Iran’s missile strikes on Israel were “correct, logical, and lawful”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a vast crowd which had gathered to hear him speak in Tehran on Friday.

The country’s supreme leader described the attack as the “minimum punishment” for what he called Israel’s “astonishing crimes” while leading Friday prayers in the capital, something he has not done since 2020.

Khamenei’s speech came three days after Iran fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The Farsi-speaking supreme leader delivered part of his speech in Arabic to address Palestinian and Lebanese supporters.

During his sermon, Khamenei praised Nasrallah and voiced support for Hamas and Hezbollah, which he said provided “vital service to the entire region and the entire Islamic world”.

He said Iran-aligned armed groups “will not back down” in their conflict with Israel, which entered a new phase after Hamas launched deadly raids into Israel almost one year ago.

Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as other armed groups around the Middle East which have attacked Israel. They often dub themselves the “Axis of Resistance”.

In recent weeks, several senior leaders of Iran-backed groups and Iran’s powerful military wing, the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Israeli strikes or presumed Israeli assassinations.

The supreme leader’s appearance in front of a crowd of tens of thousands in Tehran is a sign of the gravity of the moment for the Iranian regime, which is facing widespread domestic discontent.

It could be read as an attempt to show strength and restore Iran’s credibility as leader of the “Axis of Resistance”.

The public appearance was also intended to show that Khamenei is not in hiding, after reports emerged that he had been taken to a secure location following Nasrallah’s assassination.

The Grand Mosalla Mosque was flooded with people after Iranians were given free transport to attend the sermon. A large Palestinian flag was seen in the crowd.

Khamenei holds ultimate power in Iran, but very rarely leads Friday prayers himself.

The last time he did was in 2020, after the US killed Iran’s most senior military commander, Qassem Soleimani. The time before that was in 2012.

Iran is still reeling from the loss of its allies Nasrallah and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran in July.

Israel is widely considered to be behind Haniyeh’s killing, though it has never commented on his death.

Khamenei also told the crowd that Iran would retaliate if, as expected, Israel launches a response to Tuesday’s missile attack.

“If we needed to do that again, we would do it again in the future,” Khamenei told supporters.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden suggested a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s oil infrastructure had been discussed, as Israel continued to weigh up how to strike back at Tehran.

The Indian government has opposed petitions in the top court that seek criminalisation of marital rape, saying it would be “excessively harsh”.

The federal home ministry told the Supreme Court that “a man does not have a fundamental right” to force sex on his wife, but there were enough laws to protect married women against sexual violence.

The top court is hearing petitions seeking to amend a British-era law that says a man cannot be prosecuted for rape within marriage.

Violence within marriage is rampant in India – according to a recent government survey, one in 25 women have faced sexual violence from their husbands.

Marital rape is outlawed in more than 100 countries, including Britain which criminalised it in 1991.

But India remains among the three dozen countries – along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – where the law remains on the statute books.

A number of petitions have been filed in recent years calling for striking down Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been in existence since 1860. The law mentions several “exemptions” – or situations in which sex is not rape – and one of them is “by a man with his own wife” if she is not a minor.

Campaigners say such an argument is untenable in modern times and that forced sex is rape, regardless of who commits it.

• In India, growing clamour to criminalise rape within marriage
• Marital rape: Delhi high court gives split verdict

United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also raised concerns about India’s refusal to criminalise marital rape.

But the Indian government, religious groups and men’s rights activists have opposed any plans to amend the law saying consent for sex is “implied” in marriage and that a wife cannot retract it later.

The courts have given contradictory judgements, sometimes allowing a husband to be tried for rape while at others dismissing the petition.

The case came to the Supreme Court after the Delhi high court in 2022 delivered a split verdict. The top court began hearings in August.

The state’s response in their 49-page affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court on Thursday has not come as a surprise in a country rooted in patriarchal traditions and where marriages are considered sacrosanct.

The report says that marriage is a relationship of a “different class” and has an “entire ecosystem” of laws, rights and obligations.

Criminalising marital rape “may seriously impact the conjugal relationship and may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage”, it stated.

The affidavit noted that in a marriage, there was a “continuing expectation to have reasonable sexual access from one’s spouse” and while this did not entitle a husband to coerce his wife into having sex, including marital rape under anti-rape laws would be “excessively harsh” and “disproportionate”.

It added that there were existing laws that dealt with domestic violence, sexual harassment and assault that protected a married woman’s rights.

The home ministry also said that marriage was a social institution and the issue raised in the petitions was more social than legal and hence it should be left to the parliament to formulate policy.

An Australian man who used cable ties to detain children caught swimming in his backyard pool has been found guilty of two counts of aggravated common assault.

Images of Matej Radelic, 46, restraining three distressed children – aged six, seven and eight – on his Broome property in March made global headlines.

He was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, with prosecutors arguing his actions were “dehumanising” and unreasonable in the circumstances.

However his lawyers argued Mr Radelic had made a “lawful” citizen’s arrest.

The Broome Magistrates Court heard both parties and agreed the children’s behaviour had constituted “trespass and criminal damage”, but all were under the age of criminal responsibility, which is 10 in Western Australia.

According to the ABC, Magistrate Deen Potter found Mr Radelic guilty of two of the three charges – he was acquitted of the third charge, as the oldest child was restrained for a shorter amount of time and left the scene after breaking free.

Mr Radelic was handed a fine of A$2,000 ($1,368; £1,041), suspended for 12 months.

Mr Radelic’s call to emergency services was played, in which he can be heard telling the operator the tied-up children were uninjured, but “scared and crying”.

“Yeah no wonder,” she replied.

When police arrived at his home – in the remote town 2000km (1243 miles) north-east of Perth – the tradesman was captured on police bodycam expressing his frustration.

“I mean, there’s no consequences for anything,” he said.

“What would you do?… If you think I need to go to jail, I will.”

His lawyer Seamus Rafferty said Mr Radelic was “a victim of crime”, as his home had been broken into four times in the months before the incident, though he did not suggest these children were involved.

Mr Rafferty conceded cable tying the children’s wrists was “not a good look” but was ultimately legal.

“This case is not about optics, not about emotion, race or vigilantism,” he said.

He pointed to the responding police officer’s notes, which had described the incident as a lawful citizen’s arrest.

However, police prosecutor Mícheál Gregg argued the response was disproportionate as the children had complied when asked to get out of the pool and sit down.

“The circumstances simply weren’t there to justify any use of force,” he said.

One year on from the 7 October Hamas attacks, tough questions are still being asked within Israel about the deadliest day in its history, when the country’s powerful army was caught off guard and swiftly overwhelmed.

The BBC has heard accounts given to families of what happened at one military base that guarded the border with Gaza.

The Nahal Oz base was overrun by Hamas gunmen on the morning of 7 October and more than 60 Israeli soldiers are reported to have been killed – with others taken hostage.

Israel’s military is yet to publish its official inquiry into what happened there that day, but it has already briefed relatives of those killed there, and some have shared those details with the BBC.

This is the closest we have to an official account by Israel’s military of what happened on the day.

In an attempt to further piece together events, we have also spoken to survivors, seen messages from those who died, and listened to voice recordings reporting the attack as it happened, helping to build a picture of the speed and ferocity of the invasion.

The BBC has found:

• Suspicious activity was spotted by many soldiers at the base before 7 October, not just the young women whose job it was to monitor border cameras
• Soldiers noticed an abrupt stop to Hamas activity in the days before the attack
• Many Israeli troops there were unarmed and official protocols had soldiers standing back when under attack, instead of advancing
• Some surveillance equipment was either out of action or able to be destroyed by Hamas with ease

The details we have established raise questions – including why so few soldiers were armed at a base so close to the border, why more wasn’t done to respond to the intelligence and warnings that had been received, how it took so long for reinforcements to arrive, and whether the very infrastructure of the base had left those there unprotected.

We put our findings to the IDF, who responded to say it was in the midst of a “thorough investigation into the events of October 7th, including those in Nahal Oz, and the circumstances preceding”.

___

On 7 October, Sharon – not her real name – began her shift at Nahal Oz, about a kilometre from the Gaza border fence, at 04:00.

She was part of the base’s all-women military unit – known as Tatzpitaniyot in Hebrew – and their role was to study live surveillance footage captured by cameras along the fence.

The women worked in shifts in the base’s war room, or Hamal, watching Gaza through a bank of monitors around the clock.

The Hamal is a windowless room protected by a solid door and blast walls, with strict security protocols.

The IDF has told families of people on the base that day that many military staff were unarmed.

Gen Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Division, told the BBC that during his service, there would never have been unarmed soldiers in border areas.

“It doesn’t make sense… The soldier is about the weapon,” he says.

The armed staff at Nahal Oz that day included a unit of infantry soldiers from the IDF’s Golani brigade.

The BBC has previously reported that the Tatzpitaniyot had noticed an escalation in suspicious activity on the other side of the fence, but we have now established that these concerns were also shared by other soldiers at the base from different units.

In the days shortly before 7 October, however, things had gone quiet.

“There was nothing and that was frightening us,” one infantry soldier stationed at the base recalls.“Everybody felt that something was strange. It didn’t make sense.”

The IDF’s failure to grasp what was happening was down to “a lot of arrogance”, says Gen Ziv, the thought that “Hamas wouldn’t attack, wouldn’t dare, and that even if so, they are not capable”.

“We went to sleep on the 6th thinking there’s a cat over there and we woke up on the 7th and there’s a tiger.”

At 05:30, members of the Golani prepared to begin a jeep patrol along the Israeli side of the fence – something they did before dawn every morning. But they were then instructed by their superiors to delay the patrol and stand back because of a threat of anti-tank missiles, three of them have told the BBC.

“There was a warning. It was forbidden to go up the route next to the fence,” one recalls.

Another Golani, 21-year-old Shimon Malka, said such a warning was unusual but not unheard of, so they gave it little thought.

Gen Ziv says it is standard IDF protocol to stand people back during suspected attacks like this so they can “avoid being exposed as a target”. But, he says, “Hamas realised that and used it” to their advantage.

He said the base should have been equipped with positions that the Golani could safely respond from.

“There are very simple techniques to cover soldiers so they’re under cover but they’re still in a position to react, to not lose sight,” he said.

As the Golani waited away from the fence, Sharon began seeing movements among Hamas fighters. But they seemed nothing other than routine – “they also have shifts.”

By 06:20 Hamas had begun shooting rockets, but again Sharon says this did not seem immediately alarming – she had experienced rocket attacks before and the base was well-shielded against them.

“It’s usually five minutes of shooting and then a break,” she says.

But this time, there was no break.

At about 06:30, Sharon says she could see Hamas forces beginning to close in.

The Tatzpitaniyot radioed through to the ground forces to alert them.

“All stations, four people running to the fence, copy,” one of the young women announced, her voice shaking slightly. “I am identifying two armed people running to the fence, copy.”

About the same time, Shimon heard the code words for a rocket attack through his radio. His commander ordered they jump from their jeep into a Namer – a type of Israeli armoured personnel carrier – and head towards the fence.

But he couldn’t see any incursions and assumed it was just a drill.

This so-called iron wall had long been viewed by the IDF and people across Israel as impenetrable, and yet bases along it began reporting breaches.

Each of the Tatzpitaniyot on shift at Nahal Oz witnessed between two and five breaches of the section of border fence they were responsible for monitoring, says Sharon. They watched as Hamas fighters made their way inside Israel.

Gen Ziv says the ease with which fighters had crossed the fence showed the flaws in a barrier perceived to be impenetrable.

“As you saw, two truck-loads could come and push it. It was nothing. Even if there was a minefield of 50 or 60 metres over there, it would have delayed Hamas for a few hours.”

Shortly before 06:40, an observation post at Nahal Oz was hit and damaged by a rocket, according to IDF family briefing notes shared with the BBC.

A sniper-sighting system was put into action from the Hamal – the nerve centre of the base – and an officer attempted to shoot remotely at gunmen trying to cross the border, the IDF told families.

Infantry officers joined the Tatzpitaniyot in the Hamal, too. Sharon remembers one commander arriving in her pyjamas.

And then, as gunmen continued to shoot at surveillance cameras, the monitoring screens in the Hamal started to go dark.

The fact that Hamas had been operating in plain sight of these surveillance cameras, along the border in the weeks before, was tactical, says Gen Ziv, in order to “normalise things”.

Just 100 metres from where the Tatzpitaniyot were working, Alroy – one of the five IDF observation balloonists on site that morning – was woken by the rockets and the sirens, his father Rafi Ben Shitrit told the BBC.

The IDF later provided details of an initial investigation to Alroy’s family about what happened that day.

The balloon at Nahal Oz offered a deeper view into Gaza, and was supposed to be operational 24 hours a day.

But on 7 October it was one of three along the border that were out of action.

“The balloon in Nahal Oz didn’t work and no-one was stressed, they were told it would be fixed on Sunday,” says Mr Ben Shitrit.

“There was an atmosphere like: ‘Hamas is deterred, even if something happens it’s a terrorist infiltration or at most a terrorist squad.’”

Back at her surveillance point, Sharon carried on frantically communicating with soldiers on the ground.

“I cried and announced, simultaneously,” she says.

She remembers that the commanding officer yelled for “quiet” because some of the young women were losing focus amid the horror.

At the fence, Shimon says he followed the radio directions. He still couldn’t understand why the young woman’s voice he was hearing sounded so panicked.

“I could feel the stress, but I couldn’t see anything.”

When his unit reached the place the Tatzpitaniyot had directed them to, they saw Hamas trucks breaking through the fence.

“They started to shoot at us. Maybe five trucks.”

The soldiers shot back and ran over those on motorbikes.

Shortly after 07:00 came the moment everyone feared and nobody could imagine. Hamas gunmen were at the door of the Hamal.

“Get up, the terrorists are at the door,” Sharon remembers being told.

The Tatzpitaniyot were ordered to abandon their positions and head to an office inside the war room.

Gen Ziv says that those higher up in the military did not put enough emphasis on defending the bases themselves, focusing instead on external patrols.

“That was part of the whole mess because once the enemy surprised them and went into the base they were not ready. The whole thing collapsed,” he says.

At about 07:20 what was known as the shield – a bomb shelter outside the Hamal – was attacked.

Among those sheltering inside were some off-duty Tatzpitaniyot, who were being protected by “four female warriors”, according to a WhatsApp message sent at 07:38 by one of the Tatzpitaniyot sheltering there and seen by the BBC.

There were no further messages from her in the group.

The IDF told families that these “female warriors” were the only armed people hiding in the shelter – and they kept Hamas fighters at bay with their gunfire until a grenade explosion killed one of the commanders and injured others inside.

At this point, about 10 of the soldiers managed to escape the shelter and locked themselves in the accommodation barracks. Everyone else in the shield was either killed or captured by Hamas.

Shimon and his commander headed back to the base, but they still weren’t aware of the scale of what was happening.

The IDF would later brief the family of one of those killed at Nahal Oz that the attack on the base was begun by drone strikes, and action by 70 fighters from four directions, and that scores more joined as the morning went on.

Up and down the Gaza Strip, thousands crossed into Israeli territory.

On his way back to base Shimon says he began to comprehend the scale of the attack.

“When we got to the base, everything was burned,” he says.

In the office inside the Hamal, Sharon says the group of about 20 soldiers tried to calm each other down.

Meanwhile, they made repeated attempts to call for more support.

“I guess [someone] said something like ‘There’s no backup, no-one can come,’ and I remember my officer said ‘We don’t need backup, we need rescue.’”

Shortly before 08:00 an Israeli drone, known as a Zik, arrived, but it had difficulty distinguishing between Israeli soldiers and Hamas, according to the IDF account, which meant it was slower to attack its intended targets.

At about the same time, an attack began on the Hamal, with lots of shooting. Those armed fought at the doors of the building to prevent Hamas from getting inside. The fighting continued for about four hours.

Meanwhile, Shimon says he and other soldiers fighting at the base were completely outnumbered. There was no sign of reinforcements.

“It was all vague.”

At about 09:00, the Golani headed to the base’s dining room where the Tatzpitaniyot had told them most of the gunmen were hiding.

Relatives would later be told by the IDF that there were 150 gunmen to every 25 combat soldiers entering Nahal Oz that day.

“What Hamas was doing that morning was swarming,” says Gen Ziv.

“There were over 70 different breaches… over 3,000 terrorists… They knew they didn’t have the quality so they had to go quantity.”

A video, which Israeli media reports was filmed around this time, shows young surveillance officers at Nahal Oz, who had been captured by armed Hamas.

“You dogs, we will step on you,” one man is heard saying as the women’s hands are tied, their faces against the wall.

Nineteen-year-old Naama Levy, who had only started at the base the previous day, pleads that she has “friends in Palestine”, her face covered in blood.

The footage shows the women being dragged into a waiting vehicle and driven away.

It is devastating for Naama’s mother to watch. “The wounds, the blood, what she was saying, what the terrorists were saying to them, the horror of those moments,” says Dr Ayelet Levy.

Gen Ziv says the Tatzpitaniyot at Nahal Oz “were amazing – the mistake was the system, the commanders, not them”.

More than three hours after the attack had begun, at 09:45, an IDF helicopter started firing at the Hamas gunmen, officers told grieving relatives. It fired into the base 12 times.

Shimon and six others, including their commander, drove out of the base and returned in formation on foot. He says they were fired on “from all directions”.

Through the sound of automatic gunfire would come a series of single shots, fired by a Hamas sniper they couldn’t see.

“Every time he shot, one of my friends got a bullet in the head,” he says.

Shimon says he was the only one of those fighting alongside him to survive, and he too, had a near miss.

“A bullet passed right by my head… I could hear the bullets hitting the concrete around me and feel the heat from them.”

At this point, he says his radio was no longer operational.

Gen Ziv describes the day as a “perfect storm”.

“For so many hours the backup was not there because nobody knew exactly what was going on and where to send the backup,” he explains.

Shimon escaped the scene and moved to a sniper’s position before joining with soldiers from another unit who went to protect a kibbutz.

Back in the Hamal, or war room, there was a significant development at about 11:00.

The electricity was cut which meant the locks to the doors, which were on an electric system, were released. It left the war room wide open, according to the IDF account given to several families. Hamas fighters began shooting inside and throwing grenades.

One was killed in a face-to-face knife fight with a Golani soldier, the IDF told families.

Gen Ziv said at the point that soldiers were relying on door locks for their safety, the broader military system had “already failed”.

In the IDF’s briefing to families it said “terrorists threw a flammable substance into the Hamal and set it on fire”.

“The smoke was really thick. Everyone started to cough and suffocate. People start to fall and faint,” recalls Sharon.

One mother says she was told by the IDF that a “toxic substance” had been used by Hamas in the attack, though others were not aware of this detail or said the IDF had since changed its account on this.

At about 12:30, seven people in the Hamal – including Sharon – managed to feel their way to the toilet window and climb out, according to accounts of those there that day.

There, she and the other survivors waited for more to follow. But no-one came. Sharon was the only survivor among the Tatzpitaniyot on shift that day. One other young woman in the unit, who was at the base but not working that morning, also survived.

By the end of 7 October, the military had regained control, but many of those stationed there did not survive the day. Seven Tatzpitaniyot were taken back to Gaza as hostages, where one was killed, another rescued and five still remain.

Across Israel that day, about 1,200 people – including more than 300 soldiers – were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Since then, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

The Nahal Oz dead were to include Alroy the balloonist and four comrades, who had engaged in a lengthy battle with Hamas, says his father, citing information given to him by the IDF.

They managed to kill close to 10 gunmen, he said, but the five were outnumbered and were all found dead inside a mobile shelter at 14:30.

The war room – which had been designed as a safe space for the base’s units – was destroyed. Photos and videos show it charred, the screens the Tatzpitaniyot had been carefully monitoring, blackened. Bone fragments were found among the ashes there.

The survivors and the families of those killed and kidnapped are left with unanswered questions about how it went so wrong.

The wife of a former volunteer fire chief killed during July’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, has told the BBC she is furious about the security failures that led to her husband’s killing by a rooftop gunman.

Corey Comperatore was shot dead after diving on members of his family to protect them as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire at the former president.

His wife Helen said she hasn’t been able to stop replaying the events of the day in her mind.

“I see it every time I close my eyes, and probably will for a long time” she said.

“I’m angry because there were a lot of mistakes made that day, and it didn’t have to happen,” she added.

Helen Comperatore spoke exclusively to the BBC just days before Trump is set to return to Butler and the site of the shooting.

The home she shared with Corey in Sarver is less than 20 miles (32 km) from the Butler rally site, and close enough to the volunteer fire station where he worked for decades that when its sirens blare they can be easily heard.

Trump will hold a rally on Saturday on the same grounds where he was shot in the ear, before defiantly raising his fist and mouthing “Fight!’, in what has become a defining image of his campaign.

Multiple members of the Comperatore family will be Trump’s guests at this weekend’s rally, including Helen.

Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the July shooting and two other people suffered “life-changing” injuries: 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver.

A Secret Service internal review has since identified a litany of security failures that day, including poor planning and a communication breakdown.

Corey, who was an ardent supporter of the current Republican presidential candidate, had been excited for the July rally, his wife said.

“He just liked how [Trump] got things done, and that he wasn’t a politician and he didn’t talk like one.”

She said they believe Trump understands the lives of people like them, in places like Butler, a working-class community just north of Pittsburgh.

At the rally, the family ended up by happenstance in the bleachers between Trump and the shooter.

They’d taken time to eat beforehand and missed the opening to get a seat – to Corey’s disappointment. But then a man came by and offered them a spot in the stands.

About six minutes into Trump’s speech, Crooks fired eight shots from a roof just outside the rally’s perimeter, one striking Trump’s right ear and one striking and killing Corey as he sheltered his family.

In the months before her husband was killed, the couple spent every weekend on their boat.

“We loved that time together,” Helen said.

“We talked about everything. We made a lot of future plans on that boat. I knew a lot about Corey and what his wishes were, if anything ever happened to him.”

The couple had known one another their entire lives – they began attending school together as kindergartners.

She said her husband often appeared straight-faced and serious, but behind the façade was a deeply kind and caring man.

“As soon as he smiled, you knew he was a good, good man,” she said.

“He did anything for his community. He loved his kids. His kids were everything to him.”

His two daughters, Allyson and Kaylee, are nurses and struggling to get back to work while they grieve their dad, Helen said.

She said now the questions of “What would he want me to do? What would Corey do?” help guide her.

“It’s definitely a struggle. I realised I always knew he took care of me, but I never realised just how much. I just miss him,” she said.

Corey Comperatore was honoured at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July, with his helmet and coat displayed on stage as Trump spoke.

Helen said at the July rally, Corey had hoped – and joked – that Trump might call him on stage.

The family watched the RNC moment on television, after Trump told Helen about the planned tribute.

“And I just cried because I said he got his moment on stage with Trump,” she said. “So, you know, it was kind of like a nice moment, but it was a sad moment at the same time.”

A huge solar flare, the largest since 2017, has been spotted erupting from the Sun’s surface.

Solar flares are made up of electromagnetic radiation that travel from the Sun at the speed of light and can reach Earth in about eight minutes.

They can disrupt some radio communications and satellites but most of us are unlikely to see those effects.

There is also a chance that northern latitudes could see the Northern Lights this weekend as two geomagnetic storms are predicted to hit Earth.

Solar flares do not cause the Northern Lights. They are caused by a phenomenon called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that erupt from an active sun spot.

Combined with flares, they can create solar storms that interact with Earth’s magnetic field or magnetosphere.

The CMEs spew out plasma and magnetic field, and up to billions of tons of material, that can hit Earth. As our magnetosphere repels the storm, it creates the aurora.

“There is the potential for a coronal mass ejection to arrive at Earth late on Friday or early on Saturday, which could lead to visible aurora for Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England,” said Met Office Space Weather Manager Krista Hammond.

A second CME is likely to hit Earth on Saturday and Sunday, associated with the solar flare which is rated X9.

That means “enhanced auroral visibility is possible further south across central England and similar latitudes, though cloud and rain could hamper viewing potential for some,” says Krista Hammond.

In the US, aurora might be seen in the northern states, and from the mid-west to Oregon, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Centre.

The X9 solar flare emitted is the largest categorised by Nasa. The smallest is B, followed by C, M, and X. The scale ranks from 1 to 9, so X9 is the most powerful in Nasa’s ranking.

The Sun is approaching something called “solar maximum” which is when it is most active in an 11-year cycle.

As the Sun continues in this active phase, Earth is more likely to be hit by strong geomagnetic storms, meaning there is higher chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis for the next few months.

But scientists only know if solar maximum has happened six months after the event, because they use six months of data analysing the intensity and frequency of sun spots.

Current predictions suggest we could reach solar maximum at the end of 2024 or early 2025.

BBC weather presenter Simon King says the UK weather does not look good for people hoping to spot the aurora this weekend.

“It would just be the far north-east of Scotland getting the odd break in the cloud for a short time,” he says.

“If activity turns out to be a bit stronger, the best of the clear skies on Friday night will be more towards central and south England.

He says clouds may hamper viewings on Saturday night despite the evening starting with a lot of clear skies.

India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Pakistan this month, his ministry has announced.

This will be the first visit by a high ranking Indian minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade.

The trip comes after Mr Jaishankar’s Pakistani counterpart attended a similar meeting of foreign ministers from the SCO in India last year – he was the first senior Pakistani politician to visit since 2011.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been tense for years and they have fought three wars since they became independent nations in 1947 – two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The SCO is a political union of countries formed to discuss security and economic matters in Central Asia.

The organisation was created by China, Russia and four Central Asian countries in 2001 as a countermeasure to limit the influence of Western alliances such as Nato.

India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.

While India chaired the SCO in 2023, Pakistan will be hosting this year’s summit from 15 October to 16 October.

At a press briefing on Friday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that Mr Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan.

The last time an Indian foreign minister visited the nation was in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a security conference in Islamabad and held rare talks with Pakistani officials.

Days later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made a surprise trip to Lahore where he met then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Ties between India and Pakistan have always been strained but they hit a new low in 2019, when India launched strikes in Pakistani territory, following a militant attack on Indian troops in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it. Separatist insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir has led to thousands of deaths over three decades. India accuses Pakistan of supporting insurgents but its neighbour denies this.

A thaw of relations seemed in sight last year when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited the Indian state of Goa for a SCO meeting.

But Mr Zardari said his visit was “focussed exclusively on the SCO” and did not hold any direct talks with Mr Jaishankar during his trip.

In an interview with the BBC at that time, he said that the onus was on India to restart peace talks between the two countries.

The convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were jailed more than three decades ago for the murder of their parents in the US, are set to be reviewed.

The brothers shot Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989, in what prosecutors said was a plot to inherit their father’s fortune.

On Thursday, LA County district attorney George Gascon said there was “a moral and an ethical obligation” to review evidence submitted by the brothers last year, which claimed they were sexually abused by their father and acted in self-defence.

There has been renewed public interest in the murders since a Netflix series depicting the events was released in September.

During the original trial, prosecutors said the killings were motivated by greed.

They said the brothers spent much of their large inheritance on Rolex watches, cars and luxury property prior to becoming suspects.

These allegations of lavish spending, aired in a widely watched televised trial, made the case notorious in the US.

That original trial ended with a hung jury after the Menendez brothers submitted allegations of abuse spanning several years.

At a second trial, the abuse claims were largely withheld. The brothers were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1996.

Lyle Menendez was 21 and Erik Menendez was 18 at the time of the murders.

New evidence now being considered includes a 1988 letter from Erik Menendez to his cousin, which reportedly appears to reference his father’s abuse.

“None of this information has been confirmed,” Gascon – the most senior prosecutor in LA Country – told a news conference.

He continued: “We are not, at this point, ready to say that we either believe or do not believe that information.

“But we’re here to tell you that we have a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us.”

He added that his team was “not saying there was anything wrong with the original trial”.

Gascon said a review could potentially lead to resentencing or a new trial. A hearing is set for 26 November, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reports.

Gascon said his office had received an influx of calls following the release of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story on Netflix

The drama has caused controversy, with relatives saying the brothers had been “victimised by this grotesque shockadrama”.

The show’s creator Ryan Murphy has defended the series, and described the family’s negative reaction as “predictable at best”.

On Thursday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian voiced her support for the brothers, further fuelling renewed popular interest in the case.

“They are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, honest men,” she said in an article for NBC News.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the first diagnostic test for mpox where the results can be immediately known, saying it could prove pivotal in helping to stop the rising global cases of the deadly virus.

The new PCR test enables the detection of the mpox DNA taken from skin lesion swabs.

Currently, samples have to be sent to a laboratory for testing and the patient and medics have to wait days for the result.

Limited testing capacity and delays in confirming cases continue to be a challenge in Africa – worsening the spread of mpox that was previously known as monkeypox.

Of the more than 30,000 suspected cases reported in Africa this year, barely 40% had been confirmed through a test, the WHO said.

Yukiko Nakatani, the WHO’s assistant director-general, described the new diagnostic test as “a significant milestone”.

“Increasing access to quality-assured medical products is central to our efforts in assisting countries to contain the spread of the virus and protect their people, especially in underserved regions,” she added.

The breakthrough comes as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the highest number of cases has been reported, prepares to begin an mpox vaccination programme on Saturday.

Mpox, which is a highly contagious disease, has killed at least 635 people in that country this year.

• What is mpox and how is it spread?
• Nurses working in fear: BBC visits mpox epicentre

In August, the outbreak of the virus was declared a global public health emergency by the WHO for the second time in two years, following rising cases in DR Congo and its spread to neighbouring Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda.

Some Western countries have donated doses of mpox vaccines to combat the outbreak of the disease in Africa but reports say more are urgently needed.

Rwanda, which was the first to administer mpox vaccines in Africa last month, is set to receive 5,000 more doses on Friday, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

In Nigeria, a vaccination drive against the virus is set to be rolled out next Tuesday, the Africa CDC said.

Frontline healthcare workers and close contacts of infected patients are set to be given priority in DR Congo, which has 200,000 vaccines donated by the European Commission, it said.

• The children bearing the brunt of the mpox outbreak
• ‘Mpox made my throat so painful I couldn’t sleep’
• How worried should we be about mpox?

Big taxes will be imposed on imports of electric vehicles from China to the EU after the majority of member states backed the plans.

The move to introduce tariffs aims to protect the European car industry from being undermined by what EU politicians believe are unfair Chinese-state subsidies on its own cars.

Tariffs on electric cars made in China are set to rise from 10% to up to 45% for the next five years, but there have been concerns such a move could raise electric vehicle (EV) prices for buyers.

The decision, which split EU member states such as France and Germany, risks sparking a trade war between Brussels and Beijing, which has condemned the tariffs as protectionist.

China has been counting on high-tech products to help revive its flagging economy and the EU is the largest overseas market for the country’s electric car industry.

Its domestic car industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades and its brands, such as BYD, have begun moving into international markets, prompting fears from the likes of the EU that its own companies will be unable to compete with the cheaper prices.

The EU imposed import tariffs of varying levels on different Chinese manufacturers in the summer, but Friday’s vote was to decide if they were implemented for the next five years.

The charges were calculated based on estimates of how much Chinese state aid each manufacturer has received following an EU investigation. The European Commission set individual duties on three major Chinese EV brands – SAIC, BYD and Geely.

EU members were divided on tariffs. Germany, whose car manufacturing industry is heavily dependent on exports to China, was against them. Many EU members abstained in the vote.

German carmakers have been vocal in opposition. Volkswagen says tariffs are “the wrong approach”.

However, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland were reported to have backed the import taxes. The tariffs proposal could only have been blocked if a qualified majority of 15 members voted against it.

Germany’s top industry association, BDI, called on the European Union and China to continue trade talks over tariffs to avoid an “escalating trade conflict”.

The European Commission, which held the vote, said the EU and China would “work hard to explore an alternative solution” to the import taxes to address what it called “injurious subsidisation” of Chinese electric vehicles.

China’s Commerce Ministry called the decision to impose tariffs “unfair” and “unreasonable”, but added the issue could be resolved through negotiations.

The dispute has raised fears among industry groups outside the car sector that they could face retaliatory tariffs from China.

A trade body for the French cognac industry said the French authorities “have abandoned us”.

“We do not understand why our sector is being sacrificed in this way.”

It said a negotiated solution needed to be found that would “prevent our products from facing a surtax that could exclude them from the Chinese market”.

Figures show that in August this year, EU registrations of battery-electric cars fell by 43.9% from a year earlier.

In the UK, demand for new electric vehicles hit a new record in September, but orders were mostly driven by commercial deals and by big manufacturer discounts, according to the industry trade body.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said firms had “serious concerns as the market is not growing quickly enough to meet mandated targets”.

The industry has warned that drivers need better incentives to buy electric to help manufacturers ahead of the planned ban on sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles. Under the Conservative government the deadline for this ban was pushed back to 2035 from 2030, but Labour has pledged to bring it back to 2030.

Car makers are required to meet electric vehicle sales targets. Under the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, at least 22% of vehicles sold this year must be zero-emission, with the target expected to hit 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

Manufacturers that fail to hit quotas could be fined £15,000 per car.

The bosses of several car companies, including BMW, Ford and Nissan, wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Friday saying the industry was likely to miss these targets.

They said economic factors such as higher energy and material costs and interest rates had meant electric cars remained “stubbornly more expensive and consumers are wary of investing”. The average cost to buy an electric car in the UK is around £48,000.

They said a “lack of confidence” in the UK’s charging infrastructure was another barrier to encourage people to switch to electric.

Flash floods and landslides in central Bosnia-Herzegovina have left at least 18 people dead, with towns and villages cut off and reports in some places of homes being almost submerged.

Some of the worst scenes were in the area around Jablanica, a town on the main route between the cities of Mostar and the capital, Sarajevo, about 70km (40 miles) to the north-east.

A number of other people have been reported missing and a state of emergency has been declared.

Development minister Vojin Mijatovic said the country had witnessed a terrible disaster and appealed for calm.

Rivers burst their banks after an overnight storm and aerial photos showed many towns and villages left inundated.

Roads, bridges and railway tracks were washed away or blocked by debris, while landslides left houses buried in rocks and earth as high as their upper storeys.

The main M-17 route, which runs alongside the River Neretva was covered in debris close to Jablanica and a 17km-stretch of railway was badly damaged between nearby Ostrozac and Grabovica to the west. One 200m stretch of track was left hanging in the air by a landslide close to the river south of Jablanica.

The local authority in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton warned drivers to avoid dangerous roads around Jablanica.

Further east along the Neretva river, one homeowner told Bosnian media that water had flooded house at 03:30 on Friday and that they barely managed to save their son before escaping to neighbours and seeing their house collapse.

Meanwhile, 20km to the west of the capital around around Kiseljak, a torrent of water flooded the streets, leaving cars submerged.

The flooding was not confined to Bosnia. In neighbouring Montenegro, roads were washed away leaving the village of Komarnica cut off.

Water levels were also rising in some of Croatia’s rivers, and the government in Zagreb said there was a risk of some areas in the city of Karlovac being flooded close the Kupa river.

Much of Central Europe was hit by floods last month, with some of the worst devastation in Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said one four-day period had been the rainiest ever recorded in the region. They said the floods had been made much worse by climate change.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent. The last five years were on average around 2.3C warmer than the second half of the 19th Century, according to the Copernicus climate service.

An Israeli air strike has hit near the main border crossing point for people fleeing the escalating bombing and ground campaign in Lebanon for neighbouring Syria.

Israel’s military said it had hit Hezbollah targets near the Masnaa crossing, and earlier claimed the group was using it to smuggle weapons into Lebanon.

The strike on Friday destroyed a section of the road and effectively cut off vehicle access.

People are still able to make the journey on foot, with pictures showing families clambering over rubble and scrambling through the four-metre crater in the road to get out of the country.

More than 300,000 people have left Lebanon for Syria in the past 10 days to flee the bombing, according to Lebanese government figures.

The strike on Friday hit the road 700m from the checkpoint on the Lebanese side, and around 5km (3.1 miles) from the border itself.

Aid workers said the destruction of the road near Masnaa crossing hinders both the movement of people and also food and humanitarian supplies.

• BBC Verify: A closer look at the crater damage near Syria’s border crossing

“It will mean that goods which would normally come overland through that crossing – the cheapest, most effective way to bring commodities into that country – will also not be able to be received here,” Matthew Hollingworth, the director of the UN’s World Food programme, told the BBC.

Mr Hollingworth stressed that it was essential for other routes leading out of Lebanon – particularly those in the north – to remain unhindered.

“We really would press that they remain open because they will be critical for people to leave, and also for humanitarian commodities to come in,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The Masnaa crossing in Lebanon’s east had been the main path for people to move into Syria, and then onto Jordan and the Gulf States, while in Lebanon the road had also connected west to the capital Beirut on the coast, which has been heavily bombed in recent days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Friday said it had targeted a site at the border crossing where “weapons were transferred to Hezbollah”, and also a 3.5km underground tunnel between Lebanon and Syria, the location of which was not specified.

In a statement issued before the strike, the IDF said the crossing had become the “primary border crossing for Hezbollah’s weapons transfers” and accused the group of concealing “smuggling activity among civilian trucks and vehicles”. It called on Lebanon to thoroughly inspect trucks.

Many people moving east are Syrian nationals living in Lebanon, who have headed back to their own country to escape Israel’s bombardments.

The BBC spoke to one woman in Beirut, who had sent her son back to Syria this week because the capital was too dangerous.

“I found a lot of people from our neighbourhood heading for Syria, so I sent him with them,” she said.

Syria’s government said on Sunday that for the next week people crossing the border would no longer have to pay $100 to enter the country.

On Friday, strikes also hit near Lebanon’s only commercial airport, the Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. The airport borders the suburb of Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the city, and a continued target of Israeli air strikes.

Major strikes there one week ago killed the long-time leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Reports indicated that the new strikes on Friday morning were aimed at the group’s new leadership, including a potential new overall leader, Hashem Safieddine.

Lebanon’s public health ministry said 37 people had been killed in ground and air attacks on Thursday while 151 others had been wounded.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli air strikes since fighting escalated just over two weeks ago, the Lebanese health ministry says.

Israeli forces on Friday also told residents of another two dozen towns and villages in the South, including the regional capital city of Nabatieh, to leave immediately for their safety.

The new order applies to communities further inland, north of the Litani river, about 30km from the border with Israel.

The river is a crucial marker as Israel has previously demanded that Hezbollah withdraw to the Litani, as per the UN Security Council resolution that ended their last war in 2006. But there are concerns in Lebanon that Israel will seek to occupy part of the country’s south again.

At least 18 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said late on Thursday.

The Palestinian Authority-run news agency Wafa said the strike had hit a cafe in the Tulkarm refugee camp where many civilians were present.

The Israeli military said the air force had conducted a strike in Tulkarm in a joint operation with its Shin Bet security service, killing the city’s Hamas leader and “other significant terrorists”.

There was a further spike in violence in the West Bank after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza, in what was already the territory’s deadliest year on record.

Since then, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Palestinian health ministry, as Israeli forces have intensified their raids. The IDF has said it is trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

The Israeli military has carried out dozens of air strikes in the occupied West Bank in the past year, but normally using drones or helicopters.

One resident from the area told AFP news agency the Israeli had “hit a cafeteria in a three-story building.”

“There are many victims in the hospital,” the resident added.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Watch: Moment giant explosions seen near Beirut airport
• Explained: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
• Explained: Israel-Hezbollah conflict in maps: Where is fighting happening in Lebanon?
• Six hours at hands of Hamas – new accounts show how Israeli base fell on 7 October

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike had killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, who it said had attempted a car bombing last month and supplied weapons.

It said he had been planning another attack imminently, and was killed along with several other Hamas operatives.

Wafa quoted a local official as saying children and elderly people from several families had been killed in the strike. There were also a large number of injured.

A local cafe owner and brother of one of those killed told Reuters news agency: “We are used to missile sounds, drones and the explosive drones, but the sound was strong.

“We haven’t heard this sound since 2002, during the second Palestinian uprising.”

Another witness, named as Abdallah Kanana, told the agency he was thrown from his chair as a result of the explosion.

Tulkarm was one of the towns and Palestinian refugee camps targeted during a major Israeli military operation in August.

Last month UN rights chief Volker Turk said major Israeli operations in the occupied West Bank were taking place “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades”.

Meanwhile, at least 24 Israelis including members of the security forces have been killed by Palestinian attackers in the same period, according to Israeli officials.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, a missile tore through a building in the heart of Beirut, far from where Hezbollah’s presence is strongest in the south.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was a “precise strike”.

Unlike for many of the other strikes targeting Hezbollah in recent days in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the IDF did not issue an evacuation order in advance.

Five members of staff and two volunteer paramedics at a health facility located in the same building were killed, according to the Hezbollah-linked civil defence agency – an emergency response organisation. Nine died in total, according to Lebanese authorities.

BBC News teams went to the scene and tried to piece together what happened.

“I felt that my heart was going to stop – it was pounding very, very loud,” one witness told the BBC.

The sound of the missile hitting the 12-storey building was heard across the Lebanese capital and smoke was still drifting into the air the following morning.

The building which was targeted is in Bachoura, a largely residential part of the city, and a matter of metres from the Lebanese parliament building.

It is more than 4km (2.5 miles) from Dahieh, where Hezbollah has a strong presence and which has been the focus of Israeli strikes in recent weeks – including the one which killed the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah last week.

The IDF has carried out hundreds of strikes in Lebanon in the past one and a half weeks in an effort to dismantle Hezbollah’s leadership and ability to launch rockets, missiles and drones into Israel – something the Iran-backed group has done on an almost daily basis since Hamas, its Palestinian ally, launched a deadly raid into southern Israel almost a year ago, triggering the Gaza war.

Tens of thousands have died in fighting since, mainly Palestinians in Gaza, and dozens of strikes have targeted Beirut in recent days. And in Lebanon more than 2,000 people have died, according to the health ministry.

On the second floor of the Bachoura high-rise block, below several apartments, was a medical facility run by the Islamic Health Committee (IHC), which is affiliated with Hezbollah.

The group has a very extensive network of services that spans into supermarkets and schools. It provides medical care to people living in areas with a strong Hezbollah presence, who rely on its centres for treatment, medication and paramedics.

The missile hit one of these centres shortly after midnight.

Witnesses said the area was busy at the time and as the sound of the explosion rang out, children began to scream.

Efforts to clear the rubble were still ongoing when BBC teams arrived at the scene on Thursday morning.

Medical equipment like gloves and masks were visible in the wreckage.

Hassan Ammar, 82, told the BBC he had been living in the building which was struck for 24 years with his wife and two daughters.

He characterised the health service housed in his building as “helping all the Lebanese” and “just like the Red Cross, but an Islamic one”.

“When we heard the strike, I ran out of the building with my wife and daughters, our apartment was severely damaged,” he said.

“This is a civilian facility – why would they target a civilian facility?”

The IDF has not commented on the Bachoura strike but has repeatedly said it does not target civilian infrastructure.

The following morning, Amin Sherri – a Hezbollah MP – arrived at the scene thronged by journalists.

In 2019, he was designated a financer of terrorism by the US Treasury, which accused him of threatening Lebanese bank officials and their families after it froze the accounts of a Hezbollah member.

The US also accused him of having “extensive ties” to Hezbollah financiers, and it released a picture purporting to show Sherri alongside the late Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ overseas operation arm before he was killed in a US strike in Iraq in 2020.

Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organisation in the UK, US and European Union.

On Thursday morning, Sherri held an impromptu news conference at the site of the strike and accused the IDF of deliberately attacking the medical facility.

He said: “We will continue this resistance and confrontation, and we will not abandon our responsibilities.”

Throughout the morning, there was chaos outside the devastated Bachoura medical centre – and a palpable sense of anger.

“As soon as we heard the air raid, we came out of the building running, children were screaming, sometimes you feel your heart is going to stop,” one man said.

He insisted the medical centre served many locals and did not have a political or military function.

BBC News was unable to get access to the interior of the deserted building.

People who lived above the centre said they did not know where they would go tonight.

Kamal, a paramedic at the centre, said staffing had recently been increased in light of the fighting.

“This is why most of the casualties were medics,” he said. Some of those killed were sleeping when the missile hit, he said.

The strike in Bachoura was condemned by the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, who said the IDF had “targeted once again healthcare workers”.

He said the strike had killed civilians in a densely populated area, and denied others access to emergency care, before characterising it as a violation of international humanitarian law.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization said 28 healthcare workers were killed in the 24 hours previous in Lebanon, and many more “are not reporting to duty” because they had been forced to flee.

Israel says it is necessary to take on Hezbollah in order for people in the north of the country to be able to return to their homes.

BBC News has contacted the IDF for comment.

As China prepared to celebrate its Golden Week holiday and mark the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic, the ruling Communist Party rolled out a raft of measures aimed at boosting its ailing economy.

The plans included help for the country’s crisis-hit property industry, support for the stock market, cash handouts for the poor and more government spending.

Shares in mainland China and Hong Kong chalked up record gains after the announcements.

But economists warn the policies may not be enough to fix China’s economic problems.

Some of the new measures announced by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on 24 September took direct aim at the country’s beaten-down stock market.

The new tools included funding worth 800bn yuan ($114bn; £85.6bn) that can be borrowed by insurers, brokers and asset managers to buy shares.

PBOC governor, Pan Gongsheng, also said the central bank would offer support to listed companies that want to buy back their own shares and announced plans to lower borrowing costs, and allow banks to increase their lending.

Just two days after the PBOC’s announcement, President Xi Jinping chaired a surprise economy-focused meeting of the country’s top leaders, known as the Politburo.

Officials promised to intensify government spending aimed to support the economy.

On Monday, the day before China headed off for a weeklong holiday, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index jumped by more than 8%, in its best day since the 2008 global financial crisis. The move capped off a five-day rally that saw the index jump by 20%.

The following day, with markets closed on the mainland, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose by over 6%.

“Investors loved the announcements”, China analyst, Bill Bishop said.

While investors may have been popping champagne corks, Xi has deeper issues to tackle.

The People’s Republic marking its 75th anniversary means it has been in existence longer than the only other major communist state – the Soviet Union – which collapsed 74 years after its founding.

“Avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union has long been a key concern for China’s leaders,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

At the forefront of officials’ minds will be boosting confidence in the broader economy amid growing concerns that it may miss its own 5% annual growth target.

“In China targets must be met, by any means necessary,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

“The leadership worries that failing to meet them in 2024 will worsen a downward spiral of slow growth and low confidence.”

One of the main drags on the world’s second-largest economy has been the downturn in the country’s property market which began three years ago.

Aside from policies aimed at boosting stocks, the recently unveiled stimulus package also targeted the real estate industry.

It includes measures to increase bank lending, mortgage rate cuts and lower minimum down payments for second-home buyers.

But there’s scepticism that such moves are enough to shore up the housing market.

“Those measures are welcome but unlikely to shift the needle much in isolation,” said Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“China’s weakness stems from a crisis of confidence, not one of credit; firms and families don’t want to borrow, regardless of how cheap it is to do so.”

At the Politburo session, leaders vowed to go beyond the interest rate cuts and tap government funds to boost economic growth.

However, beyond setting priorities like stabilising the property market, supporting consumption and boosting employment, the officials offered little in the way of details about the size and scope of government spending.

“Should the fiscal stimulus fall short of market expectations, investors could be disappointed,” warned Qian Wang, chief economist for the Asia Pacific region at Vanguard.

“In addition, cyclical policy stimulus does not fix the structural problems,” Ms Wang noted, suggesting that without deeper reforms the problems China’s economy faces will not go away.

Economists see tackling entrenched problems in the real estate market as key to fixing the broader economy.

Property is the biggest investment most families will make and falling house prices have helped undermine consumer confidence.

“Ensuring the delivery of pre-sold but unfinished homes would be key,” said a note from Sophie Altermatt, an economist with Julius Baer.

“In order to increase domestic consumption on a sustainable basis, fiscal support for household incomes needs to go beyond one-off transfers and rather come through improved pension and social security systems.”

On the day of the 75th anniversary, an editorial in the state-controlled newspaper, People’s Daily, struck an optimistic tone, recognising that “while the journey ahead remains challenging, the future is promising”.

According to the article, concepts created by President Xi such as “high-quality development” and “new productive forces” are key to unlocking that path to a better future.

The emphasis on those ideas reflects Xi’s push to switch from the fast drivers of growth in the past such as property and infrastructure investment, while trying to develop a more balanced economy based on high-end industries.

The challenge China faces, according to Ms Ang, is that the “old and the new economies are deeply intertwined; if the old economy falters too quickly, it will inevitably hinder the rise of the new”.

“This is what the leadership has come to realise and is responding to.”

As always, the Australian Grand Prix in 2006 was an eclectic buffet of fame and power – with everyone from actress Amanda Bynes to the Dutch Prime Minister, a 70s pop star, and the original Blue Wiggle treading pit lane.

Unnoticed in a corner, making small talk with Italian driver Jarno Trulli and former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, was none other than 16-year-old Daniel Ricciardo.

The Perth boy had won a pass to the race – having been crowned Australian go-karting champion the year before – and on that day in April his world shifted.

Family friend and then mentor Remo Luciani jokes it was meeting Hawkins that did it: “He was practically drooling.”

But while rubbing shoulders with Formula 1 stars and feeling the rumbling roar of their engines, the shy teen got his first real taste of the life he was doggedly chasing.

“I think he saw the picture – ‘this is where I belong, this is what I want to do’,” Luciani tells the BBC.

Fast forward a few years and he’d not only become part of that world, but “a main character” in it.

But after 13 years in the sport – with an impressive 257 races, 32 podiums, and eight wins – his F1 career came to an end last week, after Red Bull dropped him from its team.

He bows out as one of the most successful and popular drivers on the circuit and the golden boy of Australian motorsport.

From the moment his motorsport-mad father let him on a go-kart track as a nine-year-old, Ricciardo has been making an impression.

“There’s those who get it at that age, and those that don’t, and he got it pretty quickly,” Tiger Kart Club stalwart John Wishart says.

Ricciardo didn’t blow the competition out of the water, but he quickly established himself as a fast but fair rival, with an infectious personality and fierce competitive spirit – a reputation he’s hung on to his entire career.

“What you see on the TV of Daniel today, he was exactly the same as a kid,” childhood friend Lewis Shugar tells the BBC.

“He was always laughing and having a good time, and if things didn’t go right for him, he still had a smile on his face,” Wishart says. “That in itself is a special talent.”

As he started to notch up race wins around Western Australia, chatter of his promise spread to the east coast.

Ricciardo soon joined Remo Racing – a self-styled development squad run by Luciani in Victoria.

“He was a very, very quick learner, and he was determined. He wanted to always go faster. I could see the hunger in him,” says Luciani – himself a karting legend and Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductee.

Ricciardo won his first race with the team in 2005 and went on to take out the national go-karting championship that year, while also racing Formula Ford cars in his home state.

And with that, he was on his way overseas – a “big move” that Ricciardo has said “changed everything”.

Each passing year brought a new step up the ladder. In 2006 he raced in Asia, before moving to Italy the year after, then signing to the Red Bull development programme as a “shy” and “immature” 18-year-old in 2008.

“Having that responsibility, that pressure, all of that, it forced me to grow up,” he told CNN Sport earlier this month.

In 2011 he made his long-awaited grand prix debut at Silverstone, on loan to Spanish team HRT, thrilling his supporters back home.

One described him as beating one-in-10-million odds.

“Just to sit in an F1 car is something that hardly anybody will ever do – so even just to have that opportunity is incredible,” Shugar says.

But Ricciardo wasn’t satisfied with just any spot on the grid, and by 2014 he’d earned a call up to the main Red Bull team, replacing fellow countryman Mark Webber.

“I’m ready,” Ricciardo declared at the time: “I’m not here to run around in 10th place.”

True to his word, he won three races that year, outperforming teammate and defending champion Sebastian Vettel.

Over his four years at Red Bull, he became known as the Honey Badger – for the affable demeanour which belied his killer racing instincts.

“His trademark was these terrific late-braking moves that would catch drivers by surprise,” Australian F1 journalist Michael Lamonato told the BBC.

“He always said he wanted the kind of reputation that meant he would be feared when another driver would see him in their mirrors, and I think he really achieved that.”

At the same time, his popularity off the track was soaring, even before the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive took F1 to new levels of acclaim.

“Daniel was one of the characters that was beginning to transcend the sport,” Lamonato says.

His signature shoey celebration – which is credited with popularising the practice in Australia – memeable media sound bites and humorous stunts have enamoured him to legions the world over.

“He seems like a mate, someone you could make friends with at the pub,” Melbourne fan Issy Futcher says.

“He’s made for this kind of stardom.”

The pinnacle of his career came with a gutsy win in Monaco in 2018, when he defended his lead for 50 laps while battling a failing engine, two years after a botched pit stop at the same circuit saw victory slip through his fingers.

“This was a redemption race… it really is his defining win,” Lamonato says.

But after ill-fated moves to Renault in 2019 and McLaren in 2021, where he struggled to replicate his previous success, he was left floundering in 2023 and returned to the broader Red Bull fold as a reserve driver.

He re-joined the starting line-up in its junior team – now called RB – halfway through the season though was soon derailed by a broken wrist and his form never recovered throughout 2024.

Rumours began to circulate and when the Singapore Grand Prix rolled around on 22 September, the writing was on the wall. In one last hurrah, Ricciardo was given a fresh set of tyres and set the fastest lap of the race.

After finishing last, the 35-year-old lingered in the cockpit for a beat.

In a teary post-race interview, Ricciardo said he was battling a lot of emotions.

“I’m aware it could be it,” he said. “I just wanted to savour the moment.”

He had only wanted to return to the grid if he could get podiums and so was “at peace” with his impending fate, he told Sky Sports.

Days later, Red Bull confirmed he would be replaced for the rest of the season by young Kiwi Liam Lawson – news that stirred outrage and cries of mistreatment.

Team boss Christian Horner said Ricciardo’s statistics and accolades weren’t the only measure of his success.

“From the moment you arrived at Red Bull it was obvious you were so much more than just a driver. Your constant enthusiasm, sense of humour and attitude will leave an indelible legacy,” he said.

Amid a wave of tributes from his peers, Ricciardo said it had been a “wild and wonderful” journey.

“I’ve loved this sport my whole life… It’ll always have its highs and lows, but it’s been fun and truth be told I wouldn’t change it,” he wrote on Instagram.

“Until the next adventure.”

While details of that next adventure are hotly anticipated, Lamonato says Ricciardo has already cemented himself as one of the most underrated F1 drivers.

“The best way to sum up Daniel Ricciardo is a driver of immense potential who suffered what so many do, and that is career wrong turns.”

His long career is near unmatched – only nine drivers have started more races – and his wins and podiums both put him in the top 40 drivers of all time, particularly impressive when factoring in that all were achieved without racing for the dominant team of the day.

And his legacy is already stamped at home in Australia – where karting figures say he’s inspired both an increase in grassroots participation and the next wave of Australian racing stars like Oscar Piastri and Jack Doohan.

Statistically, Ricciardo will be the fourth most successful of Australia’s F1 stars, but many think he’ll be remembered as the biggest.

“I don’t think anyone will have had an effect similar to him in terms of bringing the sport home to the audience,” Lamonato says.

“[He] did Australia proud,” Luciani concludes.

“I would say that maybe half of our studio is currently working under the constant threat of being killed,” says Evgeniy Kulik.

Evgeniy is a technical producer on Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, an upcoming video game developed by Kyiv-based developer GSC Game World.

It’s a title fans of the original, released in 2007, have been awaiting for some time.

But it might not have happened at all, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

BBC Newsbeat spoke to Evgeniy about how Stalker 2’s developers kept going, losing colleagues to war, and why the studio feels it’s so important for them to complete the game.

The Chernobyl power plant was the site of the world’s worst-ever nuclear accident.

In 1986, when the country was under the control of the Soviet Union, there was an explosion at the nuclear power plant 90 miles from Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

At least 31 people were killed in the immediate aftermath and the blast created a fire that burned for 10 days, sending a plume of radioactive smoke across Europe.

A 30-mile exclusion zone was set up around the nuclear reactor to keep people out, although the Ukrainian government had begun to admit tourists into the area before Russia’s invasion.

• Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment

The original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, was set on an alternative timeline where a second nuclear disaster had struck, creating an array of mutant creatures and other unnatural phenomena.

Players took the role of a character tasked with exploring the post-apocalyptic setting and navigating the various factions fighting for control of the wasteland.

The decision to set the game at the site was controversial – one developer has said “the blood was still warm and it flowed in our veins” – even 30 years later.

But the game was a big hit, and Stalker 2 was first announced in 2010 – with the intention to build on the original’s survival gameplay style.

In 2018, GSC Game World announced that it was working towards an April 2022 release date.

But just two months before that arrived, Russian troops and planes began to cross the border with Ukraine.

War had begun.

Stalker 2 is now due to come out on PC and Xbox in November, but a documentary about the making of the game was released this week.

It shows members of the development team talking about the dawning realisation that Russia was about to invade.

Lead producer Mariia Grygorovych remembers commissioning buses to wait outside the company’s offices in Kyiv, ready to transport employees and their families to Ukraine’s western border.

Ultimately, just over 180 made the journey when the invasion began, with 139 choosing to stay behind and help the war effort.

Some have joined the military while others have continued to work on Stalker 2 in between their duties.

Those who evacuated eventually set up a second studio in Prague, in the Czech Republic, rebuilding motion capture and audio studios from scratch.

It also features members of the team who stayed in Ukraine talking about fighting for their country while continuing to work on the game.

“We load our weapons with one hand and make our game with the other,” says one.

Speaking to Newsbeat during the Gamescom expo in Cologne, Germany, Evgeniy tells Newsbeat much of Stalker 2’s large Russian fanbase was unsupportive during the early days of the war.

After the conflict broke out, the game’s subtitle was altered to Heart of Chornobyl, to reflect the Ukrainian spelling of the name.

Russian voiceovers and subtitles have also been removed, and GSC has refused to release the game in Russia.

The developers have blamed Ukraine’s opponent for regular attempts to hack its servers.

“We tried to get some support from those people,” says Evgeniy. “But instead we received a lot of negativity.

“So we decided to join up with the sanctions, let’s say.”

Ukraine has tried to keep cultural events going during wartime – it won Eurovision in 2022 and its largest music festival made a comeback this summer.

Evgeniy feels the same applies to Stalker 2.

“We would like to remind the world that Ukraine is capable of doing great games once again,” he says.

“Games are part of the culture as well, just like music, movies, arts, books, and so on.

“So, yeah, it is an important work to the world.”

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Evgeniy says the studio also owes it to staff who’ve upended their lives to move, or who’ve joined the military, to see their work through.

And the studio also wants to honour friends and colleagues who’ve died, such as Volodymyr Yehzov, a developer who was killed while defending Bahkmut from Russian troops.

“All those people really worked hard to make this happen and we should really push forward to make this happen and appreciate their effort,” says Evgeniy.

“To make this happen in the memory of those people.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

The huge asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone, scientists have confirmed.

A second, smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater during the same era.

It would have been a “catastrophic event”, the scientists say, causing a tsunami at least 800m high to tear across the Atlantic ocean.

Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University first found the Nadir crater in 2022, but a cloud of uncertainty hung over how it was really formed.

Now Dr Nicholson and his colleagues are sure that the 9km depression was caused by an asteroid hurtling into the seabed.

They cannot date the event exactly, or say whether it came before or after the asteroid which left the 180km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico. That one ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

But they say the smaller rock also came at the end of the Cretaceous period when they went extinct. As it crashed into Earth’s atmosphere, it would have formed a fireball.

“Imagine the asteroid was hitting Glasgow and you’re in Edinburgh, around 50 km away. The fireball would be about 24 times the size of the Sun in the sky – enough to set trees and plants on fire in Edinburgh,” Dr Nicholson says.

An extremely loud air blast would have followed, before seismic shaking about the size of a magnitude 7 earthquake.

Huge amounts of water probably left the seabed, and later cascaded back down creating unique imprints on the floor.

It is unusual for such large asteroids to crash out of our solar system on course for our planet within a short time of each other.

But the researchers don’t know why two hit Earth close together.

The asteroid that created the Nadir crater measured around 450-500m wide, and scientists think it hit Earth at about 72,000km/h.

The nearest humans have come to this scale of event was the Tunguska event in 1908 when a 50-metre asteroid exploded in the skies above Siberia.

The Nadir asteroid was about the size of Bennu, which is currently the most hazardous object orbiting near Earth.

Scientists say the most probable date that Bennu could hit Earth is 24 September 2182, according to Nasa. But it is still just a probability of 1 in 2,700.

There has never been an asteroid impact of this size in human history, and scientists normally have to study eroded craters on Earth or images of craters on other planets.

To further understand the Nadir crater, Dr Nicholson and team analysed high-resolution 3D data from a geophysical company called TGS.

Most craters are eroded but this one was well-preserved, meaning the scientists could look further into the rock levels.

“This is the first time that we’ve ever been able to see inside an impact crater like this – it’s really exciting,” says Dr Nicholson, adding there are just 20 marine craters in the world but none have been studied in detail like this.

The findings are reported in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

More than 90 years after India’s first Test match at Lord’s in 1932, Rohit Sharma’s team has made history. With a win over Bangladesh in Chennai last month, India now boasts more Test victories than losses, standing at 179 wins to 178 defeats across 580 Tests. Cricket writer Suresh Menon explores India’s remarkable transformation into a Test cricket powerhouse.

In every field of human endeavour, there are moments when circumstances and people align, sparking change.

In popular music this happened with the Beatles, where four boys emerged from the same place at the same time and created a new sound.

In sport, such changes are usually led by a single player who has around him a bunch who are almost as good. It happened in football with Pele as Brazil won three of four World Cups between 1958 and 1970 with him in the side.

With the arrival of a baby-faced Sachin Tendulkar, the fortunes of Indian cricket changed. His supporting cast was just as important to the transformation: Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh and MS Dhoni. Many would find a place in a team of all-time India greats.

Before Tendulkar’s debut in November 1989, India had won just 43 Tests and lost more than twice that number out of the 257 matches played. The remaining were draws.

In the Tendulkar era, India registered 78 wins against 60 losses out of the 217 matches played.

But it was a period when the number of draws – 79 – was still significant. Only seven wins had come in the “SANE” countries: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and England. Draws in these countries were still seen as victory of sorts – the mindset with which India began international cricket.

Domestically, changes were happening. Led by Ganguly, and carried forward by Dhoni, India were discovering players beyond the traditional centres. If you were good enough, it didn’t matter where you were from; you would get your chance. This was despite the cricket board itself and the various local bodies often being drenched in politics.

Tendulkar retired in 2013, and since then India have won 58 while losing just 29 Tests of the 106 played. Significantly, there have been only 19 draws.

India won back-to-back series in Australia as they matched their rivals for aggression and in self-belief. This was no longer merely a cricketing change now, it was a psychological one.

Virat Kohli occasionally went beyond the pale as skipper, but he was passionate about Test cricket and passionate about winning – an attitude that seeped into the team.

Set to chase 364 in his first Test as captain in Adelaide in 2014, India nearly pulled it off and lost the match by just 48 runs.

It was a turning point. A new approach was created. Kohli, who led India in most Tests, at 68, was allergic to draws. It meant India played positive cricket at all times. Kohli drew just 16% of his Tests, the lowest among the top six captains in history. Even Clive Lloyd had 35% draws.

Kohli had a talented bunch around him – Cheteswar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishant Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, KL Rahul. Again, players were discovered outside the traditional centres.

Another psychological change was that India no longer worshipped at the altar of orthodoxy. Effectiveness was more important than style. Jasprit Bumrah, who fast-tracked into international cricket, and is possibly India’s greatest fast bowler, might not have made it in earlier generations. He is unorthodox; coaches would have recommended some other profession.

The cricket board too finally began to react to regular defeats abroad – India lost all Tests to Australia and England in a six-month span in 2011-12.

The golden generation was retiring. Much was made of the ineffectiveness of domestic cricket. The board decided that pitches had to help quick bowlers. It instructed curators to retain 3mm to 8mm grass on pitches. The result over a period was two-fold. India discovered a group of talented fast bowlers while also ensuring the batters could play fast bowling better.

You needed fast bowlers to win abroad consistently. The low points of Indian cricket can usually be traced to their weakness against fast bowling. In Manchester in 1952, they were dismissed twice on the same day – for 58 and 82 – as Fred Trueman and Alec Bedser ran through the side.

In the “Summer of 42” at Lord’s in 1974, they folded for 42 thanks to Geoff Arnold’s and Chris Old’s dominant bowling. It gave rise to one of the most cruel cartoons in sport, with a woman telling her husband emerging from the toilet, “You should have gone home. Now you have missed the entire Indian innings.”

However, India’s dismissal for 36 at Adelaide in 2020 inspired neither cartoons nor panic. That was accepted as a freak innings where every good ball picked a wicket and there were hardly any bad balls. But it required great confidence to pass it off as one of those things – that confidence carried India to victories in two Tests that followed, and with it the series.

There was a phase, 2002-2004, when India won Tests at Port of Spain, Leeds, Adelaide, Multan and Rawalpindi. But only in Pakistan did they win the series. Veteran writer David Frith thought India then had the finest Top 6 batting line-up in the history of the game. There was both heft and elegance, a rare combination.

But that team did not live up to its potential. This is one of the ironies of Indian cricket – that their most celebrated team did not dominate as they should have.

What the current team has is heart. That 36 in Adelaide and 78 in Leeds serve to highlight the temperament of players who can let bygones be bygones and remember only the good times. It is a rare quality in an individual, even rarer in a team.

In the past, Indian teams always had a couple of outstanding individuals on whom everything rested. With Sunil Gavaskar dismissed, half the team was gone. If the great spinners were collared, there was no one to turn to until Kapil Dev came along, and if he had a bad day, that was that.

In the 1960s, India won only one series abroad, in New Zealand. That helped consolidate India’s biggest strength: spin bowling. That most romanticised generation led by a Nawab, Mansur Ali Khan of Pataudi, with its essentially amateur spirit was necessary. Just as necessary was the one represented by Tendulkar, when India performed with greater consistency.

All this was before the Kohli-led bunch of professionals could emerge. When India were first ranked No.1 in 2009, they had not won a series in Australia, South Africa or Sri Lanka. Now only South Africa remains.

Indian cricket has moved on, and now we are looking at the end game of the recent stars: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja. Already, Rishabh Pant, Bumrah, Shubhman Gill, Yashaswi Jaiswal and a host of emerging fast bowlers have indicated they are ready to take over. India play five Tests in Australia starting in November.

Suddenly the pressure is on Australia. The Tendulkar generation constructed a solid foundation, the Kohli-Sharma one has built on that. At the end of the Chennai Test against Bangladesh, India’s wins outstripped losses, 179-178 in 580 Tests. Statistical evidence of a new India, if such were needed.

Set against a backdrop of cliffside mansions, bronzed bodies, and vast ocean views – Bondi is the go-to suburb for international brands looking to launch down under.

So, when news broke on TikTok that a Crumbl Cookie pop-up was coming to Sydney’s iconic beachside hub, few raised questions.

With a host of famous fans, the US-based bakery chain – which only sells domestically and in Canada – has secured a cult-like following.

But when Australian foodies sunk their teeth into the treats, outrage spread like wildfire after it became clear they were eating days-old goods, sold by a few enterprising locals – with no connection to Crumbl – who had brought the cookies back in suitcases from Hawaii.

Adding insult to injury was the eye-watering price tag, with consumers paying A$17.50 ($12;£9) for the stale snacks, which had aged inside the belly of a commercial airline.

Labelled the great “cookie controversy” and “Crumblgate” by commentators, the doughy drama has sparked debate online – prompting calls for legal action to be taken against the sellers, as well as jabs against those willing to pay such an exorbitant amount simply to be pictured indulging in the latest trendy treat.

It even inspired a last-minute Washington Post Food review of the cookies, which ruled them “underwhelming” and “under baked”.

The saga unfolded after scores of people spent the day snaking around a commercial block in North Bondi on Sunday to secure their brightly coloured signature Crumbl box.

All of it was seemingly captured on TikTok – often in real-time – as consumer after consumer filmed themselves biting into the hardened treats, responding with a series of grimaces rather than delight.

“This is actually very bad… the texture is just weird,” one vlogger said.

“I spent A$150 on 10 cookies,” another woman blurted out mid-video, before offering a scathing review.

Another group recorded themselves simply sniffing the battered treats, before offering a ranking of 3/10.

The founder of the US company, quickly took to social media to clarify that the Australian pop-up, was not affiliated with his firm.

All of which prompted a confusing story, followed by an apology by the Sydney organisers.

In a statement, a spokesperson – who declined to give his full name – said that hundreds of the cookies had been purchased while on a trip to Hawaii and then brought back to Australia in luggage.

He said that everything the pop-up had done – including using professionally shot photographs of the sweets and mimicking the Crumbl branding – was “legal”.

And that they’d tried to adhere to the Crumbl storage requirements, which advises that the products can still be consumed after three days, if kept in an airtight container.

“We kept them to these requirements. Some were warmed to enhance their texture, which is what Crumbl does as well.

“We apologise that they don’t live up to expectations. However, they are just cookies at the end of the day,” the statement added.

The strangeness of a group of people “going on an international flight to go and procure biscuits” is not lost on Australian marketing expert Andrew Hughes, however he says the bait and switch tactics are far from new.

One recent example he pointed to was when scores of people bought tickets to a so-called Bridgerton-themed ball in Detroit, Michigan.

But instead of being met with the glitz, glamour and expensive food event organisers had promised, they were left with soggy noodles, a single violin, and a pole dancer.

To understand how these viral scams lure people in, it’s important to examine the powerful emotions elicited by the “fear of missing out” – or FOMO for short – Hughes says.

“In an age where information travel so quickly… people don’t want to be behind the curve. They act out of impulse instead of logic,” he explains.

It’s unclear whether the Crumbl spin off violated Australian consumer law, or whether those affected have grounds to act.

But beyond a few cease-and-desist letters, Hughes thinks it’s unlikely the US-brand will take further action.

“They’ll deny it. They’ll say it’s bad. But at the end of the day, it’s good publicity because it raises their brand awareness in Australia.

“All of a sudden, people who hadn’t heard of them are now talking about them.”

Nibi, a two-year-old beaver whose journey has captured the attention of Americans, will be allowed to stay at a wildlife rescue centre after Massachusetts’s governor intervened in the matter.

Nibi – who was raised in captivity – became the subject of a legal case over whether she would have to be released into the wild or could remain at the Newhouse Wildlife Rescue.

On Thursday, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey waded into the debate and issued a permit so the wildlife centre could keep Nibi, who has become a social media sensation.

“Nibi has captured the hearts of many of our residents, mine included,” Healey said on Thursday.

“We’re excited to share that we have issued a permit for Nibi to remain in Newhouse’s care, continuing to educate the public about this important species.”

In a statement on Facebook, Newhouse Wildlife Rescue said they were “beyond grateful” for the governor’s actions.

MassWildlife, the state’s division of fisheries and wildlife, had argued Nibi needed to be returned to the wild because she was a healthy mammal.

The wildlife group disagreed, arguing it would be dangerous to release her just before winter because she has been cared for by humans her whole life and has not acclimatised to the wild.

“We will not release an animal that we don’t believe can make it out in the wild,” the group wrote on Facebook.

Nibbi made her way to the rescue centre a year and a half ago after she was orphaned and found on the side of the road when she was just one week old, according to the wildlife group.

The rescue group said that after taking her in, they tried to connect her with another orphaned beaver so that she had a “buddy” and did not get close to humans. But the matchmaking was unsuccessful.

“Nibi wanted nothing to do with this other beaver,” the group said, calling her a “diva”.

Now, Nibi is old enough to go outside and spends much time in her outdoor enclosure with minimised interactions with humans, the centre said.

The group suggested Nibi could still be released into the wild one day if she becomes more independent – a process that might happen at about two years of age, when her hormones may change.

“We hope, once her hormones kick in, she will want nothing to do with us,” the group wrote.

The furry mammal’s case sparked a petition signed by thousands who wanted to prevent the celebrity beaver from being released.

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

• UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
• France’s Mr Africa spills the beans on secret cash
• Nigerian star Ruger open up ahead of London headline show
• Ethiopia festival fires burn bright despite downpour
• How a mega dam has caused a mega power crisis for Zambia

Hiring in the US surged unexpectedly last month, easing fears that the economy might be heading for a sudden, sharp downturn.

Employers in the US added 254,000 jobs in September, much more than expected, while the jobless rate dipped from 4.2% to 4.1%%, the Labor Department said.

That was the strongest gain since March, and was far higher than the roughly 150,000 many analysts had forecast.

President Joe Biden welcomed the report, one of the last major pieces of economic data that voters will receive before the presidential election.

Surveys indicate public doubts about the economy have remained persistent, as a 20% rise in prices since 2021 weighs on sentiment.

Over the past year, job growth has also slowed and the unemployment rate has been edging higher, though it remains at historically low levels.

Last month, the US central bank cut interest rates by a bigger-than-usual 0.5 percentage points, saying it wanted to avoid any further weakening in the labour market.

But Friday’s report showed solid wage gains and eased fears of a sudden change for the worse in the labour market.

“All in all, it was a much stronger report than we were anticipating,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead US economist at Oxford Economics.

“If anyone was worried about the labour market being so weak that we were on the verge of a recession, then that should eliminate those worries.”

Bars and restaurants led the hiring in September, adding 69,000 jobs, according to the report. Retailers and health care firms also reported job gains, while the manufacturing sector shed positions.

The Labor Department also updated its estimates of job creation in August and July, saying employers had added about 72,000 more jobs than previously thought.

Average hourly pay was up 4% over the last 12 months, according to the report, outpacing the pace of inflation during that time.

“Today, we received good news for American workers and families with more than 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment back down at 4.1%,” President Biden said.

“With today’s report, we’ve created 16 million jobs, unemployment remains low, and wages are growing faster than prices.”

However, analysts cautioned that September can be a quirky month for data, given the start of the school year. Next month, job figures may be hit by the labour strike at Boeing and damage from Hurricane Helene.

Analysts said they still thought the Fed would cut rates in the months ahead, noting that price inflation seems headed back to the bank’s 2% target.

But they said the stronger-than-expected job growth this month suggested the Federal Reserve would make smaller rate cuts in the future.

“They can move at a more measured pace,” Ms Vanden Houten said.

“To cause them to move more aggressively again, they would need to see something really worrisome… and this report definitely isn’t sending that signal.”

India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Pakistan this month, his ministry has announced.

This will be the first visit by a high ranking Indian minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade.

The trip comes after Mr Jaishankar’s Pakistani counterpart attended a similar meeting of foreign ministers from the SCO in India last year – he was the first senior Pakistani politician to visit since 2011.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been tense for years and they have fought three wars since they became independent nations in 1947 – two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The SCO is a political union of countries formed to discuss security and economic matters in Central Asia.

The organisation was created by China, Russia and four Central Asian countries in 2001 as a countermeasure to limit the influence of Western alliances such as Nato.

India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.

While India chaired the SCO in 2023, Pakistan will be hosting this year’s summit from 15 October to 16 October.

At a press briefing on Friday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that Mr Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan.

The last time an Indian foreign minister visited the nation was in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a security conference in Islamabad and held rare talks with Pakistani officials.

Days later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made a surprise trip to Lahore where he met then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Ties between India and Pakistan have always been strained but they hit a new low in 2019, when India launched strikes in Pakistani territory, following a militant attack on Indian troops in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it. Separatist insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir has led to thousands of deaths over three decades. India accuses Pakistan of supporting insurgents but its neighbour denies this.

A thaw of relations seemed in sight last year when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited the Indian state of Goa for a SCO meeting.

But Mr Zardari said his visit was “focussed exclusively on the SCO” and did not hold any direct talks with Mr Jaishankar during his trip.

In an interview with the BBC at that time, he said that the onus was on India to restart peace talks between the two countries.

The wife of a former volunteer fire chief killed during July’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, has told the BBC she is furious about the security failures that led to her husband’s killing by a rooftop gunman.

Corey Comperatore was shot dead after diving on members of his family to protect them as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire at the former president.

His wife Helen said she hasn’t been able to stop replaying the events of the day in her mind.

“I see it every time I close my eyes, and probably will for a long time” she said.

“I’m angry because there were a lot of mistakes made that day, and it didn’t have to happen,” she added.

Helen Comperatore spoke exclusively to the BBC just days before Trump is set to return to Butler and the site of the shooting.

The home she shared with Corey in Sarver is less than 20 miles (32 km) from the Butler rally site, and close enough to the volunteer fire station where he worked for decades that when its sirens blare they can be easily heard.

Trump will hold a rally on Saturday on the same grounds where he was shot in the ear, before defiantly raising his fist and mouthing “Fight!’, in what has become a defining image of his campaign.

Multiple members of the Comperatore family will be Trump’s guests at this weekend’s rally, including Helen.

Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the July shooting and two other people suffered “life-changing” injuries: 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver.

A Secret Service internal review has since identified a litany of security failures that day, including poor planning and a communication breakdown.

Corey, who was an ardent supporter of the current Republican presidential candidate, had been excited for the July rally, his wife said.

“He just liked how [Trump] got things done, and that he wasn’t a politician and he didn’t talk like one.”

She said they believe Trump understands the lives of people like them, in places like Butler, a working-class community just north of Pittsburgh.

At the rally, the family ended up by happenstance in the bleachers between Trump and the shooter.

They’d taken time to eat beforehand and missed the opening to get a seat – to Corey’s disappointment. But then a man came by and offered them a spot in the stands.

About six minutes into Trump’s speech, Crooks fired eight shots from a roof just outside the rally’s perimeter, one striking Trump’s right ear and one striking and killing Corey as he sheltered his family.

In the months before her husband was killed, the couple spent every weekend on their boat.

“We loved that time together,” Helen said.

“We talked about everything. We made a lot of future plans on that boat. I knew a lot about Corey and what his wishes were, if anything ever happened to him.”

The couple had known one another their entire lives – they began attending school together as kindergartners.

She said her husband often appeared straight-faced and serious, but behind the façade was a deeply kind and caring man.

“As soon as he smiled, you knew he was a good, good man,” she said.

“He did anything for his community. He loved his kids. His kids were everything to him.”

His two daughters, Allyson and Kaylee, are nurses and struggling to get back to work while they grieve their dad, Helen said.

She said now the questions of “What would he want me to do? What would Corey do?” help guide her.

“It’s definitely a struggle. I realised I always knew he took care of me, but I never realised just how much. I just miss him,” she said.

Corey Comperatore was honoured at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July, with his helmet and coat displayed on stage as Trump spoke.

Helen said at the July rally, Corey had hoped – and joked – that Trump might call him on stage.

The family watched the RNC moment on television, after Trump told Helen about the planned tribute.

“And I just cried because I said he got his moment on stage with Trump,” she said. “So, you know, it was kind of like a nice moment, but it was a sad moment at the same time.”

Iran’s missile strikes on Israel were “correct, logical, and lawful”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a vast crowd which had gathered to hear him speak in Tehran on Friday.

The country’s supreme leader described the attack as the “minimum punishment” for what he called Israel’s “astonishing crimes” while leading Friday prayers in the capital, something he has not done since 2020.

Khamenei’s speech came three days after Iran fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The Farsi-speaking supreme leader delivered part of his speech in Arabic to address Palestinian and Lebanese supporters.

During his sermon, Khamenei praised Nasrallah and voiced support for Hamas and Hezbollah, which he said provided “vital service to the entire region and the entire Islamic world”.

He said Iran-aligned armed groups “will not back down” in their conflict with Israel, which entered a new phase after Hamas launched deadly raids into Israel almost one year ago.

Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as other armed groups around the Middle East which have attacked Israel. They often dub themselves the “Axis of Resistance”.

In recent weeks, several senior leaders of Iran-backed groups and Iran’s powerful military wing, the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Israeli strikes or presumed Israeli assassinations.

The supreme leader’s appearance in front of a crowd of tens of thousands in Tehran is a sign of the gravity of the moment for the Iranian regime, which is facing widespread domestic discontent.

It could be read as an attempt to show strength and restore Iran’s credibility as leader of the “Axis of Resistance”.

The public appearance was also intended to show that Khamenei is not in hiding, after reports emerged that he had been taken to a secure location following Nasrallah’s assassination.

The Grand Mosalla Mosque was flooded with people after Iranians were given free transport to attend the sermon. A large Palestinian flag was seen in the crowd.

Khamenei holds ultimate power in Iran, but very rarely leads Friday prayers himself.

The last time he did was in 2020, after the US killed Iran’s most senior military commander, Qassem Soleimani. The time before that was in 2012.

Iran is still reeling from the loss of its allies Nasrallah and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran in July.

Israel is widely considered to be behind Haniyeh’s killing, though it has never commented on his death.

Khamenei also told the crowd that Iran would retaliate if, as expected, Israel launches a response to Tuesday’s missile attack.

“If we needed to do that again, we would do it again in the future,” Khamenei told supporters.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden suggested a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s oil infrastructure had been discussed, as Israel continued to weigh up how to strike back at Tehran.

On 1 October, Israel began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Shortly afterwards, Iran launched more than 180 missiles towards Israel.

With the war in Gaza still ongoing, fears of an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East remain high.

How big a danger is this threat of further escalation? For BBC InDepth, we asked a range of experts to share their analysis of why the conflict has escalated, and what might happen next.

Israel seems to have upgraded its goals from weakening Hezbollah to enforce a ceasefire deal that secures Israel’s north, to seeking to neutralise Hezbollah permanently. Despite inflicting huge losses on Hezbollah, Israel’s military campaign won’t make Hezbollah disappear.

It’s hard to know the difference between government rhetoric and what it will do on the ground. What they say they’re doing is removing the threat of Hezbollah to protect civilians in Northern Israel who live in sovereign territory and need to return after being displaced for a year as a result of ongoing rocket fire from Hezbollah, who joined the fight with Hamas after October 7. But this government also has religious forces setting forth, not a strategy, but a cosmic vision of conquest. And therefore we can’t rule out that there may be an expansionist ethos.

Israel would like the Lebanese state to reassert authority over Hezbollah. This reminds me of the 1982 Israeli ground war in Lebanon against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. That didn’t turn out so well in the long-term for Israeli citizens living near the Lebanese border. Israel in this case will need to focus on the short-term gain of calming the situation enough that its displaced 60,000 residents of northern Israel can return to their homes.

The balance of power in the Middle East is beginning to shift in a way that is weakening Iran’s influence in the region. But any such change in the status quo is a process that will take a long time to materialise.

It’s too soon to reach that conclusion, but what’s certain is the Iran-led axis is reeling and Israel seems to have achieved some significant tactical gains. Whether it can translate those to strategic gains through diplomacy remains to be seen.

Not the map, but the power balance for sure. For the past 20 years, Iran and its proxies (Hamas and Hezbollah) on one side and Israel on the other have held each other to a draw, meaning there was mutual deterrence. That was shattered on 7 October, and Israel is trying to get the upper hand.

It’s too soon to tell. My feeling is, talk to me in two weeks or talk to me in a year and we will know if there’s been a re-occupation of Southern Lebanon… At the same time, you have the conflict with Iran, but I don’t think they’re trying to redraw the borders in the Middle East.

The fact that Iran has clearly lost Hamas and Hezbollah as effective deterrents means that an increasing number of figures in the Iranian establishment are going to want to develop a nuclear weapon.

However, what does this mean in practice? And when will Israel find out? Israeli intelligence is pretty good in Iran – if Iran does start building a weapon, will Israel find out next week? If Iran goes ahead with this, it enters a very risky area. But as things stand, Iran’s conventional military capabilities are a joke compared to Israel’s, so it has relied on non-traditional means such as militias – which have proved to be of little use.

The nuclear ambition in Iran is a concern for Israel for obvious reasons. Anti-Israel animus remains central to the regime. For Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the project to destroy Israel is the oldest and most central demand. It’s the only project he’s been able to advance towards, and the only thing the Islamic Republic is a leader in is the anti-Israel project – it’s the only state in the world that shoots at Israel.

However, there is a more pragmatic element within the Iranian political establishment, which often gets forgotten, and which believes Iran has no business fighting the Palestinian war for the Palestinians.

Iran will do whatever it takes to secure its nuclear programme. It will perceive an Israeli attack on its nuclear programme as an existential threat.

It may be that in the Iranian perception, the only thing they’ve got left that could potentially genuinely be a game-changer, is to go nuclear. I don’t know what exactly that might mean – maybe they have a capability already, and they could demonstrate it by conducting a nuclear test in the desert somewhere.

Israel’s widening campaign is sowing increasing anger among the populations in the Middle East who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. This makes achieving peace in the future harder.

Certainly, a larger war will spread Israel thin, especially when it has yet to achieve the eradication of Hamas in Gaza. However, Israel continues to have the military support of the United States.

Israel has been fighting in Gaza for a year and there has been major destruction of Hamas brigades and a severe loss of fighters. The biggest problem for achieving its aims in Gaza is that Israel has no vision for an alternative governing force. The problem isn’t that Israeli forces are being spread thin, but that Israel needs a political strategy for a government framework that leads to Palestinian self-determination and has international and Palestinian buy-in. Without that, Gaza will be a constant threat and a constant military drain.

Israel cannot achieve its aims in Gaza because it doesn’t have a political aim – it never did, and it went to war without one. And this will potentially be its Achilles’ heel. But Netanyahu probably doesn’t feel like he needs to seek any kind of political outcome because he can go to endless war, and yet still have much of the Western world on his side.

Any American president can exert influence on Benjamin Netanyahu if he or she wants to. But none of them have thought it beneficial. Kamala Harris has less long-term baggage than Joe Biden in terms of wanting to give unconditional levels of support to Israel, but her party is internally divided – on one side there is strong support for Israel and on the other side, some are calling for an arms embargo. Those are a minority, but the Democratic voices calling to constrain Israel somehow are growing significantly. Trump is a wildcard. He talks big, but he doesn’t like America being dragged into wars.

I think Donald Trump might exert more influence than Kamala Harris. He is more pro-Netanyahu, or at least pro-right-wing Israel, but he’s very much against dragging the US into war.

Any US administration that is providing $10bn (£7.6bn) to help Israel’s military operations will have leverage, especially as Israel’s economy is suffering. The question is whether there is any US politician in a position of real authority who is willing to absorb the political cost domestically of using that leverage. At present there is not in either party. There is no Ronald Reagan or George HW Bush in prospect.

They’re harder to pinpoint with every missile fired or air strike launched.

I am very pessimistic about the prospects of de-escalation… most likely the perception within the Israel Defence Forces and at the political level within Netanayhu’s war cabinet is that they have the momentum. In warfare, when one side believes it has the momentum against its adversary, you don’t want to give it up, because you can continue to put pressure on your enemy.

This conflict will not be won militarily by any actor involved. Ultimately, diplomacy is the only way towards stability.

There are two obvious off-ramps. The first is for Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza that will pull back forces to agreed locations so that humanitarian aid can move and that allows for a new Palestinian governing authority that Palestinians, not Israelis or Americans, will choose. The second is for a ceasefire in Lebanon that will see Hezbollah cease rocket/missile attacks on Israel in return for Israel halting its airstrikes and ground incursions.

I don’t think Netanyahu is looking for off-ramps. But the one potential off-ramp is if there were major concessions from Iran, a major turnaround in Iranian policy, starting with the nuclear programme but including the support for Hezbollah and Hamas. I can’t imagine it happening, but that would be an off-ramp.

In Lebanon, the off-ramp is for a ceasefire and an agreement on new security arrangements in the south. I don’t think this option is available before the end of this year and while we’re awaiting a new US administration.

There are no off-ramps here unless the US and other major Western governments make it their business to change the direction of events on the ground in the Middle East.

One year on from the 7 October Hamas attacks, tough questions are still being asked within Israel about the deadliest day in its history, when the country’s powerful army was caught off guard and swiftly overwhelmed.

The BBC has heard accounts given to families of what happened at one military base that guarded the border with Gaza.

The Nahal Oz base was overrun by Hamas gunmen on the morning of 7 October and more than 60 Israeli soldiers are reported to have been killed – with others taken hostage.

Israel’s military is yet to publish its official inquiry into what happened there that day, but it has already briefed relatives of those killed there, and some have shared those details with the BBC.

This is the closest we have to an official account by Israel’s military of what happened on the day.

In an attempt to further piece together events, we have also spoken to survivors, seen messages from those who died, and listened to voice recordings reporting the attack as it happened, helping to build a picture of the speed and ferocity of the invasion.

The BBC has found:

• Suspicious activity was spotted by many soldiers at the base before 7 October, not just the young women whose job it was to monitor border cameras
• Soldiers noticed an abrupt stop to Hamas activity in the days before the attack
• Many Israeli troops there were unarmed and official protocols had soldiers standing back when under attack, instead of advancing
• Some surveillance equipment was either out of action or able to be destroyed by Hamas with ease

The details we have established raise questions – including why so few soldiers were armed at a base so close to the border, why more wasn’t done to respond to the intelligence and warnings that had been received, how it took so long for reinforcements to arrive, and whether the very infrastructure of the base had left those there unprotected.

We put our findings to the IDF, who responded to say it was in the midst of a “thorough investigation into the events of October 7th, including those in Nahal Oz, and the circumstances preceding”.

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On 7 October, Sharon – not her real name – began her shift at Nahal Oz, about a kilometre from the Gaza border fence, at 04:00.

She was part of the base’s all-women military unit – known as Tatzpitaniyot in Hebrew – and their role was to study live surveillance footage captured by cameras along the fence.

The women worked in shifts in the base’s war room, or Hamal, watching Gaza through a bank of monitors around the clock.

The Hamal is a windowless room protected by a solid door and blast walls, with strict security protocols.

The IDF has told families of people on the base that day that many military staff were unarmed.

Gen Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Division, told the BBC that during his service, there would never have been unarmed soldiers in border areas.

“It doesn’t make sense… The soldier is about the weapon,” he says.

The armed staff at Nahal Oz that day included a unit of infantry soldiers from the IDF’s Golani brigade.

The BBC has previously reported that the Tatzpitaniyot had noticed an escalation in suspicious activity on the other side of the fence, but we have now established that these concerns were also shared by other soldiers at the base from different units.

In the days shortly before 7 October, however, things had gone quiet.

“There was nothing and that was frightening us,” one infantry soldier stationed at the base recalls.“Everybody felt that something was strange. It didn’t make sense.”

The IDF’s failure to grasp what was happening was down to “a lot of arrogance”, says Gen Ziv, the thought that “Hamas wouldn’t attack, wouldn’t dare, and that even if so, they are not capable”.

“We went to sleep on the 6th thinking there’s a cat over there and we woke up on the 7th and there’s a tiger.”

At 05:30, members of the Golani prepared to begin a jeep patrol along the Israeli side of the fence – something they did before dawn every morning. But they were then instructed by their superiors to delay the patrol and stand back because of a threat of anti-tank missiles, three of them have told the BBC.

“There was a warning. It was forbidden to go up the route next to the fence,” one recalls.

Another Golani, 21-year-old Shimon Malka, said such a warning was unusual but not unheard of, so they gave it little thought.

Gen Ziv says it is standard IDF protocol to stand people back during suspected attacks like this so they can “avoid being exposed as a target”. But, he says, “Hamas realised that and used it” to their advantage.

He said the base should have been equipped with positions that the Golani could safely respond from.

“There are very simple techniques to cover soldiers so they’re under cover but they’re still in a position to react, to not lose sight,” he said.

As the Golani waited away from the fence, Sharon began seeing movements among Hamas fighters. But they seemed nothing other than routine – “they also have shifts.”

By 06:20 Hamas had begun shooting rockets, but again Sharon says this did not seem immediately alarming – she had experienced rocket attacks before and the base was well-shielded against them.

“It’s usually five minutes of shooting and then a break,” she says.

But this time, there was no break.

At about 06:30, Sharon says she could see Hamas forces beginning to close in.

The Tatzpitaniyot radioed through to the ground forces to alert them.

“All stations, four people running to the fence, copy,” one of the young women announced, her voice shaking slightly. “I am identifying two armed people running to the fence, copy.”

About the same time, Shimon heard the code words for a rocket attack through his radio. His commander ordered they jump from their jeep into a Namer – a type of Israeli armoured personnel carrier – and head towards the fence.

But he couldn’t see any incursions and assumed it was just a drill.

This so-called iron wall had long been viewed by the IDF and people across Israel as impenetrable, and yet bases along it began reporting breaches.

Each of the Tatzpitaniyot on shift at Nahal Oz witnessed between two and five breaches of the section of border fence they were responsible for monitoring, says Sharon. They watched as Hamas fighters made their way inside Israel.

Gen Ziv says the ease with which fighters had crossed the fence showed the flaws in a barrier perceived to be impenetrable.

“As you saw, two truck-loads could come and push it. It was nothing. Even if there was a minefield of 50 or 60 metres over there, it would have delayed Hamas for a few hours.”

Shortly before 06:40, an observation post at Nahal Oz was hit and damaged by a rocket, according to IDF family briefing notes shared with the BBC.

A sniper-sighting system was put into action from the Hamal – the nerve centre of the base – and an officer attempted to shoot remotely at gunmen trying to cross the border, the IDF told families.

Infantry officers joined the Tatzpitaniyot in the Hamal, too. Sharon remembers one commander arriving in her pyjamas.

And then, as gunmen continued to shoot at surveillance cameras, the monitoring screens in the Hamal started to go dark.

The fact that Hamas had been operating in plain sight of these surveillance cameras, along the border in the weeks before, was tactical, says Gen Ziv, in order to “normalise things”.

Just 100 metres from where the Tatzpitaniyot were working, Alroy – one of the five IDF observation balloonists on site that morning – was woken by the rockets and the sirens, his father Rafi Ben Shitrit told the BBC.

The IDF later provided details of an initial investigation to Alroy’s family about what happened that day.

The balloon at Nahal Oz offered a deeper view into Gaza, and was supposed to be operational 24 hours a day.

But on 7 October it was one of three along the border that were out of action.

“The balloon in Nahal Oz didn’t work and no-one was stressed, they were told it would be fixed on Sunday,” says Mr Ben Shitrit.

“There was an atmosphere like: ‘Hamas is deterred, even if something happens it’s a terrorist infiltration or at most a terrorist squad.’”

Back at her surveillance point, Sharon carried on frantically communicating with soldiers on the ground.

“I cried and announced, simultaneously,” she says.

She remembers that the commanding officer yelled for “quiet” because some of the young women were losing focus amid the horror.

At the fence, Shimon says he followed the radio directions. He still couldn’t understand why the young woman’s voice he was hearing sounded so panicked.

“I could feel the stress, but I couldn’t see anything.”

When his unit reached the place the Tatzpitaniyot had directed them to, they saw Hamas trucks breaking through the fence.

“They started to shoot at us. Maybe five trucks.”

The soldiers shot back and ran over those on motorbikes.

Shortly after 07:00 came the moment everyone feared and nobody could imagine. Hamas gunmen were at the door of the Hamal.

“Get up, the terrorists are at the door,” Sharon remembers being told.

The Tatzpitaniyot were ordered to abandon their positions and head to an office inside the war room.

Gen Ziv says that those higher up in the military did not put enough emphasis on defending the bases themselves, focusing instead on external patrols.

“That was part of the whole mess because once the enemy surprised them and went into the base they were not ready. The whole thing collapsed,” he says.

At about 07:20 what was known as the shield – a bomb shelter outside the Hamal – was attacked.

Among those sheltering inside were some off-duty Tatzpitaniyot, who were being protected by “four female warriors”, according to a WhatsApp message sent at 07:38 by one of the Tatzpitaniyot sheltering there and seen by the BBC.

There were no further messages from her in the group.

The IDF told families that these “female warriors” were the only armed people hiding in the shelter – and they kept Hamas fighters at bay with their gunfire until a grenade explosion killed one of the commanders and injured others inside.

At this point, about 10 of the soldiers managed to escape the shelter and locked themselves in the accommodation barracks. Everyone else in the shield was either killed or captured by Hamas.

Shimon and his commander headed back to the base, but they still weren’t aware of the scale of what was happening.

The IDF would later brief the family of one of those killed at Nahal Oz that the attack on the base was begun by drone strikes, and action by 70 fighters from four directions, and that scores more joined as the morning went on.

Up and down the Gaza Strip, thousands crossed into Israeli territory.

On his way back to base Shimon says he began to comprehend the scale of the attack.

“When we got to the base, everything was burned,” he says.

In the office inside the Hamal, Sharon says the group of about 20 soldiers tried to calm each other down.

Meanwhile, they made repeated attempts to call for more support.

“I guess [someone] said something like ‘There’s no backup, no-one can come,’ and I remember my officer said ‘We don’t need backup, we need rescue.’”

Shortly before 08:00 an Israeli drone, known as a Zik, arrived, but it had difficulty distinguishing between Israeli soldiers and Hamas, according to the IDF account, which meant it was slower to attack its intended targets.

At about the same time, an attack began on the Hamal, with lots of shooting. Those armed fought at the doors of the building to prevent Hamas from getting inside. The fighting continued for about four hours.

Meanwhile, Shimon says he and other soldiers fighting at the base were completely outnumbered. There was no sign of reinforcements.

“It was all vague.”

At about 09:00, the Golani headed to the base’s dining room where the Tatzpitaniyot had told them most of the gunmen were hiding.

Relatives would later be told by the IDF that there were 150 gunmen to every 25 combat soldiers entering Nahal Oz that day.

“What Hamas was doing that morning was swarming,” says Gen Ziv.

“There were over 70 different breaches… over 3,000 terrorists… They knew they didn’t have the quality so they had to go quantity.”

A video, which Israeli media reports was filmed around this time, shows young surveillance officers at Nahal Oz, who had been captured by armed Hamas.

“You dogs, we will step on you,” one man is heard saying as the women’s hands are tied, their faces against the wall.

Nineteen-year-old Naama Levy, who had only started at the base the previous day, pleads that she has “friends in Palestine”, her face covered in blood.

The footage shows the women being dragged into a waiting vehicle and driven away.

It is devastating for Naama’s mother to watch. “The wounds, the blood, what she was saying, what the terrorists were saying to them, the horror of those moments,” says Dr Ayelet Levy.

Gen Ziv says the Tatzpitaniyot at Nahal Oz “were amazing – the mistake was the system, the commanders, not them”.

More than three hours after the attack had begun, at 09:45, an IDF helicopter started firing at the Hamas gunmen, officers told grieving relatives. It fired into the base 12 times.

Shimon and six others, including their commander, drove out of the base and returned in formation on foot. He says they were fired on “from all directions”.

Through the sound of automatic gunfire would come a series of single shots, fired by a Hamas sniper they couldn’t see.

“Every time he shot, one of my friends got a bullet in the head,” he says.

Shimon says he was the only one of those fighting alongside him to survive, and he too, had a near miss.

“A bullet passed right by my head… I could hear the bullets hitting the concrete around me and feel the heat from them.”

At this point, he says his radio was no longer operational.

Gen Ziv describes the day as a “perfect storm”.

“For so many hours the backup was not there because nobody knew exactly what was going on and where to send the backup,” he explains.

Shimon escaped the scene and moved to a sniper’s position before joining with soldiers from another unit who went to protect a kibbutz.

Back in the Hamal, or war room, there was a significant development at about 11:00.

The electricity was cut which meant the locks to the doors, which were on an electric system, were released. It left the war room wide open, according to the IDF account given to several families. Hamas fighters began shooting inside and throwing grenades.

One was killed in a face-to-face knife fight with a Golani soldier, the IDF told families.

Gen Ziv said at the point that soldiers were relying on door locks for their safety, the broader military system had “already failed”.

In the IDF’s briefing to families it said “terrorists threw a flammable substance into the Hamal and set it on fire”.

“The smoke was really thick. Everyone started to cough and suffocate. People start to fall and faint,” recalls Sharon.

One mother says she was told by the IDF that a “toxic substance” had been used by Hamas in the attack, though others were not aware of this detail or said the IDF had since changed its account on this.

At about 12:30, seven people in the Hamal – including Sharon – managed to feel their way to the toilet window and climb out, according to accounts of those there that day.

There, she and the other survivors waited for more to follow. But no-one came. Sharon was the only survivor among the Tatzpitaniyot on shift that day. One other young woman in the unit, who was at the base but not working that morning, also survived.

By the end of 7 October, the military had regained control, but many of those stationed there did not survive the day. Seven Tatzpitaniyot were taken back to Gaza as hostages, where one was killed, another rescued and five still remain.

Across Israel that day, about 1,200 people – including more than 300 soldiers – were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Since then, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

The Nahal Oz dead were to include Alroy the balloonist and four comrades, who had engaged in a lengthy battle with Hamas, says his father, citing information given to him by the IDF.

They managed to kill close to 10 gunmen, he said, but the five were outnumbered and were all found dead inside a mobile shelter at 14:30.

The war room – which had been designed as a safe space for the base’s units – was destroyed. Photos and videos show it charred, the screens the Tatzpitaniyot had been carefully monitoring, blackened. Bone fragments were found among the ashes there.

The survivors and the families of those killed and kidnapped are left with unanswered questions about how it went so wrong.

India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Pakistan this month, his ministry has announced.

This will be the first visit by a high ranking Indian minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade.

The trip comes after Mr Jaishankar’s Pakistani counterpart attended a similar meeting of foreign ministers from the SCO in India last year – he was the first senior Pakistani politician to visit since 2011.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been tense for years and they have fought three wars since they became independent nations in 1947 – two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The SCO is a political union of countries formed to discuss security and economic matters in Central Asia.

The organisation was created by China, Russia and four Central Asian countries in 2001 as a countermeasure to limit the influence of Western alliances such as Nato.

India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.

While India chaired the SCO in 2023, Pakistan will be hosting this year’s summit from 15 October to 16 October.

At a press briefing on Friday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that Mr Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan.

The last time an Indian foreign minister visited the nation was in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a security conference in Islamabad and held rare talks with Pakistani officials.

Days later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made a surprise trip to Lahore where he met then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Ties between India and Pakistan have always been strained but they hit a new low in 2019, when India launched strikes in Pakistani territory, following a militant attack on Indian troops in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it. Separatist insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir has led to thousands of deaths over three decades. India accuses Pakistan of supporting insurgents but its neighbour denies this.

A thaw of relations seemed in sight last year when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited the Indian state of Goa for a SCO meeting.

But Mr Zardari said his visit was “focussed exclusively on the SCO” and did not hold any direct talks with Mr Jaishankar during his trip.

In an interview with the BBC at that time, he said that the onus was on India to restart peace talks between the two countries.

The convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were jailed more than three decades ago for the murder of their parents in the US, are set to be reviewed.

The brothers shot Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989, in what prosecutors said was a plot to inherit their father’s fortune.

On Thursday, LA County district attorney George Gascon said there was “a moral and an ethical obligation” to review evidence submitted by the brothers last year, which claimed they were sexually abused by their father and acted in self-defence.

There has been renewed public interest in the murders since a Netflix series depicting the events was released in September.

During the original trial, prosecutors said the killings were motivated by greed.

They said the brothers spent much of their large inheritance on Rolex watches, cars and luxury property prior to becoming suspects.

These allegations of lavish spending, aired in a widely watched televised trial, made the case notorious in the US.

That original trial ended with a hung jury after the Menendez brothers submitted allegations of abuse spanning several years.

At a second trial, the abuse claims were largely withheld. The brothers were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1996.

Lyle Menendez was 21 and Erik Menendez was 18 at the time of the murders.

New evidence now being considered includes a 1988 letter from Erik Menendez to his cousin, which reportedly appears to reference his father’s abuse.

“None of this information has been confirmed,” Gascon – the most senior prosecutor in LA Country – told a news conference.

He continued: “We are not, at this point, ready to say that we either believe or do not believe that information.

“But we’re here to tell you that we have a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us.”

He added that his team was “not saying there was anything wrong with the original trial”.

Gascon said a review could potentially lead to resentencing or a new trial. A hearing is set for 26 November, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reports.

Gascon said his office had received an influx of calls following the release of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story on Netflix

The drama has caused controversy, with relatives saying the brothers had been “victimised by this grotesque shockadrama”.

The show’s creator Ryan Murphy has defended the series, and described the family’s negative reaction as “predictable at best”.

On Thursday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian voiced her support for the brothers, further fuelling renewed popular interest in the case.

“They are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, honest men,” she said in an article for NBC News.

The Indian government has opposed petitions in the top court that seek criminalisation of marital rape, saying it would be “excessively harsh”.

The federal home ministry told the Supreme Court that “a man does not have a fundamental right” to force sex on his wife, but there were enough laws to protect married women against sexual violence.

The top court is hearing petitions seeking to amend a British-era law that says a man cannot be prosecuted for rape within marriage.

Violence within marriage is rampant in India – according to a recent government survey, one in 25 women have faced sexual violence from their husbands.

Marital rape is outlawed in more than 100 countries, including Britain which criminalised it in 1991.

But India remains among the three dozen countries – along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – where the law remains on the statute books.

A number of petitions have been filed in recent years calling for striking down Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been in existence since 1860. The law mentions several “exemptions” – or situations in which sex is not rape – and one of them is “by a man with his own wife” if she is not a minor.

Campaigners say such an argument is untenable in modern times and that forced sex is rape, regardless of who commits it.

• In India, growing clamour to criminalise rape within marriage
• Marital rape: Delhi high court gives split verdict

United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also raised concerns about India’s refusal to criminalise marital rape.

But the Indian government, religious groups and men’s rights activists have opposed any plans to amend the law saying consent for sex is “implied” in marriage and that a wife cannot retract it later.

The courts have given contradictory judgements, sometimes allowing a husband to be tried for rape while at others dismissing the petition.

The case came to the Supreme Court after the Delhi high court in 2022 delivered a split verdict. The top court began hearings in August.

The state’s response in their 49-page affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court on Thursday has not come as a surprise in a country rooted in patriarchal traditions and where marriages are considered sacrosanct.

The report says that marriage is a relationship of a “different class” and has an “entire ecosystem” of laws, rights and obligations.

Criminalising marital rape “may seriously impact the conjugal relationship and may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage”, it stated.

The affidavit noted that in a marriage, there was a “continuing expectation to have reasonable sexual access from one’s spouse” and while this did not entitle a husband to coerce his wife into having sex, including marital rape under anti-rape laws would be “excessively harsh” and “disproportionate”.

It added that there were existing laws that dealt with domestic violence, sexual harassment and assault that protected a married woman’s rights.

The home ministry also said that marriage was a social institution and the issue raised in the petitions was more social than legal and hence it should be left to the parliament to formulate policy.

Atul Kumar, 18, was ecstatic when he found out in June that he had passed a tough examination that would allow him to join a prestigious technology college in India.

But then came the next step: paying 17,500 rupees ($281; £156) online to confirm his admission. It was a big amount for the family from Muzaffarnagar in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

His father managed to borrow the money, but Atul says he missed the online fee deadline by a few seconds, partly due to technical issues.

The family didn’t give up, filing petitions and court cases. This week, India’s top court stepped in and ordered the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dhanbad, to restore Atul’s admission.

The Supreme Court invoked its extraordinary powers granted by India’s constitution, saying that “we cannot allow such a young talented boy to go away”.

The IITs are India’s top technology institutes, attracting more than a million candidates for nearly 18,000 seats in 23 colleges spread across the country. Students spend years in private coaching centres to prepare for the exams, and parents believe joining an IIT is a ticket to success.

Atul’s story has made headlines in India because of his financially deprived background and the challenges he overcame.

Atul is from the Dalit community, which lies at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy and is among the most marginalised in the country.

His father Rajendra Kumar earns about 450 rupees ($5; £4) a day as a daily wage labourer and his mother weaves cots at home.

But Rajendra Kumar says that nothing was more important to him than his children’s education. He even sold his house once to fund his eldest son’s studies, he told the BBC.

Two of Atul’s brothers are studying engineering at reputed colleges, while a third is doing a bachelor’s degree from a college in Muzaffarnagar.

Atul knew he also had to study hard, and he did that for hours every day in a dark corner of his house which got little sunlight. Erratic electricity supply made things worse, with daily power cuts lasting hours.

Rajendra Kumar says buying an inverter didn’t make sense as it cost nearly 25,000 rupees.

“But I would have sold the house [again] if needed,” he adds.

Atul had joined a free coaching centre for marginalised students in a nearby city, and this year was his last out of the two attempts allowed in IIT entrance examinations.

When Atul passed the exam, his father asked for help from a local moneylender. But the man backed out two hours before the fee deadline.

The father then had to turn to his friends, who immediately chipped in with 14,000 rupees. Rajendra Kumar dipped into his savings for the remaining 3,500 rupees.

He quickly deposited the amount in his eldest son’s bank account, while Atul logged in to complete the formalities.

By then, he had just 180 seconds left for the deadline.

“We tried to complete the task that requires many more minutes’ work in three minutes,” Rajendra Kumar said.

But the portal froze suddenly, he says, and Atul missed the deadline.

In shock, no-one in the family ate for a day.

Atul’s coaching centre reached out to IIT Dhanbad but his petition says they did not help him. The desperate family wrote emails to several college authorities and moved another court, but nothing worked.

The only option left now was the Supreme Court. In 2021, the court had allowed a Dalit student to join IIT Bombay after he also couldn’t pay his admission fee on time due to financial and technical difficulties.

Atul and his father contacted that student who put them in touch with the lawyer who fought his case.

In the Supreme Court, IIT Dhanbad argued that Atul had logged into the payment portal at 3pm, which indicated that it was not a last-minute attempt. It also pointed out that Atul was sent multiple reminders through text messages, well before the deadline.

But the court asked IIT why it was so keen to oppose his admission.

The court observed that there was no reason why the petitioner would not have paid the amount if he had the means to do so and ordered IIT Dhanbad to create an additional seat for Atul in the current batch.

The Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud then wished him luck in his studies.

“All the best, do well!,” he said.

Iranians have been expressing a mixture of pride, uncertainty and fear since their country launched a large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday night.

Within minutes of the attack starting, Persian social media feeds were filled with shaky videos showing the flashes of the missiles flying overhead.

Iran’s state television broadcast pictures of groups of people cheering on the streets, waving flags and chanting “Death to Israel”.

But the mood was different online, with not everyone expressing support for the attack.

Some shared tense scenes and heated debates about a possible war between the arch-foes, after decades of keeping their conflict largely in the shadows.

The contrasting reactions laid bare the deep divisions in Iran, where there is widespread discontent at the clerical establishment and frustration over the economic troubles caused by sanctions.

On one side of the debate are those who support the government’s actions with nationalist pride, while on the other are those who fear war, economic collapse and further suppression of domestic reform movements.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Tuesday’s missile strike successfully targeted Israeli military and intelligence bases and that it was retaliation for recent killings of the leaders of its allies Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military described the attack as “indiscriminate” and said that while it had been largely thwarted by air defences, there had been casualties and millions of Israelis had been sent running to bomb shelters.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Iran will pay for the “big mistake”.

For many supporters of the Iranian government, the attack represented a proud moment of defiance.

“Bravo to [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei! Bravo to the Revolutionary Guards!” shouted a young woman in a clip that went viral.

Such sentiment frustrated other Iranians online.

“Please distinguish between the people and the Revolutionary Guards; we are under immense pressure,” pleaded a middle-aged man in a video shared on social media.

Some Iranians felt the strike was an unnecessary provocation that would only result in making their lives worse.

“We have no choice but to protect our country, but we are the ones who suffer the consequences,” said a concerned resident of the capital, Tehran.

In the hours after the strikes, rumours surfaced that Israel might respond by targeting Iran’s oil infrastructure, which is an important part of the country’s economy.

Videos quickly surfaced showing petrol stations overwhelmed, with long queues of people as they rushed to fill up their vehicles, fearing future shortages.

The missile attack has also diminished hopes for diplomatic progress with the West and other countries in the region.

The election of Masoud Pezeshkian as the new president in July had sparked optimism among those with moderate views. Some people saw him as a potential bridge in easing regional tensions.

But one BBC Persian viewer lamented that “this attack is another step away from diplomacy and a step closer to conflict”.

“I fear this war might be used as an excuse to intensify the crackdown of us, who are fighting for freedom,” a young activist said, referring to the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that erupted two years ago.

Many worry that a new conflict could not only undermine calls for reform, but also empower the government to further suppress internal dissent.

Unlike after previous escalations, this time there’s a growing fear of a potentially strong retaliatory response from Israel.

And many believe that Israel’s advanced military capabilities could bring unprecedented destruction if a full-scale war broke out.

“No-one wants war, not the people, not even the officials,” said a commentator on social media.

This sense of vulnerability has made the situation feel more precarious than ever before.

Amid the growing tensions, some people even called for regime change.

“The only way to save Iran is not through war, but through toppling the current regime,” said another BBC News Persian viewer, urging the West to support Iranians in their struggle against the government.

However, many believe the country’s future should be decided internally, free from any foreign intervention, to avoid the potential chaos that outside interference might cause.

Big taxes will be imposed on imports of electric vehicles from China to the EU after the majority of member states backed the plans.

The move to introduce tariffs aims to protect the European car industry from being undermined by what EU politicians believe are unfair Chinese-state subsidies on its own cars.

Tariffs on electric cars made in China are set to rise from 10% to up to 45% for the next five years, but there have been concerns such a move could raise electric vehicle (EV) prices for buyers.

The decision, which split EU member states such as France and Germany, risks sparking a trade war between Brussels and Beijing, which has condemned the tariffs as protectionist.

China has been counting on high-tech products to help revive its flagging economy and the EU is the largest overseas market for the country’s electric car industry.

Its domestic car industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades and its brands, such as BYD, have begun moving into international markets, prompting fears from the likes of the EU that its own companies will be unable to compete with the cheaper prices.

The EU imposed import tariffs of varying levels on different Chinese manufacturers in the summer, but Friday’s vote was to decide if they were implemented for the next five years.

The charges were calculated based on estimates of how much Chinese state aid each manufacturer has received following an EU investigation. The European Commission set individual duties on three major Chinese EV brands – SAIC, BYD and Geely.

EU members were divided on tariffs. Germany, whose car manufacturing industry is heavily dependent on exports to China, was against them. Many EU members abstained in the vote.

German carmakers have been vocal in opposition. Volkswagen says tariffs are “the wrong approach”.

However, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland were reported to have backed the import taxes. The tariffs proposal could only have been blocked if a qualified majority of 15 members voted against it.

Germany’s top industry association, BDI, called on the European Union and China to continue trade talks over tariffs to avoid an “escalating trade conflict”.

The European Commission, which held the vote, said the EU and China would “work hard to explore an alternative solution” to the import taxes to address what it called “injurious subsidisation” of Chinese electric vehicles.

China’s Commerce Ministry called the decision to impose tariffs “unfair” and “unreasonable”, but added the issue could be resolved through negotiations.

The dispute has raised fears among industry groups outside the car sector that they could face retaliatory tariffs from China.

A trade body for the French cognac industry said the French authorities “have abandoned us”.

“We do not understand why our sector is being sacrificed in this way.”

It said a negotiated solution needed to be found that would “prevent our products from facing a surtax that could exclude them from the Chinese market”.

Figures show that in August this year, EU registrations of battery-electric cars fell by 43.9% from a year earlier.

In the UK, demand for new electric vehicles hit a new record in September, but orders were mostly driven by commercial deals and by big manufacturer discounts, according to the industry trade body.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said firms had “serious concerns as the market is not growing quickly enough to meet mandated targets”.

The industry has warned that drivers need better incentives to buy electric to help manufacturers ahead of the planned ban on sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles. Under the Conservative government the deadline for this ban was pushed back to 2035 from 2030, but Labour has pledged to bring it back to 2030.

Car makers are required to meet electric vehicle sales targets. Under the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, at least 22% of vehicles sold this year must be zero-emission, with the target expected to hit 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

Manufacturers that fail to hit quotas could be fined £15,000 per car.

The bosses of several car companies, including BMW, Ford and Nissan, wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Friday saying the industry was likely to miss these targets.

They said economic factors such as higher energy and material costs and interest rates had meant electric cars remained “stubbornly more expensive and consumers are wary of investing”. The average cost to buy an electric car in the UK is around £48,000.

They said a “lack of confidence” in the UK’s charging infrastructure was another barrier to encourage people to switch to electric.