from illegal subsidies from the Chinese government – and believes tariffs will create a level playing field.

But the plan is controversial, and has received a mixed reception from manufacturers.

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.