Suddenly, Malak stops speaking, leans forward a fraction and kisses the baby sitting on her lap. Her sister Rahma is fair-haired and has blue eyes. There is a 13-year age difference between them. But to Malak – who lost her father in an Israeli attack – the four-month-old baby is an unimaginably precious gift.

“I love her so much, in a way no-one else knows,” she says.

The BBC went back to meet Malak and others in Gaza as the first anniversary of the war approached. We first interviewed Malak in February, just after the death of her father, Abed-Alrahman al-Najjar, a 32-year-old farm labourer.

The father of seven, believed to have been hit by shrapnel, was among more than 70 people killed during an Israeli commando operation to rescue two hostages held by Hamas in Rafah. He was asleep with his family in a refugee tent when the raid happened.

Their tent was close to the scene of the fighting. Malak lost an eye in the attack. She also suffered a wound in her side. Back then she was severely traumatised – when she met a BBC colleague, she called out in anguish, “I am in pain. I lost my dad. Enough!”

Since then, doctors have fitted a small white sphere in her empty eye socket. It will have to suffice until the war ends and she hopefully can be fitted with a proper prosthetic eye.

But Malak does not complain about this loss – rather, she imagines how her father would react if he could hold baby Rahma, born three months after his death. She smiles and says: “He always wanted to have a daughter with blue eyes.”

After what has happened, Malak wants to train as an eye doctor, to help others who suffer as she does.

She is sitting on a concrete floor in Khan Younis in southern Gaza with the baby and her five other younger siblings – three sisters, two brothers, aged between four and 12 years old. Before the war, their father worked hard on other people’s farms to support his family.

“Our father used to take us out and buy us clothes in the winter. He was so kind to us. He would deny himself but never us,” Malak remembers.

Then came 7 October 2023, and the Hamas assault on Israel in which over 1,200 Israelis were killed – among them, dozens of children. More than 250 hostages were abducted into Gaza. There were 30 children seized, including a baby of nine months.

The attack triggered Israel’s ground invasion, relentless air strikes and fighting with Hamas. Almost 42,000 people have now been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. About 90% of Gaza’s population – nearly two million people – are displaced, according to the United Nations. Malak’s family has been uprooted four times.

“I carry a pain that even mountains cannot bear,” she says. “We were displaced, and it feels like our whole life is displacement. We move from place to place.”

The Israeli government refuses to allow foreign reporters into Gaza, and the BBC relies on a team of local journalists to cover the humanitarian crisis. We briefed them with questions and asked them to contact some of the Palestinians we have spoken to in Gaza over the past 12 months.

These journalists share the fear and displacement of the people they report on. Displacement means uncertainty. Constant fear. Will the child, sent for a bucket of water, come home? Or will they return to find their home flattened, and their family buried under the rubble? These are the questions that haunt Abed-Alrahman’s young widow, Nawara, every day.

“There is always shelling and we are always afraid, terrified. I constantly hold my children close and hug them,” she says.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tell people to move to so-called “humanitarian zones”. People flee but often find no safety. When they move, the struggle to locate food, firewood and medicine in an unfamiliar place starts again.

The al-Najjars are now back in their family home, but they know they may have to flee again. That is the inescapable reality of their lives after a year of war. In the words of Nawara, there is “no safe place in the Gaza Strip”.

Nawara complains of the overflowing sewage in the street. The lack of medical supplies. Like so many in Gaza, with no income, she depends on what food her in-laws or charities can supply.

There are no schools open for her children, who are among the 465,000 that Unicef – the UN Children’s Fund – estimate are affected by school closures there.

“Our health – my children’s and mine – is bad. They are always sick, always have fevers or diarrhoea. They are always feeling unwell,” Nawara adds.

Through all of this, she holds on to the memory of her husband Abed-Alrahman.

“I look at his picture, and keep talking to him. I imagine he’s still alive,” she says. “I keep talking to him on the phone as if he’s replying to me, and I imagine answering back. Every day I sit by myself, bring up his name, talk to him, and cry. I feel like he’s aware of everything I’m going through.”

And Malak too has her daily ritual. She and one of her sisters try to do a charitable deed each day in memory of their father. When possible, their aunt makes a gift of food for the dead man. “At night, we put it out and pray for him,” Malak says.

The stories of Nawara al-Najjar and Malak are a fragmentary glimpse into the suffering of the last 12 months. As the war enters its second year, our BBC colleagues on the ground continue to report on death and displacement. In northern Gaza we re-visited the family of a disabled man who died after being attacked in an Israeli search operation.

___

Muhammed Bhar was terrified. The dog growled and lunged. It was biting, drawing blood and he could not stop it. Around him, the sitting room was full of noise – his mother and little niece screaming, the Israeli soldiers shouting orders.

Muhammed, aged 24, had Down’s syndrome and was autistic – he could not have understood what was happening. When a BBC colleague first spoke to his family in July, they were still struggling with the shock of what had happened.

Muhammed’s mother, Nabila, 70, described what she remembered: “I constantly see the dog tearing at him and his hand, and the blood pouring from his hand.

“This scene I will never forget – it stays in front of my eyes the whole time, it never leaves me at all. We couldn’t save him, neither from them, nor from the dog.”

The incident happened on 3 July, as troops were engaged in intense close-quarter combat in Shejaiya. The IDF said that there were “significant exchanges of fire between [its troops] and Hamas terrorists”.

According to the IDF, troops were searching buildings for Hamas using a dog – these animals are regularly used to hunt for fighters, booby traps, explosives and weapons.

“Inside one of the buildings,” the IDF said, “the canine detected terrorists and bit an individual.” The soldiers restrained the animal and gave Muhammed some “initial medical treatment” in another room.

Nabila Bhar said a military doctor arrived and went into the room where Muhammed was lying. His niece, Janna Bhar, 11, remembered troops saying he was “fine”.

Two of Muhammed’s brothers were arrested during the raid, according to the family. They say one has since been released.

Nabila said the rest of the family was ordered to leave. They pleaded to be allowed to stay with the wounded Muhammed. The IDF said they were “urged to leave to avoid staying in the combat area”.

Some time after this – the army has not said how long – the troops left. The IDF said they went to help soldiers who had been ambushed. The army report for 3 July named Capt Roy Miller, 21, as having been killed, and three other soldiers wounded, during fighting in Shejaiya.

Muhammed was now alone. The IDF statement did not say what condition he was in when the soldiers left. His brother Jibreel believes he had not been given proper treatment.

“They could have treated him much better than they did, but they just put some gauze on him, as if they did a quick, careless job. Whether he lived or died didn’t seem to matter to them,” he says.

The Israelis withdrew from the neighbourhood a week later and Muhammed’s family returned. They found him dead on the kitchen floor.

It is still not known what exactly caused his death after he was attacked by the dog. In the current wartime circumstances the family has not been able to have an autopsy carried out.

The young man was buried in an alleyway beside the house because it was too dangerous to go to the cemetery where his father – who died before the war – was interred.

Three months later, Muhammed is still interred in the alleyway. His brother Jibreel has covered the grave with plastic sheeting, some concrete blocks and a sheet of corrugated iron. It is surrounded by a mess of rubble and pieces of metal, the detritus from bombed-out buildings nearby.

Inside, Muhammed’s bedroom has been left shuttered. Jibreel opens the door, walks into the darkness, opens a wardrobe and takes out some of his brother’s clothes. Along with some photographs and family videos, they are the remaining mementoes of his life in the house.

“His personal room was where he exercised, played, and ate, and no-one entered this room except for him,” he says. In the sitting room, Jibreel points to the couch where Muhammed was sitting when the dog attacked. The blood stains have dried into the fabric.

“Every corner of this house reminds us of Muhammad,” Jibreel says. “This is the spot where he would always sit. We would sit around him, making sure not to disturb him. He loved peace and quiet.”

The family wants an independent investigation into his death.

“Once the war ends and international human rights organisations and legal groups return,” says Jibreel, “we will definitely file a legal case against the Israeli army.

“Muhammad was a special case – he wasn’t a fighter, he wasn’t armed, just an ordinary civilian. He wasn’t even just any civilian, he had special needs.”

___

Most of Dr Amjad Elawa’s neighbours and friends have gone. They are either dead or have fled south, hoping it will be safer there. When he walks home from the hospital, he sees people on the streets talking to themselves.

“No one is in their right mind anymore,” he says.

Dr Elawa, 32, works in the Emergency Services department of al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza. Back at the start of the war it was the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip. Now, much of the hospital is in ruins following two major raids by the IDF, who said Hamas and other gunmen used the facility to plan and launch attacks in breach of international law. The charge is rejected by Gaza’s health ministry, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes at al-Shifa.

Dr Elawa has seen children die in front of him. Victims of war wounds. Of disease, often caused by the lack of clean water. And when the BBC first met him, the area was facing acute malnutrition.

In February – when the BBC first interviewed Dr Elawa – he described witnessing the death of two-month-old Mahmoud Fatou. The baby boy died soon after being brought to the hospital.

“This child could not be provided with milk. His mum was not provided with food to be able to breastfeed him,” said Dr Elawa. “He had symptoms of severe dehydration, and he was taking his last breaths when he came.”

Dr Elawa’s own son was born 12 days after the 7 October attacks. After the death of Mahmoud Fatou, he reflected on his own family situation.

“We were all shocked – this child could be our child. Maybe my son after a few days will be just like him,” he said. Thankfully, Dr Elawa’s son is healthy and about to celebrate his first birthday.

The doctor faces the same problems as almost everybody else in northern Gaza. His house was destroyed and he had to move with his family to a patient’s home.

The UN and humanitarian NGOs in Gaza say Israel has regularly blocked aid from entering. For example, in the first two weeks of January (the month before we met Dr Elawa), the UN said 69% of requests to move aid and 95% of missions to provide fuel and medicines to water reservoirs, water wells and health facilities in northern Gaza, were refused. Israel denies blocking aid.

Dr Elawa queued for food whenever he could get any free time. This led to him being wounded when Israeli forces opened fire at Nabulsi roundabout in northern Gaza on 29 February.

Thousands of people had gathered, hoping to be given flour from an aid convoy escorted by the IDF. More than 100 people were killed and over 700 wounded according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The IDF said most of the casualties were caused by a stampede as people rushed the trucks.

The army said there were two incidents at the roundabout. It fired warning shots and then shot at individuals who the troops believed were a threat. Numerous survivors challenge that account, and say the stampede was caused by the army firing into the crowd.

Dr Elawa treated his own wound and then went to help survivors. Within days he was back on duty at al-Shifa.

A BBC colleague returned recently to find Dr Elawa still working in the emergency section. He returns to the theme of the wounded children he treats.

“They are the only ones who really stir our emotions, especially when their limbs are lost. It’s a truly emotional and heartbreaking situation. We see children who haven’t experienced much of life yet, losing their legs.”

On a break, he goes outside and points to the ruins of different buildings. “It used to have an intensive care unit, an operating room, and a cardiology department,” he says.

“Whether it’s medical devices, equipment, or anything else, all are completely destroyed, even the beds. We need a fully-equipped hospital, built from scratch.”

When Dr Elawa returned after the second Israeli raid there was an overpowering stench of death from several mass graves. One of the hospital directors, Mohamed Mughir, says there were “signs of field executions, binding marks, gunshot wounds to the head and torture marks on the limbs” of some of the corpses.

The IDF deny allegations of war crimes and say the graves contain bodies exhumed and then re-buried by the army when searching for dead Israeli hostages.

“The claim that the IDF buried Palestinian bodies is baseless and unfounded,” it says.

The UN Human Rights Director, Volker Turk, says that, given what he calls “the prevailing climate of impunity”, there should be an independent international investigation.

There is more food now. Dr Elawa has a supply of flour but says there are no vegetables, fruit or meat. They use canned foods instead.

Like so many who work to save lives in Gaza, Dr Elawa prays for the war to end.

“We want to return to our old lives, to be able to sleep safely, to walk in the streets safely, to visit our loved ones and relatives – those who are still alive.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ mother has said she is “devastated and profoundly saddened” by the allegations levelled against her son, but that they are “lies”.

The musician, known for hits like 1997’s I’ll Be Missing You, was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering last month. He is currently being held in a Manhattan detention centre after being denied bail.

In a statement, Janice Small Combs defended her son, saying that although he had “made mistakes in the past, as we all have”, he is “not the monster they have painted him to be”.

“It is heartbreaking to see my son judged not for the truth, but for a narrative created out of lies,” she wrote.

The statement was attributed to Ms Small Combs and the Combs family, and was issued by her lawyer, Natlie G Figgers.

It came five days after it was revealed that Mr Combs could face lawsuits from more than 100 additional accusers, both men and women, for alleged sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

The star’s lawyer have denied these and all previous charges, calling them “false and defamatory”.

He has faced a number of cases since last year, when his former partner Cassie Ventura accused him of rape and abuse.

Mr Combs denied the allegations, and the case was settled out of court a day after being filed.

However, he was subsequently sued by 12 other women, many of whom accused the rapper of drugging and assaulting them.

Federal agents raided his properties in March as authorities built a criminal case against the star.

Then in May, a video of Mr Combs physically assaulting Ms Ventura in a hotel room in 2016 was leaked to the press.

In her statement, the Ms Small Combs referenced the video, saying she was “not here to portray my son as perfect because he is not”.

“My son may not have been entirely truthful about certain things, such as denying he has ever gotten violent with an ex-girlfriend when the hotel’s surveillance showed otherwise,” she said.

“Sometimes, the truth and a lie become so closely intertwined that it becomes terrifying to admit one part of the story, especially when that truth is outside the norm or is too complicated to be believed.

“This is why I believe my son’s civil legal team opted to settle the ex-girlfriend’s lawsuit instead of contesting it until the end, resulting in a ricochet effect as the federal government used this decision against my son by interpreting it as an admission of guilt.”

Mr Combs had previously apologised for the incident that was caught on film, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

Concluding her statement, Janice Small Combs argued that one lie did not make him guilty of all the other “repulsive allegations and the grave charges leveled against him”.

“It is truly agonizing to watch the world turn against my son so quickly and easily over lies and misconceptions, without ever hearing his side or affording him the opportunity to present his side,” she said, adding that she believed some of his accusers were motivated by money.

Mr Combs is next due in court on Wednesday, 9 October, when his lawyers will argue for him to be released on bail.

He was previously denied bail after prosecutors argued that he posed “a significant risk” to the forthcoming trial.

They told a New York judge that Mr Combs had “already tried to obstruct the government’s investigation of this case, repeatedly contacting victims and witnesses and feeding them false narratives of events”.

The northern Israeli port city of Haifa was hit by about five rockets fired by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah late on Sunday, causing damage and injuring eight people, Israeli authorities say.

The Israeli military said it was investigating how its air defences failed to intercept the rockets. Hezbollah said it targeted a military base south of Haifa.

Another person was injured when a barrage of rockets hit the town of Tiberias, which is located to east on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Israeli warplanes meanwhile carried out a new round of air strikes in the Lebanese capital Beirut, hitting what the military said were Hezbollah targets.

The military also said a third division had joined its invasion of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah said its fighters were targeting Israeli troops in and around border villages.

Israel’s government has pledged to make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced residents to return to their homes near the Lebanese border after a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the Gaza war.

The hostilities have escalated steadily since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Hezbollah has remained defiant despite suffering a series of devastating blows in recent weeks, insisting on Monday that it was confident in its ability to “repel the [Israeli] aggression”.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hezbollah fired more than 135 rockets into northern Israel on Sunday.

Approximately five projectiles crossed from Lebanon after air raid sirens sounded in the Carmel and Bay areas of Haifa at 23:22 local time (20:22 GMT), an IDF statement said.

“Interceptors were fired. Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review,” it added.

BBC Verify geolocated CCTV footage showing the moment that one of the rockets hit a roundabout near a supermarket and several apartment blocks in the west of the city.

In another video, emergency services and bystanders are seen inspecting a crater and piles of rubble and earth at the scene.

Tal Rosen, a member of the emergency services, told Reuters news agency that he had been inside his home about 500m (1,640ft) away when he heard an explosion.

“In the beginning, we didn’t find any injuries and then I saw in this building,” he said, pointing to damaged windows on the side of a nearby apartment block.

“There were shards of glass in this building. I went inside and I found four people [with] minor to moderate [injuries].”

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance service said it treated a 13-year-old boy in a moderate condition with shrapnel injuries to his head, as well as a 22-year-old man in a moderate condition with both a blast injury and a head injury from falling through a window.

Hezbollah said it launched “a salvo of Fadi 1 rockets at the Carmel base south of Haifa” late on Sunday in retaliation for the Israeli air strike that killed its leader Hassan Nasrallah last month.

The MDA also reported that a man in his 20s was in a serious but stable condition are suffering from shrapnel injuries to his chest and abdomen following a separate rocket attack on the town of Tiberias, about 50km (30 miles) to the east.

The IDF said approximately 15 projectiles were identified as crossing from Lebanon at the same time as the Haifa attack. Some were intercepted while others fell in the area, it added.

The Israeli police some buildings and properties were damaged.

A spacecraft is on its way to visit an asteroid that US space agency Nasa knocked off course in 2022.

The Hera craft launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:52 local time (15:52BST) on Monday.

It is part of an international mission to see if we can stop dangerous asteroids hitting Earth.

The project will look at what happened to a space rock called Dimorphos when Nasa intentionally collided with it.

If all goes to plan, Hera will reach Dimorphos, around seven million miles away, in December 2026.

The Hera mission, which is run by the European Space Agency, is a follow-on from Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project.

Dimorphos is a small moon 160m-wide that orbits an asteroid close to Earth called Didymos in something called a binary asteroid system.

In 2022 Nasa said it successfully changed Dimorphos’s course by crashing a probe into it. It altered the rock’s path by a few metres, according to Nasa’s scientists.

The asteroid was not on course to hit Earth, but it was a test to see whether space agencies could do it when there is genuine risk.

When it arrives in two years, the Hera craft will look at the size and depth of the impact crater created on Dimorphos.

Two cube-shaped probes will also study the make-up of the asteroid and its mass.

“We need to understand what are the physical properties of these asteroids? What are they made of? Are they blocks of rock? Are they made of sand inside?” says Naomi Murdoch, a scientist involved with the European Space Agency mission.

That should help scientists understand the best way to attempt to intercept other asteroids, which can be many different sizes and shapes, in the future.

Scientists do not believe that we are currently at risk of a dinosaur-style extinction caused by an asteroid hitting Earth. An asteroid of that size could be easily spotted in space.

The size of asteroid that DART and Hera are targeting are about 100-200m wide and are very difficult to see from our planet.

From time to time they hit Earth. On 2013 a house-sized asteroid exploded in the sky above the town of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The shock wave blew out windows for over 200 square miles and damaged buildings. Over 1,600 people were injured in the blast.

Scientists hope to one day be able to identify asteroids like this and knock them off course.

“It’s not to avoid an extinction of the human race. It’s to create a system to minimize the damage as much as we can. The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do,” says Prof Murdoch.

But scientists warn that even though Nasa has proved it is possible to alter one asteroid’s course, it does not mean it can easily be done on all space rocks.

Intercepting an asteroid before it hits Earth also relies on being able to spot the incoming hazard in the first place.

India has agreed to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support to the Maldives to help strengthen its struggling economy.

The deal was announced after Maldives President Mohammed Muizzu held talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his five-day visit to India.

The support includes a $400m currency swap deal and an additional 30bn rupees ($357m; £273m) in another swap agreement which will allow companies to do business in local currencies rather than in US dollars.

The Maldivian president was given red carpet treatment after relations soured in recent months. Modi called his visit a “new chapter” in ties.

“India will always be there for the progress and prosperity of the people of Maldives,” he said.

The statements – and the Indian financial package – signal a significant improvement in relations between Male and Delhi, which have been strained since Muizzu came to power in November 2023.

Soon after taking over, he chose to travel to Turkey and China – his visit to the latter in January was seen especially as a high-profile snub to India as previous Maldivian leaders traditionally visited Delhi first after being elected.

Around the same time, India was angered by derogatory comments from three Maldivian officials about Modi.

But analysts say the country’s ailing economy has made its leadership mend its ties with India.

The Maldives is staring at a debt default as its foreign exchange reserves have dropped to $440m (£334m), just enough for one-and-a-half months of imports.

On Monday, Muizzu said he held “extensive discussions” with Modi to chart “a path for the future collaboration between our two countries”.

He thanked India and said the budgetary support would be “instrumental in addressing foreign exchange issues”.

The two countries have also agreed on a deal to start talks on a free trade agreement.

Ahead of his meeting with Modi, Muizzu had told the BBC that he expected India to help the country as it has done in the past.

“India is fully cognisant of our fiscal situation, and as one of our biggest development partners, will always be ready to ease our burden, find better alternatives and solutions to the challenges we face,” he said.

Without referring to his anti-India campaign, he said: “We are confident that any differences can be addressed through open dialogue and mutual understanding.”

This was in contrast to his previous decisions, some of which were seen as a way to reduce Delhi’s influence and forge closer ties with India’s rival China.

In February, his administration allowed a Chinese research ship to dock in the Maldives, much to Delhi’s displeasure. Some saw it as a mission to collect data which could be used by the Chinese military for submarine operations.

Muizzu has however rejected the pro-China tag, calling his policies as “Maldives First”.

But the country also continues to depend on China, which has so far extended $1.37bn in loans.

Two Chinese nationals have been killed and at least 10 people injured in a suspected suicide attack near Karachi airport in Pakistan.

A third body, not yet officially identified, is thought to be that of the attacker, the BBC understands.

The Chinese embassy in Pakistan said the explosion on Sunday night was a “terrorist attack” targeting a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a power project in Sindh province.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has in recent years carried out attacks on Chinese nationals involved in development projects in Pakistan, has said it carried out the attack.

In a statement released on Monday, the militant group said it had “targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors” arriving from Karachi airport.

A later statement from the group described it as a suicide attack, and named the perpetrator as Shah Fahad, part of a BLA suicide squad called Majeed Brigade.

The attack was carried out using a “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device”, Reuters news agency quoted the BLA as saying.

The explosion happened around 23:00 local time (17:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attack a “heinous act” and offered his condolences to the Chinese people.

“Pakistan stands committed to safeguarding our Chinese friends,” he wrote on X.

The country’s foreign ministry said it is “in close contact” with Chinese authorities and will “bring to justice those responsible for this cowardly attack”.

“This act of terrorism is an attack not only on Pakistan, but also on the enduring friendship between Pakistan and China,” the ministry said.

“This barbaric act will not go unpunished,” it added.

The Chinese embassy said that the engineers were part of the Chinese-funded enterprise Port Qasim Power Generation Co Ltd, which aims to build two coal power plants at Port Qasim, near Karachi.

Thousands of Chinese workers are in Pakistan, many of them involved in creating an economic corridor between the two countries as part of Beijing’s multibillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

The Port Qasim plant is part of the corridor, along with a number of infrastructure and energy projects in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which has a rich supply of natural resources, including gas and minerals.

The BLA along with other ethnic Baloch groups has fought a long-running insurgency for a separate homeland.

It has regularly targeted Chinese nationals in the region, claiming ethnic Baloch residents were not receiving their share of wealth from foreign investment the province and natural resources extracted there.

The Chinese embassy on Monday reminded its citizens and Chinese enterprises in Pakistan to be vigilant and to “do their best to take safety precautions”. The embassy added that it hoped Pakistan would thoroughly investigate the attack and “severely punish the murderer”.

The blast was reportedly heard in various areas around the city, with footage from local media showing thick smoke and cars set alight.

Pictures online show security officials and firefighters investigating the explosion site, with several vehicles charred by the blast.

A police surgeon, Dr Summaiya told Dawn news: “Ten injured persons, including one in critical condition, have been brought the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre [JPMC].”

She added the injured included a police constable and a woman.

A statement posted on X from Sindh’s Interior Minister’s office said that a “tanker truck” had exploded on Airport Road. Roads leading to Jinnah International Airport were sealed off following the attack, but the airport is functioning as usual on Monday.

There has also been heightened security in Pakistan as it prepares to host the leaders’ summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

There have been multiple attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan in recent years. The BLA has claimed responsibility for several of them, including an attack in March on a Pakistani naval airbase near Gwadar port, another main feature of the China-Pakistan economic corridor.

In April 2022, the group killed three Chinese tutors and a Pakistani driver in a suicide bombing near Karachi University’s Confucius Institute.

In November 2018, gunmen killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.

Japan’s government has admitted an official photo of its new cabinet was manipulated to make members look less unkempt after online speculation that it had been edited.

Photos taken by local media showed the new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, and his defence minister with small patches of white shirt showing under their suits.

But in the official photo issued by the prime minister’s office on Thursday, the untidiness had disappeared.

After plenty of online mockery, a government spokesperson on Monday said “minor editing was made” to the image.

Spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters the image had been manipulated as group photos taken by the prime minister’s office “will be preserved forever as memorabilia”.

He added that “minor editing is customarily performed on these photos”.

His comments come after a barrage of mockery on social media.

“This is more hideous than a group picture of some kind of a seniors’ club during a trip to a hot spring. It’s utterly embarrassing,” one user wrote on X.

Another user said it was clear the cabinet members were wearing suits in the incorrect size.

Other users have been referring to the cabinet – and their trousers – as “ill-fitting”, according to local media.

The photograph was taken on Thursday following the first meeting of Japan’s new cabinet.

A few days earlier, Ishiba, 67, replaced outgoing prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as chief of the country’s ruling party.

He was officially appointed to the role of prime minister on Tuesday.

Ishiba has already announced plans for a snap election on 27 October.

“It is important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible,” he told a news conference in Tokyo, according to Reuters.

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

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024 has been awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on microRNA.

Their discoveries help explain how complex life emerged on Earth and how the human body is made up of a wide variety of different tissues.

MicroRNAs influence how genes – the instructions for life – are controlled inside organisms, including us.

The winners share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000).

Every cell in the human body contains the same raw genetic information, locked in our DNA.

However, despite starting with the identical genetic information, the cells of the human body are wildly different in form and function.

The electrical impulses of nerve cells are distinct from the rhythmic beating of heart cells. The metabolic powerhouse that is a liver cell is distinct to a kidney cell, which filters urea out of the blood. The light-sensing abilities of cells in the retina are different in skillset to white blood cells that produce antibodies to fight infection.

So much variety can arise from the same starting material because of gene expression.

The US scientists were the first to discover microRNAs and how they exerted control on how genes are expressed differently in different tissues.

The medicine and physiology prize winners are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

They said: “Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.

“It is now known that the human genome codes for over 1,000 microRNAs.”

Without the ability to control gene expression, every cell in an organism would be identical, so microRNAs helped enable the evolution of complex life forms.

Abnormal regulation by microRNAs can contribute to cancer and to some conditions, including congenital hearing loss and bone disorders.

A severe example is DICER1 syndrome, which leads to cancer in a variety of tissues, and is caused by mutations that affect microRNAs.

Prof Ambros, 70, works at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Prof Ruvkun, 72, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Both conducted their research on the nematode worm – .

They experimented on a mutant form of the worm that failed to develop some cell types, and eventually homed in on tiny pieces of genetic material or microRNAs that were essential for the worms’ development.

This is how it works:

• A gene or genetic instruction is contained within our DNA
• Our cells make a copy, which is called messenger RNA or simply mRNA (you’ll remember this from Covid vaccines)
• This travels out of the cell’s nucleus and instructs the cell’s protein-making factories to start making a specific protein
• But microRNAs get in the way by sticking to the messenger RNA and stop it working
• In essence the mircoRNA has prevented the gene from being expressed in the cell

Further work showed this was not a process unique to worms, but was a core component of life on Earth.

Prof Janosch Heller, from Dublin City University, said he was “delighted” to hear the prize had gone to Profs Ambros and Ruvkun.

“Their pioneering work into gene regulation by microRNAs paved the way for groundbreaking research into novel therapies for devastating diseases such as epilepsy, but also opened our eyes to the wonderful machinery that is tightly controlling what is happening in our cells.”

2023 – Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for developing the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

2022 – Svante Paabo for his work on human evolution.

2021 – David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their work on how the body senses touch and temperature.

2020 – Michael Houghton, Harvey Alter and Charles Rice for the discovery of the virus Hepatitis C.

2019 – Sir Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how cells sense and adapt to oxygen levels.

2018 – James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo for discovering how to fight cancer using the body’s immune system.

2017- Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for unravelling how bodies keep a circadian rhythm or body clock.

2016 – Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering how cells remain healthy by recycling waste.

Two grisly killings involving teenagers have shaken the French city of Marseille, which has long battled organised crime and drug-related violence.

Last week, a 14-year-old murdered a taxi driver during a botched revenge mission for the brutal killing of a 15-year-old.

Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone has warned that the city’s drug lords were recruiting young boys to kill “without any remorse or reflection”.

During a press conference on Sunday, Mr Bessone described the “unprecedented savagery” of the 15-year-old’s murder linked to a feud between two gangs known as the “DZ Mafia” and the “Blacks”.

According to prosecutors, a member of the DZ Mafia, who is currently in prison, hired the boy for €2,000 ($2,192; £1,676) to “intimidate” a competitor by setting fire to his door.

The teenager was spotted and searched by rivals from the Blacks gang, who then stabbed him and set him on fire after finding a gun.

“He was stabbed 50 times and taken to the Fonscolombes housing estate, where he was burned alive,” said Mr Bessone. A friend, also aged 15, managed to escape.

The DZ Mafia member in jail then hired a 14-year-old via social media to exact revenge two days later, promising to pay him €50,000 ($55,000; £42,000).

However, the boy shot dead taxi driver Nessim Ramdane, 36, before reaching his target because the driver refused to wait while he carried out his mission, Mr Bessone said.

The prisoner who had hired the teenager then phoned the police to turn him in. The minor was taken into custody and admitted shooting the driver, but insisted that the shot had “gone off accidentally”.

Franck Rastoul, a public prosecutor at the Aix-en-Provence court of appeal, has warned of the scourge of drug-related violence, saying that young people were “intoxicated by easy drug money” to the point of “total disregard for human life”.

Young people are also often victims of the drug trade.

In 2021, the BBC reported a 14-year-old boy was shot dead by a young man on a scooter outside the Les Marronniers housing estate in northern Marseille. Two other boys – aged 14 and eight – were wounded.

In March this year French police staged a major operation to seize drug money and weapons in Marseille.

Authorities said that within a few weeks, they made 627 arrests, recovered 450kg of cannabis and 19 weapons, as well as €1.6m ($17.5m; £1.3m) in cash.

The two latest murders mean that the number of drug-related killings in Marseille has risen to 17 since the start of 2024.

A Russian court has sentenced a 72-year-old American citizen to almost seven years in jail for allegedly fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.

Prosecutors said Stephen James Hubbard was serving in a defence unit based in the eastern city of Izyum when he was captured by Russian forces in April 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Hubbard “systematically received material compensation” for his participation in the war on the Ukrainian side, a statement by the Russian Prosecutor General said.

He has now been sentenced to 6 years and 10 months imprisonment in a penal colony.

Hubbard, a native of Michigan, pleaded guilty to the charges last week, according to Russian state media.

However, his sister Patricia Fox told Reuters that Hubbard held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms at his age.

“He is so non-military,” Ms Fox told Reuters, adding that her brother “never had a gun, owned a gun, done any of that… He’s more of a pacifist.”

According to Ms Fox, Hubbard had moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived there for a time with a woman, surviving off a small pension. He and his partner later split but he continued living in Ukraine.

Although Hubbard was detained by Russian forces in early 2022, his case only became public when his trial began in Moscow in September.

In a video shared by Russian authorities, Hubbard can be seen walking with difficulty inside the defendants’ glass box in the courtroom where he was sentenced on Monday.

The eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum where Hubbard was detained was captured by Russia soon after it invaded Ukraine. It was liberated by Ukrainian troops in the autumn of 2022.

In a separate case, on Monday Robert Gilman, an ex-US marine who was already serving time in Russia for an assault conviction, was handed seven years and one month in jail for assaulting a prison officer.

At least 10 US nationals are currently behind bars in Russia. A number of Americans were released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West in August.

A few metres from a charred home in Kibbutz Be’eri, Simon King tends to a patch of ground in the sunshine. The streets around him are eerily quiet, the silence punctuated only by the sound of air strikes that ring in the near distance.

In this community almost a year ago, 101 people were killed after gunmen from Hamas and other groups rampaged through Be’eri’s tree-lined streets, burning homes and shooting people indiscriminately. Another 30 residents and their family members were taken to Gaza as hostages.

Survivors hid in safe rooms all day and long into the night – exchanging horrifying details with each other over community WhatsApp groups, as they tried to make sense of what was happening.

The kibbutz was a strong community, where people lived and operated together as one. Neighbours were more like extended family. It is one of a small number of kibbutzim in Israel that still operates as a collective.

But now, post-7 October, the collective is splintered – psychologically and physically.

About one in 10 were killed. Only a few of the survivors have returned to their homes. Some travel back to the kibbutz daily to work, but can’t face overnight stays. Many, after months in a hotel, are now living in prefabricated buildings on another kibbutz 40km (25 miles) away.

The community, built up over nearly 80 years, is being tested like never before, and its future is uncertain.

There are reminders everywhere of those who didn’t survive – says Dafna Gerstner, who grew up in Be’eri, and spent 19 terrifying hours on 7 October holed up in a safe room – designed to protect residents from rocket attacks.

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“You look to the left and it’s like, ‘Oh it’s my friend who lost her parents.’ You look to the right, ‘It’s my friend who lost her father,’ [and then] ‘She lost her mother.’ It’s everywhere you look.”

Inside Be’eri, surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire, you are never far from a house completely burnt or destroyed, or an empty patch of land where a home, wrecked that day, has been demolished.

Some streets might, upon first glance, appear almost untouched – but look closely and even there you will see markings spray-painted on walls by military units on or after 7 October. Houses where people were killed or kidnapped have black banners on the facades with their names and photos.

In the carcass of one burnt-out home, a board game rests on top of a coffee table, next to a melted television remote control. Food, long-rotten, is still in the fridge-freezer and the smell of burning lingers.

“Time stood still in the house,” says Dafna, 40, as she pokes through the ash-covered wreckage. She and her family had been playing that board game on the eve of the attacks.

Here, her disabled father and his Filipina carer hid for hours in their fortified safe room, as their home burned down around them. Dafna says it is a miracle they both survived.

Her brother did not. A member of Be’eri’s emergency response squad, he was killed in a gunfight at the kibbutz’s dental clinic. Dafna was staying in his house at the time, on a visit from her home in Germany.

Dozens of buildings in Be’eri are spattered with bullet holes – including the nursery. The play park and petting zoo are empty. No children have moved back, and the animals have been sent to new homes.

The kibbutz’s empty streets sometimes come alive, though, in a surprising way – with organised tours for visitors, who give donations.

Israeli soldiers, and some civilians from Israel and abroad, come to see the broken homes, and hear accounts of the devastation, in order to understand what happened.

Two of those who volunteer to lead the tours, Rami Gold and Simon King, say they are determined to ensure what happened here is remembered.

Simon, 60, admits this can be a difficult process.

“There’s a lot of mixed feelings and [the visitors] don’t really know what to ask but they can see and hear and smell… it’s a very heavy emotional experience.”

Rami, 70, says these occasions are often followed by restless nights. Each tour, he says, takes him back to 7 October.

He is one of the few who moved back to Be’eri after the attacks.

And the tours are not popular with everyone. “At some point it felt like someone took over the kibbutz – everybody was there,” Dafna says.

But Simon says the stories have to be told. “Some don’t like it because it’s their home and you don’t want people rummaging around,” he says. “But you have to send the message out, otherwise it will be forgotten.”

At the same time, both he and Rami say they are looking to the future, describing themselves as “irresponsible optimists”. They continue to water the lawns and fix fences, amid the destruction, as others build new homes that will replace those destroyed.

Simon describes the rebuilding as therapy.

Established in 1946, Be’eri is one of 11 Jewish communities in this region set up before the creation of the state of Israel. It was known for its left-leaning views, and many of its residents believed in, and advocated for, peace with the Palestinians.

After the attacks, many residents were moved into a hotel by the Dead Sea – the David Hotel – some 90 minutes’ drive away.

In the aftermath of the attacks, I witnessed their trauma.

Shell-shocked residents gathered in the lobby and other communal areas, as they tried to make sense of what had happened, and who they had lost, in hushed conversations. Some children clung to their parents as they spoke.

Still now, they say, the conversations have not moved on.

“Every person I speak to from Be’eri – it always goes back to this day. Every conversation is going back to dealing with it and the effects after it. We are always talking about it again and again and again,” says Shir Guttentag.

Like her friend Dafna, Shir was holed up that day in her safe room, attempting to reassure terrified neighbours on the WhatsApp group as Hamas gunmen stormed through the kibbutz, shooting residents and setting homes on fire.

Shir twice dismantled the barricade of furniture she had made against her front door to let neighbours in to hide. She told her children, “it’s OK, it’s going to be OK” as they waited to be rescued.

When they were eventually escorted to safety, she looked down at the ground, not wanting to see the remains of her community.

In the coming months at the Dead Sea hotel, Shir says she struggled as people began to leave – some to homes elsewhere in the country or to stay with families, others seeking to escape their memories by heading abroad.

Each departure was like “another break-up, another goodbye”, she says.

It is no longer unusual to see someone who is crying or looking sad among Be’eri’s grieving residents.

“In normal days it would have been like, ‘What happened? Are you OK?’ Nowadays everyone can cry and no-one asks him why,” Shir says.

Shir and her daughters, along with hundreds of other Be’eri survivors, have now moved to new, identical prefabricated homes, paid for by the Israeli government, on an expanse of barren land at another kibbutz, Hatzerim – about 40-minutes drive from Be’eri.

I was there on moving day.

It feels a world away from the manicured lawns of Be’eri, though grass has now been planted around the neighbourhood.

When single mother Shir led her daughters, aged nine and six, into their new bungalow, she told me her stomach was turning from excitement and nerves.

She checked the door to the safe room, where her children will sleep every night, noting that it felt heavier than the door at Be’eri. “I don’t know if it’s bulletproof. I hope so,” she said.

She chose not to bring many items from Be’eri because she wants to keep her home there as it was – and to remind herself that she will one day return.

The mass move to Hatzerim happened after it was put to a community vote – as is the case with all major kibbutz decisions. It is estimated about 70% of Be’eri’s survivors will live there for the time being. About half of the kibbutz’s residents have moved in so far, but more homes are on the way.

The journey from Hatzerim to Be’eri is shorter than it was from the hotel – and many people make the trip every day, to work in one of the kibbutz’s businesses, as they did before.

Shir travels to Be’eri to work at its veterinary clinic, but can’t imagine returning to live there yet.

“I don’t know what needs to happen, but something drastic, so I can feel safe again.”

In the middle of the day, the Be’eri lunch hall fills with people as they gather to eat together.

Shir, like many others, has reluctantly applied for a gun licence, never wanting to be caught off-guard again.

“It’s for my daughters and myself because, on the day, I didn’t have anything,” she says.

Her mother’s long-term partner was killed that day. When they talk about it, her mother says: “They destroyed us.”

Residents say they have relied on the support of their neighbours over the past year, but individual trauma has also tested a community that has historically operated as a collective.

The slogan at Be’eri is adapted from Karl Marx: “Everyone gives as much as he can and everyone gets as much as he needs.” But these words have now become hard to live by.

Many residents of working age are employed by Be’eri’s successful printing house, and other smaller kibbutz businesses. Profits are pooled and people receive housing and other amenities based on their individual circumstances.

However, the decision of some people not to return to work has undermined this principle of communal labour and living.

And if some residents decide they can never return to Be’eri that could, in turn, create fresh problems.

Many have little experience of non-communal living and would struggle financially if they lived independently.

The 7 October attack has also quietened calls for peace.

The kibbutz used to have a fund to support Gazans. Some residents would also help arrange medical treatment for Gazans at Israeli hospitals, members say.

Now, among some, strong views to the contrary are shared in person and on social media.

“They’ll [Gazans] never accept our being here. It’s either us or them,” says Rami.

Several people bring up the killing of resident Vivian Silver – one of Israel’s best-known peace advocates.

“For now, people are very mad,” Shir says.

“People still want to live in peace, but for now, I can’t see any partner on the other side.

“I don’t like to think in terms of hate and anger, it’s not who I am, but I can’t disconnect from what happened that day.”

Shir wears a necklace engraved with a portrait of her lifelong friend Carmel Gat, who was taken hostage from Be’eri that day.

Her biggest dream was that they would be reunited – but, on 1 September, Carmel’s body was found alongside five other hostages.

The IDF said they had been killed by Hamas just hours before a planned rescue attempt. Hamas said the hostages were killed in air strikes – but an autopsy on the returned bodies concluded they had all been shot multiple times at close range.

Be’eri is still waiting and hoping for the return of others. So far, 18 have been brought back alive, along with two dead bodies, while 10 are still in Gaza, at least three of whom are believed to still be alive.

Behind Dafna’s father’s house, 37-year-old Yuval Haran stands in front of the home where his father was killed, and many relatives were taken hostage, on 7 October. His brother-in-law Tal is still being held in Gaza.

“Until he comes back, my clock is still on 7 October. I don’t want revenge, I just want my family back, I just want to have a quiet peaceful life again,” Yuval says.

In all, some 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel on 7 October, with 251 taken to Gaza as hostages. Since then, in the Israeli military operation in Gaza, more than 41,000 people have been killed according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Hundreds of people – combatants and civilians – have also been killed in Lebanon in Israeli air strikes against the armed group Hezbollah, in a significant escalation of their long-running conflict.

Residents from Be’eri say that before 7 October, despite their proximity to the Gaza fence, they always felt safe – such was their faith in the Israeli military system. But that faith has now been shaken.

“I’m less confident and I’m less trusting,” Shir says.

She relives the events in her dreams.

“I wake up and I remind myself it’s over. But the trauma is, I think, for life. I don’t know if I can ever feel fully safe again.”

This summer Rami and Simon also took on the sombre task of digging graves for Be’eri’s dead, who are only just being moved back to the kibbutz from cemeteries elsewhere in Israel.

“After the 7th [October] this area was a military zone, we couldn’t bury them here,” says Rami, as he looks over the graves, a rifle slung across his body.

Simon says it brings up strong and passionate feelings – “but in the end they’re back at home”.

Each time a person is returned, the kibbutz holds a second funeral, with many residents in attendance.

Shir, in the temporary site at Hatzerim, says that for now, she is drawing strength from the community around her.

“We’re not whole, but we will be I hope,” she says.

“It’s a grieving community – sadder and angrier – but still a strong community.”

“Our people respect the Russian and Ukrainian people,” says Savo Dobrovic. “I simply haven’t noticed any bad relations.”

It sounds like a recipe for tension and confrontation: tens of thousands of people from opposing sides in a bitter, protracted war descending on a small Balkan nation with its own very recent memories of conflict.

But Montenegro has managed the influx so far.

Since February 2022, Ukrainian refugees and Russian exiles have fanned out across Europe, fleeing war, conscription and Vladimir Putin’s rule.

More than four million people have fled Ukraine for temporary protection in the European Union – to Germany and Poland and elsewhere.

But beyond the EU, Montenegro has let in more than 200,000 Ukrainians, making it the highest per capita Ukrainian refugee population in the world.

“Montenegrins are very patient, they are people who want to help,” says Dobrovic, a property owner in the Adriatic resort of Budva.

The word , meaning “slowly”, is integral to their way of life.

“It amazes me – they’re a mountain people, but all that’s left from that noisy temperament is a desire to hug you,” says Natalya Sevets-Yermolina, who runs the Russian cultural centre Reforum in Budva.

Montenegro, a Nato member and candidate for EU status, has not been without its problems.

It has a substantial ethnic Serb population, many of whom have pro-Russian sympathies, and six Russian diplomats were expelled two years ago on suspicion of spying.

But it has won praise for its response to the refugee crisis – in particular its decision to grant Ukrainians temporary protection status, which has now been extended until March 2025.

The most recent figures from September last year show more than 10,000 had benefited, and the UN says 62,000 Ukrainians had registered some legal status by then. That is nearly 10% of Montenegro’s population.

Thousands more have come from Russia or Belarus.

For all of these groups Montenegro is attractive for its visa-free regime, similar language, common religion and Western-leaning government.

That welcome does not always extend to their quality of life.

While there are plenty of jobs for immigrants in coastal areas, they are often seasonal and poorly paid. Better quality, professional work is harder to find. The luckier ones have been able to retain the jobs they had back home, working remotely.

Another difficulty is that it is almost impossible to get citizenship here, a problem for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to renew their passports.

There has been a strong Russian presence in Montenegro for years, and it has a reputation, perhaps unfairly, as a playground for the very rich.

Many Russians and Ukrainians have property or family connections, but there is also a large contingent who ended up here almost by chance, feeling completely lost.

It was for them that non-profit shelter (Haven) was set up.

Based in Budva, it gives the most desperate arrivals a safe place and a warm welcome for two weeks as they find their feet.

They are given help with documentation, hunting for jobs and flats, and Ukrainians can also come for two weeks as a “holiday” from the war.

Valentina Ostroglyad, 60, came here with her daughter a year ago from Zaporizhzhia, a regional capital in south-eastern Ukraine that comes under repeated, deadly Russian bombardment.

“When I first arrived in Montenegro I couldn’t handle fireworks, or even a roof falling in – I associated it with those explosions,” she said.

Now she is working as an art teacher and enjoying her adopted country: “Today I went up to a spring, admired the mountains and sea. And people are very kind.”

The ongoing grimness of the war ensures that Ukrainians keep coming, no longer able to endure the pain and suffering at home.

Sasha Borkov, a driver from Kharkiv, was separated from his wife and six children, aged four to 16, as they left Ukraine in late August.

He was turned back at the Polish border – he previously did jail time in Hungary for transporting irregular migrants and is banned from the EU. His family were allowed to continue to Germany while he, after a tense few days travelling around Europe, was finally allowed to touch down in Montenegro.

Visibly stressed and exhausted, he described how the war had finally driven him and his family from their home.

“When you see and hear every day houses being destroyed, people being killed, it’s impossible to convey,” he said.

“Our flat isn’t damaged but windows get broken, and [the bombs] are getting closer and closer.”

Borkov said he had been looking at the possibility of going to Montenegro since the start of the war: “[Pristaniste] took me in, gave me food and drink, a place to stay. I rested, then I started looking for work.”

He has already found a job and his family are due to join him here. He is applying for temporary protection, and a place at a Ukrainian refugee centre.

Elsewhere in Budva, Yuliya Matsuy has set up a children’s centre for Ukrainians to take lessons in history, English, maths and art – or just to dance, sing and watch films.

Many were traumatised by war, she says: “They weren’t interested in the mountains or the sea, they wanted nothing.”

“But when they started interacting, their eyes were smiling. Those children’s smiles and emotions were something that’s impossible to convey. And only then we understood we were doing the right thing.”

Now most are settled. The younger children learned Montenegrin and now attend local schools, while the older ones have continued their learning remotely at Ukrainian schools.

Both charities have volunteers from several countries and don’t check passports – there’s no emphasis on citizenship here.

Other parts of Europe have seen occasional friction between Ukrainians and Russians. At the start of the war, Germany recorded a rise in attacks on both.

But there has been little of that so far in Montenegro.

There is a sense of tolerance here and Pristaniste and its volunteers have had a role in promoting it.

Sasha Borkov distinguishes between Russians he has met in Budva and those fighting the war in Ukraine.

“People here are trying to help, they’re not doing anything against our country, against us, against my children, [unlike] those who fire at and destroy our houses, and say that they’re liberating us.”

Friendships have grown among volunteers and residents, and between residents, and one Russian-Ukrainian couple who lived at Pristaniste recently married.

Empathy is a major factor. A recent talk in Budva by Kyiv-based journalist Olha Musafirova about her work, in Ukrainian, had Russians in the audience in tears, horrified by their country’s actions.

For Ukrainian actor Katarina Sinchillo, Russian diasporas can vary and Montenegro’s is “sensitive”.

“I think the people who live here are a somewhat different community because it’s the intelligentsia,” she says, “educated people who can’t live without the arts.”

Sinchillo set up a theatre here, with husband and fellow actor Viktor Koshel, using actors from all over the former Soviet Union.

Their plays are well attended, she says: “Progressive Russian people, who are helping Ukraine, go with interest and pleasure.”

Koshel says the environment here is perfect for such contacts. ”Here the countryside is heavenly, it takes you away from those urbanist, gloomy, depressive moods, political propaganda etc. You go to the sea and all that disappears.”

They have also collaborated with veteran Russian rock musician Mikhail Borzykin, who has seen big changes in the Russian diaspora over the past three years. Russian-Ukrainian joint musical projects are vanishingly rare.

Before the war, he says, “fierce arguments” about Putin in the Russian community were commonplace, but the recent influx of anti-war immigrants created a different atmosphere.

“The overwhelming majority of young people who have come here, they of course understand the horror of what’s happening, so there is agreement on the main questions,” he says.

As for the pro-Kremlin former members of Russia’s corrupt elite, who he calls the they are sitting quietly in the properties they bought in Montenegro years ago.

“Conflicts are not aired in public,” he says.

Borzykin is part of a volleyball group of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians and says they are “all on the same wavelength”.

Despite the relatively warm welcome, the future of some immigrants remains uncertain.

Strict citizenship laws mean many of them will not be able to stay here indefinitely.

Most Ukrainians seem keen to return home if the war ends, assuming they still have homes to go to.

“Currently there’s a huge threat to our lives, but if it ends of course we’ll go home,” says Sasha Borkov. “There’s nowhere better than home”.

But most Russians say it will take much more than the fall of the regime to persuade them to go back permanently.

Natalya Sevets-Yermolina, who comes from the northern city of Petrozavodsk, says she’s not in a hurry.

“I have the problem that it’s not Putin that persecuted me but those little people I lived in the same city with,” she says. “Putin is far away but those who do his bidding will remain, even if he dies soon.”

Borzykin says he too is unlikely to return quickly, as attitudes could take decades to change.

“Germany needed 30 years [after the Nazis] while the new generation came along. I’m afraid I won’t have that long.”

With one month to election day, the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is the electoral equivalent of a bare-knuckle brawl.

The race for the White House still appears deadlocked, both nationally and in battleground states, so victory will be decided by the slimmest of margins – every new voter engaged, every undecided voter swayed, could help land a knock-out punch.

“In any super close race, where the electorate is divided down the middle, a difference of a percentage point or two could be decisive,” says David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University.

While party strategists are focused on how to earn that decisive edge, it could just as easily be an event out of their control, an unexpected twist, that upends the campaign in the final weeks.

It’s already been a year of political shockwaves – from one candidate surviving two assassination attempts and being convicted of a crime, to another, President Joe Biden, dropping out of the race in favour of his much younger vice-president.

However, when the surprises drop in October – think Trump’s Access Hollywood tape or Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 – there is scarcely time left to recover or regain momentum after a misstep or bad news cycle.

This week alone, there were several new rumbles that could turn into political storms by 5 November.

The first potential political storm was a literal one. Hurricane Helene tore through two key electoral battlegrounds last week, Georgia and North Carolina. Because of the intense focus on both states during this presidential race, a humanitarian disaster, with a death toll already over 200, has also become a political issue.

Harris pledged long-term aid to the region at a stop in Georgia earlier this week, and visited those affected by the storm in North Carolina on Saturday.

“We’re here for the long haul,” she said in Georgia.

Meanwhile, both states are essentially must-wins for Trump, and polls show a dead heat. While visiting Georgia, the former president claimed that Americans were losing out on emergency relief money because it had been spent on migrants. In fact, the two distinct programmes have separate budgets, and the Biden administration accused Republicans of spreading “bold-faced lies” about funding for the disaster response.

When disaster strikes, it’s not easy for the government to keep everyone happy. If Trump’s attacks land, any voter dissatisfaction with recovery efforts could potentially impact the result in two of the most closely-watched states in the country.

Thousands of miles from the disaster-ravaged American southeast, a manmade crisis continues to inject itself into American politics. The Gaza war is in danger of expanding into a regional conflagration, as Israeli forces fought Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and Iran launched hundreds of missiles at Israel earlier this week.

While Harris has presented herself as a candidate of change, she put no distance between herself and the current administration when it comes to US-Israeli policies. That comes with risks.

Hopes for any kind of pre-election ceasefire in Gaza appear firmly dashed, and the White House at this point is trying to ensure that the inevitable Israeli response to Tuesday’s Iranian strike doesn’t lead to all-out war.

On Thursday night, Biden was not exactly reassuring.

“I don’t believe there’s going to be an all-out war,” he said. “I think we can avoid it. But there’s a lot to do yet.”

The war is also having consequences at home for Democrats, even if American voters usually don’t think directly about foreign policy when they cast their ballots.

Harris’s commitment to continue supplying arms to Israel is a problem for two key segments of the Democratic base: Arab-Americans in the must-win state of Michigan, and young voters on campuses, where anti-war protests could start up again.

The conflict in the Middle East has also fuelled pocketbook concerns. Biden’s mention of the possibility that Israel would target Iranian refineries caused the price of oil to jump more than 5% on Thursday.

If there’s one thing that American consumers are particularly sensitive to, it’s higher prices at the petrol pump.

Across the board, public opinion surveys continue to show that the economy is the top issue for American voters. And Harris and the Democrats received some good news on that front on Friday, with the latest employment figures showing robust job growth over the past few months and an unemployment level that dropped to 4.1%.

According to Mr Greenberg, however, voter concerns on the economy are about more than the latest job figures.

“When people complain about the economy, what they’re really complaining about is the longer-term failure in certain parts of the country – rural America’s de-industrialised communities,” he says. “Those are parts of the country that are hurting even in a good economy.”

For most of the election season, Trump has fared better than Harris when voters are asked who they think would do a better job with the economy, including in a recent CNN poll. But there are signs his lead may not be set in stone, such as a Cook Political Report survey of swing states that showed the two candidates tied on who would be best at dealing with inflation.

One looming economic pitfall for Democrats also evaporated this week – the dockworkers strike, which had briefly shut down critical ports on the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico for the first time in 50 years. Both parties agreed to return to the bargaining table in January, reopening the ports. If a work stoppage had continued, it could have disrupted supply chains and driven up consumer prices in the weeks before the election.

Meanwhile, undocumented crossings at the US-Mexico border have returned to pre-Covid pandemic levels, after hitting a record high of 249,741 last December.

While the impact of that border surge is still being felt in many American cities, the urgency of the crisis may be diminishing.

While much of this week’s news could spell trouble for Harris and the Democrats, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Trump.

His conduct during the 6 January attack on the US Capitol once again came into focus on Wednesday, when a federal judge released a document from special counsel Jack Smith outlining his case and evidence against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election result.

The document, which argued that the former president should not be given presidential immunity from prosecution, contained new details about Trump’s words and actions leading up to the Capitol riot by his supporters.

A recent CNN poll shows that voters favour Harris over Trump on issues of “protecting democracy” by 47% to 40% – so anything that renews attention on the chaotic final weeks of Trump’s presidency could be to the Democrat’s advantage.

The term “October surprise” has been a fixture in American political lexicon for nearly 50 years. Campaigns dread the unexpected headline or crisis that pushes their candidates off message and changes the trajectory of a race.

Even the smallest ripple in public opinion might deliver the White House in a year when the electoral margins in the swing states could be measured in only tens of thousands of votes.

November’s balloting, says Mr Greenberg, is shaping up to be a nail-biter.

“I don’t have any fingernails left,” he says. “I could totally imagine this election going either way with extremely significant consequences riding on that vote no matter where your loyalty is.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ANALYSIS: Only one candidate is talking about China
• DISINFO: Pro- and anti-Trump voters united by one belief
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

The last surviving cast member from the very first Doctor Who series said she would like to return to the show as the 60th anniversary of her final appearance approaches.

Carole Ann Ford, from Ilford, played Susan, granddaughter of the Doctor played by William Hartnell when the BBC show started in 1963. The character has been frequently mentioned in the recent series with Ncuti Gatwa.

During an appearance at Luton Comic Con, the actress said she wanted to return although she admitted it “would be very emotional.. very emotional”.

“I don’t know if I could survive the excitement actually, it would be intense beyond all intensity,” she said.

The 84-year-old is the last member of the original cast following the death of William Russell in June.

She said: “It’s not just returning, it would bring back all the memories of William Russell and Jackie and Bill [William Hartnell] and various other people who aren’t with us anymore.

“I might be a little bit overcome and start blubbing.

“I keep being reminded I’m the last one standing and it’s not something I’m happy to hear.”

She appeared as the granddaughter of the original Doctor, played by William Hartnell, but was left behind after a showdown with the Daleks set in Bedfordshire and broadcast on 26 December 1964.

At the time, the Doctor promised to return for her, but despite an appearance in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, a story that would address the reunion between the characters is yet to take place.

“He said he’d come back and get me and never did. I’d give him a good telling off if I saw him again,” she said.

“I understand their dilemma, how difficult it must be to write for me. It has been 60 years since I was first in it.

“I’ve met Russell [T Davies] a few times and I absolutely adore him. He is the man that would be the boss man to say yes or no – so hopefully it’s going to be yes.”

Last year the character returned to screens in a newly colourised version of the 1963 episode, The Daleks, which was broadcast on BBC Four to mark the show’s 60th anniversary.

The actress encouraged fans to be vocal in their support of her return if there was any chance of her returning.

In an interview on BBC Three Counties Radio, she hinted that she had had “one or two” conversations about returning in the past.

“I’ve had many conversations about going back, maybe not with the right people, I don’t know,” she added.

When it was suggested her character could be recast, she joked: “They better not, I’d burn the studio down.”

Butler County in Western Pennsylvania is rock-solid Trump country.

In front yards, on the sides of roads and at filling stations, the messages on the billboards are blunt.

“Bulletproof” is one, on a picture of the former president with his fist raised, moments after he was shot in this very town.

Another, more overtly political, reads: “Even my dog hates Biden.”

The former president got twice as many votes as Joe Biden here in 2020, beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a similar margin. In fact, this county has only voted Democrat once in the past 150 years of presidential elections.

Butler has always been proud to be known as the home of the American Jeep but this year it is better remembered for one thing – where a former Republican president was inches away from being assassinated.

A bullet grazed his ear that day, on 13 July, and Butler is undergoing its own healing process as Donald Trump returns to the same spot, the Farm Show grounds, for a rally on Saturday evening.

Trump’s speech is expected to begin at about 17:00 local time (21:00 GMT), with the site reportedly already in lockdown ahead of his visit.

For the first time since publicly endorsing the former president, Elon Musk – the boss of X, Tesla and SpaceX – has confirmed he will be in the audience.

Ahead of Trump’s return to Butler, the BBC has spoken to some of the people who were just a few feet away from him as the gunfire rang out back in July.

There is sadness and guilt among local Republicans and resentment, too, that their county – so staunchly pro-Trump – was where this happened.

“That was the saddest moment of my life,” said Jim Hulings, chairman of the Butler County Republican Party, who was 30ft away at the time and thought Trump had been killed. “I was horrified to think that somebody had the audacity to shoot a great man.”

Jondavid Longo, the mayor of Slippery Rock, a small town just a few miles away, was on stage moments before the shooting, part of the warm-up act.

When the gunman began to fire, he instinctively used his body to cover his pregnant wife. He says he replays the incident in his mind every day.

“It’s a difficult thing for us to come to terms with,” he said. There is guilt that somebody else did lose their life that day, he says, and two others were seriously injured.

• Unanswered questions as Trump returns to Butler
• Wife of man killed at Trump rally struggles with loss

That person was Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former volunteer fire fighter, who died after throwing himself in front of the bullets to protect his wife and daughters.

His widow Helen seems lost and distracted when I meet her. It’s clear she’s struggling.

“I think about it every day. I see it every time I close my eyes.”

She and Corey were childhood sweethearts, married for 29 years. And both staunch supporters of Trump.

They joked that day that the former president was going to invite Corey up on stage, she said. Days later, his fire chief’s jacket was taken to the Republican convention in Milwaukee and placed on stage as Trump made his acceptance speech for the nomination.

“I just cried because, you know, I said he got his moment on stage with Trump.”

Like Helen, Trump supporters in Butler have dozens of questions about how it could have happened.

While the motive of the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Crooks, remain obscure, what has become much clearer is the series of security blunders that led to him pulling the trigger.

Two hours before he opened fire, he was able to fly a drone around the site without being detected because Secret Service counter-surveillance equipment was not working.

Communications failures meant that suspicious sightings of Crooks an hour and a half before he shot at Trump were not passed on to all elements of the Secret Service.

More than half an hour before the shooting, he was seen by police using a rangefinder pointed at the stage – a device often used by hunters pursuing their prey.

Yet a little over 25 minutes later, Crooks had managed to climb on to the roof of a local business and fire eight shots. Seconds later he was dead, a single shot to the head from a Secret Service sniper.

Those few seconds are still haunting many of those who witnessed it.

Lucie Roth can be seen in the VIP seats behind Trump in one of the most recognisable pictures of the shooting, taken by a Reuters photographer.

She initially thought the gunfire was fireworks but then she heard screams to “Get down!” and dropped to the floor.

“I truly thought he was dead. I saw the Secret Service pile on top of him like he was the quarterback at a football game.”

She was still down when she heard the crowd roar and cheer, and knew then he was OK.

Renae Billow and her 11-year-old son and Trump impersonator, Gino Benford, were a few feet away from Lucie and Gino is clearly visible in the Reuters photo, complete with a blond wig and a dark suit.

Speaking from the family home in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Gino says he was both scared and calm, “half and half”, when the shots rang out.

“I thought, who would want to do this to such a great president?”

Reporting from just outside the rally that night, we began to interview people as they left.

But one man stood out. He was wearing a Trump hat with fake orange hair sprouting out of it and holding a can of beer.

Greg Smith’s words, in which he described how he had seen the gunman on the roof and tried to warn the Secret Service, reverberated around the world.

• Witness tells BBC he saw gunman on roof

It provided the first hint at the catastrophic security failure and a clip of the interview was viewed by tens of millions of people on social media.

Meeting him again this week at his store, just yards from the scene of the shooting, he still feels angry.

“I was very frustrated when I talked to you, extremely frustrated because I think of the time frame. He was on that roof for minutes, crawling, and we were pointing and yelling.”

“I remember thinking ‘Why? Why isn’t someone doing something? How is this happening? How do I still hear President Trump talking as this is going on?'”

There is also pride in what he did in speaking out. People tell him he is part of history, the first person to tell the world what happened.

As someone who usually shuns the limelight, he added: “I jumped out of my comfort zone and did that. And I’m glad that it went like it did, that everything I told you that night has proven to be true.”

Greg, who that day was listening to Trump from outside the rally, does not plan to go to Saturday’s event. He says his 12-year-old son has been traumatised by it, jumping whenever he hears fire works.

Despite still feeling angry about the security lapses, Helen Comperatore and her daughters will go back.

It’s what Corey would have wanted, she says.

“I have tried to do that with everything I do, what would he want me to do? What would Corey do? And that’s how I go.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ANALYSIS: Only one candidate is talking about China
• DISINFO: Pro- and anti-Trump voters united by one belief
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

It was a regeneration idea that started half a century ago in the US, and has spread to other parts of the world. But do $1 homes reverse urban decay and who are the winners and losers?

Judy Aleksalza’s house in the Pigtown area of Baltimore feels like a real-life version of the Tardis, Doctor Who’s famous time-travelling police box. It seems bigger on the inside than the outside.

It’s part of a row of impeccably kept 19th Century terrace houses – there are freshly watered plant pots outside many of the front steps, and no litter or graffiti.

Ms Aleksalza bought the then abandoned, derelict property back in the 1976 for the same price as her neighbours – $1 (77p).

Since then she has spent tens of thousands of dollars, and much more in blood sweat and tears, transforming it. Poor weather, contractors who failed to do the work, it was, in Judy’s words – “a horror story”.

“I came very close to declaring personal bankruptcy,” she says. “It’s kind of like childbirth, you know. It was horrible while it was going on.

“But you know, after it was all over, I said ‘it is mine, it’s all mine’. And the stability of having your own home is everything.”

Baltimore, 40 miles (64km) northeast of Washington DC, was one of the first cities in the US to try what it called “urban homesteading”. Vacant properties were sold off for just one dollar, allowing people to get on the housing ladder who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

The scheme was run by Jay Brodie who at the time was a senior figure in the city’s housing department.

“We picked names out of a hat and started meeting with them,” he remembers. “Once it was finished, it made the cover of the American Express magazine… and we said ‘we have something here’.

“We’re talking about something that you can see and touch. They were living examples of what could be done with Baltimore row houses.”

The project came to a halt in 1988 after Mr Brodie left the department in the early 1980s. But some ideas never quite go away, and instead spread their wings.

Fast forward to 2013, and three and a half thousand miles away, another port city that had faced similar issues of urban decay decided to try something similar – Liverpool.

Tony Mousedale from Liverpool City Council’s housing department had heard about the idea of selling off abandoned properties cheaply. He suggested Liverpool try it.

So they offered properties in the Webster Triangle area of Wavertree for just £1.

“I think we just felt that there was an appetite for people who were keen to renovate derelict houses, starting from scratch, putting their own stamp on it,” says Mr Mousedale.

“We put that sort of concept out there, and received a very positive response. I think it really captured people’s imagination.”

It might have raised a lot of interest, but some of the more than 100 buyers were brought down to earth with a bump.

“There was a rat infestation, and I had a tree growing out of the front bay window frame,” says Maxine Sharples, one of those who bought into the scheme. “It was gruelling, backbreaking work. It was filthy.”

Despite all the heartache and hard work, Maxine Sharples says it was worth it. “It’s completely changed my life. I don’t take it for granted that I’m living in the home of my dreams that I renovated and got for a quid.”

Similar schemes have also introduced in other countries, including Italy, and Spain.

And things have in some ways come full circle. Earlier this year Baltimore unveiled new plans to help regenerate its blighted neighbourhoods.

Part of that? A scheme called the Fixed Pricing Program that would allow residents to buy a derelict property for just $1.

Any individual wishing to buy a house for a dollar needs to show that they have $90,000 for the renovation. Plus, they must already live in the city, and promise to reside in the renovated property for five years.

Interest in the project is said to be high. Alice Kennedy, the Baltimore Housing Commissioner, tells me: “I think that it definitely got people more excited or interested than even, I think, we recognized that would happen.”

Yet so far only a handful of people have met the criteria and actually been successful.

Meanwhile, non-profit providers of affordable housing, known as “community land trusts”, can also buy the Baltimore buildings for $1, while large housing developers can apply to purchase them for $3,000.

Such $1 home schemes are quick to make media headlines, but critics questions what they can achieve. One such sceptic is David Simon, the creator of the hit TV series The Wire, which was set in Baltimore.

The gritty show, which was broadcast from 2002 to 2008, was inspired by Mr Simon’s own experience as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

He says that the original Baltimore scheme didn’t benefit those who were economically marginalised, as the properties were bought by people who had enough money to do them up.

“I mean it brought tax base back to the city,” says Mr Simon, who still lives and works in Baltimore. “But it wasn’t socialistic in the sense that I don’t think it was successful in, in spreading the wealth. But I don’t think any urban renewal, or any urban reclamation, that I’m familiar with in the city, has ever been egalitarian.”

In Liverpool Tony Mousedale accepts that while its scheme has helped improve the area in question, there are still issues with anti-social behaviour, and there are still boarded up properties that haven’t been renovated, a decade later.

“I would say anti-social incidents are not as frequent as they used to be,” he says. “Generally speaking, the homes for a pound scheme has been a driver for regenerating the area. There is still a way to go. I think in some ways regeneration never finishes, does it? There’s always more to do.”

Back in Baltimore, David Lidz runs Waterbottle Cooperative, a grassroots organisation that buys up decaying properties in Baltimore and renovates them to rent to people on low incomes.

He is concerned that individuals buying homes for a $1 may lead to areas being gentrified, which results in general rent levels being “jacked up” and people on lower incomes being “pushed out”.

“So then you ask yourself where do those people go? Well they move over to the next rotting neighbourhood. That’s not good.”

At the Baltimore Housing Commissioner’s office, Alice Kennedy says she’s aware of the problems previous renewal schemes have created, and is keen to learn the lessons of the past.

“A top priority for all of us that work in the city is to redress the racist housing policies of the past and the socioeconomic segregation,” she says.

“For me, success is really knowing that our communities are going to be whole again, and that they’re going to have the ability to thrive from birth to death as a human in the city of Baltimore.”

A new nine-month term begins for the US Supreme Court on Monday with major cases that will shape many aspects of American life.

The court’s nine justices are back after last year’s blockbuster term, which saw rulings that protected a widely used abortion pill or granting former President Donald Trump partial immunity from prosecution.

The coming months may bring legal disputes over the looming presidential elections, potentially consequential in what should be a closely-fought contest.

With its six-three conservative majority intact, its rulings may fuel further scepticism among the American public whose approval for its work is now at 43%, according to Gallup, a near-record low.

With a new year ahead, here’s a look at some of the major cases on its docket.

Perhaps the most high-profile case of the term will be US v Skrmetti, where the justices will hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a Republican-backed ban on gender care for minors.

The Tennessee ban, which took effect in July 2023, prohibits certain treatments for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, including the prescription of any puberty blockers or hormones, if the treatment is meant to “enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity”.

• BMA takes ‘neutral position’ on gender review
• Gender care review disappointing, says trans man
• Three trans journeys: ‘I spent so long hiding’

A group of young transgender people, their families and medical providers, have joined the Biden administration in challenging a decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that upheld the Tennessee ban.

The nine Supreme Court justices will be asked to weigh whether the ban violates the 14th Amendment of the US constitution, which grants equal protection under the law.

The decision could have consequences nationwide. More than 20 states have enacted laws in recent years to restrict access to bespoke care for transgender youth.

The restrictions have been opposed by major medical groups including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

On the second day of its term, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a new regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on so-called “ghost guns”, the mostly untraceable firearms made from at-home kits.

The case, Garland v VanDerStok, centres on whether the ATF may regulate these weapons in the same way it regulates commercial gun sales, including serial numbers and federal background checks.

The Biden administration first imposed the restrictions in 2022, but was quickly blocked by a lower court, which sided with a group of firearms owners, gun rights groups and firearms manufacturers who argued the ATF had overstepped its authority.

The Justice Department then appealed, bringing the case to the country’s highest court.

• Why ghost guns are America’s fastest-growing gun problem

The case could have major implications for US gun control. The White House has said the unregistered weapons pose an increasing threat, with 20,000 suspected ghost guns found during criminal investigations in 2021 – a tenfold increase from five years earlier.

The top court will also hear a case to clarify how courts can determine if a police officer acted with reasonable force.

A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit ruled this year that a Texas police officer reasonably feared for his life when he shot and killed a driver during a traffic stop in Houston in 2016.

Ashtian Barnes had been driving a vehicle his girlfriend rented, which had unpaid toll fees when officer Roberto Felix Jr stopped him. Mr Barnes initially stopped and opened his boot, but then began to drive away. Officer Felix jumped on to the vehicle and fired two shots into the car, according to dashcam footage. A bullet struck Mr Barnes in the head and he died.

• How the Supreme Court became a political battlefield
• Biden considering major Supreme Court reform: report
• Who are the justices on the US Supreme Court?

Mr Barnes’s mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, sued on her son’s behalf, arguing the deadly use of force against her son was unreasonable and violated his Fourth Amendment rights, which protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

The judges found that Officer Felix had behaved reasonably under the Fourth Amendment’s “moment of threat” doctrine, which asks whether the officer had been in danger at the moment he used force. Under this standard, the officer’s actions until that moment are not taken into account.

One of the justices on the panel, Judge Patrick Higginbotham, wrote a concurring opinion expressing frustration with the test, and asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

If he had been allowed to consider the “totality of circumstances”, Judge Higginbotham said, he would have found the officer had violated Mr Barnes’s Fourth Amendment rights.

Though a date on this case has not yet been set, at some point this term the Supreme Court justices will consider a challenge from the adult entertainment industry over a Texas law requiring pornography websites to verify the age of their users.

The law requires porn sites where one-third of their content is harmful to minors to use age-verification measures to ensure all visitors are 18 years of age or older.

It also requires the sites to post health warnings, saying porn is addictive, impairs development and increases the demand for child exploitation – claims the industry disputes.

Several other US states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana and North Carolina, require certain websites to verify the ages of visitors.

The Free Speech Coalition, which represents the porn industry, has challenged the law, saying it violates the First Amendment’s free speech protection.

The challenge was successful before a federal district court, but that ruling was overturned on appeal by a Fifth Circuit panel.

The ruling could have broad implications for First Amendment protections, possibly upending past ruling which found the free speech rights of adults outweighed the possible harm to minors.

Alex Green is clear – without immunotherapy, he would have died in 2019.

His advanced melanoma skin cancer was only stopped by the revolutionary treatment that recruits the body’s own immune system to fight the disease.

But unfortunately at the moment the majority of people with cancer see no benefit from immunotherapy.

Many suffer a relapse or experience significant side effects, which can include painful inflammation in the bowel, skin or the lungs.

So now a new multimillion-pound research programme aims to discover why at least half of all patients fail to respond to immunotherapy or suffer from those debilitating side effects.

Now 42, Alex was initially diagnosed with melanoma in 2012.

He was treated with surgery, but three years later the disease had spread to his lymph nodes.

Alex underwent several operations to remove the tumours, followed by a course of post-surgery radiotherapy, and then later, immunotherapy.

“I finished radiotherapy and my scans were clear, however under two years later my cancer returned,” he said.

“I was offered immunotherapy and it completely saved my life.

“Without it I was expected to have died in 2019, leaving behind my wife and two children, then aged four and seven.

“It was a life-changing treatment for me and I’m now in my eighth year of complete remission and able to lead a normal and active life.”

But Alex, a lawyer who lives in Surrey, warns the treatment is not straightforward.

“Whilst the treatment’s results have been amazing, it did come with some tough challenges,” he said.

“I suffered from some pretty significant side effects, which resulted in me being hospitalised for two weeks.

“I’m very clear on the importance of researching and understanding immunotherapy side effects to make the treatment as effective and as kind as possible.”

The research project involves 16 academic institutions and NHS trusts and health boards from across the UK, working alongside 12 bioscience and technology companies.

One of the issues the researchers will look at is a lack of testable and usable biomarkers, which are the tiny molecules which can tell doctors whether someone is likely to benefit from a given drug.

Identifying these biomarkers could help in two ways – both selecting those patients who are most likely to benefit, but also possibly opening up new treatments, like vaccines and cell therapies.

The project will involve 3,000 patients who have already completed their treatment and then 3,000 more who are starting treatment across the UK for breast, bladder, kidney and skin cancer.

Other forms of cancer could be added as the research progresses.

Professor Samra Turajlic, who is a cancer specialist at the Royal Marsden hospital, will be leading the project at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

Prof Turajlic says huge progress has been made in cancer treatment in recent years using immunotherapy.

“We are still underserving many patients due to treatment failure and side effects,” she said.

“We have a unique opportunity in the UK, especially given the NHS, to address this challenge.

“Research on this scale can get us one step closer to better tests in the clinic, but also fuel more discoveries regarding cancer immunology and new therapies.

“Ultimately, we want to speed up the delivery of personalised medicine for a disease that affects huge numbers of people across the UK every year.”

Funding for the project comes from various sources, including £9m from the government-run Office for Life Sciences and the Medical Research Council – two organisations that support research and innovation to improve healthcare in the UK. An additional £12.9m comes from industry.

The project is part of a bigger commitment from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology for £145m to support cancer diagnosis and treatment and has the backing of Science and Technology Minister Peter Kyle.

“Cancer is a disease that has brought pain, misery and heartbreak to every family in the country, including my own,” he said.

“But through government working in partnership with the NHS, researchers, and business, we can harness science and innovation to bring the detection and treatment of this horrendous disease firmly in to the 21st Century, keeping more families together for longer.

“The UK’s scientists, researchers and captains of industry have brilliant ideas that aren’t just going to boost our health – they’ll boost our economy too, helping to build a virtuous circle for more investment in both health and research which will ultimately drive up living standards.”

When Taylor Swift is making $2bn in ticket sales, and Coldplay can sell out 10 nights at Wembley Stadium, it’s easy to conjure an image of touring musicians swimming in sweet piles of cash, like guitar-wielding Scrooge McDucks.

But for many artists, touring is becoming less and less viable. The cost of putting a show on the road – from van hire and petrol, to crew fees and accommodation – has skyrocketed since 2019.

Little Simz and Rachel Chinouriri are among the artists who’ve cancelled US tours this year because the finances didn’t add up.

In the middle of our interview about her new album, Everybody Needs A Hero, Dublin indie artist Orla Gartland explains how dire the situation has become.

In exactly one month, she’s setting off for her first ever North American tour, playing 13 dates in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit and Philadelphia. Every night is sold out. Several venues have been upgraded due to high demand.

But she says, “the amount of money I’m going to lose on that tour is really eye-watering”.

How much, exactly?

“About 40 grand,” she winces.

“I even had to pay to expedite the band’s visas the other day… It’s pretty scary but it’s fine. Everything will go ahead.”

Gartland is determined to make it work, because a US tour has been at the top of her bucket-list since she was a 13-year-old posting music to YouTube under the name “MusicMaaad”.

“I’ve never gigged there properly, so putting this tour on sale was a real fingers-crossed-behind-the-back moment,” she says. “It was so cool when it sold out.”

The singer isn’t a household name yet but, to those in the know, she’s been one of indie’s most promising talents from the moment early EPs like Lonely People and Roots showcased her knack for sharp lyrics and sophisticated songwriting.

She cultivated her audience (and a degree of financial independence) by launching a “Secret Demo Club” in 2016 – with about 1,000 fans paying up to £13 a month to receive demo recordings, livestreams and “deep dive” songwriting videos direct from the singer herself.

And she picked up a new wave of fans in 2022 when her song Why Am I Like This was used in a pivotal scene of Netflix’s coming-of-age drama Heartstopper.

In the week after the show premiered, it was streamed 1.4 million times in America alone.

US fans have been begging Gartland to tour over there for years. With her second album about to hit the shelves, 2024 felt like the right time.

“America is such a big place, I’m just fascinated by it,” she says.

“The fans there seem to love music in a different way. I’ve had messages from people saying they’re going to drive 12 hours from North Carolina to see me.

“We wouldn’t do that here. People would just be like, ‘Why aren’t you playing in w London?’”

Gartland’s new album, Everybody Needs A Hero, is built for playing live. It’s packed with jagged guitar lines and fiery melodies that nip hungrily at your earlobes.

First single Kiss Ur Face Forever is a grunge-pop anthem to physical infatuation, while the follow-up Little Chaos is a frantic reflection of an unsettled mind.

Those bombastic songs are paired with more vulnerable, singer-songwriter tracks like The Hit – a homespun ballad where Gartland describes a friendship so close that “”.

The 12 songs act as an autopsy of a single, long-term relationship, examining all the different feelings you can have about the same person, from the heady rush of first love to the uneasy realisation that something’s gone wrong.

Incisive and wise, it recognises that all those emotions can co-exist – something she states explicitly in the opening song, Both Things Are True.

“When I listen to really, really commercial pop, I just find it a bit dumb,” Gartland explains.

“It’s so simplified – you fall in love or you break up. That’s just not my experience of relationships. It’s way more dense, and I thought it’d be interesting to commit to that as a thread running through the album.”

The complexity comes to the fore on Who Am I?, where Gartland sings about the tendency to put her partner’s interests before her own.

The song starts with an idle thought – “” – that spirals into an existential crisis. By the end of the song, Gartland is singing, “

“I see that in myself and in a lot of my female friends,” she says. “You’re sort of manic, running around, giving your energy to other people, then being left with this feeling of like, ‘God, I don’t even know what I want’.

“So that song was about trying to take your foot off the gas, and thinking, ‘If I take you out of the equation, does that leave my identity in shreds?’”

Released last Friday, critics have already given Everybody Needs a Hero an enthusiastic thumbs up. Far Out Magazine called it an “incredible evolution”, Dork magazine praised its “delightfully rebellious” sound, and Golden Plectrum named Gartland a “blue-ribbon songwriter in the alt-pop universe”.

The musician, conversely, has no idea what she thinks of the record.

“I have no perspective,” she laughs. “In my gut, I feel proud of it. I think it juts out at the edges a bit more than the music I made before – but I would love the ability to just wipe my memory and just hear it for the first time.”

Fair enough. She’s been living with the album for two years at this point, working in fits and starts around her commitments with the indie-pop supergroup Fizz.

The band, which she formed with her friends Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, delivered a ridiculously enjoyable album of harmony-driven psychedelic pop last year, and quickly found themselves becoming festival favourites.

That record was written and recorded in a little under a week, as the band shook off the pressures of their solo careers. For Gartland, who had spent years obsessing over tiny details in her home studio, the anything-goes approach was a revelation.

“It was such a big thing,” she says. “I realised how easy it is to suck the magic out of the song by tinkering too much.”

She still writes on her own – claiming that collaborators would find her methods “insufferable” – but approached recording sessions with a newfound looseness.

“Making sure everyone’s eating well, having a nice walk in the afternoon – all of that made it into the music,” she says. “You can hear it in someone’s vocal when they’re having a good time.”

Although some of the songs were written in her London apartment, others were constructed from improvised jam sessions held in Devon’s Middle Farm studios.

“Little Chaos was like that,” she says. “We picked a key, recorded for 40 minutes, and then I took all the separate parts home and cut them up.

“I made a chorus section, made a verse section and sang a vocal over the top.

“It was so exciting to have well-recorded drums to write over. It made me want to match that energy. I’d stand a bit taller when I was singing.”

The result is a record that bursts out of the speakers, brimming with confidence, assured in its worldview.

Gartland can’t wait to play the new music live. She might be losing money going to the US, but she’s expecting a “fun, gnarly” couple of weeks on the tour bus.

Her only regret is leaving her kitchen behind.

“Hotel food and endless deliveries just make my soul feel depleted,” she says.

“I’ve definitely watched YouTube videos of people making elaborate food with the apparatus given to you in a hotel room.”

Such as?

“Oh, like, cooking a toasted sandwich in a trouser press, or frying an egg on an iron covered in tinfoil.

“But I don’t know… I don’t think I can’t bring myself to try it.”

Dr Taghrid Diab does not follow Colonel Avichae Adraee on social media, so she didn’t see the IDF officer’s warning when it was posted late on Saturday night.

But her daughter did, and she forwarded it to her mother with an urgent question.

“Is this your clinic?”

Col Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic speaking spokesman, sometimes posts evacuation warnings on social media ahead of an Israeli air strike in Lebanon. The posts contain an aerial image with the target building highlighted in red.

Dr Diab, a 57-year-old gynaecologist who provides care to hundreds of women in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh, studied the image her daughter had sent.

It did not take long for her to recognise the apartment building directly next door to her clinic, shaded by an ominous red square. She began to cry.

“After 30 years of work, I knew my clinic was going be destroyed,” she said.

“I felt like my heart was going to explode.”

The Israeli air strike that followed was one of roughly 30 that pounded Dahieh overnight, in the most intense bombing of the Lebanese capital since Israel began its recent escalation against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah last month.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 23 people were killed and 93 wounded in the strikes on Saturday and overnight into Sunday.

The IDF said in a statement it had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities” in the area belonging to Hezbollah. Israel says it is targeting the militant group to allow its citizens to return to the north of the country, where they have come under intensified rocket fire from southern Lebanon over the past year.

Hezbollah is the dominant force in Dahieh, a collection of neighbourhoods south of Beirut that has been heavily targeted during this recent escalation.

It was in Dahieh that a bunker-busting Israeli missile strike killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, a little over a week ago, flattening six residential buildings in the process.

And another similar strike reportedly killed Nasrallah’s presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine, in the area on Thursday night, although this has not been confirmed.

The once busy area is now largely devoid of life. Israeli drones can be easily heard buzzing overhead in the quiet left by the recent exodus of the suburb’s nearly 500,000 residents.

By the time the BBC arrived at the site of Dr Diab’s clinic on Sunday morning, the target building had vanished and been replaced by a smoking crater 9 metres (30 feet) deep, filled with twisted metal and mangled family possessions.

No one was killed in this strike, but Dr Diab’s clinic was destroyed, just as she had feared. She had decided to suspend services a few days earlier. “When they started to hit everywhere,” she said.

The destruction of the clinic was “a disaster”, she added. “Women from all over Dahieh and beyond depend on this clinic. Before the bombing we were seeing 50 patients every day.”

That service would likely now be out of commission for a very long time, she said, because the premises and medical equipment was likely all destroyed and was all uninsured.

One floor below Dr Diab’s clinic, Shakeeb Saleh’s lighting shop was also destroyed by the blast, and his ornate lighting hung blackened and charred.

“All of my stock has been smashed or burned, it is a huge, huge loss,” said Saleh, 73.

“It took me years to rebuild after a bomb hit my warehouse during the Israeli invasion of 1982. Now I am here again.”

Video footage posted on social media over the weekend showed widespread and significant destruction in Dahieh, with multi-storey buildings reduced to rubble.

A senior member of staff at the Al Rassoul Al-Azam hospital, one of the few remaining emergency healthcare facilities in Dahieh, which sits just150 metres from Dr Diab’s destroyed clinic, told the BBC that the hospital had reverberated with nearby strikes over the weekend.

The member of staff, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the situation at the hospital, said that it was operating at a severely limited capacity and had been receiving seriously wounded patients from strikes, including people with traumatic head and chest injuries.

Air strikes on the Dahieh area continued into the day on Sunday, and appeared to be intensifying ahead of an expected retaliation by Israel against Iran in the coming days.

Dr Diab’s voice caught in her throat when she described the neighbourhood around her clinic before the bombing began. “This area was always busy – schools, shops, clinics, there was traffic, people walking, life everywhere,” she said.

She opened her clinic with the dream that her daughters would one day work there with her. All three went to medical school, and the eldest, newly graduated, had just joined her staff before the clinic was destroyed.

That dream was now on hold, probably for some time. But not dead. “I will go back to Dahieh and work with my daughters,” she said.

When South Indian star Sid Sriram thinks back to starting out in the music industry, the word “disrupter” comes to his mind.

His debut in Tamil cinema got a “lot of pushback”, he says.

Indian-born, American-raised Sriram blends a unique Carnatic (South Indian) singing style with soul and R&B influences from his youth.

He says Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross are big inspirations.

People questioned “what kind of voice is this? Why is he singing like this?” says Sriram.

But he didn’t let the early criticism stop him and has largely let his music do the talking.

This year he became the first South Indian to perform at Coachella, opened for US indie star Bon Iver on his US tour and is about to embark on the UK leg of his All Love No Hate tour.

It will be his biggest solo UK show, in front of a crowd at the O2 Arena in London.

“I’ve always had the vision to take our music and elevate it to the highest level,” Sriram explains to BBC Asian Network’s Tamil and South Indian music show.

A wave of South Asian musicians have been appearing in mainstream spaces and collaborating with western artists.

Punjabi megastar Diljit Dosanjh featured on The Tonight Show, AP Dhillon worked with Stormzy and Arijit Singh brought out Ed Sheeran at his concert.

Sriram says the success of these artists inspires him to do the same with his Carnatic style.

“My mission since the beginning has been to take my Carnatic musical roots and amplify them across the globe,” he says.

Sriram, who is best known for songs such as Srivalli, Kalaavathi and Neeli Neeli Aakasam, says he felt “the world wasn’t ready” when he first entered the West.

“Now, over a decade later, it’s clear to me that the world is not only ready for this perspective, but they need it. It’s an exciting time.”

Describing himself as a “cultural bridge between two different worlds”, Sriram says being that conduit is what he has “always wanted to do.”

During his Coachella set, Sriram performed a Tamil religious song known as Thiruppugazh which went viral online.

“It was very affirming for me and inspiring for sure,” he says.

He is also signed to label Def Jam, which has artists such as Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Pusha T.

Last year he went viral with his critically acclaimed NPR Tiny Desk concert and released Sidharth, an album in English which mixes Carnatic music with R&B and indie rock influences.

Sriram says that album has helped open up Tamil music to a new audience.

“Even if I’m doing an English album show I’ll still sing some Tamil film songs and I always get non-South Asian people texting me like: ‘Whoa, what was that song?’

“I call myself an ambassador of my language, my culture, my people and if I call myself that then I have to put action to that.”

While Diljit Dosanjh and Arijit Singh cover the globally popular Bollywood and bhangra genres, Sriram is the first Carnatic singer since AR Rahman to do the same.

AR Rahman was one of the first South Indian artists to work with mainstream acts, but he did so using Bollywood and film music, most notably with the Oscar-winning soundtrack for Slumdog Millionaire.

Sriram contacted AR Rahman after Slumdog Millionaire, which, to his pleasant surprise, gave him his first break.

It’s a journey he is keen to celebrate in the UK show, where he will play Tamil cinema hits from his debut to now.

“I love performing in the UK because it feels like the audience understands my roots, as well as a lot of the cultural touch points I grew up with in California.

“The resonance is special.

“I came to the UK for the first time last year and it immediately felt like home,” he says.

But he’s not settling.

There is “more to come” which includes Sriram’s own original Tamil music, as opposed to tunes composed by others.

“The next wave is just putting out music in my mother tongue that feels like it’s just pushing the boundary.

“In the way I would if I was making English music and continuing to expand.”

A woman who spent 48 years wondering why an application for her dream job was never answered has finally found out why.

Tizi Hodson, 70, from Gedney Hill in Lincolnshire, could not believe her eyes when she opened the post to discover her original letter applying for a job as a motorcycle stunt rider, sent in January 1976, had been stuck behind a post office drawer all these years.

Despite it getting lost in the post, the setback did not hamper her daredevil career as she found a job that took her all over the world.

Describing the letter being returned as “amazing”, Ms Hodson said: “I always wondered why I never heard back about the job. Now I know why.”

At the top of the letter is a handwritten note that reads: “Late delivery by Staines Post Office. Found behind a draw [sic]. Only about 50 years late.”

Ms Hodson doesn’t know who returned the letter, or how it even found its way to her.

“How they found me when I’ve moved house 50-odd times, and even moved countries four or five times, is a mystery,” she said.

“It means so much to me to get it back all this time later.

“I remember very clearly sitting in my flat in London typing the letter.

“Every day I looked for my post but there was nothing there and I was so disappointed because I really, really, wanted to be a stunt rider on a motorcycle.”

Luckily for Ms Hodson, the silence following her application did not put her off from trying for other jobs.

She moved to Africa, worked as a snake handler and horse whisperer, learned to fly and became an aerobatic pilot and flying instructor.

Looking back at the letter she sent when she was just starting out, Ms Hodson said: “I was very careful not to let people who were advertising for a stunt rider know that I was female, or I thought I would have had no chance of even getting an interview.

“I even stupidly told them I didn’t mind how many bones I might break as I was used to it.

“It seems incredible to get the letter back after all this time.

“If I could speak to my younger self, I would tell her to go and do everything I’ve done. I’ve had such a wonderful time in life, even if I have broken a few bones.”

Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds latest episode of Look North here.

The mother of the only British-Israeli hostage still being held by Hamas in Gaza has asked why the UK is not “fighting every moment to secure her release”.

Emily Damari, 28, was shot and taken from an Israeli kibbutz across the border into Gaza on 7 October.

Speaking at a London memorial event marking the attacks a year ago, her mother Mandy Damari said her daughter’s “plight seems to have been forgotten”.

Prime Minster Sir Keir Starmer said in a statement the UK “must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community”.

The dual national is among 97 hostages who remain unaccounted for.

Speaking at the Hyde Park memorial event, her mother said: “[Emily] is a daughter of both countries, but no one here mentions the fact that there is still a female British hostage being held captive by Hamas for a year now, and I sometimes wonder if people even know there is a British woman there.

“Imagine, for a moment if Emily was your daughter. Try to picture what she is going through.

“Since 7 October last year, she has been held a hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza terror tunnels, 20 metres or more underground, kept in captivity, tortured, isolated, unable to eat, speak or even move without someone else’s permission.”

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The crowd heard how Emily, who was born to her British mother in Israel and lived there, loved to visit the UK – her “second home across the sea”. She loved watching Spurs play, going to the pub, shopping at Primark and had also watched Ed Sheeran in concert, her mother said.

Her mother pleaded with Britain and other countries to do more to secure the release of her daughter, and the other hostages.

“How is it that she is still imprisoned there after one year? Why isn’t the whole world, especially Britain, fighting every moment to secure her release? She’s one of their own.”

She said some of the women and children who were released in the hostage deal in November had told her Emily was alive then, and spoke about how she helped the other hostages try to stay positive, even in the worst of times.

“Every day is living hell not knowing what Emily is going through. I do know from the hostages that returned that they were starved, sexually abused and tortured. Every moment lost is another moment of unimaginable suffering or even death.”

BBC News has approached the UK Foreign Office for comment.

Other hostages with British relatives held include Eli Sharabi, Oded Lifschitz and Avinatan Or. British-Israeli Nadav Popplewell was also kidnapped on 7 October and his body was recovered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in August.

Families of Israeli hostages met Sir Keir and Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Monday, calling on them to “do more” to bring them home.

The prime minister agreed that the hostages must be freed and returned immediately, a subsequent press conference was told.

On Sunday, he said the country must “unequivocally” stand with the Jewish community and described 7 October as the “darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust”.

“As a father, a husband, a son, a brother – meeting the families of those who lost their loved ones last week was unimaginable. Their grief and pain are ours, and it is shared in homes across the land,” Sir Keir said.

He also reiterated his call for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon.

The Hyde Park event, organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and other groups, was attended by thousands of British Jews and supporters of Israel who waved British and Israeli flags with chants of “bring them home”.

Among the crowd, many of whom have family and friends in Israel, there was disbelief that the hostages still had not been freed, one year on.

Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely told the crowd: “We will do whatever we can to bring them home.”

Michael Wegier, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told BBC News: “The British Jewish community is traumatised like much of the Jewish community around the world, especially in Israel.

“There are 30,000 Jews from Britain who live in Israel. Many of us have friends and family there and we go there, and so we take what happens there very deeply and very personally.”

A vigil to remember the victims of the Hamas attack was also held in Glasgow where hundreds gathered at the steps of Kelvingrove Art Gallery.

On the eve of 7 October, a man was filmed damaging a Jewish memorial in Hove.

Sussex Police responded to the video, which had been circulated on X and other social media platforms, and confirmed the incident was being treated as a “hate crime”.

On Saturday tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors marched through central London calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas gunmen, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

At least 41,870 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Maldivian President Mohammed Muizzu has told the BBC that he is confident that India will come to the aid of the island nation as it faces an economic crisis.

Muizzu, who begins a five-day visit to India on Sunday, is expected to seek a bailout worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Maldives is staring at a debt default as its foreign exchange reserves have dropped to $440m (£334m), just enough for one-and-a-half months of imports.

“India is fully cognizant of our fiscal situation, and as one of our biggest development partners, will always be ready to ease our burden, find better alternatives and solutions to the challenges we face,” Muizzu told the BBC in an email interview ahead of his visit.

Experts point out that Muizzu’s reconciliatory tone towards Delhi is a far cry from the rhetoric he adopted during his election campaign a year ago. That campaign had centred on an “India out” policy, demanding that Delhi must withdraw its troops from the island nation.

Speaking to the BBC, Muizzu did not directly address his anti-India campaign but said: “We are confident that any differences can be addressed through open dialogue and mutual understanding.”

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An Indian relief package will bolster the country’s foreign currency reserves.

Last month, global agency Moody’s downgraded the Maldives’ credit rating, saying that “default risks have risen materially”.

But Muizzu told the BBC that Male is not facing a sovereign debt default, adding that the country would not join an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme to handle the crisis.

“We have our own home-grown agenda,” he said.

However, Moody has said that “(foreign) reserves remain significantly below the government’s external debt service of around $600m in 2025 and over $1bn in 2026”.

It’s not clear where Muizzu will find the money to overcome the reserves crisis and that’s where his Delhi visit is seen as crucial. India has already offered financial support worth $1.4bn to Male for various infrastructure and development projects.

Since Muizzu came to power in November 2023, relations between Male and Delhi have become strained.

Soon after taking over, he chose to travel to Turkey and China – his visit to the latter in January was seen especially as a high-profile snub to India as previous Maldivian leaders first visited Delhi after being elected. Around the same time, a controversy erupted in India after three Maldivian officials made derogatory comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Muizzu also gave an ultimatum to India to withdraw about 80 troops based in the country. Delhi said they were stationed there to maintain and operate two rescue and reconnaissance helicopters and a Dornier aircraft it had donated years ago.

In the end, both countries reached a compromise by agreeing to replace soldiers with Indian civilian technical staff to operate the aircraft.

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Muizzu’s administration also announced that it would not renew a hydrographic survey agreement with India that was signed by the previous government to map the seabed in Maldivian territorial waters.

But the Maldivian president defended his decision.

“The decisions taken are based on our evolving domestic interests and strategic priorities. The will of the people, that elected me 10 months ago,” Muizzu said.

“I believe both the Maldives and India have a better understanding of each others’ priorities and concerns,” he added.

Some of Muizzu’s decisions were seen as a way to reduce Delhi’s influence and forge closer ties with India’s rival China.

In February, Muizzu’s administration allowed the port call of a Chinese research ship, Xiang Yang Hong 3, in the Maldives, much to Delhi’s displeasure. Some saw it as a mission to collect data which could – at a later date – be used by the Chinese military for submarine operations.

But Muizzu rejects the pro-China tag.

“I have made clear our foreign policy the day I took office – that it is a ‘Maldives First’ policy. Our relationships with other nations are guided by the principles of mutual respect and trust, non-interference and the pursuit of peace and prosperity,” he insists.

“We believe that through open communication and collaboration, we can address any concerns, contributing to a peaceful and prosperous Indian Ocean region,” he says.

Despite Muizzu’s attempts to move Male closer to Beijing, analysts say financial assistance from China hasn’t been forthcoming,

As a result, the president’s extraordinary turnaround towards India now is based on harsh realities.

Muizzu’s Delhi visit “is a realisation of how dependent the Maldives is on India, a dependency that no other country will find easy to fill”, says Azim Zahir, a Maldivian analyst.

India has agreed to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support to the Maldives to help strengthen its struggling economy.

The deal was announced after Maldives President Mohammed Muizzu held talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his five-day visit to India.

The support includes a $400m currency swap deal and an additional 30bn rupees ($357m; £273m) in another swap agreement which will allow companies to do business in local currencies rather than in US dollars.

The Maldivian president was given red carpet treatment after relations soured in recent months. Modi called his visit a “new chapter” in ties.

“India will always be there for the progress and prosperity of the people of Maldives,” he said.

The statements – and the Indian financial package – signal a significant improvement in relations between Male and Delhi, which have been strained since Muizzu came to power in November 2023.

Soon after taking over, he chose to travel to Turkey and China – his visit to the latter in January was seen especially as a high-profile snub to India as previous Maldivian leaders traditionally visited Delhi first after being elected.

Around the same time, India was angered by derogatory comments from three Maldivian officials about Modi.

But analysts say the country’s ailing economy has made its leadership mend its ties with India.

The Maldives is staring at a debt default as its foreign exchange reserves have dropped to $440m (£334m), just enough for one-and-a-half months of imports.

On Monday, Muizzu said he held “extensive discussions” with Modi to chart “a path for the future collaboration between our two countries”.

He thanked India and said the budgetary support would be “instrumental in addressing foreign exchange issues”.

The two countries have also agreed on a deal to start talks on a free trade agreement.

Ahead of his meeting with Modi, Muizzu had told the BBC that he expected India to help the country as it has done in the past.

“India is fully cognisant of our fiscal situation, and as one of our biggest development partners, will always be ready to ease our burden, find better alternatives and solutions to the challenges we face,” he said.

Without referring to his anti-India campaign, he said: “We are confident that any differences can be addressed through open dialogue and mutual understanding.”

This was in contrast to his previous decisions, some of which were seen as a way to reduce Delhi’s influence and forge closer ties with India’s rival China.

In February, his administration allowed a Chinese research ship to dock in the Maldives, much to Delhi’s displeasure. Some saw it as a mission to collect data which could be used by the Chinese military for submarine operations.

Muizzu has however rejected the pro-China tag, calling his policies as “Maldives First”.

But the country also continues to depend on China, which has so far extended $1.37bn in loans.

Japan’s government has admitted an official photo of its new cabinet was manipulated to make members look less unkempt after online speculation that it had been edited.

Photos taken by local media showed the new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, and his defence minister with small patches of white shirt showing under their suits.

But in the official photo issued by the prime minister’s office on Thursday, the untidiness had disappeared.

After plenty of online mockery, a government spokesperson on Monday said “minor editing was made” to the image.

Spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters the image had been manipulated as group photos taken by the prime minister’s office “will be preserved forever as memorabilia”.

He added that “minor editing is customarily performed on these photos”.

His comments come after a barrage of mockery on social media.

“This is more hideous than a group picture of some kind of a seniors’ club during a trip to a hot spring. It’s utterly embarrassing,” one user wrote on X.

Another user said it was clear the cabinet members were wearing suits in the incorrect size.

Other users have been referring to the cabinet – and their trousers – as “ill-fitting”, according to local media.

The photograph was taken on Thursday following the first meeting of Japan’s new cabinet.

A few days earlier, Ishiba, 67, replaced outgoing prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as chief of the country’s ruling party.

He was officially appointed to the role of prime minister on Tuesday.

Ishiba has already announced plans for a snap election on 27 October.

“It is important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible,” he told a news conference in Tokyo, according to Reuters.

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

Madonna has paid tribute to her brother Christopher Ciccone, who has died at the age of 63, describing him as “the closest thing to me for so long”.

Her brother, who was a tour director for the pop star and danced in her early music videos including Lucky Star, died from cancer on Friday in Michigan.

In a heartfelt post on Instagram, the 66-year-old singer wrote that their bond was hard to explain but it “grew out of an understanding that we were different”.

She added: “Society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo.

“We took each other’s hands and we danced through the madness of our childhood, in fact dance was a kind of superglue that held us together.”

The singer explained that “discovering dance in our small Midwestern town saved me”, and then “it saved him too” as a gay young man.

She wrote: “When I finally got the courage to go to New York to become a dancer, my brother followed, and again we took each other’s hands, and we danced through the madness of New York City.”

She added that the pair “devoured art and music and film like hungry animals” in the city, and “were in the epicentre of all of these things exploding”.

“We danced together on stage in the beginning of my career and eventually, he became my creative director of many tours.”

She added: “My brother was right by my side, he was a painter a poet and a visionary, I admired him.

“He had impeccable taste. And a sharp tongue, which he sometimes used against me but I always forgave him.

“We soared the highest heights together, and floundered in the lowest lows.

“Somehow, we always found each other again and we held hands and we kept dancing.”

The pair fell out around the early 2000s, with Ciccone saying his relationship with his sister came under strain after she married her ex-husband, film director Guy Ritchie.

He later released his autobiography, titled Life With My Sister Madonna (2008), in which he wrote about her love life and what it was like working for her.

Speaking about reuniting prior to his death, Madonna added: “The last few years have not been easy.

“We did not speak for some time but when my brother got sick, we found our way back to each other.

“I did my best to keep him alive as long as possible.

“He was in so much pain towards the end, once again, we held hands, we closed our eyes and we danced, together.

“I’m glad he’s not suffering anymore, there will never be anyone like him. I know he’s dancing somewhere.”

Ciccone was also an artist and interior designer, and directed music videos for other stars including Dolly Parton and Tony Bennett.

Madonna’s stepmother Joan also died from cancer recently, and the star’s older brother Anthony died early last year.

The northern Israeli port city of Haifa was hit by about five rockets fired by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah late on Sunday, causing damage and injuring eight people, Israeli authorities say.

A spokesman for Haifa’s municipality said it was the first time the city had been targeted since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said it was investigating how its air defences failed to intercept the rockets. Hezbollah said it targeted a military base south of Haifa.

Another person was injured when a barrage of rockets hit the town of Tiberias, which is located to the east on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes carried out a new round of air strikes in the Lebanese capital. Beirut, hitting what the military said were Hezbollah targets.

The military also said a third division had joined its invasion of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah said its fighters were targeting Israeli troops in and around border villages.

Israel’s government has pledged to make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced residents to return to their homes near the Lebanese border after a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the Gaza war.

The hostilities have escalated steadily since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Hezbollah has remained defiant despite suffering a series of devastating blows in recent weeks, insisting on Monday that it was confident in its ability to “repel the [Israeli] aggression”.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hezbollah fired more than 135 rockets into northern Israel on Sunday.

Approximately five projectiles crossed from Lebanon after air raid sirens sounded in the Carmel and Bay areas of Haifa at 23:22 local time (20:22 GMT), an IDF statement said.

“Interceptors were fired. Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review,” it added.

Eliran Tal, spokesman for the Haifa municipality, told the BBC that two neighbourhoods were hit.

BBC Verify geolocated CCTV footage showing the moment that one of the rockets hit a roundabout near a supermarket and several apartment blocks in the west of the city.

In another video, emergency services and bystanders are seen inspecting a crater and piles of rubble and earth at the scene.

Tal Rosen, a member of the emergency services, told Reuters news agency that he had been inside his home about 500m (1,640ft) away when he heard an explosion.

“In the beginning, we didn’t find any injuries and then I saw in this building,” he said, pointing to damaged windows on the side of a nearby apartment block.

“There were shards of glass in this building. I went inside and I found four people [with] minor to moderate [injuries].”

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance service said it treated a 13-year-old boy in a moderate condition with shrapnel injuries to his head, as well as a 22-year-old man in a moderate condition with both a blast injury and a head injury from falling through a window.

Hezbollah said it launched “a salvo of Fadi 1 rockets at the Carmel base south of Haifa” late on Sunday in retaliation for the Israeli air strike that killed its leader Hassan Nasrallah last month.

Mr Tal dismissed Hezbollah’s claim, saying it was “an attack on civilian population”.

He estimated that 95% of Haifa’s population of 280,000 was staying put.

“With missile threats from the north, it is not an easy period of time. But we are strong,” he said.

“We went through a lot of tragedy like this – and I hope the IDF and the leadership will do their best to push the enemy far from the border.”

The MDA also reported that a man in his 20s was in a serious but stable condition and suffering from shrapnel injuries to his chest and abdomen following a separate rocket attack on the town of Tiberias, about 50km (30 miles) to the east.

The IDF said approximately 15 projectiles were identified as crossing from Lebanon at the same time as the Haifa attack. Some were intercepted while others fell in the area, it added.

The Israeli police said some buildings and properties were damaged.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024 has been awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on microRNA.

Their discoveries help explain how complex life emerged on Earth and how the human body is made up of a wide variety of different tissues.

MicroRNAs influence how genes – the instructions for life – are controlled inside organisms, including us.

The winners share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000).

Every cell in the human body contains the same raw genetic information, locked in our DNA.

However, despite starting with the identical genetic information, the cells of the human body are wildly different in form and function.

The electrical impulses of nerve cells are distinct from the rhythmic beating of heart cells. The metabolic powerhouse that is a liver cell is distinct to a kidney cell, which filters urea out of the blood. The light-sensing abilities of cells in the retina are different in skillset to white blood cells that produce antibodies to fight infection.

So much variety can arise from the same starting material because of gene expression.

The US scientists were the first to discover microRNAs and how they exerted control on how genes are expressed differently in different tissues.

The medicine and physiology prize winners are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

They said: “Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.

“It is now known that the human genome codes for over 1,000 microRNAs.”

Without the ability to control gene expression, every cell in an organism would be identical, so microRNAs helped enable the evolution of complex life forms.

Abnormal regulation by microRNAs can contribute to cancer and to some conditions, including congenital hearing loss and bone disorders.

A severe example is DICER1 syndrome, which leads to cancer in a variety of tissues, and is caused by mutations that affect microRNAs.

Prof Ambros, 70, works at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Prof Ruvkun, 72, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Both conducted their research on the nematode worm – .

They experimented on a mutant form of the worm that failed to develop some cell types, and eventually homed in on tiny pieces of genetic material or microRNAs that were essential for the worms’ development.

This is how it works:

• A gene or genetic instruction is contained within our DNA
• Our cells make a copy, which is called messenger RNA or simply mRNA (you’ll remember this from Covid vaccines)
• This travels out of the cell’s nucleus and instructs the cell’s protein-making factories to start making a specific protein
• But microRNAs get in the way by sticking to the messenger RNA and stop it working
• In essence the mircoRNA has prevented the gene from being expressed in the cell

Further work showed this was not a process unique to worms, but was a core component of life on Earth.

Prof Janosch Heller, from Dublin City University, said he was “delighted” to hear the prize had gone to Profs Ambros and Ruvkun.

“Their pioneering work into gene regulation by microRNAs paved the way for groundbreaking research into novel therapies for devastating diseases such as epilepsy, but also opened our eyes to the wonderful machinery that is tightly controlling what is happening in our cells.”

2023 – Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for developing the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

2022 – Svante Paabo for his work on human evolution.

2021 – David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their work on how the body senses touch and temperature.

2020 – Michael Houghton, Harvey Alter and Charles Rice for the discovery of the virus Hepatitis C.

2019 – Sir Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how cells sense and adapt to oxygen levels.

2018 – James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo for discovering how to fight cancer using the body’s immune system.

2017- Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for unravelling how bodies keep a circadian rhythm or body clock.

2016 – Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering how cells remain healthy by recycling waste.

Millions of people in the Middle East dream of safe, quiet lives without drama and violent death. The last year of war, as bad as any in the region in modern times, has shown yet again that dreams of peace cannot come true while deep political, strategic and religious fault lines remain unbridged. Once again, war is reshaping the politics of the Middle East.

The Hamas offensive came out of well over a century of unresolved conflict. After Hamas burst through the thinly defended border, it inflicted the worst day the Israelis had suffered.

Around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, phoned President Joe Biden and told him that “We’ve never seen such savagery in the history of the state”; not “since the Holocaust.” Israel saw the attacks by Hamas as a threat to its existence.

Since then, Israel has inflicted many terrible days on the Palestinians in Gaza. Nearly 42,000 people, mostly civilians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Much of Gaza is in ruins. Palestinians accuse Israel of genocide.

The war has spread. Twelve months after Hamas went on the offensive the Middle East is on the edge of an even worse war; wider, deeper, even more destructive.

A year of killing has stripped away layers of assumptions and illusions. One is Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that he could manage the Palestinian issue without making concessions to their demands for self-determination.

With that went the wishful thinking that had comforted Israel’s worried Western allies. Leaders in the US and UK, and others, had convinced themselves that Netanyahu, despite opposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel all his political life, could somehow be persuaded to accept one to end the war.

Netanyahu’s refusal reflected almost universal distrust of Palestinians inside Israel as well as his own ideology. It also torpedoed an ambitious American peace plan.

President Biden’s “grand bargain” proposed that Israel would receive full diplomatic recognition by Saudi Arabia, the most influential Islamic country, in return for allowing Palestinian independence. The Saudis would be rewarded with a security pact with the US.

The Biden plan fell at the first hurdle. Netanyahu said in February that statehood would be “huge reward” for Hamas. Bezalel Smotrich, one of the ultra-nationalist extremists in his cabinet, said it would be an “existential threat” to Israel.

• Latest coverage as Israel strikes Gaza and Beirut
• Israeli kibbutz struggles to heal, one year after 7 October
• Gaza Strip in maps: How life in the territory has been upended
• Journalists from across the BBC reflect on the year-long war
• New accounts reveal how one military base was overrun

The Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, presumed to be alive, somewhere in Gaza had his own illusions. A year ago, he must have hoped that the rest of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” would join, with full force, into a war to cripple Israel. He was wrong.

Sinwar kept his plans to attack Israel on 7 October so secret that he took his enemy by surprise. He also surprised some on his own side. Diplomatic sources told the BBC that Sinwar might not even have shared his plans with his own organisation’s exiled political leadership in Qatar. They had notoriously lax security protocols, talking on open lines that could be easily overheard, one source said.

Far from going on the offensive, Iran made it clear it did not want a wider war, as Israel invaded Gaza and President Biden ordered American carrier strike groups to move closer to protect Israel.

Instead, Hassan Nasrallah, and his friend and ally, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, restricted themselves to rocketing Israel’s northern border, which they said would continue until a ceasefire in Gaza. The targets were mostly military, but Israel evacuated more than 60,000 people away from the border. In Lebanon, perhaps twice as many had to flee over the months as Israel hit back.

Israel made clear it would not tolerate an indefinite war of attrition with Hezbollah. Even so, the conventional wisdom was that Israel would be deterred by Hezbollah’s formidable fighting record in previous wars and its arsenal of missiles, provided by Iran.

In September, Israel went on the offensive. No one outside the senior ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad spy agency believed so much damage could be inflicted so quickly on Iran’s most powerful ally.

Israel remotely exploded booby-trapped pagers and radios, destroying Hezbollah’s communications and killing leaders. It launched one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern warfare. On its first day Israel killed about 600 Lebanese people, including many civilians.

The offensive has blown a big hole in Iran’s belief that its network of allies cemented its strategy to deter and intimidate Israel. The key moment came on 27 September, with the huge air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and many of his top lieutenants. Nasrallah was a vital part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, its informal alliance and defence network of allies and proxies.

Israel broke out of the border war by escalating to a bigger one. If the strategic intention was to force Hezbollah to cease fire and pull back from the border, it failed. The offensive, and invasion of south Lebanon, has not deterred Iran.

Iran seems to have concluded that its open reluctance to risk a wider war was encouraging Israel to push harder. Hitting back was risky, and guaranteed an Israeli response, but for the supreme leader and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, it had become the least bad option.

On Tuesday 1 October, Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles.

___

Kibbutz Kfar Aza is very close to the wire that was supposed to protect Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. The kibbutz was a small community, with modest homes on an open-plan campus of lawns and neat gardens. Kfar Aza was one of Hamas’s first targets on 7 October. Sixty-two people from the kibbutz were killed by Hamas. Of the 19 hostages taken from there into Gaza, two were killed by Israeli troops after they escaped from captivity. Five hostages from Kfar Aza are still in Gaza.

The Israeli army took journalists into Kfar Aza on 10 October last year, when it was still a battle zone. We saw Israeli combat troops dug into the fields around the kibbutz and could hear gunfire as they cleared buildings where they suspected Hamas fighters might be sheltering. Israeli civilians killed by Hamas were being carried out in body bags from the ruins of their homes. Hamas fighters killed by Israeli soldiers as they fought their way into the kibbutz still lay on the neat lawns, turning black as they decomposed in the strong Mediterranean sun.

A year later the dead are buried but very little has changed. The living have not returned to live in their homes. Ruined houses have been preserved as they were when I saw them on 10 October last year, except the names and photos of the people who lived and were killed inside them are displayed on big posters and memorials.

Zohar Shpak, a resident who survived the attack with his family, showed us round the homes of neighbours who were not as lucky. One of the houses had a large photo on its wall of the young couple who lived there, both killed by Hamas on 7 October. The ground around the houses has been dug over. Zohar said the young man’s father had spent weeks sifting earth to try to find his son’s head. He had been buried without it.

The stories of the dead of 7 October, and the hostages, are well known in Israel. Local media still talk about their country’s losses, adding new information to old pain.

Zohar said it was too early to think about how they might rebuild their lives.

“We are still inside the trauma. We are not in post-trauma. Like people said, we’re still here. We are still in the war. We wanted the war will be ended, but we want it will be ended with a victory, but not an army victory. Not a war victory.

“My victory is that I could live here, with my son and daughter, with my grandchildren and living peacefully. I believe in peace.”

Zohar and many other Kfar Aza residents identified with the left wing of Israeli politics, meaning that they believed Israel’s only chance of peace was allowing the Palestinians their independence. Israelis like Zohar and his neighbours are convinced that Netanyahu is a disastrous prime minister who bears a heavy responsibility for leaving them vulnerable and open to attack on 7 October.

But Zohar does not trust the Palestinians, people he used to ferry to hospitals in Israel in better times when they were allowed out of Gaza for medical treatment.

“I don’t believe those people who are living over there. But I want the peace. I want to go to Gaza’s beach. But I don’t trust them. No, I don’t trust any one of them.”

Hamas leaders do not accept that the attacks on Israel were a mistake that brought the wrath of Israel, armed and supported by the United States down on to the heads of their people. Blame the occupation, they say, and its lust for destruction and death.

In Qatar, an hour or so before Iran attacked Israel on 1 October, I interviewed Khalil al-Hayya, the most senior Hamas leader outside Gaza, second only in their organisation to Yahya Sinwar. He denied his men had targeted civilians – despite overwhelming evidence – and justified the attacks by saying it was necessary to put the plight of the Palestinians on the world’s political agenda.

“It was necessary to raise an alarm in the world to tell them that here there is a people who have a cause and have demands that must be met. It was a blow to Israel, the Zionist enemy.”

Israel felt the blow, and on 7 October, as the IDF was rushing troops to the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech promising a “mighty vengeance”. He set out war aims of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home. The prime minister continues to insist that “total victory” is possible, and that force will in the end free the Israelis held by Hamas for a year.

His political opponents, including relatives of the hostages, accuse him of blocking a ceasefire and a hostage deal to appease ultra-nationalists in his government. He is accused of putting his own political survival before the lives of Israelis.

Netanyahu has many political enemies in Israel, even though the offensive in Lebanon has helped repair his poll numbers. He remains controversial but for most Israelis the war in Gaza is not. Since 7 October, most Israelis have hardened their hearts to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

Two days into the war, Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said he had ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip.

“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Since then, under international pressure, Israel has been forced to loosen its blockade. At the United Nations at the end of September, Netanyahu insisted Gazans have all the food they need.

The evidence shows clearly that is not true. Days before his speech, UN humanitarian agencies signed a declaration just demanding an end to “appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.

“More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, electricity and fuel – the basic necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out.”

BBC Verify has analysed the condition of Gaza after a year of war.

The Hamas-run health ministry says nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. Analysis of satellite imagery by US academics Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek suggests 58.7% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

But there is another human cost – displacement – with civilians repeatedly instructed to move by the IDF.

The effects of the movement of people can be seen from space.

Satellite images show how tents have amassed and dispersed in central Rafah. It’s a pattern that has been repeated across the strip.

These waves of displacement began on 13 October, when the IDF told residents of the northern half of the strip to move south for their own “safety”.

BBC Verify has identified more than 130 social media posts like these shared by the IDF, detailing which areas were designated combat zones, routes to take out and where temporary pauses in fighting would take place.

In total, these often-overlapping posts amounted to about 60 evacuation orders covering more than 80% of the Gaza strip.

On many of the notices, BBC Verify has found key details to be unreadable and drawn boundaries inconsistent with the text.

The IDF has designated a coastal area – al-Mawasi – in southern Gaza as a humanitarian zone. It still gets bombed. BBC Verify has analysed footage of 18 air strikes within the zone’s borders.

___

Satellite pictures show a huge bottleneck of people on Salah al-Din Street, after Israel ordered the effective depopulation of northern Gaza. Somewhere in the crowds moving down Salah al-Din, Gaza’s main north-south route, was Insaf Hassan Ali, her husband and two children, a boy of 11 and a girl of seven. So far, they have all survived, unlike many members of their extended family.

Israel does not allow journalists into Gaza to report freely. We assume that is because Israel does not want us to see what it has done there. We commissioned a trusted Palestinian freelancer inside Gaza to interview Insaf Ali and her son.

She spoke about the terrible fear they felt as they walked south, with perhaps one million others, on the orders of the Israeli army. Death was everywhere, she says.

“We were walking on Salah al-Din Street. A car in front of us was hit. We saw it, and it was burning… On the left, people were killed, and on the right, even the animals—donkeys were thrown around, they were bombed.

“We said, ‘That’s it, we’re done.’ We said, ‘now the rocket that is coming will be for us’.”

Insaf and her family had a comfortable middle-class life before the war. Since then, they have been displaced 15 times on the orders of Israel. Like millions of others, they are destitute, often hungry, living in a tent at al-Mawasi, a desolate area of sand dunes. Snakes, scorpions and venomous giant worms invade the tents and have to be swept out. As well as the risk of death in an air strike, they face hunger, disease and the faecal dust generated when millions of people do not have access to proper sanitation.

Insaf wept for her old life, and the people they have lost.

“Our lives were beautiful, and suddenly we had nothing—no clothes, no food, no essentials for life. Constantly being displaced is incredibly hard on my children’s health. They’ve had malnutrition and they have been infected with diseases, including amoebic dysentery and hepatitis.”

Insaf said that the beginning of months of Israeli bombing felt like the “horrors of judgement day”.

“Any mother would feel the same, anyone who owns something precious and is afraid it might slip from their hands at any moment. Each time we moved to a house, it would be bombed, and someone in our family would be killed.”

The only chance of making even small improvements in the lives of Insaf and her family and well over two million others in Gaza is to agree a ceasefire. If the killing stops, diplomats might have a window to stop the slide into a much wider catastrophe.

More disasters await in the future, if the war drags on and a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians cannot shake the hatred and horror many currently feel about the actions of the other side.

Insaf’s 11-year-old son, Anas Awad, has been deeply affected by everything he has seen.

“There’s no future for Gaza’s children. The friends I used to play with have been martyred. We used to run around together. May God have mercy on them. The mosque where I used to memorise the Quran has been bombed. My school has been bombed. So has the playground… everything has gone. I want peace. I wish I could return with my friends and play again. I wish we had a house, not a tent.”

“I don’t have friends anymore. Our whole life has turned to sand. When I go out to the prayer area, I feel anxious, and hesitant. I don’t feel right.”

His mother was listening.

“It has been the hardest year of my life. We saw sights we should not have seen – scattered bodies, the desperation of a grown man holding a bottle of water to drink for his children. Of course, our homes are no longer homes; they are just piles of sand, but we hope for the day when we can return.’

UN humanitarian agencies have condemned both Israel and Hamas: “The parties’ conduct over the last year makes a mockery of their claim to adhere to international humanitarian law and the minimum standards of humanity that it demands.”

Both sides deny accusations they have broken the laws of war. Hamas claims it ordered its men not to kill Israeli civilians. Israel says it warns Palestinian civilians to get out of harm’s way but Hamas uses them as human shields.

Israel has been referred to the International Court of Justice, accused by South Africa of genocide. The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has applied for arrest warrants on a range of war crimes charges for Yahya Sinwar of Hamas, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

For Israelis the Hamas attacks on 7 October were a painful reminder of centuries of pogroms against Jews in Europe that culminated in the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany. In the first month of the war, the Israeli writer and former politician Avraham Burg explained the profound psychological impact on his country.

“We, the Jews,” he told me, “we believe that the state of Israel is the first and best immune system and protective system versus Jewish history. No more pogroms, no more Holocaust, no more mass murderers. And all of a sudden, all of it is back.”

Ghosts of the past tormented Palestinians as well. Raja Shehadeh, the celebrated Palestinian writer and human rights campaigner believes that Israel wanted to make another Nakba – another catastrophe: in his latest book What Does Israel Fear From Palestine? he writes “as the war progressed I could see that they meant every word and did not care about civilians, including children. In their eyes, as well as the eyes of most Israelis, all Gazans were guilty”.

No one can doubt Israel’s determination to defend its people, helped enormously by the might of the United States. It is clear though, that the war has shown that nobody can fool themselves that Palestinians will accept lives lived forever under an Israeli military occupation, without proper civil rights, freedom of movement and independence.

After generations of conflict Israelis and Palestinians are used to confronting each other. But they are also used to living alongside each other, however uncomfortably. When a ceasefire comes, and with a new generation of leaders, there will be chances to push again for peace.

But that is a more distant future. The rest of the year and into 2025, with a new president in the White House, are uncertain and full of danger.

For months after Hamas attacked Israel, the fear was that the war would spread, and get worse. Slowly, and then very quickly, it happened, after Israel’s devastating attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon.

It is too late to say the Middle East is on the brink. Israel is facing off against Iran. The warring parties have plunged over it, and countries not yet directly involved are desperate not to be dragged over the edge.

As I write Israel has still not retaliated for Iran’s ballistic missile attack on 1 October. It has indicated that it intends to inflict a severe punishment. President Biden and his administration, Israel’s constant supplier of weapons and diplomatic support, are trying to calibrate a response that might offer Iran a way to stop the accelerating climb up the ladder of escalation, a phrase strategists use to describe the way wars speed from crisis to disaster.

The proximity of the US elections, along with Joe Biden’s steadfast support for Israel, despite his misgivings about the way it has been fighting, do not induce much optimism that the US will somehow finesse a way out.

The signals from Israel indicate that Netanyahu, Gallant, the generals of the IDF and the intelligence agencies believe they have the upper hand. October 7th was a disaster for them. All the major security and military chiefs, except the prime minister, apologised and some resigned. They had not planned for a war with Hamas. But planning for the war with Hezbollah started after the last one ended in 2006 in a humiliating stalemate for Israel. Hezbollah has suffered blows from which it might never recover.

So far Israel’s victories are tactical. To get to a strategic victory it would need to coerce its enemies into changing their behaviour. Hezbollah, even in its reduced state, is showing that it wants to fight on. Taking on Israeli infantry and tanks now that south Lebanon has once more been invaded might negate some of Israel’s advantages in air power and intelligence.

If Iran answers Israel’s retaliation with another wave of ballistic missiles other countries might get pulled in. In Iraq, Iran’s client militias could attack American interests. Two Israeli soldiers were killed by a drone that came from Iraq.

Saudi Arabia is also looking on nervously. Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman has made clear his view of the future. He would contemplate recognising Israel, but only if the Palestinians get a state in return and Saudi Arabia gets a security pact with the United States.

Joe Biden’s role, simultaneously trying to restrain Israel while supporting it with weapons, diplomacy and carrier strike groups, exposes the Americans to getting involved in a wider war with Iran. They don’t want that to happen, but Biden has pledged that he will come to Israel’s aid if it becomes necessary.

Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, and the damage done to Iran’s strategy and its “axis of resistance” is fostering a new set of illusions among some in Israel and the United States. The dangerous idea is that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East by force, imposing order and neutering Israel’s enemies. Joe Biden – and his successor – should be wary of that.

The last time that restructuring the Middle East by force was contemplated seriously was after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on America, when US President George W Bush and Tony Blair, the UK’s prime minister, were getting ready to invade Iraq in 2003.

The invasion of Iraq did not purge the Middle East of violent extremism. It made matters worse.

The priority for those who want to stop this war should be a ceasefire in Gaza. It is the only chance to cool matters and to create a space for diplomacy. This year of war started in Gaza. Perhaps it can end there too.

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ mother has said she is “devastated and profoundly saddened” by the allegations levelled against her son, but that they are “lies”.

The musician, known for hits like 1997’s I’ll Be Missing You, was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering last month. He is currently being held in a Manhattan detention centre after being denied bail.

In a statement, Janice Small Combs defended her son, saying that although he had “made mistakes in the past, as we all have”, he is “not the monster they have painted him to be”.

“It is heartbreaking to see my son judged not for the truth, but for a narrative created out of lies,” she wrote.

The statement was attributed to Ms Small Combs and the Combs family, and was issued by her lawyer, Natlie G Figgers.

It came five days after it was revealed that Mr Combs could face lawsuits from more than 100 additional accusers, both men and women, for alleged sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

The star’s lawyer have denied these and all previous charges, calling them “false and defamatory”.

He has faced a number of cases since last year, when his former partner Cassie Ventura accused him of rape and abuse.

Mr Combs denied the allegations, and the case was settled out of court a day after being filed.

However, he was subsequently sued by 12 other women, many of whom accused the rapper of drugging and assaulting them.

Federal agents raided his properties in March as authorities built a criminal case against the star.

Then in May, a video of Mr Combs physically assaulting Ms Ventura in a hotel room in 2016 was leaked to the press.

In her statement, the Ms Small Combs referenced the video, saying she was “not here to portray my son as perfect because he is not”.

“My son may not have been entirely truthful about certain things, such as denying he has ever gotten violent with an ex-girlfriend when the hotel’s surveillance showed otherwise,” she said.

“Sometimes, the truth and a lie become so closely intertwined that it becomes terrifying to admit one part of the story, especially when that truth is outside the norm or is too complicated to be believed.

“This is why I believe my son’s civil legal team opted to settle the ex-girlfriend’s lawsuit instead of contesting it until the end, resulting in a ricochet effect as the federal government used this decision against my son by interpreting it as an admission of guilt.”

Mr Combs had previously apologised for the incident that was caught on film, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

Concluding her statement, Janice Small Combs argued that one lie did not make him guilty of all the other “repulsive allegations and the grave charges leveled against him”.

“It is truly agonizing to watch the world turn against my son so quickly and easily over lies and misconceptions, without ever hearing his side or affording him the opportunity to present his side,” she said, adding that she believed some of his accusers were motivated by money.

Mr Combs is next due in court on Wednesday, 9 October, when his lawyers will argue for him to be released on bail.

He was previously denied bail after prosecutors argued that he posed “a significant risk” to the forthcoming trial.

They told a New York judge that Mr Combs had “already tried to obstruct the government’s investigation of this case, repeatedly contacting victims and witnesses and feeding them false narratives of events”.

A spacecraft is on its way to visit an asteroid that US space agency Nasa knocked off course in 2022.

The Hera craft launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:52 local time (15:52BST) on Monday.

It is part of an international mission to see if we can stop dangerous asteroids hitting Earth.

The project will look at what happened to a space rock called Dimorphos when Nasa intentionally collided with it.

If all goes to plan, Hera will reach Dimorphos, around seven million miles away, in December 2026.

The Hera mission, which is run by the European Space Agency, is a follow-on from Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project.

Dimorphos is a small moon 160m-wide that orbits an asteroid close to Earth called Didymos in something called a binary asteroid system.

In 2022 Nasa said it successfully changed Dimorphos’s course by crashing a probe into it. It altered the rock’s path by a few metres, according to Nasa’s scientists.

The asteroid was not on course to hit Earth, but it was a test to see whether space agencies could do it when there is genuine risk.

When it arrives in two years, the Hera craft will look at the size and depth of the impact crater created on Dimorphos.

Two cube-shaped probes will also study the make-up of the asteroid and its mass.

“We need to understand what are the physical properties of these asteroids? What are they made of? Are they blocks of rock? Are they made of sand inside?” says Naomi Murdoch, a scientist involved with the European Space Agency mission.

That should help scientists understand the best way to attempt to intercept other asteroids, which can be many different sizes and shapes, in the future.

Scientists do not believe that we are currently at risk of a dinosaur-style extinction caused by an asteroid hitting Earth. An asteroid of that size could be easily spotted in space.

The size of asteroid that DART and Hera are targeting are about 100-200m wide and are very difficult to see from our planet.

From time to time they hit Earth. On 2013 a house-sized asteroid exploded in the sky above the town of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The shock wave blew out windows for over 200 square miles and damaged buildings. Over 1,600 people were injured in the blast.

Scientists hope to one day be able to identify asteroids like this and knock them off course.

“It’s not to avoid an extinction of the human race. It’s to create a system to minimize the damage as much as we can. The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do,” says Prof Murdoch.

But scientists warn that even though Nasa has proved it is possible to alter one asteroid’s course, it does not mean it can easily be done on all space rocks.

Intercepting an asteroid before it hits Earth also relies on being able to spot the incoming hazard in the first place.

Two Chinese nationals have been killed and at least 10 people injured in a suspected suicide attack near Karachi airport in Pakistan.

A third body, not yet officially identified, is thought to be that of the attacker, the BBC understands.

The Chinese embassy in Pakistan said the explosion on Sunday night was a “terrorist attack” targeting a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a power project in Sindh province.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has in recent years carried out attacks on Chinese nationals involved in development projects in Pakistan, has said it carried out the attack.

In a statement released on Monday, the militant group said it had “targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors” arriving from Karachi airport.

A later statement from the group described it as a suicide attack, and named the perpetrator as Shah Fahad, part of a BLA suicide squad called Majeed Brigade.

The attack was carried out using a “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device”, Reuters news agency quoted the BLA as saying.

The explosion happened around 23:00 local time (17:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attack a “heinous act” and offered his condolences to the Chinese people.

“Pakistan stands committed to safeguarding our Chinese friends,” he wrote on X.

The country’s foreign ministry said it is “in close contact” with Chinese authorities and will “bring to justice those responsible for this cowardly attack”.

“This act of terrorism is an attack not only on Pakistan, but also on the enduring friendship between Pakistan and China,” the ministry said.

“This barbaric act will not go unpunished,” it added.

The Chinese embassy said that the engineers were part of the Chinese-funded enterprise Port Qasim Power Generation Co Ltd, which aims to build two coal power plants at Port Qasim, near Karachi.

Thousands of Chinese workers are in Pakistan, many of them involved in creating an economic corridor between the two countries as part of Beijing’s multibillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

The Port Qasim plant is part of the corridor, along with a number of infrastructure and energy projects in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which has a rich supply of natural resources, including gas and minerals.

The BLA along with other ethnic Baloch groups has fought a long-running insurgency for a separate homeland.

It has regularly targeted Chinese nationals in the region, claiming ethnic Baloch residents were not receiving their share of wealth from foreign investment the province and natural resources extracted there.

The Chinese embassy on Monday reminded its citizens and Chinese enterprises in Pakistan to be vigilant and to “do their best to take safety precautions”. The embassy added that it hoped Pakistan would thoroughly investigate the attack and “severely punish the murderer”.

The blast was reportedly heard in various areas around the city, with footage from local media showing thick smoke and cars set alight.

Pictures online show security officials and firefighters investigating the explosion site, with several vehicles charred by the blast.

A police surgeon, Dr Summaiya told Dawn news: “Ten injured persons, including one in critical condition, have been brought the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre [JPMC].”

She added the injured included a police constable and a woman.

A statement posted on X from Sindh’s Interior Minister’s office said that a “tanker truck” had exploded on Airport Road. Roads leading to Jinnah International Airport were sealed off following the attack, but the airport is functioning as usual on Monday.

There has also been heightened security in Pakistan as it prepares to host the leaders’ summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

There have been multiple attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan in recent years. The BLA has claimed responsibility for several of them, including an attack in March on a Pakistani naval airbase near Gwadar port, another main feature of the China-Pakistan economic corridor.

In April 2022, the group killed three Chinese tutors and a Pakistani driver in a suicide bombing near Karachi University’s Confucius Institute.

In November 2018, gunmen killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.