At least five people have been killed and eight wounded in an Israeli air strike on a building in central Beirut, Lebanese officials have said.

The multi-storey block in Bachoura housed a Hezbollah-affiliated health centre, which Israel’s military said was hit in a “precision” attack.

This is the first Israeli strike close to Beirut’s centre – just metres away from Lebanon’s parliament. There were five other air strikes overnight against targets in the southern suburb of Dahieh.

It comes after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said eight soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon, its first losses since the start of ground operations against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said it had destroyed Israeli tanks during the fighting and insisted it had enough men and ammunition to push back the forces.

Earlier, the IDF announced that more infantry and armoured troops had joined the operation seeking to dismantle what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Lebanese border villages.

In the latest overnight strikes, three explosions were heard in Dahieh, in the city’s southern suburbs – with a fourth closer to the centre.

There were two further air strikes in Dahieh, which came after the IDF warned people living nearby that it was targeting what it said were facilities belonging to Hezbollah in the area of the city known to be its stronghold.

Before the overnight air strikes, Lebanon’s health ministry said 46 people had been killed and 85 wounded in Israeli bombings in the last 24 hours, without differentiating between civilians and combatants.

It also emerged a US permanent resident from the state of Michigan was among those killed in recent Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.

Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, was in the country to care for his elderly mother, according to The Detroit News.

His death was confirmed by a White House official, who said: “His death is a tragedy, as are the deaths of many civilians in Lebanon.”

Hezbollah has been weakened after two weeks of Israeli strikes and other attacks that have killed more than 1,200 people across Lebanon and displaced around 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.

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 displaced by Hezbollah attacks.

Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries.

On the second full day of their ground invasion into Lebanon, Israeli troops encountered Hezbollah fighters for the first time.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Wednesday that soldiers backed by aircraft had “eliminated terrorists and dismantled terrorist infrastructure through precision-guided munitions and close-range engagements” in several southern Lebanese areas.

Later, the IDF announced that eight troops had been killed in action. Most were commandos from the elite Egoz and Golani Reconnaissance units.

Hezbollah said its fighters had fired ani-tank missiles at Israeli commandos, killing and wounding dozens during clashes early on Wednesday in one border village.

It also said that other troops were targeted with explosives and gunfire on the outskirts of Kafr Kila, and that three Israeli Merkava tanks were destroyed by missiles near Maroun al-Ras.

Hezbollah has spent years building infrastructure in southern Lebanon that includes extensive underground tunnels. It also has thousands of fighters, who know the area well.

Paying tribute to the eight soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they had fallen ”in the midst of a tough war against Iran’s axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us”.

“This will not happen, because we will stand together, and with God’s help, we will win together,” he added.

Israeli air defences were also in action again a day after they repelled the vast majority of the more than 180 ballistic missiles launched by Iran towards Israel on Tuesday night in retaliation for the Israeli air strike in Beirut last Friday that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a top Iranian commander.

More than 240 rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel throughout Wednesday, according to the IDF.

Netanyahu insists that the ground offensive in Lebanon will degrade Hezbollah’s capability and push its fighters back, eventually allowing about 60,000 Israelis to return to their homes near the border.

Meanwhile US President Joe Biden said he did not support an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iranian nuclear sites. He added that the US “will be discussing with the Israelis what they’re gonna do” in response to the Iranian barrage.

Subramanian Iswaran, a senior cabinet minister in Singapore’s government, has been sentenced to 12 months in prison in a high-profile trial that has gripped the wealthy nation.

Iswaran, 62, pleaded guilty to accepting gifts worth more than S$403,000 ($311,882; £234,586) while in public office, as well as obstructing the course of justice.

The gifts included tickets to the Formula 1 Grand Prix, a Brompton T-line bicycle, alcohol and a ride on a private jet.

Justice Vincent Hoong, who oversaw the case in Singapore’s High Court, emphasised that the former transpor minister’s crimes were an abuse of power and jeopardised people’s trust in public institutions.

He also noted that Iswaran seemed to think he would be acquitted.

“In his letter to the prime minister, he stated he rejected (the charges) and expressed his strong belief he would be acquitted,” said Justice Hoong.

“Thus I have difficulty accepting these are indicative of his remorse.”

It was not immediately clear when Iswaran would report to prison, but his lawyers asked the judge to expedite the process.

He will serve his sentence at Changi, the same prison that holds Singapore’s death row prisoners, where the cells don’t have fans and most inmates sleep on straw mats instead of beds.

He is Singapore’s first political figure to be tried in court in nearly fifty years.

The nation prides itself on its squeaky clean image and lack of corruption. But that image, and the reputation of the governing People’s Action Party, have taken a hit as a result of Iswaran’s case.

The city state’s lawmakers are among the highest-paid in the world, with some ministers earning more than S$1 million ($758,000). Leaders justify the handsome salaries by saying it combats corruption.

Ministers cannot keep gifts unless they pay the market value of the gift to the government, and they must declare anything they receive from people they have business dealings with.

“It’s not a significant sum over his years of service, but on his salary, he could have very well afforded not to,” said Eugene Tan, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University.

“I think the public were expecting the court to demonstrate zero tolerance for this sort of conduct.”

Iswaran’s defence team had asked for eight weeks, if the judge deemed prison necessary. His lawyer argued the charges were not an abuse of power and did not disadvantage the government.

Prosecutors meanwhile requested an eight to nine-month sentence, saying Iswaran was “more than a passive acceptor of gifts”.

“If public servants could accept substantial gifts in such a situation, over the long term, public confidence in the impartiality and integrity of government would be severely undermined,” said Deputy Attorney-General Tai Wei Shyong.

“Not punishing such acts would send a signal that such acts are tolerated.”

Justice Hoong noted on Thursday that holders of high office have a particularly large impact on the public interest.

“Such persons set the tone for public servants in conducting themselves in accordance with high standards of integrity and must be expected to avoid any perception that they are susceptible to influence by pecuniary benefits,” he said.

While in government, Iswaran held multiple portfolios in the prime minister’s office: in home affairs, communications and, most recently, the transport ministry.

Prior to last year, the most recent case of a politician facing a major corruption probe was in 1986, when national development minister Teh Cheang Wan was investigated for accepting bribes. He took his own life before he was charged.

Before that, former minister of state for environment Wee Toon Boon was sentenced to 18 months jail in 1975 for a case involving more than $800,000.

Allegations against Iswaran first surfaced in July of last year. Nearly all the charges against him stem from his dealings involving billionaire property tycoon Ong Beng Seng, who helped bring the Formula 1 Grand Prix to Singapore. Ong Beng Seng is also under investigation.

When Iswaran discovered authorities were investigating Mr Ong’s associates he requested that Mr Ong bill him for his flight to Doha, Justice Hoong said on Thursday.

He acted with deliberation and premeditation, and in asking to be billed and paying for the ticket was trying to avoid investigations into the gifts, the judge added.

Iswaran was originally charged with 35 counts, including two counts of corruption, one charge of obstructing justice and 32 counts of “obtaining, as a public servant, valuable things”. But at a trial in late September, Iswaran pleaded guilty to lesser offences after the corruption charges were amended.

Lawyers did not confirm whether a plea deal had been reached.

“The system still works and there is still that public commitment. But this particular case is certainly not going to win the party any favours,” Mr Tan said.

The case against Iswaran is one of a series of political scandals that has rocked the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which has long touted its strong stance against corruption and amoral behaviour.

In 2023, a separate corruption probe into the real estate dealings of two other ministers eventually cleared them of impropriety, while the speaker of Parliament resigned because of an extramarital affair with another lawmaker.

The property scandal raised questions about the privileged positions that ministers have in Singapore at a time of rising living costs.

Singapore must hold a general election by November 2025. The PAP’s share of the popular vote declined in the most recent elections, and it is facing a challenge to its decades-long one party dominance from an increasingly influential opposition party.

The Workers’ Party won a total of 10 seats in parliament in the last election, but has also been rocked by scandal. Its leader, Pritam Singh, has been charged with lying under oath to a parliamentary committee. He has rejected the accusations.

The release of a blockbuster Pakistani film has been put on hold in India after officials in Delhi refused to give permission for its screening, the BBC has learnt.

A remake of a 1979 Punjabi film, The Legend of Maula Jatt, is the highest ever grossing film in Pakistan.

The movie was set to release in the northern Indian state of Punjab on Wednesday, which would have made it the first Pakistani film to hit Indian screens in more than a decade.

The South Asian neighbours share a frosty relationship and tensions often affect cultural exchanges between them.

On Wednesday, a source close to Zee Studios – the film’s distributor in India – confirmed to the BBC that its release had been stalled indefinitely, after the information and broadcasting ministry denied them permission.

It’s not immediately clear why the film was put on hold. The BBC has contacted the ministry for comment.

Starring Pakistan’s biggest stars Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, the 2022 film tells the story of a local folk hero who takes on the leader of a rival clan.

The film was initially supposed to release in India in 2022, but its screening was postponed indefinitely – until last month when its maker Bilal Lashari announced it would hit Indian theatres soon.

“Two years in, and still house full on weekends in Pakistan! Now, I can’t wait for our Punjabi audience in India to experience the magic of this labour of love!” he wrote on Instagram.

However, the news sparked protests in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, where the regional Maharashtra Navnirman Sena political party said it would not allow the film’s release “under any circumstances”. Mumbai, which is located in the state, is home to Bollywood, India’s largest film industry.

Following tensions, Zee Studios decided to limit the film’s release to Punjab state, which shares a border and language with Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Despite tense relations, Indian and Pakistan have always shared an affinity for each other’s art and culture.

Movies and web series made in India and Pakistan travel widely across the border. India’s Bollywood and Punjabi movies are particularly popular in Pakistan, while Pakistani series enjoy a large viewership in India.

Performers in both the countries also have a history of cross-border collaborations, working together on film and music projects.

But such collaborations came to a halt when Bollywood dropped Pakistani actors in 2016 and Pakistan banned Indian movies in 2019, over military tensions between the countries.

A few Punjabi movies from India have been screened in Pakistan in recent months.

In 2023, India’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition that sought a complete ban on performers from Pakistan, asking the petitioners to not to be “so narrow minded”.

Encouraged by this mild thaw in relations and Maula Jatt’s global success, its makers had hoped the folk drama would attract audiences in India.

The leading actors of Maula Jatt are well-known in India for starring in popular Pakistani dramas. They have also previously appeared in big-budget Bollywood films.

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in an effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, prosecutors allege in a new court filing that argues the former president is not immune from charges.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor appointed to lead the election interference case against Trump, submitted the filing, which was publicly released on Wednesday.

The filing challenges Trump’s claim that he is protected by a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer that grants broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office.

Since there will be no trial before Trump, a Republican, vies with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris for the White House in next month’s election, the 165-page court document may be the last chance for prosecutors to outline their case.

In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors allege Trump was not always acting in an official capacity and instead engaged in a “private criminal effort” to overturn the 2020 results.

The document is an effort by prosecutors to advance the criminal case against Trump following the Supreme Court ruling in July.

It prompted prosecutors to narrow the scope of their indictment. That is because the ruling did not apply immunity to unofficial acts, leading prosecutors to argue that while Trump may still have been in office some of his alleged efforts to overturn the election were related to his campaign and his life as a private citizen.

The court should “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as he would any other citizen,” Mr Smith wrote in the new filing.

The case has been frequently delayed since charges were filed by the Department of Justice more than a year ago accusing Trump, who denies wrongdoing, of seeking to illegally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

The filing lays out several instances in which Trump’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, expressed doubt about his boss’s voter fraud claims and tried to persuade him to accept he lost the election.

In the court document, prosecutors say Trump was not upset when he learned his vice-president had been rushed to a secure location as rioters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. “So what?” he allegedly said, when informed of the scenes.

Pence would later go public about his falling out with Trump in the wake of the storming of Congress, when some rioters shouted “Hang Mike Pence” because the vice-president refused to obstruct the certification of election results.

Trump’s lawyers fought to keep the latest filing sealed, and campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump called it a “hit job” and said it “should not have been released right before the election”.

He accused prosecutors of “egregious” misconduct.

The filing offers new evidence and presents the clearest view yet of how prosecutors would seek to present their case against Trump at trial.

It alleges that he always planned to declare victory no matter the result, and laid the groundwork for this long before election day. It also accuses him of knowingly spreading false claims about the vote that he himself deemed “crazy”.

Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with the ballots to give him “options to file litigation”.

The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors.

Trump said on Wednesday that the case would end with his “complete victory”. A trial date has not been set.

Days after a tropical storm inundated parts of North Carolina with catastrophic flooding, leaving scores dead and hundreds more missing, entire communities are beginning to come to terms with devastating losses and, for some, narrow escapes.

For over 40 years, Nancy Berry’s trailer in the town of Boone was her mountain oasis and her family’s homestead.

It was where she created memories with family and friends, and where she preserved the memories of those lost. Her mother died in the same trailer.

But it took just a matter of hours for Hurricane Helene to wash it all away.

Now, the 77-year-old is trying to salvage what remains. On her bed, still soaked from the floods, she’s placed mementos of who she was, and where she came from.

On top of the pile, her son’s death certificate from when he died of Covid three years ago.

“I grabbed it and laid it out,” she told the BBC. “I’ve got to protect my family’s history. A lot of it is lost though.”

It was Ms Berry’s great-niece who saved her, helping her wade through three to four feet of water.

“They kept calling me – thank God for the cell phones. You never know, a long time ago, what would have happened,” Ms Berry recalled.

When her great-niece arrived, she found Ms Berry trying to save some of her belongings by putting them up high.

“Aunt Nanny. Come on. Get out. Get out,” she called out.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Ms Berry replied. She grabbed her purse, handing it to her great-niece, who carried it over her head while helping Ms Berry to safety.

“She’s strong and she was just pushing me, pulling and that water was – ,” Ms Berry, said, shuddering. “It was not a nice moment.”

Western North Carolina, located more than 300 miles (482km) from the ocean, is no stranger to storms, said Kathie Dello, a climate expert at North Carolina State University.

Six people died when a tropical storm caused “catastrophic” flooding in nearby Carusoe – but nothing like this, she said. At least 180 people are now known to have died. More than 600 are still unaccounted for. Thousands are without power, and fresh water supplies are dwindling.

The government has deployed 6,000 National Guard members and 4,800 federal aid workers to the region, but many have criticised the response, saying that the bulk of rescue efforts have been left up to volunteers.

“We were cut off from [the outside world] for about three days,” said Kennie McFee, the fire chief for Green Valley.

“Here, it was mainly neighbours helping neighbours.”

The cities of Boone and Asheville were hard hit, but remote communities located deep within the Appalachian Mountains are also seriously struggling, Diello told the BBC.

Even before the storm, mobile reception and Wi-Fi was patchy. Poverty and rough, rural roads have added to the difficulties people have faced getting out.

“A lot of times people say ‘well, why didn’t they leave?’,” Diello said. “Well maybe you can’t afford a tank of gas, and how many nights in a hotel in a safer place? Maybe you know you can’t leave your family, maybe you can’t leave your job.”

In Green Valley, a woman, who did not want the BBC to use her name, said that five days after the storm she still had no power and no communication with the outside world.

Her only functioning device was a battery powered antenna radio that she said was decades-old.

“If you’re raised in the mountains, you’ll cope,” she said.

While talking with the BBC, a car pulled up to bring her news of her family, who she hadn’t seen or heard from since the storm hit.

“They were all okay, another thank you, Lord,” she said.

Although she recalled bad storms, she said she’s never seen anything like Helene.

“God is getting people’s attention. He really is getting people’s attention, not just here, but it’s everywhere,” she said. “But I really think it’s just, it’s to let us know who’s in control.”

Nicole Rojas, 25, moved to her remote home up the mountain in Vilas, North Carolina not long ago from nearby Tennessee, where she had lived, in her own words, “off grid”.

“I kind of wish I would have stuck to my lifestyle a little bit, because I always had drinking water, showering water, food,” she told the BBC, while looking for supplies in Boone.

Now, she and her roommates, who include a 54-year-old woman named Karen, Karen’s 74-year-old mother and a family with young children, will likely be without power for weeks, she heard, with the only way in and out a single-lane, tree-strewn road.

“The only reason I was even able to step out was from the gentlemen in the community taking out their chainsaws and their tractors and moving all the trees,” she said.

Ms Rojas had been at home on Friday, when the storm struck the mountain. On Sunday, after her neighbours spent all of Saturday clearing the road, she and Karen ventured out to town. Karen, who amid the chaos of the storm had suffered a life-threatening allergy attack after being stung by an insect, brought supplies back to their house.

Ms Rojas, meanwhile, stayed in Boone with friends, so that she could go to work at a local healthstore. She plans to return home, with more supplies, on Wednesday.

It was at work when it all finally hit her, after hearing the story of another customer.

“She had to drive by a truck that was picking up, that had like, dead bodies on there, and she started crying,” she recalled. “And that’s when I just broke down.”

“You hear everyone’s horror stories about how, like, literally their entire house just slid down the mountain.”

“I feel like I just survived the apocalypse.”

A US bomb buried at a Japanese airport exploded on Wednesday, causing a crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights.

The minor blast left a hole about seven meters (23 feet) wide but no casualties were reported and no aircraft were nearby at the time.

The bomb, which exploded at Miyazaki Airport in south-west Japan, is thought to have been dropped during World War Two to stem “kamikaze” planes on suicide missions.

“There is no threat of a second explosion, and police and firefighters are currently examining the scene,” chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, adding that the airport aimed to reopen on Thursday.

A bomb disposal team from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces confirmed a 500lb US bomb had been the source of the blast.

While a transport minister said they could not confirm when the bomb was dropped, local media reported it was likely during World War Two.

Located at the south-east end of Kyushu island, Miyazaki Airport was built in 1943 as an imperial Japanese navy base.

Other unexploded ordinance dropped by the US was reportedly found at a nearby construction site in 2009 and 2011.

Unexploded bombs remain buried around the country. Reuters news agency said a total of 2,348 bombs weighing 41 tonnes were disposed of during 2023.

For several years, Masato Kanda hardly slept.

“Three hours a night is an exaggeration,” he laughs as he speaks to the BBC from Tokyo.

“I slept for three hours consecutively before being woken up but I then went back to bed, so if you add them up, I got a bit more.”

So why was this 59 year-old bureaucrat’s schedule so punishing?

Until the end of July, he was Japan’s vice finance minister for international affairs, the country’s top currency diplomat, or yen czar.

Key to the role was fending off currency market speculators that could trigger turmoil in one of the world’s largest economies.

Historically, authorities intervened to weaken the value of the Japanese currency. A weak yen is good for exporters like Toyota and Sony as it makes goods cheaper for overseas buyers.

But when the yen plummeted during Mr Kanda’s time in office it increased the cost of importing essential items like food and fuel, causing a cost of living crisis in a country more used to seeing prices fall rather than rise.

In his three years in the role, the value of the yen against the US dollar weakened by more than 45%.

To control the yen’s slide, Mr Kanda unleashed an estimated 25 trillion yen ($173bn) to support the currency, marking Japan’s first such intervention in almost a quarter of a century.

“The Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance are very clear. They intervene not at a particular level of the currency, but they intervene when market volatility is too much,” says economist Jesper Koll.

Japan now finds itself on the US Treasury’s watchlist of potential currency manipulators.

But Mr Kanda argues that what he did was not market manipulation.

“Markets should move based on fundamentals but occasionally they fluctuate excessively because of speculation, and they don’t reflect fundamentals which don’t change overnight,” he says.

“When it affects ordinary consumers who have to buy food or fuel, that is when we intervened.”

While countries like the US and UK can raise interest rates to boost the value of their currencies, Japan had for years been unable to put up the cost of borrowing due to the weakness of its economy.

Professor Seijiro Takeshita of the University of Shizuoka says Japan had no other option other than to intervene in the currency markets.

“It is not the right thing to do, but in my opinion it is the only thing they can do.”

The irony is that the yen’s value jumped in recent months without Mr Kanda or his successor lifting a finger after the Bank of Japan surprised the markets with a rate hike, and the country got a new prime minister.

So was the $170bn bid to prop up the yen a waste of money?

No, says Mr Kanda and points out that his interventions actually made a profit although he emphasises that it was never a goal.

On whether or not his actions were ultimately successful he says: “It is not up to me to evaluate, but many say our exchange management stopped the excessive level of speculation.”

Markets or historians should be the final judges, he adds.

After decades of economic stagnation, Mr Kanda also sounds an optimistic note about Japan’s prospects.

“We are finally seeing investments and wages rising, and we have a chance to go back to a normal market economy,” he says.

A more surprising legacy for this “humble public servant” is him becoming a star on the internet after Japanese social media users celebrated his ability to surprise financial markets with a series of AI generated dancing videos.

The BBC has confronted a neo-Nazi in Finland who shared online instructions on how to commit arson with UK rioters during the summer.

The 20-year-old was an administrator in the Southport Wake Up group on the Telegram messaging app, where he was known as “Mr AG”. He posted the arson manual, which was pinned to the top of the group chat.

In late July and early August, the group was key in helping to organise and provoke protests that turned to violence in England and Northern Ireland.

We tracked Mr AG – whose real name is Charles-Emmanuel Mikko Rasanen – to an apartment on the outskirts of the Finnish capital, Helsinki.

It was from here, more than 1,000 miles away from Southport, that the neo-Nazi took a prominent online role during the UK riots.

On 29 July, within hours of the killings of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, the Southport Wake Up group was created.

Within days it had grown to more than 14,000 members. Mr Rasanen – or Mr AG as he was known online – helped to run the group chat.

The group organised the very first protest in the UK, on St Luke’s Road in Southport, the day after the killings. That protest later turned into a riot.

Before the group was taken down by Telegram, a series of other protest locations were advertised, as well as a list of dozens of refugee centres, suggested as potential targets.

Alongside that list, Mr AG posted the arson manual, writing: “Something fun for you to read.”

The manual is believed to have been written by a Russian fascist group proscribed as terrorists in their own country.

It includes details on how to avoid the police and it encourages the targeting of Muslims and Jews.

Underneath the post, other members wrote aggressive and offensive comments, including: “I’m ready for these migrant boys,” while another describes “invaders” as “a stupid bunch underestimating whites”.

Mr AG pinned the post to the top of the group, which meant it was in full view of all 14,000 members when they logged in.

At the time, several riots had broken out across the UK.

The BBC travelled to Finland to confront Mr Rasanen – we had previously emailed him. He refused to answer any of our questions, but did not deny sending the posts or being an administrator of the Southport Wake Up group.

Before we left him, he also accused the BBC of harassment and rang the police.

On his Telegram accounts, Mr Rasanen celebrates Hitler and promotes a neo-Nazi group called the Nordic Resistance Movement, which is banned as a terrorist organisation in the US.

He also posts voice notes – in one he describes himself as a “national socialist”, and in another he appears to call for the genocide of Jewish people.

Veli-Pekka Hämäläinen, an investigative journalist at Yle, Finland’s national broadcaster, says Mr Rasanen has been active online “for many years”.

Mr Hämäläinen’s team has also spoken to him about his role in the UK riots. He believes Mr Rasanen’s involvement in the Southport Wake Up group transformed him from a solitary extremist into someone with an audience of thousands.

“This is an example of how lone internet keyboard warriors can turn dangerous,” says Mr Hämäläinen.

He says he has seen Finnish police records, which show Mr Rasanen was investigated when he was a teenager for making an illegal threat, but that he has never been charged with a crime.

The BBC has also been told of Mr Rasanen’s previous online links to a far-right white nationalist group in the UK, Patriotic Alternative (PA).

He was an active member of a private gaming group chat, and his posts were shared by key figures in PA, according to the British anti-fascist research group, Red Flare.

These included the group’s Yorkshire regional organiser, Sam Melia, who was jailed earlier this year for inciting racial hatred.

During the time of the UK riots, a post by Mr AG read: “When is the same violence coming to Northern Europe?”

A spokesperson for Red Flare – which first identified Mr AG’s real identity and his links to Southport Wake Up – says Mr Rasanen should be held accountable for what he has done.

“What we have here is a case of a young man sitting behind his keyboard in a different country starting racist violence in Britain,” they say. “It exposes the transnational nature of the far-right in the world today.”

The BBC contacted Patriotic Alternative, and although the group refused to answer specific questions, it did say what Mr AG posted on PA’s public channel was “fine” and that PA was not involved in what Mr AG posted in other Telegram groups.

Speaking to the BBC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, says “if [Mr Rasanen] was in the UK he would be arrested and prosecuted under the 2006 Terrorism Act”.

Mr Hall estimates at least half of terrorism propaganda prosecutions last year involved the Telegram app.

It’s unclear if Finland would extradite one of its own nationals to the UK, and the Home Office has declined to comment on whether any extradition request or other action is being taken in respect of the matter. The BBC is not aware of any arrest warrant being issued.

The National Police Board of Finland says it is “aware of the matter”, but it is not possible to comment in more detail.

A spokesperson for Telegram has told the BBC its moderators removed UK channels calling for violence when they were discovered in August, including Southport Wake Up.

Its statement adds: “Of course, we are ready to co-operate with both the UK and Finnish governments on this matter through the appropriate channels.”

A spokesperson for the UK government says it is working at pace to implement the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to remove illegal content and prevent the spread of misinformation.

“We will not let the internet serve as a haven for those seeking to sow division in our communities,” says the spokesperson.

Six migrants have died after soldiers in Mexico opened fire on a vehicle carrying a group of 33 people who were travelling in the south of the country.

The Mexican defence ministry said another 10 migrants were injured in the incident on Tuesday evening some 25 miles (40km) north of the border with Guatemala.

The ministry said a military patrol saw the migrants’ pick-up vehicle travelling at high speed, which made an apparent attempt to avoid being stopped.

Soldiers reported hearing explosions after which two officers opened fire, the statement said, adding they have been removed from their duties while an investigation is carried out.

Mexico is under pressure from the US to crack down on the number of migrants making their way through the country to reach the American border.

A police report into the incident in the southern Chiapas state said the soldiers chased the vehicle after it failed to stop at an army checkpoint before firing gunshots to try and stop it, Reuters news agency reported.

The driver turned off down a dirt road in an attempt to escape, it added, but lost control of the vehicle.

According to the defence ministry’s statement, the migrants came from Egypt, Nepal, Cuba, India and Pakistan. It did not give the nationalities of those who died.

Four died at the scene while two of the 12 people who were wounded died in hospital. The remaining 17 passengers were handed over to immigration authorities.

Officials said federal prosecutors had been informed and a military tribunal would also investigate.

The defence ministry said it was committed to “act in strict accordance with the rule of law, under a policy of zero-impunity, and ready to help the civil authorities to shed light on the facts”.

Thousands of migrants travel through Mexico each year in buses, overcrowded lorries and on freight trains as they try to get to the US-Mexican border.

They run the risk of fatal accidents, kidnapping by criminal groups and extortion by corrupt officials.

In December 2021, a people smugglers’ lorry overturned in Chiapas killing 56 mostly Central American migrants.

A doctor charged in the drug-related death of actor Matthew Perry has pleaded guilty in the case.

Dr Mark Chavez changed his plea to guilty in a Los Angeles court to a charge of conspiring to distribute the surgical anaesthetic ketamine.

Chavez, 54, operated a ketamine clinic and sold ketamine lozenges to Dr Salvador Plasencia, who supplied them to Perry, the star of NBC sitcom Friends.

Chavez is one of five people charged in Perry’s death. The 54-year-old actor was found dead in his backyard jacuzzi in southern California in October 2023.

A post-mortem examination found a high concentration of the drug ketamine in his blood and determined “acute effects” of the substance had killed him.

Ketamine is used as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain.

In his plea agreement, Chavez admitted he obtained ketamine from both his former clinic and a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.

Prosecutors said Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, worked with the two doctors to provide the actor with more than $50,000 (£38,000) of ketamine in the weeks before his death.

According to the indictment, the two medical doctors exchanged texts discussing how much they could charge Perry for vials of the drug, with one message reading: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

The plea allows Chavez to plead guilty to a lesser charge for his co-operation in the investigation, though he could still face up to 10 years in prison.

“He has accepted responsibility. He is co-operating,” his attorney told the court.

Chavez has turned over his passport and agreed to surrender his medical licence immediately.

He is free on bail until sentencing on 2 April 2025.

On Monday night, just 20 minutes before closing time, chaos erupted at the Ludu International Shopping Plaza in southwestern Shanghai’s Songjiang district.

Police say that a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin, went on a stabbing spree lunging at strangers as he traversed the maze-like shopping centre, past food outlets and upstairs to a Wallmart.

He managed to strike 18 people and killed three of them.

A 28-year-old construction worker identified only as Zheng had just finished eating barbeque with a friend when he saw people “running, hiding and screaming”.

He tells us that he and his friend saw the man with his knives and tried to stop him – running at him and throwing chairs to try to slow him down or knock the weapons out of his hands.

But Zheng says the man was moving too quickly, and they lost him as he moved up to the second floor.

“As everything became chaotic, we could only work out where he had gone to by hearing people’s screams,” Zheng says, adding, “As the attacker was stabbing people, he was shouting expletives in Chinese.”

Zheng says he thought the killer’s route “was definitely pre-planned”.

“I believe he deliberately chose the exits; he must have scouted the area beforehand.”

Two young stallholders on the outside of the building – who saw police bring Lin to the ground – say he strode out of the shopping centre carrying a knife in each hand. Rather than running away from the scene of the carnage he had caused, he appeared calm, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.

They tell the BBC that he carried himself as if he was in control of the situation, even as police officers caught him.

Footage shared on social media captured the moment he was then taken away, his jacket splashed with what appeared to be the blood of his victims.

Police say he had come to Shanghai with the aim of “venting his anger… due to a personal economic dispute” and that their investigations are continuing.

But barely a day later, when the BBC visited the Ludu International Shopping Plaza, it was as if this carnage never happened.

There was no extended crime scene lockdown. Just over 12 hours after the deadly attack, the blood had been mopped up, and the plaza was open for business as usual.

Yet the shock remains.

A young shopkeeper, who had been rostered off at the time of the attack, says she is now scared to come to work. “It’s like a movie. You can’t believe there’d be something so terrifying right next to you”.

She points to the extra security and police now stationed near her clothes shop.

“Look at them,” she says, while admitting that she does feel safer having these officers around.

We ask about her colleagues who were at work and had to run with others who were screaming through the corridors, in order to stay alive.

“Of course they were terrified. None of them came to work today. They say they don’t dare to return,” she says.

One young woman who operates a stall selling phone accessories and other small electrical goods says that if she had delayed shutting shop by just 10 minutes, she would have been in the attacker’s path.

“When I heard about it later, I was so scared I couldn’t sleep. Today I arrived at work obviously still scared.”

She says she feels very lucky but terrified by how close she came to such extreme danger.

This incident is the latest in a spate of knife attacks to hit China this year.

There has been discussion about economic pressures causing rifts in society, not to excuse horrendous acts like this but in an attempt to explain the seemingly inexplicable.

Then there is the question of mental illness here and how it is treated. For many years, knife attacks on strangers have come in waves in this country and they seem to be horrific copycat attempts at gaining attention.

Either way, there is something very troubling in China leading to these bloody assaults.

This week is supposed to be a time to celebrate what China has become, 75 years after the Communist Party came to power, but a killing spree ushered in the seven-day break.

Shocking footage of those who were injured, struggling in pain on the floor, spread on social media.

A woman nursing a stabbed toddler on her lap could be seen sobbing as she tried to telephone for help. Her other hand shook uncontrollably.

At the time of writing, a family member who declined to be identified, told the BBC that the two and a half year old girl was still in intensive care.

The sharing of these images and discussion of the attack is now being censored on China’s tightly controlled social media platforms although some are finding ways to talk about the subject using certain expressions to avoid being blocked.

Yet in online discussion forums, there are still those who’ve welcomed the fact that in this country – as opposed to say the United States – it is very difficult for ordinary people to get hold of guns, as access to automatic weapons would mean many more deaths in cases like this.

Yet the official move to try to erase this incident, and others like it, from the public discourse reveals the extent to which this is troubling for the government.

Managers from Walmart and the entire Ludu Plaza stopped many staff from speaking to us, sometimes even interrupting us mid-interview.

Zheng for his part, says that on returning to the shopping centre the next day, he could not believe everything was simply “cleaned up” – no flowers. Nothing to mark the attack.

“I can only feel sorrow for the victims,” he said.

One of the worst famines in decades could be under way in Sudan, a country in the middle of a civil war, aid workers warn.

Starvation in war-stricken Sudan “is almost everywhere”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The BBC visited a hospital ward in Omdurman, just across the River Nile from the capital Khartoum.

Sir Keir Starmer has made his first visit to Brussels since becoming prime minister.

His main message: to rebuild ties and trust with the EU after the bitter bickering of Brexit negotiations.

The moment was predictably rain-soaked but not insignificant.

Union flags were placed next to EU ones on press podiums. The red carpet at the European Parliament was washed down and hoovered ahead of Sir Keir’s arrival.

Ursula von der Leyen, the powerful president of the European Commission, gushed that his welcome was a warm one.

And the prime minister did not come empty-handed.

The wish list he brought here was long.

He called for closer co-operation on defence and security, including energy security, as well as on climate change, irregular migration, labelled ‘illegal migration’ under the previous Conservative government and on delivering economic growth – to help make Brexit work in the UK’s interest, he said.

He insisted the British public wanted a return to what he called sensible leadership when it came to the EU.

His European interlocutors nodded but without much evident enthusiasm.

The bloc still regrets losing the UK as a member. It bemoans the huge amount of time and political capital Brussels spent on Brexit negotiations.

It has little appetite for more protracted talks – and that was what was announced today – if the risk is high of going round in circles.

Working together better on security and defence is the most straightforward and uncontentious path of rapprochement.

Relations have steadily improved since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two sides worked rapidly and closely to impose sanctions on Moscow and boost Kiev’s defences. The UK leading the way on the latter.

One point of division amongst EU member states, though, is whether British businesses could or should be involved in the bloc’s rearmament drive.

On migration, there’s clear cross-Channel agreement that people-smuggling gangs must be stopped and irregular migration, tackled.

The ‘How?’ could get thorny though. The French and German interior ministers recently asked the European Commission to reach a formal agreement with the UK, urging it to open more legal avenues to allow asylum seekers and others to enter the country.

The ministers said up to a third of irregular migrants coming their way, actually wanted to go to the UK.

Meanwhile Sir Keir has been in Rome, taking notes from Italy on how to stem migration at source in Africa and the Middle East with economic agreements.

Human rights groups have been highly critical of Italy’s and similar EU deals, saying they often result in the abuse of migrants.

But of all the points on the prime minister’s wish list, the EU is most wary of Labour’s zeal to strip away what it calls ‘unnecessary trade barriers’.

Brussels says those barriers are a result of the UK’s own choices: leaving the single market and customs union. Something the prime minister insisted again today was not up for renegotiation.

In which case, says the EU, our hands are tied.

The reality is: trade add-ons will require trade-offs. On both sides.

The government wants to ease the movement of food and drinks exports. It wants easier access for UK artists, including musicians to the EU.

Some EU member states want enhanced fishing rights in UK waters.

The bloc as a whole has asked for a youth mobility scheme where young Europeans study and work in the UK for a visa-limited time period. British youngsters would be offered the same deal in the EU.

But Sir Keir – who has pledged to reduce immigration levels – said again today that ‘free movement is a red line’.

He tried to avoid directly addressing prickly issues when pushed by the press.

He insisted that the focus of Wednesday’s meetings was the bigger picture, with an emphasis on “what we can do, not what we can’t do, and on deliverables rather than running commentary.”

But the European Commission has emphasised it wants the already-negotiated post-Brexit deals with the UK – the Withdrawal Agreement, the Windsor Framework on Northern Ireland and the Trade and Cooperation agreement – to be fully respected before it embarks on brand new chapters.

This summer it alleged non-compliance in a number of areas.

Behind-closed-door talks start imminently, we’re told, with the first of now-to-be regular EU-UK summits planned for the new year.

The joke once shared amongst us Brussels-based journalists during the Brexit process, that negotiations would go on forever, might to be coming to pass.

Warning: This story contains details which some people may find upsetting

An Israeli air strike that killed multiple children at a former school twelve days ago had been targeting one local Hamas figure, the BBC has been told.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a Hamas “command and control centre” had been embedded inside the compound in Gaza City, which it targeted in a “precise strike” on 21 September.

It killed 22 people, including 13 children and six women, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The school, closed during the war, had been housing displaced people, the health ministry said.

One young girl, Amal, told the BBC she had been inside the school building when it was hit and saw bodies “torn apart”.

“What have we done as children? We wake up and go to sleep terrified,” she said.

“At least protect the schools; we don’t have schools or homes – where do we go?”

Sources have told the BBC that one of those killed was a local Hamas figure, meaning many civilians died due to a single main target.

Huda Alhadad lost two children – son Muhammad, 13, and daughter Hanan, 12.

“I was coming from the hallway when the missile fell. I came and found my husband screaming, saying, ‘My children, my children, my children,'” she told the BBC.

“I asked him, ‘Where are they?’ I searched for them and found them under the rubble.”

In the twelve days after the air strike, at least eight more fatal strikes took place in Gaza on school buildings housing displaced families – the latest in a series of attacks on such buildings, which provide little safety.

Unicef has said more than 50% of schools used as shelters in Gaza had been directly hit during the current war, with “devastating consequences for children and families”.

In each of the latest strikes, the IDF released public statements saying the former schools had contained Hamas terrorists or “command and control” centres.

In their public statement about the 21 September strike, the IDF incorrectly named the former school they hit – Al-Zeitoun C – instead identifying another one nearby, Al-Falah.

We confirmed that Al-Zeitoun C was the one that had been hit by speaking to local people, as well as comparing videos of the attack aftermath with satellite imagery.

The Hamas-run Gazan authorities also named it as Al-Zeitoun C.

The relevant area is in the Al-Zeitoun neighbourhood and includes four distinct schools: Al-Falah, and Al-Zeitoun A, B, and C.

When asked about incorrectly naming the school, the IDF refused to comment.

It would also not comment on who was targeted.

The Hamas-run government media office said the Israeli military had committed a “horrific massacre” by bombing Al-Zeitoun C school, which shelters displaced people. It said that, in addition to those killed, the attack also caused severe injuries, including nine children who needed limbs amputating.

Dr Amjad Eliwa, an emergency physician who treated those injured in the strike, described over 30 injuries reaching his hospital, saying they were “mostly among children and women, with cases of amputations and very severe injuries”.

He described one of those who died as a woman who was six months pregnant.

This was corroborated by images of a foetus at the site of the strike, and residents said the dead woman was Barah Deraawi, who died along with two young daughters, Israa and Iman.

US President Joe Biden has said he does not support any potential Israeli retaliatory strike on Iranian nuclear sites after Iran launched around 180 missiles at Israel.

Tensions are high between Iran and Israel after the Iranian attack on Tuesday, which Israel said was mostly repelled by its missile defense system.

Iran said the barrage was a response to the killings of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Brig-Gen Abbas Nilforoushan.

Its attack also came after Israel announced a ground assault into Lebanon, in an effort to dismantle what it called Iran-backed Hezbollah’s “terrorist infrastructure” in border villages.

The US has repeatedly called for de-escalation and has also led long-running negotiations on a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza but so far without success.

Biden’s comment to reporters on Wednesday came during a trip to tour hurricane damage in North Carolina with Vice-President Kamala Harris.

“Would you support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites by Israel?” Biden was asked by a reporter.

“The answer is no,” he responded.

He added that the US “will be discussing with the Israelis what they’re gonna do”.

He also said that he had consulted with the leaders of other G7 countries and they all agree that Israel “has the right to respond, but they should respond proportionally”.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, at a briefing, added: “It’s clear that this was an unprecedented escalation by Iran.

“Israel has the right to respond to it. We’re having discussions about what that response will be”.

So far, the White House has given no public indication of how it believes Israel should respond to Iran’s attack.

In a video message on Tuesday, Biden said that at his direction, US military forces in the region had helped shoot down the missiles fired from Iran.

He said the Iranian attack had been “defeated and ineffective”, calling it “a testament to intensive planning between the United States and Israel to anticipate and defend against the brazen attack we expected.”

“Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” Biden added.

The Middle East is once again on the brink of a deep and damaging war between two protagonists that have been facing off against each other for much of the past 45 years. This is now one of the most dangerous moments for the entire region.

Iran, which became an Islamic Republic after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, has long vowed to destroy the state of Israel, which it calls the “Zionist regime”. Israel accuses Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of spreading violence across the Middle East through its allies and proxies, a view shared by several Arab governments.

Israel is poised to retaliate against Iran for Tuesday’s volley of ballistic missiles, some of which penetrated Israel’s air defences.

Iran says that was in response to two assassinations by Israel – of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

So what happens next?

Both Israel and its closest ally, the US, have vowed to punish Iran for launching 180 missiles at Israel. “Iran,” says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, “will pay a heavy price.”

• Follow live updates on this story
• Watch: Video shows Iran’s missile attack on Israel
• Explained: What we know about Iran’s missile attack on Israel
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The restraint that Israel’s allies urged on it the last time there was a standoff like this in April is more muted this time. And given Israel’s determination to take on all its enemies at once – in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Syria – the Netanyahu government seems to be in no mood to hold back.

Israeli planners will likely now be debating not if and when to hit Iran, but how hard.

Aided by US satellite intelligence and by Mossad (Israel’s overseas spy agency) human agents on the ground in Iran, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has a wide range of targets to choose from. These can broadly be divided into three categories:

• Conventional military – An early and obvious target will be the bases from which Iran launched those ballistic missiles. So that means launch pads, command-and-control centres, refuelling tanks and storage bunkers. It could go further and hit bases belonging to the IRGC as well as air defences and other missile batteries. It could even try to assassinate key individuals involved in Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
• Economic – This would include Iran’s most vulnerable state assets – its petrochemical plants, its power generation and possibly its shipping interests. This, however, would be a deeply unpopular move in Iran as it would end up hurting ordinary people’s lives far more than any attack on the military.
• Nuclear – This is the big one for Israel. It is a known fact, established by the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, that Iran is enriching uranium well beyond the 20% needed for civil nuclear power. Israel, and others, suspect Iran of trying to reach “breakout point” where it is within a very short timescale of being able to build a nuclear bomb. Sites on Israel’s possible target list include Parchin, the epicentre of Iran’s military nuclear programme, research reactors at Tehran, Bonab and Ramsar, as well as major facilities at Bushehr, Natanz, Isfahan and Ferdow.

A large part of their calculations will involve trying to second guess Iran’s response in turn and how to mitigate it. The Iranian position is that after launching those missiles at what it says were Israeli military targets on Tuesday the score is now settled. But it is warning that if Israel retaliates it will hit back in turn.

“This is only a glimpse of our capabilities,” said Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. The IRGC reinforced this message, stating: “If the Zionist regime responds to Iran’s operations, it will face crushing attacks.”

Iran cannot defeat Israel militarily. Its air force is old and decrepit, its air defences are porous and it has had to contend with years of Western sanctions.

But it still has an enormous quantity of ballistic and other missiles as well as explosive-laden drones and numerous allied proxy militias around the Middle East. Its next volley of missiles could well target Israeli residential areas, rather than military bases. The attack by an Iran-backed militia on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities in 2019 showed just how vulnerable its neighbours are to attack.

The IRGC Navy, which operates in the Gulf, has large flotillas of small, fast missile attack boats which could, potentially, overwhelm the defences of a US Navy 5th Fleet warship in a swarm attack. If it had orders to do so, it could attempt to sow mines in the Strait of Hormuz, interrupting the flow of up to 20% of the world’s daily oil exports, something that would have a major impact on the global economy.

And then there are all the US military bases, dotted up and down the Arabian side of the Gulf, from Kuwait to Oman. Iran has given warning that if it is attacked it won’t just hit back at Israel, it will target any country it perceives as supporting that attack.

These then, are just some of the scenarios that defence planners in Tel Aviv and Washington will now be considering.

Despite having the mighty Zambezi River and the massive hydro-powered Kariba Dam, Zambia is currently grappling with the worst electricity blackouts in living memory.

The crisis is so severe that cities and towns across the country are sometimes without electricity for three consecutive days, with people counting themselves lucky if the lights come on for an hour or two.

The power cuts have come as a shock to the 43% of Zambians who are connected to the grid and have taken electricity for granted all their lives.

But one of the severest droughts in decades – caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon – has decimated Zambia’s power-generation capacity.

Nowadays, I sometimes go to bars and restaurants to find people not eating or drinking – they are there just to charge their phones amid the pounding noise of generators.

There is also a booming business of people making money by charging the phones of those without power.

Zambia sources up to 84% of its electricity from water reservoirs such as lakes and rivers, while only 13% comes from coal.

Contributions from solar, diesel and heavy fuel oil are even lower, accounting for 3%.

For several weeks, the crisis was compounded while the country’s only coal-fired power plant, Maamba Energy, was not operating at maximum capacity as it underwent routine maintenance work.

On Wednesday, there was finally some good news when Minister of Energy Makozo Chikote said the plant was now fully operational, and Zambians would have at least three hours of electricity a day.

President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought a national disaster in February but the government has been unable to solve the energy crisis because Zambia is heavily reliant on the Kariba Dam for its electricity.

A financial crunch also severely restricted the government’s ability to import power as suppliers wanted payment upfront, though a spokesman for state-owned power utility Zesco, Matongo Maumbi, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast that electricity was being imported from Mozambique and South Africa to ease the crisis, especially in the mining industry – Zambia’s main export earner and source of foreign currency.

Located on the Zambezi, the fourth-longest river in Africa, Kariba was built in the 1950s and is the reservoir for the country’s largest underground power station, Kariba North Bank Power Station. A power station on the other bank serves Zimbabwe.

But because of the drought that has led to parts of the river drying up, only one of the six turbines at Zambia’s power station is operating, resulting in the generation of a paltry 7% of the 1,080 MW installed at Kariba.

The dam retains the water of the Zambezi with a curving wall that is 128m (420ft) high, 579m (1,900ft) long and 21m (69ft) thick.

Engineer Cephas Museba – who has been working for the state-owned power utility Zesco for 19 years – says he has never seen water levels so low at Kariba.

“I think we stopped receiving the rains as early as February. It’s supposed to rain up to April. If we compare the history of this basin, this is the lowest we have received,” he told me.

It has triggered an electricity crisis that is being felt in every business and home.

Some companies are opening for fewer hours, and retrenching staff.

It can even be difficult to find bread – bakeries are making fewer loaves because they find it too expensive to keep generators running.

Fortunately, the government has installed huge generators in some markets, government offices and hospitals, though stories are still being shared on social media of how kidney patients are struggling to cope.

Some patients need to be hooked up to a dialysis machine for up to three hours a day but power only gets restored for about an hour or two, sometimes after midnight.

On other occasions, there is no electricity at all for 72 hours in a row.

On those days, I wear the same clothes as the previous day, rather than a washed but wrinkled shirt that has not been ironed.

Life has become more difficult for everyone.

One day recently, I woke up to be greeted by a foul smell as blood flowed from under the fridge.

All the meat we had bought had gone off and we had to give it to our German Shepherd dog, the happiest member of our household these days.

The other day I bought relish from a supermarket – but when I opened the package at the dinner table I realised that it was more food for our dog.

My food budget, already tight because of the cost-of-living crisis, is now even tighter. Buying perishable items in bulk at a cheaper price is completely out of the question as they will just rot.

The government has been encouraging homes and businesses to switch to solar, and has scrapped import taxes for solar equipment to make it cheaper to buy.

But some people say their solar panels do not generate enough electricity when there is little sunlight – and they cannot afford to install more panels. Most Zambians cannot afford solar panels at all.

Now, many families have resorted to cooking and heating water on portable gas stoves – but shops have been running out of gas too because of high demand.

So in desperation and because it is cheaper, they buy charcoal to cook and heat water – despite its negative impact on the environment and the climate.

The electricity crisis has also had an impact on the boreholes that middle-class families have dug on their properties.

As boreholes work with electricity and solar-powered pumps, homes are now also without a constant supply of water, making it impossible to even flush the toilet.

In some schools, children are advised to take five litres of water each day to reduce the possibility of a sanitation crisis – and the outbreak of waterborne diseases like cholera, which hit the country at the start of the year.

Many families now fill buckets – or bath tubs – with water, hoping it will last until the lights are back, and toilets can be flushed.

All of this has left Zambians frustrated and angry. They point out that the blackouts highlight the failure of successive governments to plan ahead – something that President Hichilema’s administration has now pledged to do.

Mr Maumbi said that Zesco was investing in more energy sources, including solar plants, so that dependency on hydro-power falls to around 60%.

But Zambia’s focus is not only on green energy – coal is also in the mix.

In July, the energy regulator approved plans to build only the country’s second coal-fired power plant.

It is the dirtiest fossil fuel, producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt, but the government feels that to avoid a similar crisis in the future, it has little option but to press ahead.

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It has been hailed as the most valuable shipwreck in the world.

A Spanish galleon, the San José, was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago. It had a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds worth billions of dollars.

But years after it was discovered, a debate still rages over who owns that treasure and what should be done with the wreck.

The Colombian and Spanish states have staked a claim to it, as have a US salvage company and indigenous groups in South America. There have been court battles in Colombia and the US, and the case is now before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.

The Colombian government says it wants to raise the remains of the vessel and put it in a museum. Treasure hunters point to the commercial value of the cargo, which could be as much as $18bn (£13.bn).

But archaeologists say the wreck – and thousands like it scattered across the world – should be left where it is. Maritime historians remind us that the San José is a graveyard and should be respected as such: around 600 people drowned when the ship went down.

“It’s a great mess and I see no easy way out of this,” says Carla Rahn Phillips, a historian who has written a book about the San José. “The Spanish state, the Colombian government, the various indigenous groups, the treasure hunters. I don’t think there’s any way that everyone can be satisfied.”

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The San José sank in 1708 as it sailed from what is now Panama towards the port city of Cartagena in Colombia. From there it was due to cross the Atlantic to Spain, but the Spanish were at war with the British at the time, and a British warship intercepted it.

The British wanted to seize the ship and its treasure, but fired a cannonball into the San José’s powder magazines by mistake. The ship blew up and sank within minutes.

The wreck lay on the seabed until the 1980s, when a US salvage company, Glocca Mora, said it had found it. It tried to persuade the Colombians to go into partnership to raise the treasure and split the proceeds, but the two sides could not agree on who should get what share, and plunged into a legal battle.

In 2015, the Colombians said they had found the ship, independently of the information provided by the Americans, on a different part of the sea bed. Since then they have argued that Glocca Mora, now known as Sea Search Armada, has no right to the ship or its treasure.

The Spanish state has staked its claim, arguing that the San José and its cargo remains state property, and indigenous groups from Bolivia and Peru say they are entitled to at least a part of the booty.

They argue that it is not Spanish treasure because it was plundered by the Spanish from mines in the Andes during the colonial period.

“That wealth came from the mines of Potosí in the Bolivian highlands,” says Samuel Flores, a representative of the Qhara Qhara people, one of the indigenous groups.

“This cargo belongs to our people – the silver, the gold – and we think it should be raised from the sea bed to stop treasure hunters looting it. How many years have gone by? Three hundred years? They owe us that debt.”

The Colombians have released tantalising videos of the San José, taken with submersible cameras. They show the prow of a wooden ship, encrusted with marine life, a few bronze cannons scattered across the sand, and blue-and-white porcelain and gold coins shining on the ocean floor.

As part of its court case at the Hague, Sea Search Armada commissioned a study of the cargo. It estimates its value at $7-18bn.

“This treasure that sank with the ship included seven million pesos, 116 steel chests full of emeralds, 30 million gold coins,” says Rahim Moloo, the lawyer representing Sea Search Armada. He described it as “the biggest treasure in the history of humanity”.

Others are less convinced.

“I try to resist giving present-day estimates of anything,” says Ms Rahn Phillips.

“If you’re talking about gold and silver coins, do we make an estimate based on the weight of the gold now? Or do we look at what collectors might pay of these gold coins?

“To me it’s almost meaningless to try to come up with a number now. The estimates of the treasure hunters, to me, they’re laughable.”

While the San José is often described as the holy grail of shipwrecks, it is – according to the United Nations – just one of around three million sunken vessels on our ocean floors. There is often very little clarity over who owns them, who has the right to explore them, and – if there is treasure on board – who has the right to keep it.

In 1982, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Law of the Sea – often described as “the constitution of the oceans”, but it says very little about shipwrecks. Because of that, the UN adopted a second set of rules in 2001 – the Unesco Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001 Convention.

That says far more about wrecks, but many countries have refused to ratify it, fearing it will weaken their claim to riches in their waters. Colombia and the US, for example, have not signed it.

“The legal framework right now is neither clear nor comprehensive,” says Michail Risvas, a lawyer at Southampton University in the UK. A specialist in international arbitration and maritime disputes, he adds: “I’m afraid international law does not have clear-cut answers.”

For many archaeologists, wrecks like the San José should be left in peace and explored “in situ” – on the ocean floor.

“If you just go down and take lots of artefacts and bring them to the surface, you just have a pile of stuff. There’s no story to tell,” says Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, a Mexican deep-sea diver who has explored dozens of wrecks around the world.

“You can just count coins, you can count porcelain, but there is no ‘why was this on board? Who was the owner? Where was it going?’ – the human story behind it.”

Juan Guillermo Martín, a Colombian maritime archaeologist who has followed the case of the San José closely, agrees.

“The treasure of the San José should remain at the bottom of the sea, along with the human remains of the 600 crew members who died there,” he says. “The treasure is part of the archaeological context, and as such has no commercial value. Its value is strictly scientific.”

Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate between Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz felt like a civil and relatively restrained conversation about the issues at the top of American voters’ minds going into the 5 November election.

In that, it was unlike the two presidential debates earlier this year.

The two men spent much more time attacking the other’s running mate than each other during 90-plus minutes on the CBS News stage in New York.

Walz had a shaky start but hit his stride when talking about abortion and the Capitol riot.

But the even-tempered, policy-focused debate, with few political body blows, probably served Vance – a polished public speaker – best in the end.

If Vance was picked because he puts ideological meat on the bones of Trump’s conservative populism, on Tuesday night he put a polite, humble face on them, as well.

“Something these guys do is they make a lot of claims about if Donald Trump becomes president, all of these terrible consequences are going to ensue,” he said. “But in reality, Donald Trump was president. Inflation was low. Take-home pay was higher.”

• Debate claims fact-checked
• Six key takeaways from the debate
• Vance refuses to answer whether Trump lost 2020 election
• Walz says he ‘misspoke’ in personal story about Tiananmen Square

There were moments when the Republican candidate bristled at what he thought was unfair fact-checking from the two CBS moderators, and at one point microphones of both candidates were temporarily muted.

But for the most part, the exchanges on stage were even-tempered.

And there were several moments when the two men agreed on issues – and said so.

“There’s a lot of commonality here,” Walz said toward the end of the evening.

When Walz spoke of his 17-year-old son witnessing a shooting at a community center, Vance seemed genuinely concerned.

“I’m sorry about that and I hope he’s doing OK,” he said. “Christ have mercy, it is awful.”

The most vigorous disagreements came toward the end of the debate, on the topic of Trump’s repeated and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Vance, when asked if Trump lost the last presidential election, dodged the question and criticised what he said was Kamala Harris’s censorship.

Walz quickly noted that it was a “damning non-answer”.

“To deny what happened on January 6, the first time an American president or anyone tried to overturn an election, this has got to stop,” he said. “It’s tearing our country apart.”

Walz went on to say that the only reason Mike Pence, Trump’s previous vice-president, was not on stage was because he certified President Joe Biden’s victory.

Vance had no answer to that, highlighting that beyond his friendly demeanour and agreeability, he would not break from Trump’s position.

Vance and Walz entered this debate with different skill sets. Vance has sparred with journalists on television in heated exchanges. Walz is at home on the campaign stump, using his folksy style in contrast to more polished politicians.

In the early part of this debate, with both candidates standing behind podiums in a New York City television studio, Vance seemed much more comfortable. His answers were smooth, and relentlessly on-message, constantly reminding the audience that for all of Vice-President Harris’s promises, Democrats have held the White House for the past three and a half years.

“If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, then she ought to do them now,” he said.

Walz, for his part, seemed halting and unsure on the opening topic, dealing with Tuesday’s Iranian missile attack on Israel and if the candidates would support an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran. The Minnesota governor rarely talks about foreign policy, and his discomfort on the subject was apparent.

• A quick guide to JD Vance
• A quick guide to Tim Walz

The Democrat settled in as the debate moved along, and during his exchanges with Vance on the topic of immigration – an area of strength for the Republicans – both delivered well-honed messages.

Vance deflected accusations that he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in Ohio.

“The people I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives ruined by Kamala Harris’s border policies,” he said.

Vance said undocumented migration burdens city resources, drives up prices and pushes down wages.

Walz pointed to Trump’s opposition to proposed bipartisan immigration legislation earlier this year.

“I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this, but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point, and when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanise and villainise other human beings.”

• What voters made of VP debate
• Listen: The Americast team analyse Vance v Walz
• Election polls – is Harris or Trump winning?

When the topic turned to abortion rights – an area of strength for Democrats, according to polls – it was Vance who played defence, acknowledging that Republicans had to do more to earn the trust of American voters.

“I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” he said. “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. There’s so much we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”

Walz countered by saying that the Democratic view on abortion was simple: “We are pro-women. We are pro-freedom to make your own choice.”

If Walz was more pointed on abortion, he declined to push his attacks when the subject turned to gun control.

After Vance said that it was important to increase security in schools, making doors and windows “stronger”, Walz talked up background checks rather than endorsing Democratic calls for bans on assault weapons and other limitations on firearms.

As a congressman, Walz regularly voted in favour of gun rights and against many gun control measures, winning the praise of the pro-gun National Rifle Association. During the debate, he said his views on gun control changed after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, but some Democrats may be disappointed he did not press Vance more on Tuesday night.

American political history suggests that vice-presidential debates don’t really matter.

In 1988, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen dismantled Republican Dan Quayle. A few months later, Quayle was sworn in as vice-president after his ticket won in a landslide.

It may turn out that this debate is similarly irrelevant to November’s results. Unless there is a last-minute debate announced, however, it will be the last word both parties have on a debate stage before election day.

Walz did no harm to the Democratic ticket and showed some of the Midwestern charm that made him Harris’s choice.

But Vance’s strong performance is likely to buoy Republicans in the days ahead.

And the debate’s lasting impact may be to convince members of his party that the Ohio senator – who is only 40 – has a future in national conservative politics, given his ability to clearly advance their ideological priorities on the brightest of stages.

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?

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

On a freezing cold November day in 2023, we’re driving up to a school on the outskirts of London. It appears disused and unremarkable – but then a sign reading ‘Truham High’ gives the game away.

This abandoned-looking building is actually the set of Netflix sensation Heartstopper, and on the day we visit, shooting for series three is well under way. The new episodes will be released on 3 October.

Inside, the hustle and bustle you might expect in a school corridor has been replaced with the organised chaos of a film set. The plain school interior is covered with colourful murals painted in the style of Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, which inspired the show.

Mr Ajayai’s art classroom is instantly recognisable.

In the first two series it’s been a safe space for Joe Locke’s character, Charlie, to go to when he’s having a hard time. During our visit he’s joined by Kit Connor, who plays Nick – and the conversation they’re filming looks difficult.

They’re sitting in a corner and speaking in hushed tones.

While the producers are tight-lipped about the detail of what they’re shooting, they do tell us “it’s quite an intense scene”.

They’re protective over how many people are in the room with the actors during more emotional scenes. Dozens of silent crew members are crammed into a room next door, watching intently on monitors while the actors do several takes.

The third series of the show deals with more serious topics than the first two; Charlie’s eating disorder will be a key storyline, and some characters will be having sex for the first time.

“We’ve always said the show grows up with the characters, which is definitely the case this year,” Locke says, speaking to us in a quick break before his next scene.

“The show deals with some more heavy topics like mental health, and growing up, so there’s a lot of ‘teenageness’.”

The show has been praised for showcasing “queer joy” – shining a light on the positive elements of growing up as part of the LGBTQ+ community – but Locke says it feels important to make sure it is still realistic.

“It’s all about authenticity, and trying to make your portrayal of a topic that is quite intense and quite close to people’s hearts as true as possible,” he says.

Connor and Locke joked it was hard getting used to kissing your friend on camera, and with the actors all being so close, they admit some of the more passionate scenes can feel strange to film.

Connor tells us: “When you’re shooting for seven-and-a-half hours as we did [for] a slightly steamier scene, it’s like, what is my job?”

During our visit it’s clear the cast members’ chemistry goes beyond their time on-screen. Throughout our interviews they have in-jokes and gently make fun of each other, which Connor says helps with the more difficult days on set.

“After filming we all just sort of pile into someone’s flat and spend time together, we have a great way of doing it where we don’t talk about work or anything like that,” he says.

“We all just go home, make dinner and criticise each other’s cooking skills.

“[Joe Locke] actually cooked a good chilli this time… last time it was a very, very bad chilli. This time Will, who plays Tao, had seconds… but he will eat anything.”

While the friendships might be real, some of the most iconic locations in the show are actually flat-packed and assembled inside the school, as and when required.

During our visit, Nick’s bedroom is assembled in what would have been the school’s sports hall.

There are no lights as no scenes are planned here today, so we explore using our phone torches instead. Even in the semi-darkness, the attention to detail is clear.

From books about bisexuality, to Polaroid pictures of Nick and Charlie together, they’ve gone to painstaking lengths to make the bedroom a true reflection of the character’s journey throughout the series.

“The fans really notice everything, and have theories about even the tiniest of details… you should see some of the TikToks they make,” a member of the crew tells us.

Just down the corridor from Nick’s flat-pack bedroom is the costume department, where designer Adam Dee says he likes giving mega-fans things to spot.

“If they’ve got a scene with an open wardrobe, [we’ll] sneak in some iconic pieces from previous series so the audience can spot them,” he says.

“With Elle, she has a sewing station in her room, so we managed to add in some bits and pieces to her wardrobe that are made from two other items we’ve sewed together, or vintage scarves we’ve turned into tops.”

Heartstopper was somewhat of a surprise hit for Netflix, and series one launched with very little promotion.

It became one of the top 10 most-watched English-language series within two days of its release and received an almost-unheard-of 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – something many critics have put down to the diverse on-screen representation.

Season three involves some of the show’s older characters turning 16 and starting to have sex.

Yasmin Finney’s character, Elle, who is transgender, will be shown starting a sexual relationship with her on-screen boyfriend Tao (William Gao).

The sex lives of transgender characters are often left out of TV storylines.

Finney tells us: “It’s nice to have that representation of a trans person being able to have those sorts of relationships.

“It’s very sweet and I’m very blessed to be able to deliver that performance with Will.”

In the second series, Tobie Donovan’s character Isaac discovers he is asexual, meaning he experiences little or no sexual attraction. It’s another topic few TV shows have featured.

Donovan tells us he felt he wanted to do “lots of research” to make sure “he was doing justice to this community”.

He added: “There’s been sort of nothing like this on TV before, so I really wanted to make sure I got it right.

“I feel like, from our season two response, people were quite happy that even just to have anyone on screen that’s like a little bit of their story. It’s great for all of us.”

Just before we leave, we catch the show’s executive producer, Patrick Walters, on the set of Mr Ajayai’s classroom.

Walters came up with the idea of turning Alice Oseman’s graphic novels into a TV series after “falling in love” with the books.

The show’s diversity is something he’s particularly proud of.

He says: “It’s amazing to think it is an important show for LGBT youth.

“I like to think young people really see themselves in the characters, and that’s why it connects.”

South Korean police have detained a North Korean defector for attempting to cross the heavily-guarded border back to the North on a stolen bus.

The man was caught Tuesday on the Unification Bridge that separates the two Koreas, where he ignored soldiers who asked him to stop and crashed the bus into a barricade.

Though some 34,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean peninsula was divided more than 70 years ago, defectors seeking to return to the North are rare.

The man, who is in his 30s, told police he had wanted to return home after experiencing difficulties in the South, according to South Korean media. He reportedly left North Korea about a decade ago.

He reportedly stole the bus at 01:00 local time on Tuesday (16:00 GMT Monday) from a garage in the northern city of Paju and was caught half an hour later.

Surveillance footage from the garage showed the man wearing a hat, trying to open several vehicles until he managed to get into the bus.

He was not found to have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident, reports say.

The man, who has worked as a day labourer in Paju and other cities, told police that he had accumulated several unpaid fines, according to South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo.

South Korea’s law prohibits citizens, including defectors, from crossing the border to the North without government authorisation. North Korean defectors in the South are automatically granted citizenship. Offenders may be jailed up to ten years if convicted.

South Korea receives over 1,000 defectors from the North each year. In contrast, the number of defectors returning to North Korea totalled just 31 from 2012 to 2022, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.

Some make the return, or attempt to do so, because the lives of defectors in the South sometimes fall short of expectations. The defectors earn around 2.3 million won ($1,740; £1,300) per month on average, according to a survey from Korea Hana Foundation published on Tuesday.

Others want to go back to see their family members.

However these returns are risky. Some returnees have been imprisoned while others have undergone rigorous re-education back in the North.

In January 2022, a defector in his 30s returned to North Korea after a year in the South. He had struggled to resettle in the South as he was “barely scraping a living”, reports said, citing South Korean officials.

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, Scott Rozelle of Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy and Stanford masters student Michael Alisky.

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 26 Chinese provinces and administrative regions. The 2023 surveys excluded Xinjiang and parts of Tibet – 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 criticising 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.

Whyte, Rozelle and Alisky 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.

Last week, authorities in the Indian city of Kolkata announced plans to eliminate trams entirely, retaining only a small heritage loop. In response, a group of activists is fighting to ensure that trams remain a vital mode of transport rather than mere nostalgic joyrides. Sandip Roy reports.

In February 2023, Kolkata celebrated 150 years of its tramways with music, cake, a beauty parade of vintage trams, including a century-old wooden car, and a cheerful tram conductor, Roberto D’Andrea, who travelled all the way from Melbourne, Australia.

Melbourne and Kolkata boast two of the oldest operational tramways in the world. Melbourne’s trams date back to 1885. Kolkata’s first tram, a horse-drawn one, started in 1873.

That’s where the similarities end.

Melbourne’s tram system is going strong despite the government once attempting to get rid of them. The system has been upgraded and some trams are solar-powered.

• In pictures: India’s fading trams

Kolkata’s trams have been steadily declining over the years. From 52 routes in the 1970s, down to 25 in 2015 and now to just three.

The tram cars rattle and wheeze, having not been updated in years. Even the signs inside have not changed. “Beware of pickpockets”, “No change available for 100 rupees ($1.19; $0.89) or 50” and “To stop the car please ring the bell only once”.

Now, the state government has announced that it wants to do away with trams entirely, save for one small loop as a heritage route.

But a dogged group of tram activists is fighting back.

“It’s a huge backward step as cities worldwide are ‘decarbonising transport’ because of global warming and climate change,” says Mr D’Andrea, who has helped foster a Kolkata-Melbourne tram friendship over the years.

“More than 400 cities run tram systems. Cities that dismantled their tramways are rebuilding them at great expense in places like Sydney and Helsinki and all over France. Hong Kong runs trams at high frequency on narrow streets,” he says.

But West Bengal transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told the media: “The population and vehicular count of Kolkata have multiplied several times but the city’s roads have not widened. Road space continues to hover around 6% which is way less than Mumbai’s 18% and Delhi’s 10%.”

Both those cities once had trams. Mumbai had double-decker ones. Both have done away with them, leaving Kolkata as the only Indian city to hold onto the trundling streetcars.

In a way they have become emblematic of the city itself.

The city has other landmarks – the steel Howrah bridge, the white-domed Victoria Memorial monument, the colonial buildings in the city’s centre. But just as London has its iconic red double-decker buses, Kolkata has its trams. The ding-ding sound of the first tram of the day rattling down streets was the alarm clock many in Kolkata woke up to.

They are a familiar sight in films made in the state.

“I have used trams in two of my films and the tram depot as well,” says filmmaker Anjan Dutt.

Mahanagar (1963), by celebrated filmmaker Satyajit Ray, opens with a stunning two-minute-long tram sequence, sparks flying from the overhead cables before the camera moves inside to settle on the protagonist’s tired face as he returns home from work. Here, the tram stands in for the city itself, both its dreams and the daily grind.

In fact, Kolkata’s Belgachia tram depot, once bustling with workmen repairing, maintaining, even building trams, nowadays often doubles as a film set. “Even on a working day I saw films being shot in the workshop,” says Subir Bose, a tram company worker who retired in 2022 after 39 years of service. “A Kolkata film means they have to show a tram.”

Trams are very much part of the history of the city and its sense of itself.

In 1902, Calcutta as it was known then, became the first Asian city with electric trams. Even after independence, the Calcutta Tramways Company was run from London and was listed on the London Stock Exchange till 1968. The cars were built by companies with names like Burn Standard and Jessop.

And it wasn’t just a transportation system. The tram lines knit the city together.

When bloody Hindu-Muslim riots gripped Calcutta during partition in 1947, tram workers patrolled the city in empty trams to help restore normalcy.

“My own father helped save some people from a mob,” says tram driver Gopal Ram. “Tram workers were like a family. It didn’t matter if you were Hindu or Muslim.”

Mr Ram’s great grandfather Antu Ram was a tram employee from the steam-powered days. His grandfather Mahavir and father Jagannath worked for the trams as well. Mr Ram retired recently, the fourth and last generation of his family in Kolkata trams.

In some ways, the mystery is that Kolkata’s trams have survived this long.

“In the 1950s and 60s, during the personal automobile boom, people were getting rid of trams everywhere, not just in India,” says transport consultant Suvendu Seth.

“Now they are making a comeback. The light rail in many cities in the United States is just a newer version of trams. It’s sad that we had it all the time and are neglecting it instead of improving it.”

Mr Seth says that instead of complaining about lack of road space, an innovative solution could be to make some roads open only to pedestrians and trams.

Debashis Bhattacharyya, a retired academic and president of the Calcutta Tram Users Association, thinks trams survived in Kolkata all these years because they connected the city’s schools, hospitals and cinemas.

In the 1990s, as the count of cars and buses increased, the then Communist government in the state called trams “obsolete” and wanted to get rid of them.

“I protested,” says Mr Bhattacharyya. “If trams went, I felt my whole existence was threatened. I did exhibitions, slide shows, brought in foreign experts. The government should be applying for UNESCO heritage status for trams instead of trying to kill it off. ”

Recently, activists have been trying to use culture to save trams.

Since 1996, filmmaker Mahadeb Shi has been organising the Tramjatra festival, often in collaboration with Mr D’Andrea. Art students paint the trams and local bands perform in the streetcars.

Each Tramjatra has a theme, like Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali or the city’s Durga Puja festival.

“Tramjatra helped expose younger people to trams too,” says Shi.

One north Kolkata tram route was reopened recently. The West Bengal Transport Corporation also tried to make trams cool again with special projects like a tram library, an Independence Day special tram and a short-lived Tram World museum.

When Kolkata received a C40 Cities “Green Mobility” award in Copenhagen in 2019, mayor Firhad Hakim said trams were a key part of his vision to make the city’s transportation all-electric by 2030.

But now he seems to have forgotten that pledge. The government admits trams are a “green” mode of transport but says they are investing in other forms instead – electric buses and cars and expanding the underground metro system.

Mr Bhattacharyya says tram routes have been gobbled up by tuk-tuks which generate more employment and votes for the government. The tram depots also sit on valuable real estate the government can sell.

But Shi insists the final bell hasn’t rung yet, as the issue is now with the Calcutta High Court, which formed an advisory committee last year to explore how Kolkata’s tram services can be restored and maintained, with the state awaiting the committee’s report before taking further action.

Mr Bose, the retired tram worker, says the government could have shut down the trams long ago, but that something held it back every time. Perhaps because it too senses what trams mean for the city, he says.

“Three things made Kolkata Kolkata – the Howrah Bridge, the Victoria Memorial and the trams. It’s heart-breaking to think we could be losing one of them.”

How would you like to spend your 80s?

Some gardening, maybe learning a language, a bit of travelling, spending time with the grandchildren.

Or perhaps entering an international beauty contest with the ultimate aim of launching your modelling career on the world stage.

For Choi Soon-hwa, it was a no-brainer.

This week, the 81-year-old took to the stage with women a quarter of her age for Miss Universe South Korea, hoping to make it to the finals in Mexico later this year.

The question, though, is why?

“After raising children and going through hardships, it’s just two people left, and that’s when you need to find what you want to do,” the former hospital worker explained to the BBC shortly after she came off stage.

“Once you find it, it becomes the energy that drives your life, leading to a positive outlook and healthier relationships with people, which in turn helps your well-being.”

For Ms Choi, the thing she wanted to do has been modelling, ever since a patient suggested she take it up at the spritely age of 72.

The comment gave her the confidence to take the leap after several years of financial hardship, which had pushed her and her family to the brink of ruin.

In the years since, she has become a familiar face in South Korea – including walking the runway at fashion week – but launching a career outside the country has proved difficult.

So when Miss Universe, the famed beauty pageant which began nine years after Ms Choi was born, decided to throw out rules banning entrants over the age of 28 earlier this year, she jumped at the chance to take part – making her the oldest ever contestant so far to take part.

“It was something I couldn’t have imagined,” she says. “For several years, I had wished to step onto the international stage as a model.

“However, there was no clear path or guidance for me, but since the Universe competition had no age restriction, I participated with the goal of reaching the global stage.”

The removal of age restrictrions come as the Miss Universe competition has moved towards becoming more diverse in recent years – allowing married women, transgender women and single mothers to take part.

But her entry still caused quite the stir – not least among her competition.

“The participants were surprised to see me, and when they learned I was 80, they expressed admiration, saying, I want to age like you,” she admits.

And it has brought her the international interest she was hoping: Ms Choi has garnered headlines around the world.

What it did not buy was a ticket to Mexico: the Miss Universe South Korea crown went instead to Han Ariel, 22.

Ms Choi didn’t walk away completely empty handed however – but with the title of “Best Dressed”.

“Just being able to participate is an amazing and honourable experience”, she says, adding that she hopes she is the first of many older women to compete for the crown and, by extension, challenge beauty norms.

“Since this is still new, there’s a lot of buzz, but as more seniors participate, perspectives on them will shift, and there will come a time when seniors can compete in world competitions,” she says. “But for now, it’s still time for the young to take the stage.”

And whatever happens next, she knows some of her biggest fans will always be at home in the form of her grandsons, aged 23 and 24.

“My grandchildren cheer me on, saying, ‘Our grandma is so cool, pretty, beautiful, and the best!'”

One of the ringleaders of a global monkey torture network exposed by the BBC has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison.

Mike Macartney, 50, who used the alias ‘The Torture King’, pleaded guilty in the US state of Virginia to conspiracy to create and distribute animal crushing videos.

Macartney was one of three key distributors identified by the BBC Eye team in a year-long investigation into sadistic monkey torture groups.

The BBC’s reporting led to a nationwide criminal investigation in the US by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

A former motorcycle gang member who previously spent time in prison, Macartney ran several of the most high-profile torture groups, based on the encrypted message app Telegram.

Sadists around the world used Telegram groups to share ideas for specific methods of torture. Those requests were then sent, along with payments, to video makers in Indonesia, who carried them out on baby long-tailed macaques.

Though Macartney collected funds and distributed videos, he was able to show that he had never sent money directly to an Indonesian video maker.

By choosing to plead guilty to conspiracy and co-operate fully with the Department of Homeland Security, which took charge of the unusual investigation, Macartney was able to avoid a possible maximum seven-year sentence.

At the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, the judge told the court it had been difficult to come up with an appropriate sentence because the justice system had never seen a similar case before, but that he merited a reduction from the guidelines because of his cooperation.

Special agent Paul Wolpert, who led the case and testified at Macartney’s hearing, told the BBC that despite the sentence reduction the underlying crimes were nonetheless serious.

“From my perspective, this is just below child exploitation in the depravity that we’ve seen, ” Agent Wolpert said. “These are living beings, they have human qualities, and during this torture you could see them reaching out to try and find some comfort and not getting any.”

Authorities are also pursuing similar plea agreements with two other ringleaders identified by the BBC, including Stacey Storey from Alabama, who went by the alias ‘Sadistic’.

Storey was among the most brutal figures in the monkey torture network. Along with another ringleader known by the alias ‘Mr Ape’, she was responsible for directing some of the most disturbing videos, including one of a live baby monkey being lowered into a blender.

A total of nine key players in the monkey torture ring have now pleaded guilty or been sentenced in the US, following a wide-ranging and unprecedented investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.

In Oregon in April, 48-year-old David Noble, a disgraced former US Air Force officer who used the alias ‘Bones’, was sentenced to four years for his role in the groups.

Special Agent Robert Hammer, from DHS’s Pacific Northwest office, said the videos directed by Noble “represented a dark descent into the abyss of cruelty and exploitation”.

In Florida, Nicole Devilbiss, 35, was sentenced to four years and three months for her role in the conspiracy.

According to an affidavit, Devilbiss told investigators she wanted to help stop the monkey torture, but later “transitioned to a dark place where she found relief” from the videos.

In the UK last month, 42-year-old Peter Stanley from Liverpool was sentenced to 20 months in prison for distributing what the judge here described as “horrific” videos.

Sergeant Dan Goss of Merseyside Police credited the BBC investigation with bringing the monkey torture network to the force’s attention. “The original investigation uncovered the widespread sharing of content which showed the deliberate and gratuitous suffering of baby monkeys,” he said.

Two other UK-based ringleaders, 37-year-old Holly LeGresley from Kidderminster and 55-year-old Ariana Orme from Upton-upon-Severn, are due to be sentenced later this month.

LeGresley, who went by ‘The Immolater’, admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured.

The prosecution said LeGresley had showed a desire to harm vulnerable creatures as well as a hatred towards pregnant women and children.

Kevin Lacks-Kelly, the head of the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit, told the BBC that the force was preparing to arrest several more suspects in the UK in the coming weeks.

“I’ve been investigating wild crime for 22 years and it sickens me to say that this is unequivocally the worst case I have ever investigated or overseen,” he said.

Players from Pakistan have been dominating the professional Tekken scene – but the game’s director says he has no idea how it got so big in the country.

First launched 30 years ago, the Japan-developed fighting game released its eighth numbered instalment at the start of this year.

The competitive Tekken scene used to be ruled by players from the Far East, but the current top ten contains four players from Pakistan.

Speaking at a recent tournament, Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada told BBC Asian Network the dominance of pros from the country “came out of nowhere”.

Tekken is a 3D beat ’em up where players fight each other in one-on-one bouts in best-of-three matches.

Arslan “Arslan Ash” Siddique became an overnight superstar on the competitive circuit when he claimed victory in the 2019 EVO fighting game tournament.

He went on to win the coveted title four more times, earning him all-timer status in the eyes of many fans.

Arslan, 29, is currently ranked 10th in the world after an early exit from the Red Bull Golden Letters Tournament in London, but fellow Pakistani pro Atif Butt holds the second spot in the world list.

It’s clear that the country’s become a force on the global stage, but the game’s director still isn’t sure how it got there.

“We never knew they were playing Tekken,” Harada-san says.

“Even now we’ve never been to Pakistan, so I’m still quite interested to hear why they became so obsessed with Tekken and so good at the game.”

The game’s producer Michael Murray tells Asian Network that he “loved it when Arslan came on the scene”.

“No-one knew him,” he says.

“Then out of nowhere someone no-one’s talking about comes along and you find this other community and then Arslan says it’s not just him.

“He says they’re all strong in Pakistan, and everyone’s like ‘what?’

“It was just such an amazing story and I still remember how exciting it was to hear that.”

At the recent contest in London, Lim “Ulsan” Soo-hoon from South Korea won first place, beating Jae-hyun “CherryBerryMango” Kim in the grand final.

They were joined by players from the USA, Japan and Europe, demonstrating the global popularity of Tekken.

Harada-san has been working on the series for 30 years, and says the competitive scene really kicked off around the release of Tekken 7.

He tells Asian Network his mother cried when he first told her he wanted to pursue a career in video games, but now his family is “quite proud” when they see him in magazines.

“They’re like, ‘wow, you’re actually doing something with it, that’s good,” he says.

Harada-san says he’s glad Tekken “has continued for a long time and we’ve been able to come this far”.

But he does confess to being “a bit sad” that it’s the “only remaining major 3D fighting game franchise”.

“It would be more interesting if there were other rivals, right?” he says.

A judge in Georgia has struck down the state’s abortion law that has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy since it took effect in 2022.

Georgia’s Life Act was fully nullified by Judge Robert McBurney’s decision, meaning that the state must now allow abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The judge wrote in his order that “liberty in Georgia” includes “the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices”.

Georgia passed the Life Act in 2019 but it only came into force in 2022, after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and opened the door for state bans.

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective filed the original lawsuit with other plaintiffs in 2019, shortly after Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed the act into law.

When Judge McBurney reviewed the case in 2022, he struck down the law, ruling that it violated the US Constitution.

The Georgia Supreme Court later took up the case, however, and allowed the six-week limit to stand.

The case has since returned to Judge McBurney, who found this time that it violated the state constitution after a review “of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty'”.

“[D]oes a Georgian’s right to liberty of privacy encompass the right to make personal healthcare decisions? Plainly it does,” the judge wrote in his decision.

Gov Kemp’s office criticised the judge’s ruling on Monday.

“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” Garrison Douglas, Kemp’s spokesperson, said in a statement.

“Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”

This ruling could affect more than just Georgians, however.

It could open up abortion access in the US South, where several Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed laws that have severely limited access to abortion procedures.

These laws have meant people in the region sometimes travel hundreds of miles to states like North Carolina, Kansas and Illinois for legal abortions.

Judge McBurney noted the danger a six-week limit could have on women in his order, writing that “for many women, their pregnancy was unintended, unexpected, and often unknown until well after the embryonic heartbeat began”.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women, called the ruling “a significant step in the right direction”.

“We are encouraged that a Georgia court has ruled for bodily autonomy. At the same time, we can’t forget that every day the ban has been in place has been a day too long – and we have felt the dire consequences with the devastating and preventable deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.”

Thurman and Miller were named in a pair of ProPublica reports that found their deaths were connected to Georgia’s abortion ban. Their cases have been highlighted by Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has made reproductive rights a centerpiece of her campaign for the White House.

South Korean police have detained a North Korean defector for attempting to cross the heavily-guarded border back to the North on a stolen bus.

The man was caught Tuesday on the Unification Bridge that separates the two Koreas, where he ignored soldiers who asked him to stop and crashed the bus into a barricade.

Though some 34,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean peninsula was divided more than 70 years ago, defectors seeking to return to the North are rare.

The man, who is in his 30s, told police he had wanted to return home after experiencing difficulties in the South, according to South Korean media. He reportedly left North Korea about a decade ago.

He reportedly stole the bus at 01:00 local time on Tuesday (16:00 GMT Monday) from a garage in the northern city of Paju and was caught half an hour later.

Surveillance footage from the garage showed the man wearing a hat, trying to open several vehicles until he managed to get into the bus.

He was not found to have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident, reports say.

The man, who has worked as a day labourer in Paju and other cities, told police that he had accumulated several unpaid fines, according to South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo.

South Korea’s law prohibits citizens, including defectors, from crossing the border to the North without government authorisation. North Korean defectors in the South are automatically granted citizenship. Offenders may be jailed up to ten years if convicted.

South Korea receives over 1,000 defectors from the North each year. In contrast, the number of defectors returning to North Korea totalled just 31 from 2012 to 2022, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.

Some make the return, or attempt to do so, because the lives of defectors in the South sometimes fall short of expectations. The defectors earn around 2.3 million won ($1,740; £1,300) per month on average, according to a survey from Korea Hana Foundation published on Tuesday.

Others want to go back to see their family members.

However these returns are risky. Some returnees have been imprisoned while others have undergone rigorous re-education back in the North.

In January 2022, a defector in his 30s returned to North Korea after a year in the South. He had struggled to resettle in the South as he was “barely scraping a living”, reports said, citing South Korean officials.

Kenya’s embattled Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, calls himself the “truthful man”, attributing his remarkable rise to the fact that he speaks truth to power.

But as he faces impeachment proceedings, he says these troubles are also a result of his outspoken nature.

Before he was elected MP in 2017, little was known about the man who would, in five short years, rise to become Kenya’s second-in-command.

Not many people outside Gachagua’s central Kenya constituency had heard of him or his style of politics.

Gachagua captured the limelight in the run-up to the 2022 elections, when he vehemently opposed President Uhuru Kenyatta’s choice of preferred successor.

Kenyatta was campaigning heavily for former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

But Gachagua allied himself with William Ruto, Kenyatta’s then deputy, who was angling for the presidency that his boss did not want to bequeath to him.

• How Kenya’s president has fallen out with his deputy

At political rallies and in media circles, Gachagua railed against Kenyatta, often in words that other politicians would find cringeworthy.

“Don’t kill me the way your father killed JM Kariuki,” he said at a rally in July 2022, referring to an MP who was killed in 1975 during the administration of Jomo Kenyatta, the nation’s first president and the father of Uhuru Kenyatta.

To this day, no one has been found guilty of Kariuki’s death.

Before he became Kenya’s deputy president, police raided Gachagua’s home and arrested him in relation to a corruption and money-laundering case. The charges were dropped after he and Ruto took power following the 2022 election.

He had helped Ruto win by marshalling support in Mount Kenya – the biggest voting bloc in the country. Both Gachagua and Kenyatta come from there. Kenyatta had tried to rally Mount Kenya’s voters to throw their weight behind Odinga, but he failed.

Long before Kenyatta became president in 2013, Gachagua had worked closely with him, including as his personal assistant for five years.

But after teaming up with Ruto, Gachagua went from being Kenyatta’s “confidant” to one of his harshest critics.

However, since falling out with his current boss, Gachagua has apologised to Kenyatta, saying it was “foolish” of him to have “fought my own brother”.

This humility is in sharp contrast to his rhetoric as Ruto’s running-mate – analyst Javas Bigamo had even described Gachagua as a “feared political bulldog that Ruto needed to be able to counter President Kenyatta in the central region”.

Gachagua was praised as an excellent mobiliser, who had the ear of ordinary people on the ground.

Yet he was probably not the person many expected to take the deputy position, given that Gachagua had only being a politician for five years and was up against more seasoned candidates.

Ruto explained he had chosen Gachagua because “he is one of those leaders who are passionate about ordinary people”.

Politics expert Bobby Mkangi previously told the BBC that Gachagua’s ability to negotiate his way to the top “considering other names that were fronted and were known nationally” was “quite something”.

But just two years after ascending to power, that ability seems to have fizzled out – leaving Gachagua butting heads with the president and in a position where many legislators are pushing for his removal.

He stands accused of corruption, money-laundering, gross misconduct, insubordination and bullying public officers and six other acts of wrongdoing.

As the motion was being tabled in parliament on Tuesday, the MP introducing the motion, Mwengi Mutuse, said that 291 out of 349 MPs had signed the document pushing for Gachagua’s removal.

The signatures of two-thirds – or 233 – of all MPs are required to impeach him.

Mkangi now says the deputy president has been “unable to consolidate the support of his base and the politicians around him”.

Gachagua has always been accused of being brash and aggressive – it was one of the reasons some argued against his selection to the running mate position prior to the 2022 election. But in recent months, this criticism has increased.

He denies this assessment of his character, along with assertions that he alienates his fellow politicians.

He says all he does is “speak the truth”, which he insists has made him unpopular within certain political factions.

“I will not compromise my principles,” he said over the weekend as calls for his impeachment came to a crescendo.

Gachagua has often identified himself as a child of the Mau Mau freedom fighters, who battled British colonial rule.

He was born in 1965 to parents who he has said were well known for their involvement in the struggle for freedom. His father built and serviced guns and his mother was a courier of ammunition and food for the fighters, Gachagua said.

His lineage has painted him as a champion of people in central Kenya, many of whom are descendants of independence struggle icons, but still continue to fight for economic freedom.

A popular catchphrase associated with the deputy president is “don’t touch the mountain”, a reference to his support base in the Mount Kenya region. However, he has also been accused of promoting tribalism rather than being a unifying figure.

But Gachagua has defended himself, insisting that speaking for the central Kenya region is not the same as antagonising other communities.

• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth

Before joining politics, Gachagua had had a long career.

After completing university, he began working as a public administrator in government, and as a district officer in different locations across the country.

The district administrators of that time, during Daniel arap Moi’s presidency, were known for their high-handedness. It is an accusation that has stuck with him, including in present circumstances.

He worked as Kenyatta’s personal assistant between 2001 and 2006 – at a time when Kenyatta was a minister, presidential candidate and later the leader of the opposition.

Gachagua is a wealthy politician, having built a fortune in business over the years. He is married to a pastor, Dorcas, and they have two adult sons.

In 2017, he vied for the Mathira constituency seat, winning the position that had earlier been held by his elder brother, Nderitu Gachagua.

It is at this time that Gachagua’s fiery character and political abilities started attracting attention.

Yet his public utterances, before and since he became deputy president, have at times been seen as blunders or straight-up disgraceful comments.

He said last year that government was like a shareholding company, with those that voted for the current administration being more deserving of government appointments and contracts.

Senator Danson Mungatana last week said Gachagua’s words have “marginalised sections of Kenyans, created and continue to heighten ethnic tensions”.

Gachagua has often defended himself, but recently he acknowledged that in the end, it may be the very same thing that catapulted him to the top that will lead to his downfall: his way with words.

• How Kenya’s president has fallen out with his deputy
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth

A Chinese woman has been arrested in Leipzig on suspicion of passing information about Leipzig/Halle airport, which is used as a key transport hub for the German defence industry, to Chinese intelligence.

German prosecutors said that Yaqi X, 38, had been working for a company providing logistics services at the airport.

Prosecutors said she had repeatedly sent details on flights, passengers and military cargo transport to another figure who worked for China’s secret services. The airport is considered an important centre for defence exports, particularly to Ukraine.

A second suspect, Jian G, was detained earlier this year.

He had worked as an aide for a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s far-right AfD party.

Yaqi X was remanded in custody and her home and workplace searched.

Between August 2023 and February 2024, prosecutors allege she had given Jian G information on the transport of military equipment and people linked to an unnamed German arms company.

German sources told public broadcaster ARD that the defence company involved was Rheinmetall, Germany’s biggest defence firm which has been heavily involved in supplying Ukraine with weapons, armoured vehicles and military equipment.

Yaqi X’s case appears to be linked to a spying case that unfolded last April involving parliamentary aide Jian G.

The MEP he had worked for, Maximilian Krah, dismissed Jian G as his assistant. Krah’s office in Brussels was searched by police, although there was no indication that he was involved.

Jian G was alleged to have spied on Chinese dissidents in Germany as well as passing information on the European Parliament to Chinese intelligence.

He had previously worked for dissident groups and had taken up German citizenship after coming to Germany in 2002.

At least five people have been killed and eight wounded in an Israeli air strike on a building in central Beirut, Lebanese officials have said.

The multi-storey block in Bachoura housed a Hezbollah-affiliated health centre, which Israel’s military said was hit in a “precision” attack.

This is the first Israeli strike close to Beirut’s centre – just metres away from Lebanon’s parliament. There were five other air strikes overnight against targets in the southern suburb of Dahieh.

It comes after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said eight soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon, its first losses since the start of ground operations against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said it had destroyed Israeli tanks during the fighting and insisted it had enough men and ammunition to push back the forces.

Earlier, the IDF announced that more infantry and armoured troops had joined the operation seeking to dismantle what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Lebanese border villages.

In the latest overnight strikes, three explosions were heard in Dahieh, in the city’s southern suburbs – with a fourth closer to the centre.

There were two further air strikes in Dahieh, which came after the IDF warned people living nearby that it was targeting what it said were facilities belonging to Hezbollah in the area of the city known to be its stronghold.

Before the overnight air strikes, Lebanon’s health ministry said 46 people had been killed and 85 wounded in Israeli bombings in the last 24 hours, without differentiating between civilians and combatants.

It also emerged a US permanent resident from the state of Michigan was among those killed in recent Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.

Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, was in the country to care for his elderly mother, according to The Detroit News.

His death was confirmed by a White House official, who said: “His death is a tragedy, as are the deaths of many civilians in Lebanon.”

Hezbollah has been weakened after two weeks of Israeli strikes and other attacks that have killed more than 1,200 people across Lebanon and displaced around 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.

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 displaced by Hezbollah attacks.

Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries.

On the second full day of their ground invasion into Lebanon, Israeli troops encountered Hezbollah fighters for the first time.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Wednesday that soldiers backed by aircraft had “eliminated terrorists and dismantled terrorist infrastructure through precision-guided munitions and close-range engagements” in several southern Lebanese areas.

Later, the IDF announced that eight troops had been killed in action. Most were commandos from the elite Egoz and Golani Reconnaissance units.

Hezbollah said its fighters had fired ani-tank missiles at Israeli commandos, killing and wounding dozens during clashes early on Wednesday in one border village.

It also said that other troops were targeted with explosives and gunfire on the outskirts of Kafr Kila, and that three Israeli Merkava tanks were destroyed by missiles near Maroun al-Ras.

Hezbollah has spent years building infrastructure in southern Lebanon that includes extensive underground tunnels. It also has thousands of fighters, who know the area well.

Paying tribute to the eight soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they had fallen ”in the midst of a tough war against Iran’s axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us”.

“This will not happen, because we will stand together, and with God’s help, we will win together,” he added.

Israeli air defences were also in action again a day after they repelled the vast majority of the more than 180 ballistic missiles launched by Iran towards Israel on Tuesday night in retaliation for the Israeli air strike in Beirut last Friday that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a top Iranian commander.

More than 240 rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel throughout Wednesday, according to the IDF.

Netanyahu insists that the ground offensive in Lebanon will degrade Hezbollah’s capability and push its fighters back, eventually allowing about 60,000 Israelis to return to their homes near the border.

Meanwhile US President Joe Biden said he did not support an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iranian nuclear sites. He added that the US “will be discussing with the Israelis what they’re gonna do” in response to the Iranian barrage.

The commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Maj-Gen Hossein Salami, stood in front of a large banner in a war room as he used a telephone to order the launch of about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday night, according to a video clip published by Iranian media.

The banner featured photos of the three men whose deaths he said Iran was seeking to avenge with the major attack – Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran in July in an attack that Iran blamed on Israel, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC Quds Force operations commander Brig-Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, who were killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut last week.

The IRGC claimed the barrage included Fattah hypersonic missiles that took 12 minutes to reach Israel and that they successfully hit targets including three Israeli airbases and the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency.

However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said most of the missiles were “intercepted by Israel and a defensive coalition led by the United States”, and that there were a “small number of hits” in central and southern Israel.

Shortly after the attack, a massive banner was raised in Tehran’s Palestine Square, featuring missiles flying towards buildings shaped like a Star of David and the words “The beginning of the end of Zionism”.

Iran had appeared to show restraint after Haniyeh’s assassination – but this inaction became a source of humiliation when Israel dealt a series of devastating blows to Iran’s closest and most longstanding regional ally Hezbollah, culminating in the air strike on Friday that killed Nasrallah and Nilforoushan.

Iranian weapons, training and funding have been pivotal to Hezbollah’s transformation into Lebanon’s most powerful armed force and political actor since the IRGC helped establish the group in the 1980s.

Before this month, Iranian leaders had hoped that a war of attrition with Hezbollah would help wear down the Israeli military, which is still fighting a war against Hamas in Gaza.

They also relied on Hezbollah and its massive arsenal of rockets and missiles to serve as a major deterrent against direct Israeli attacks on their country’s nuclear and missile facilities.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected in July, accused Israel of trying to provoke Iran into a regional war that would also draw in the US.

“We also want security and peace. It was Israel that assassinated Haniyeh in Tehran,” he was quoted by Iranian media as saying during a visit to Qatar on Wednesday.

“Europeans and the US said that if we do not act, there will be a peace in Gaza in one week. We waited for them to have peace but they increased their killing.”

• Follow live updates on this story
• Explained: What we know about Iran’s missile attack on Israel
• Analysis: How could Israel respond, and what might Iran do then?
• Explained: What is Israel’s Iron Dome missile system and how does it work?

Many hardline conservatives in Iran had been growing uneasy about the country’s lack of action against Israel.

Several commentators on state TV – which is controlled by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the IRGC – argued that the decision to hold back from seeking revenge for Haniyeh’s killing had emboldened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran’s interests and allies in Lebanon.

After Tuesday’s missile attack, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj Gen Mohammad Baqeri stated that the time for “patience and restraint” was over.

“We targeted military and intelligence sites in Israel and deliberately refrained from hitting economic and industrial locations,” he said. “However, if Israel retaliates, our response will be more forceful.”

The missile attack reflects a growing concern among Iranian leaders that remaining silent after Israel’s attacks would portray them as weak and vulnerable – both domestically and in the eyes of their regional allies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” which includes Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran and Israel have pursued a shadow war for decades, adhering to a policy of “no war, no peace”. However, it now appears that this status quo is ending.

Israel has vowed to respond severely, with Netanyahu warning that “Iran made a big mistake and it will pay for it”.

There are also indications of a shift in tone and strategy from the US.

In April, President Joe Biden urged restraint after Israeli and US-led forces shot down most of the 300 drones and missiles that Iran launched at Israel in retaliation for an air strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria that killed several top IRGC commanders. Israel heeded the US call and responded by launching a missile that hit an Iranian air defence battery in central Iran.

But this time, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned there would be “severe consequences” for the Iranian attack and that the US will “work with Israel to make that the case”.

Israeli media cited Israeli officials as saying on Wednesday that Israel was preparing for retaliatory strikes on Iran “within days”, and that they would target “strategic sites”, including the country’s vital oil facilities.

The officials also warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be hit if it made good on its threat to strike back at Israel.

Senior Iranian officials have asserted that they consider their retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and Nilforoushan to be over unless they are provoked further.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also said he had conveyed a message to the US through the Swiss embassy in Tehran warning it “not to intervene”.

He cautioned: “Any third country that assists Israel or allows its airspace to be used against Iran will be considered a legitimate target.”

The US has approximately 40,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, with many deployed in Iraq and Syria. These troops could be threatened by Iran-backed Shia militias in both countries.

Iran must now brace itself for the Israeli response and hope its gamble pays off.

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in an effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, prosecutors allege in a new court filing that argues the former president is not immune from charges.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor appointed to lead the election interference case against Trump, submitted the filing, which was publicly released on Wednesday.

The filing challenges Trump’s claim that he is protected by a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer that grants broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office.

Since there will be no trial before Trump, a Republican, vies with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris for the White House in next month’s election, the 165-page court document may be the last chance for prosecutors to outline their case.

In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors allege Trump was not always acting in an official capacity and instead engaged in a “private criminal effort” to overturn the 2020 results.

The document is an effort by prosecutors to advance the criminal case against Trump following the Supreme Court ruling in July.

It prompted prosecutors to narrow the scope of their indictment. That is because the ruling did not apply immunity to unofficial acts, leading prosecutors to argue that while Trump may still have been in office some of his alleged efforts to overturn the election were related to his campaign and his life as a private citizen.

The court should “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as he would any other citizen,” Mr Smith wrote in the new filing.

The case has been frequently delayed since charges were filed by the Department of Justice more than a year ago accusing Trump, who denies wrongdoing, of seeking to illegally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

The filing lays out several instances in which Trump’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, expressed doubt about his boss’s voter fraud claims and tried to persuade him to accept he lost the election.

In the court document, prosecutors say Trump was not upset when he learned his vice-president had been rushed to a secure location as rioters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. “So what?” he allegedly said, when informed of the scenes.

Pence would later go public about his falling out with Trump in the wake of the storming of Congress, when some rioters shouted “Hang Mike Pence” because the vice-president refused to obstruct the certification of election results.

Trump’s lawyers fought to keep the latest filing sealed, and campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump called it a “hit job” and said it “should not have been released right before the election”.

He accused prosecutors of “egregious” misconduct.

The filing offers new evidence and presents the clearest view yet of how prosecutors would seek to present their case against Trump at trial.

It alleges that he always planned to declare victory no matter the result, and laid the groundwork for this long before election day. It also accuses him of knowingly spreading false claims about the vote that he himself deemed “crazy”.

Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with the ballots to give him “options to file litigation”.

The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors.

Trump said on Wednesday that the case would end with his “complete victory”. A trial date has not been set.

A US bomb buried at a Japanese airport exploded on Wednesday, causing a crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights.

The minor blast left a hole about seven meters (23 feet) wide but no casualties were reported and no aircraft were nearby at the time.

The bomb, which exploded at Miyazaki Airport in south-west Japan, is thought to have been dropped during World War Two to stem “kamikaze” planes on suicide missions.

“There is no threat of a second explosion, and police and firefighters are currently examining the scene,” chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, adding that the airport aimed to reopen on Thursday.

A bomb disposal team from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces confirmed a 500lb US bomb had been the source of the blast.

While a transport minister said they could not confirm when the bomb was dropped, local media reported it was likely during World War Two.

Located at the south-east end of Kyushu island, Miyazaki Airport was built in 1943 as an imperial Japanese navy base.

Other unexploded ordinance dropped by the US was reportedly found at a nearby construction site in 2009 and 2011.

Unexploded bombs remain buried around the country. Reuters news agency said a total of 2,348 bombs weighing 41 tonnes were disposed of during 2023.

Subramanian Iswaran, a senior cabinet minister in Singapore’s government, has been sentenced to 12 months in prison in a high-profile trial that has gripped the wealthy nation.

Iswaran, 62, pleaded guilty to accepting gifts worth more than S$403,000 ($311,882; £234,586) while in public office, as well as obstructing the course of justice.

The gifts included tickets to the Formula 1 Grand Prix, a Brompton T-line bicycle, alcohol and a ride on a private jet.

Justice Vincent Hoong, who oversaw the case in Singapore’s High Court, emphasised that the former transport minister’s crimes were an abuse of power and jeopardised people’s trust in public institutions.

He also noted that Iswaran seemed to think he would be acquitted.

“In his letter to the prime minister, he stated he rejected (the charges) and expressed his strong belief he would be acquitted,” said Justice Hoong.

“Thus I have difficulty accepting these are indicative of his remorse.”

It was not immediately clear when Iswaran would report to prison, but his lawyers asked the judge to expedite the process.

He will serve his sentence at Changi, the same prison that holds Singapore’s death row prisoners, where the cells don’t have fans and most inmates sleep on straw mats instead of beds.

He is Singapore’s first political figure to be tried in court in nearly fifty years.

The nation prides itself on its squeaky clean image and lack of corruption. But that image, and the reputation of the governing People’s Action Party, have taken a hit as a result of Iswaran’s case.

The city state’s lawmakers are among the highest-paid in the world, with some ministers earning more than S$1 million ($758,000). Leaders justify the handsome salaries by saying it combats corruption.

Ministers cannot keep gifts unless they pay the market value of the gift to the government, and they must declare anything they receive from people they have business dealings with.

“It’s not a significant sum over his years of service, but on his salary, he could have very well afforded not to,” said Eugene Tan, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University.

“I think the public were expecting the court to demonstrate zero tolerance for this sort of conduct.”

Iswaran’s defence team had asked for eight weeks, if the judge deemed prison necessary. His lawyer argued the charges were not an abuse of power and did not disadvantage the government.

Prosecutors meanwhile requested an eight to nine-month sentence, saying Iswaran was “more than a passive acceptor of gifts”.

“If public servants could accept substantial gifts in such a situation, over the long term, public confidence in the impartiality and integrity of government would be severely undermined,” said Deputy Attorney-General Tai Wei Shyong.

“Not punishing such acts would send a signal that such acts are tolerated.”

Justice Hoong noted on Thursday that holders of high office have a particularly large impact on the public interest.

“Such persons set the tone for public servants in conducting themselves in accordance with high standards of integrity and must be expected to avoid any perception that they are susceptible to influence by pecuniary benefits,” he said.

While in government, Iswaran held multiple portfolios in the prime minister’s office: in home affairs, communications and, most recently, the transport ministry.

Prior to last year, the most recent case of a politician facing a major corruption probe was in 1986, when national development minister Teh Cheang Wan was investigated for accepting bribes. He took his own life before he was charged.

Before that, former minister of state for environment Wee Toon Boon was sentenced to 18 months jail in 1975 for a case involving more than $800,000.

Allegations against Iswaran first surfaced in July of last year. Nearly all the charges against him stem from his dealings involving billionaire property tycoon Ong Beng Seng, who helped bring the Formula 1 Grand Prix to Singapore. Ong Beng Seng is also under investigation.

When Iswaran discovered authorities were investigating Mr Ong’s associates he requested that Mr Ong bill him for his flight to Doha, Justice Hoong said on Thursday.

He acted with deliberation and premeditation, and in asking to be billed and paying for the ticket was trying to avoid investigations into the gifts, the judge added.

Iswaran was originally charged with 35 counts, including two counts of corruption, one charge of obstructing justice and 32 counts of “obtaining, as a public servant, valuable things”. But at a trial in late September, Iswaran pleaded guilty to lesser offences after the corruption charges were amended.

Lawyers did not confirm whether a plea deal had been reached.

“The system still works and there is still that public commitment. But this particular case is certainly not going to win the party any favours,” Mr Tan said.

The case against Iswaran is one of a series of political scandals that has rocked the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which has long touted its strong stance against corruption and amoral behaviour.

In 2023, a separate corruption probe into the real estate dealings of two other ministers eventually cleared them of impropriety, while the speaker of Parliament resigned because of an extramarital affair with another lawmaker.

The property scandal raised questions about the privileged positions that ministers have in Singapore at a time of rising living costs.

Singapore must hold a general election by November 2025. The PAP’s share of the popular vote declined in the most recent elections, and it is facing a challenge to its decades-long one party dominance from an increasingly influential opposition party.

The Workers’ Party won a total of 10 seats in parliament in the last election, but has also been rocked by scandal. Its leader, Pritam Singh, has been charged with lying under oath to a parliamentary committee. He has rejected the accusations.

It has been hailed as the most valuable shipwreck in the world.

A Spanish galleon, the San José, was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago. It had a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds worth billions of dollars.

But years after it was discovered, a debate still rages over who owns that treasure and what should be done with the wreck.

The Colombian and Spanish states have staked a claim to it, as have a US salvage company and indigenous groups in South America. There have been court battles in Colombia and the US, and the case is now before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.

The Colombian government says it wants to raise the remains of the vessel and put it in a museum. Treasure hunters point to the commercial value of the cargo, which could be as much as $18bn (£13.bn).

But archaeologists say the wreck – and thousands like it scattered across the world – should be left where it is. Maritime historians remind us that the San José is a graveyard and should be respected as such: around 600 people drowned when the ship went down.

“It’s a great mess and I see no easy way out of this,” says Carla Rahn Phillips, a historian who has written a book about the San José. “The Spanish state, the Colombian government, the various indigenous groups, the treasure hunters. I don’t think there’s any way that everyone can be satisfied.”

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The San José sank in 1708 as it sailed from what is now Panama towards the port city of Cartagena in Colombia. From there it was due to cross the Atlantic to Spain, but the Spanish were at war with the British at the time, and a British warship intercepted it.

The British wanted to seize the ship and its treasure, but fired a cannonball into the San José’s powder magazines by mistake. The ship blew up and sank within minutes.

The wreck lay on the seabed until the 1980s, when a US salvage company, Glocca Mora, said it had found it. It tried to persuade the Colombians to go into partnership to raise the treasure and split the proceeds, but the two sides could not agree on who should get what share, and plunged into a legal battle.

In 2015, the Colombians said they had found the ship, independently of the information provided by the Americans, on a different part of the sea bed. Since then they have argued that Glocca Mora, now known as Sea Search Armada, has no right to the ship or its treasure.

The Spanish state has staked its claim, arguing that the San José and its cargo remains state property, and indigenous groups from Bolivia and Peru say they are entitled to at least a part of the booty.

They argue that it is not Spanish treasure because it was plundered by the Spanish from mines in the Andes during the colonial period.

“That wealth came from the mines of Potosí in the Bolivian highlands,” says Samuel Flores, a representative of the Qhara Qhara people, one of the indigenous groups.

“This cargo belongs to our people – the silver, the gold – and we think it should be raised from the sea bed to stop treasure hunters looting it. How many years have gone by? Three hundred years? They owe us that debt.”

The Colombians have released tantalising videos of the San José, taken with submersible cameras. They show the prow of a wooden ship, encrusted with marine life, a few bronze cannons scattered across the sand, and blue-and-white porcelain and gold coins shining on the ocean floor.

As part of its court case at the Hague, Sea Search Armada commissioned a study of the cargo. It estimates its value at $7-18bn.

“This treasure that sank with the ship included seven million pesos, 116 steel chests full of emeralds, 30 million gold coins,” says Rahim Moloo, the lawyer representing Sea Search Armada. He described it as “the biggest treasure in the history of humanity”.

Others are less convinced.

“I try to resist giving present-day estimates of anything,” says Ms Rahn Phillips.

“If you’re talking about gold and silver coins, do we make an estimate based on the weight of the gold now? Or do we look at what collectors might pay of these gold coins?

“To me it’s almost meaningless to try to come up with a number now. The estimates of the treasure hunters, to me, they’re laughable.”

While the San José is often described as the holy grail of shipwrecks, it is – according to the United Nations – just one of around three million sunken vessels on our ocean floors. There is often very little clarity over who owns them, who has the right to explore them, and – if there is treasure on board – who has the right to keep it.

In 1982, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Law of the Sea – often described as “the constitution of the oceans”, but it says very little about shipwrecks. Because of that, the UN adopted a second set of rules in 2001 – the Unesco Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001 Convention.

That says far more about wrecks, but many countries have refused to ratify it, fearing it will weaken their claim to riches in their waters. Colombia and the US, for example, have not signed it.

“The legal framework right now is neither clear nor comprehensive,” says Michail Risvas, a lawyer at Southampton University in the UK. A specialist in international arbitration and maritime disputes, he adds: “I’m afraid international law does not have clear-cut answers.”

For many archaeologists, wrecks like the San José should be left in peace and explored “in situ” – on the ocean floor.

“If you just go down and take lots of artefacts and bring them to the surface, you just have a pile of stuff. There’s no story to tell,” says Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, a Mexican deep-sea diver who has explored dozens of wrecks around the world.

“You can just count coins, you can count porcelain, but there is no ‘why was this on board? Who was the owner? Where was it going?’ – the human story behind it.”

Juan Guillermo Martín, a Colombian maritime archaeologist who has followed the case of the San José closely, agrees.

“The treasure of the San José should remain at the bottom of the sea, along with the human remains of the 600 crew members who died there,” he says. “The treasure is part of the archaeological context, and as such has no commercial value. Its value is strictly scientific.”

For several years, Masato Kanda hardly slept.

“Three hours a night is an exaggeration,” he laughs as he speaks to the BBC from Tokyo.

“I slept for three hours consecutively before being woken up but I then went back to bed, so if you add them up, I got a bit more.”

So why was this 59 year-old bureaucrat’s schedule so punishing?

Until the end of July, he was Japan’s vice finance minister for international affairs, the country’s top currency diplomat, or yen czar.

Key to the role was fending off currency market speculators that could trigger turmoil in one of the world’s largest economies.

Historically, authorities intervened to weaken the value of the Japanese currency. A weak yen is good for exporters like Toyota and Sony as it makes goods cheaper for overseas buyers.

But when the yen plummeted during Mr Kanda’s time in office it increased the cost of importing essential items like food and fuel, causing a cost of living crisis in a country more used to seeing prices fall rather than rise.

In his three years in the role, the value of the yen against the US dollar weakened by more than 45%.

To control the yen’s slide, Mr Kanda unleashed an estimated 25 trillion yen ($173bn) to support the currency, marking Japan’s first such intervention in almost a quarter of a century.

“The Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance are very clear. They intervene not at a particular level of the currency, but they intervene when market volatility is too much,” says economist Jesper Koll.

Japan now finds itself on the US Treasury’s watchlist of potential currency manipulators.

But Mr Kanda argues that what he did was not market manipulation.

“Markets should move based on fundamentals but occasionally they fluctuate excessively because of speculation, and they don’t reflect fundamentals which don’t change overnight,” he says.

“When it affects ordinary consumers who have to buy food or fuel, that is when we intervened.”

While countries like the US and UK can raise interest rates to boost the value of their currencies, Japan had for years been unable to put up the cost of borrowing due to the weakness of its economy.

Professor Seijiro Takeshita of the University of Shizuoka says Japan had no other option other than to intervene in the currency markets.

“It is not the right thing to do, but in my opinion it is the only thing they can do.”

The irony is that the yen’s value jumped in recent months without Mr Kanda or his successor lifting a finger after the Bank of Japan surprised the markets with a rate hike, and the country got a new prime minister.

So was the $170bn bid to prop up the yen a waste of money?

No, says Mr Kanda and points out that his interventions actually made a profit although he emphasises that it was never a goal.

On whether or not his actions were ultimately successful he says: “It is not up to me to evaluate, but many say our exchange management stopped the excessive level of speculation.”

Markets or historians should be the final judges, he adds.

After decades of economic stagnation, Mr Kanda also sounds an optimistic note about Japan’s prospects.

“We are finally seeing investments and wages rising, and we have a chance to go back to a normal market economy,” he says.

A more surprising legacy for this “humble public servant” is him becoming a star on the internet after Japanese social media users celebrated his ability to surprise financial markets with a series of AI generated dancing videos.

A doctor charged in the drug-related death of actor Matthew Perry has pleaded guilty in the case.

Dr Mark Chavez changed his plea to guilty in a Los Angeles court to a charge of conspiring to distribute the surgical anaesthetic ketamine.

Chavez, 54, operated a ketamine clinic and sold ketamine lozenges to Dr Salvador Plasencia, who supplied them to Perry, the star of NBC sitcom Friends.

Chavez is one of five people charged in Perry’s death. The 54-year-old actor was found dead in his backyard jacuzzi in southern California in October 2023.

A post-mortem examination found a high concentration of the drug ketamine in his blood and determined “acute effects” of the substance had killed him.

Ketamine is used as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain.

In his plea agreement, Chavez admitted he obtained ketamine from both his former clinic and a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.

Prosecutors said Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, worked with the two doctors to provide the actor with more than $50,000 (£38,000) of ketamine in the weeks before his death.

According to the indictment, the two medical doctors exchanged texts discussing how much they could charge Perry for vials of the drug, with one message reading: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

The plea allows Chavez to plead guilty to a lesser charge for his co-operation in the investigation, though he could still face up to 10 years in prison.

“He has accepted responsibility. He is co-operating,” his attorney told the court.

Chavez has turned over his passport and agreed to surrender his medical licence immediately.

He is free on bail until sentencing on 2 April 2025.

Despite having the mighty Zambezi River and the massive hydro-powered Kariba Dam, Zambia is currently grappling with the worst electricity blackouts in living memory.

The crisis is so severe that cities and towns across the country are sometimes without electricity for three consecutive days, with people counting themselves lucky if the lights come on for an hour or two.

The power cuts have come as a shock to the 43% of Zambians who are connected to the grid and have taken electricity for granted all their lives.

But one of the severest droughts in decades – caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon – has decimated Zambia’s power-generation capacity.

Nowadays, I sometimes go to bars and restaurants to find people not eating or drinking – they are there just to charge their phones amid the pounding noise of generators.

There is also a booming business of people making money by charging the phones of those without power.

Zambia sources up to 84% of its electricity from water reservoirs such as lakes and rivers, while only 13% comes from coal.

Contributions from solar, diesel and heavy fuel oil are even lower, accounting for 3%.

For several weeks, the crisis was compounded while the country’s only coal-fired power plant, Maamba Energy, was not operating at maximum capacity as it underwent routine maintenance work.

On Wednesday, there was finally some good news when Minister of Energy Makozo Chikote said the plant was now fully operational, and Zambians would have at least three hours of electricity a day.

President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought a national disaster in February but the government has been unable to solve the energy crisis because Zambia is heavily reliant on the Kariba Dam for its electricity.

A financial crunch also severely restricted the government’s ability to import power as suppliers wanted payment upfront, though a spokesman for state-owned power utility Zesco, Matongo Maumbi, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast that electricity was being imported from Mozambique and South Africa to ease the crisis, especially in the mining industry – Zambia’s main export earner and source of foreign currency.

Located on the Zambezi, the fourth-longest river in Africa, Kariba was built in the 1950s and is the reservoir for the country’s largest underground power station, Kariba North Bank Power Station. A power station on the other bank serves Zimbabwe.

But because of the drought that has led to parts of the river drying up, only one of the six turbines at Zambia’s power station is operating, resulting in the generation of a paltry 7% of the 1,080 MW installed at Kariba.

The dam retains the water of the Zambezi with a curving wall that is 128m (420ft) high, 579m (1,900ft) long and 21m (69ft) thick.

Engineer Cephas Museba – who has been working for the state-owned power utility Zesco for 19 years – says he has never seen water levels so low at Kariba.

“I think we stopped receiving the rains as early as February. It’s supposed to rain up to April. If we compare the history of this basin, this is the lowest we have received,” he told me.

It has triggered an electricity crisis that is being felt in every business and home.

Some companies are opening for fewer hours, and retrenching staff.

It can even be difficult to find bread – bakeries are making fewer loaves because they find it too expensive to keep generators running.

Fortunately, the government has installed huge generators in some markets, government offices and hospitals, though stories are still being shared on social media of how kidney patients are struggling to cope.

Some patients need to be hooked up to a dialysis machine for up to three hours a day but power only gets restored for about an hour or two, sometimes after midnight.

On other occasions, there is no electricity at all for 72 hours in a row.

On those days, I wear the same clothes as the previous day, rather than a washed but wrinkled shirt that has not been ironed.

Life has become more difficult for everyone.

One day recently, I woke up to be greeted by a foul smell as blood flowed from under the fridge.

All the meat we had bought had gone off and we had to give it to our German Shepherd dog, the happiest member of our household these days.

The other day I bought relish from a supermarket – but when I opened the package at the dinner table I realised that it was more food for our dog.

My food budget, already tight because of the cost-of-living crisis, is now even tighter. Buying perishable items in bulk at a cheaper price is completely out of the question as they will just rot.

The government has been encouraging homes and businesses to switch to solar, and has scrapped import taxes for solar equipment to make it cheaper to buy.

But some people say their solar panels do not generate enough electricity when there is little sunlight – and they cannot afford to install more panels. Most Zambians cannot afford solar panels at all.

Now, many families have resorted to cooking and heating water on portable gas stoves – but shops have been running out of gas too because of high demand.

So in desperation and because it is cheaper, they buy charcoal to cook and heat water – despite its negative impact on the environment and the climate.

The electricity crisis has also had an impact on the boreholes that middle-class families have dug on their properties.

As boreholes work with electricity and solar-powered pumps, homes are now also without a constant supply of water, making it impossible to even flush the toilet.

In some schools, children are advised to take five litres of water each day to reduce the possibility of a sanitation crisis – and the outbreak of waterborne diseases like cholera, which hit the country at the start of the year.

Many families now fill buckets – or bath tubs – with water, hoping it will last until the lights are back, and toilets can be flushed.

All of this has left Zambians frustrated and angry. They point out that the blackouts highlight the failure of successive governments to plan ahead – something that President Hichilema’s administration has now pledged to do.

Mr Maumbi said that Zesco was investing in more energy sources, including solar plants, so that dependency on hydro-power falls to around 60%.

But Zambia’s focus is not only on green energy – coal is also in the mix.

In July, the energy regulator approved plans to build only the country’s second coal-fired power plant.

It is the dirtiest fossil fuel, producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt, but the government feels that to avoid a similar crisis in the future, it has little option but to press ahead.

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Iran launched almost 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel on Tuesday night.

The Israeli military said most of the missiles were intercepted, but that a small number struck central and southern Israel. The only person reported to have been killed was a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank.

It was Iran’s second such attack on Israel this year, after it launched about 300 missiles and drones in April.

Here’s what we know so far.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the attack involved more than 180 missiles, which tallied with Iranian state media reports saying that about 200 missiles were launched.

The US said the attack was “nearly twice the scope” of what happened in April.

Sirens sounded as Israel’s entire 10 million population was told to head into bomb shelters at about 19:30 local time (16:30 GMT) on Tuesday.

Social media videos verified by the BBC showed missiles flying over the densely populated cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem less than 15 minutes later. Explosions could be heard overhead as air defences intercepted the incoming missiles.

The footage also showed several missiles hitting areas around the Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert and the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency near Tel Aviv.

“There were a small number of hits in the centre of Israel, and other hits in southern Israel,” said IDF spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari. “The majority of the incoming missiles were intercepted by Israel and a defensive coalition led by the United States.”

The Israeli military confirmed on Wednesday some of its air bases had been hit during the attack, but said no weapons, aircraft or critical infrastructure was damaged and the air force’s operational abilities were not affected.

Iranian state media cited the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) as saying the missiles hit Nevatim, Hatzerim and Tel Nof airbases, as well as Israeli tanks in Netzarim – a reference to an Israeli military corridor in central Gaza – and gas installations in the southern city of Ashkelon.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran had for the first time used Fattah hypersonic missiles that it claimed “cannot be intercepted”, as well as Emad and Qadr ballistic missiles.

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Israeli authorities are still assessing the damage caused by the night-time attack.

Just north of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, close to the Mossad’s headquarters, a BBC correspondent found several badly damaged cars and a pile of earth next to a road where a missile impact was said to have caused a crater between 8m and 10m deep.

The nearby municipality of Hod HaSharon also said about 100 houses were damaged by a missile explosion and shrapnel.

And a video released by the IDF showed the head of its Home Front Command visiting a school that was hit by a missile in the Gedera area, just to the east of Ashkelon, causing extensive damage to a classroom.

The Wall Street Journal cited US officials as saying that missiles that targeted Nevatim airbase caused minor damage. However, the IDF declined to comment, saying it would not provide information that would help Iran understand the effectiveness of its attack.

Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service paramedics treated two people with light injuries from shrapnel in the Tel Aviv area, as well as some people with minor injuries caused by falling as they moved to shelters.

However, the Palestinian Civil Defence authority said a Palestinian man was killed when he was hit by a falling missile fragment in the West Bank city of Jericho.

CCTV footage showed the rear half of a large, black missile plummeting directly on to a man as he walks along a road at night. It was not clear if the missile had been intercepted.

The New York Times identified him as Sameh al-Asali, a 37-year-old Palestinian construction worker from Gaza who had been sheltering in Jericho since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last October.

The IDF has not provided details about how the missiles were intercepted, besides saying that Israeli and US-led forces were involved.

It also did not say exactly how many were shot down or landed. The IDF previously claimed that 99% of the Iranian projectiles launched in April’s attack were intercepted.

Israel has a sophisticated system of air defences, the best-known of which is the Iron Dome. It is designed to intercept short-range rockets of the sort fired by Hamas and Hezbollah.

While it was used to defend against some elements of Iran’s last attack in April, other elements of the country’s “layered” defence systems probably did the bulk of the work on Tuesday.

David’s Sling – a joint US-Israeli manufactured system – is used to intercept medium to long-range rockets, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles. And when it comes to long-range ballistic missiles, which fly outside the Earth’s atmosphere, Israel has the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors.

The Pentagon said two US Navy destroyers deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean fired a dozen interceptors as part of the efforts to defend Israel, but that it was not known whether they took down any of the missiles.

UK Defence Secretary John Healey said British forces had “played their part in attempts to prevent further escalation”. But the BBC understands that British military jets did not shoot down any Iranian missiles.

Verified footage also showed missile interceptions over the Jordanian capital, Amman. The Arab kingdom’s forces also shot down a number of missiles during Iran’s last attack in April.

• How do Israel’s air defence systems work?

The IRGC said in a statement that the missile barrage was retaliation for what it called the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty and the martyrdom” of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed by an explosion in Tehran in July that Iranian officials blamed on Israel, but Israeli officials did not claim.

The statement described the barrage as having been “in line with the legitimate right of the nation to defend itself”.

It also said the attack was in response to the Israeli air strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut last Friday that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Brig-Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, the operations commander of the IRGC’s overseas arm, the Quds Force.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters news agency the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had personally given the order for Tuesday’s missile attack.

The escalation also came hours after Israeli troops began an invasion of southern Lebanon to remove what the military said were “Hezbollah terror targets” in border villages that posed a threat to residents of northern Israel.

Israel has gone on the offensive against the Shia Islamist political and military organisation after almost a year of cross-border hostilities sparked by the war with Hamas in Gaza. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran and designated as terrorist organisations by Israel, the US, UK and others.

Iran does not recognise Israel’s right to exist and seeks its eradication. It has spent years building a network of armed groups across the Middle East, known as the “Axis of Resistance”, which are opposed to Israel and the US.

Israel believes that Iran poses an existential threat and has spent years engaged in a shadow war with Iran that has is now increasingly out in the open.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday night that Iran’s missile attack “failed”, having been “thwarted thanks to Israel’s air defence array”.

“Iran made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it,” he added. “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant also vowed vengeance.

“Iran has not learned a simple lesson – those who attack the state of Israel pay a heavy price,” he said in a statement.

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed US support for Israel after the missile attack, describing it as “defeated and ineffective”.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also condemned what he called “this outrageous act of aggression by Iran”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK stood with Israel and recognised her “right to self-defence”.

France and Japan also condemned Iran’s attack, but also called on all parties to avoid further escalation.

The US told Israel before the attack that it had intelligence indicating that Iran was preparing to launch ballistic missiles imminently, which allowed the IDF to warn Israeli civilians to be prepared to seek shelter.

However, US officials said after the attack that they had received no warning from the Iranian government.

Iran’s mission to the UN also said in a statement: “No notice was given to the United States prior to our response.”

The Wall Street Journal citing Arab officials in the region as saying that Iran “telegraphed” to Arab countries on Monday night that it was going to launch an attack similar in scale to April’s.

The officials also said Israel had sent clear messages back to Iran that it would respond to any attack on Israeli territory with a strikes that targeted Iranian nuclear or oil facilities.

The IDF’s Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, said: “We will choose when to exact the price and demonstrate our precise and surprising offensive capabilities, in accordance with the directive of the political echelon.”

Axos cited Israeli officials as saying that Israel’s response would be “significant” and that it could target oil production facilities inside Iran and other strategic sites.

Some analysts suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities could also be targeted.

President Biden said the US was “fully supportive of Israel” and that he would discuss a response with Israel’s prime minister.

The IRGC warned that Iran’s response would be “crushing” if Israel dared to retaliate.

Israel responded to April’s attack by launching a missile that hit an air defence battery at an Iranian airbase, following Western calls for restraint.