Florida residents are rushing to finish emergency preparations – or just leave – as Hurricane Milton races toward landfall on the heavily-populated Tampa Bay.

Milton is currently a category five storm, packing ferocious winds of up to 165mph (270km/h). It is expected to hit with full force on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after the state was struck by the devastating Hurricane Helene.

President Joe Biden warned people in Florida on Tuesday to leave their homes as a “matter of life and death” while the state undertakes its largest evacuation effort in years.

“A category five, that is like a giant tornado coming at you,” one resident of the Gulf Coast city of Bradenton told the BBC from the hotel that he has evacuated to in Kissimmee.

• When will the hurricane hit? Everything we know so far
• Full coverage of Hurricane Milton

“I wouldn’t want to be there,” said Gerald Lemus. “This will be a life-changing storm no matter where it hits.”

Mr Lemus, who has lived in Bradenton his entire life, said he has never evacuated for any previous storm. But he decided he has to for the safety of his eight-year-old daughter.

“I just looked at her and I couldn’t traumatise her to something like this,” he said on Tuesday night. “It’s a gamble we weren’t willing to make.”

ML Ferguson has been struggling to rebuild her home in Anna Maria, Florida, after it was severely damaged last month by Helene, a powerful category four hurricane when it hit.

“This one is going to be way worse than Helene,” she said on the phone while stalled in highway traffic out of the city.

“My car is totalled, we all were laid off of our job, and [my] belongings were ruined. After this storm hits, I will officially become homeless.”

Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that Florida had prepared dozens of shelters outside of evacuation zones to help house residents left stranded in the wake of the “monster” storm.

Long queues at petrol stations formed in south Florida, as some stations began running out of fuel.

Chynna Perkins told the BBC she is remaining in Tampa, where she lives in a newly constructed home outside the mandatory evacuation zones.

“I don’t think people really understand how much planning has to go into a decision like this,” she said, adding that she has two large Great Danes.

“There’s so much traffic and barely any gas available right now. People are running out of gas on the highway.”

DeSantis said that petrol was being trucked to stations, and electric vehicle charging stations also were deployed along roadways to ease the evacuation.

Tampa resident Steve Crist, spoke to the BBC while boarding up the windows of his dentist office. “Everyone’s gone. I’ve never seen it so quiet,” he said.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, President Biden said the storm could be one of Florida’s worst in a century.

“Evacuate now, now, now,” he told Florida residents.

The White House cancelled Biden’s planned visit to Germany and Angola in order to oversee preparations for Milton and ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene.

Less than two weeks ago Hurricane Helene – the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005 – pummelled the US south-east, killing at least 225. Hundreds more are missing.

At least 14 of those deaths were in Florida, where 51 of 67 counties are now under emergency warnings as Milton approaches.

The National Hurricane Center has warned people to brace for strong winds that could potentially send debris still on the streets from Helene to destructively fly through the air.

Rainfall totals could reach highs of 15in (38cm), and coastal areas could see storm surges of 10-15ft (3-4.5m).

Hurricanes are categorize based on wind speed. Category three and higher are considered major because of their potential for damage and loss of life, according to the National Weather Service.

Counties began issuing evacuation orders on Monday, with tolls suspended on roads in western and central Florida.

School closures in several counties began on Tuesday. Airports in Tampa and Orlando announced they would be suspending flight operations until the storm passes.

Parts of Pinellas County, where at least a dozen people were killed by Helene, were placed under evacuation orders on Monday.

• Are you in Florida? Please share your experiences
• How is climate change affecting hurricanes like Milton?
• What made Hurricane Helene so damaging?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms
• What is a storm surge and how serious is the threat from Milton?

The approach of the new hurricane comes as the US government warns that clean-up efforts could take years after Hurricane Helene.

Over 12,000 cubic yards of debris have been removed in Helene-affected areas of Florida in less than two days, officials said.

Hundreds of roads remain closed, hampering efforts to send aid to hard-hit communities.

As well as in Florida, deaths were recorded in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – and the worst-hit state, North Carolina.

Biden has ordered another 500 soldiers to be deployed to North Carolina. The troops – who now number 1,500 in all – will work with thousands of government relief workers and National Guard.

He has so far approved nearly $140m (£107m) in federal assistance.

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Israel’s prime minister has made a direct appeal to urge the Lebanese people to throw out Hezbollah and avoid “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal on Tuesday came as Israel expanded its ground invasion against Hezbollah by sending thousands more troops into a new zone in south-west Lebanon.

Netanyahu also claimed the Israel Defense Forces had killed the successor to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but the IDF later said it could not confirm Hashem Safieddine’s death.

Elsewhere, Hezbollah’s fighters launched barrages of rockets towards the Israeli port city of Haifa for the third consecutive day, injuring 12 people.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Lebanon abandoned by international community – ex PM
• Analysis: Year of killing and broken assumptions has taken Middle East to edge of deeper, wider war
• Analysis: What will it take to end the conflict?

During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.

“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”

Hezbollah has remained defiant despite three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks that Lebanese officials say have killed more than 1,400 people and displaced another 1.2 million.

Earlier on Tuesday Hassan Nasrallah’s former deputy, Naim Qassem, insisted Hezbollah had overcome the recent “painful blows” from Israel and that its capabilities were “fine”.

Israel has gone on the offensive after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks.

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.

On Tuesday morning, the IDF announced that reservists from its 146th Division had begun “limited, localized, targeted operational activities” in south-western Lebanon.

It joined three standing army divisions which have been operating in central and eastern areas of southern Lebanon since the invasion began on 30 September – reportedly bringing the total number of soldiers deployed to over 15,000.

The IDF said troops had taken control of what it called a Hezbollah “combat compound” in the border village of Maroun al-Ras and published photos showing what it said was a loaded rocket launcher in an olive grove, as well as weapons and equipment inside a residential building.

Drone footage meanwhile showed widespread destruction in the nearby village of Yaroun, which was an initial target of the invasion.

Meanwhile, the UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned in a joint statement that the humanitarian impact of the conflict was “nothing short of catastrophic”.

Lebanon’s government says as many as 1.2 million people have fled their homes over the past year. Almost 180,000 people are in approved centres for the displaced.

In addition, more than 400,000 people have fled into war-torn Syria, including more than 200,000 Syrian refugees – a situation that the head of the UN’s refugee agency described as one of “tragic absurdity”.

The World Food Programme said there was “extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself” because thousands of hectares of farmland had been burned or abandoned.

The IDF also said its aircraft had carried out a new round of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group has a strong presence, and other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday.

Earlier, it announced that a strike in the capital on Monday had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s headquarters, Suhail Husseini.

Hezbollah did not comment on the claim. But if confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of severe blows Israel has dealt to the group, with Hassan Nasrallah and most of its military commanders having been killed in similar recent strikes.

Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official widely expected to succeed his cousin Nasrallah as leader, has not been heard from publicly since an Israeli air strike reportedly targeted him in Beirut last Thursday.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday evening the military could not confirm claims by Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister that Safieddine was killed in the attack, adding that the IDF was examining the results of the operation.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader said in a defiant televised address from an undisclosed location on Tuesday that its command and control was “solid” and had “no vacant positions”, citing its attacks on Israel in recent days.

“We are hurting them and we will prolong the time. Dozens of cities are within range of the resistance’s missiles. We assure you that our capabilities are fine,” Naim Qassem said.

But, for the first time, he made no mention of ending the war in Gaza as a pre-condition where previously Hezbollah has said it would not stop attacking Israel until the Gaza conflict is over.

“We support the political efforts that (Lebanese Parliament Speaker) Nabih Berri is undertaking towards a ceasefire,” Qassem said in a televised speech.

“Once a ceasefire is achieved, diplomacy can look into all the other details.”

It was not clear if this meant a change in Hezbollah’s position.

The speech coincided with the launch of more than 100 rockets towards Haifa Bay, as well as the Lower, Central and Upper Galilee regions.

The IDF said most of the rockets were intercepted. There were no serious casualties.

On Sunday night, there was a direct hit on Haifa – something which had not happened since Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war in 2006.

Shares in the owner of convenience store giant 7-Eleven have jumped after a report that it has received a new takeover offer from Canadian rival Alimentation Couche-Tard.

The new offer values Japan’s Seven & i Holdings at more than $47bn (£36bn), which is around 20% higher than Couche-Tard’s original offer, according to Bloomberg News.

In September, Seven & i rejected a $38bn approach from Couche-Tard, saying it grossly undervalued the firm and that any potential takeover would face major regulatory hurdles.

BBC News has contacted Couche-Tard and Seven & i for comment.

Seven & i shares were around 5% higher in morning trade in Tokyo after initially jumping by 9.5%.

The new offer was reportedly submitted to Seven & i on 19 September and no discussions between the two sides have taken place since.

After the previous offer was rejected, Seven & i was added by Japan’s Finance Ministry to a list of businesses that are considered to be “core” to the country’s national security.

The move, which is largely considered to have little impact on Couche-Tard’s buyout attempt, forces prospective foreign investors in such Japanese companies to seek a government review.

A Japanese company of Seven & i’s size has never been bought by a firm from overseas.

Historically, companies from Japan were more likely to buy foreign businesses.

Last year, the Japanese government issued new guidelines on mergers and acquisitions, which called on companies to not reject credible takeover offers without proper consideration.

7-Eleven is the world’s biggest convenience store chain, with 85,000 outlets across 20 countries and territories.

If the deal went ahead, Couche-Tard’s footprint in the US and Canada would more than double to about 20,000 sites and create a 100,000-strong global convenience store chain.

Australia’s prime minister has apologised for making a “hurtful” comment in parliament, after he mocked opposition lawmakers by asking them if they had Tourette’s syndrome.

The remark – which was quickly withdrawn – has angered disability advocates and been labelled “ableist” and “despicable” by MPs across the political spectrum.

Late on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese returned to the chamber to ask for forgiveness from Australians living with the disorder.

“I regret saying it. It was wrong. It was insensitive and I apologise,” he said in his address.

Albanese made the taunt after facing interjections from frontbenchers, including shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, during a speech on tax changes.

“Have you got Tourette’s or something? You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble,” he said, responding to the interruptions.

Tourette’s syndrome is a condition that causes people to make involuntary movements or sounds, called tics.

The President of the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia said Albanese’s comment demonstrated the need to increase awareness about the disorder.

“For him to just flippantly use it in such an offhanded manner speaks volumes… we have a lot of work to do,” Mandy Maysey told Seven News.

“If people see Albanese doing that in parliament, then it will trickle down, and people already use it as a punchline or an insult,” she added.

The Australian Greens disability spokesman Jordon Steele-John, who has cerebral palsy, criticised Albanese for “using disability as the butt of his jokes” – saying that “casual ableism is still ableism”.

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston had earlier called the taunt “despicable” and demanded the PM apologise to the “entire Tourette’s community”.

“Mocking a disability is no laughing matter,” she wrote on X.

Research estimates one in every 100 school-aged children may have Tourette’s syndrome in Australia and that roughly 1-2% live with the disorder in the UK.

Tourette’s syndrome is a genetic inherited neurological condition, which means it can be passed on from birth parents to their children.

The northern Indian state of Haryana and Indian-administered Kashmir sprang surprises on Tuesday as votes were counted in assembly elections there.

Most exit polls had predicted a hung assembly in Kashmir but an alliance of the main opposition Congress and the National Conference Party (NCP) are on course for a landslide in the 90-member house and poised to form a government.

In Haryana, which also has 90 seats, predictions of a Congress landslide were upended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has proved the pollsters wrong.

The BJP-led government appears on course to return for a rare third consecutive term in Haryana.

The polls in Kashmir are significant as these are first assembly elections there in a decade – and also the first since the federal government revoked the region’s autonomy and changed the former state into a federally- governed territory in 2019.

Unlike Kashmir – which India and its neighbour Pakistan have fought wars over – Haryana does not often command global headlines.

But the tiny state grabs much attention in India as it is next to the capital, Delhi. Along with Punjab, it is called the bread basket of India for its large wheat and paddy farms, and the city of Gurugram is home to offices of some of the biggest global brands such as Google, Dell and Samsung.

The results are being watched keenly in India as these are the first state assembly polls since the summer parliamentary election. Analysts say Tuesday’s results will set the tone as the country heads into more regional elections, including in the state of Maharashtra and Delhi, over the next few months.

Perhaps the best description of what transpired in the state has come from political scientist Sandeep Shastri.

“The Congress has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” he told the BBC.

For weeks, political circles had been abuzz that the BJP was facing a huge wave of anti-incumbency and analysts were confidently saying that the party’s government was on its way out.

After most of the post-election exit polls predicted a Congress landslide, many said it was an election for the party to lose.

Shastri blames the Congress defeat on overconfidence and infighting within the party.

“They were confident they would win and became complacent. BJP, on the other hand, worked on issues quietly on the ground and successfully fought anti-incumbency to return to power.”

Both parties, he said, tried to form social coalitions by bringing together different caste groups – the results show the majority chose to support the BJP.

Shastri says differences between two top Congress leaders – Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja, who were contenders for the chief minister’s post – did not go down well with the voters.

Tuesday’s count, however, has been mired in controversy with the Congress accusing the Election Commission (EC) of delaying updating numbers on their website.

After party leader Jairam Ramesh submitted a complaint letter to the Election Commission, Selja said her party may still come out on top.

“I am telling you… there is something going on. If all goes well, Congress will form the government in Haryana,” she said.

But with numbers not on their side, that will likely remain a dream.

The EC has denied the allegations.

In the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the Hindu nationalist BJP has little support, but it enjoys tremendous goodwill in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. And the results reflect that divide. But the Congress-NC alliance has enough seats and is headed to form a government in the state.

The Modi government’s 2019 decision to scrap Article 370 of the constitution, which granted special status to Kashmir, and carve the state into two sent shockwaves around the valley, which elects 47 assembly seats.

At his campaign rallies, Modi had promised to restore the region’s “statehood”. But as the results show, that failed to placate angry voters.

The region saw a surprisingly high turnout – but as political analyst Sheikh Showkat Hussain says, they were voting against the BJP and the revocation of the region’s special status.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters
• Modi’s BJP ahead in Haryana election but trails in Kashmir

“The BJP made this election into a sort of referendum on its decision [to revoke Article 370]. However, people voted in favour of the stand taken by the regional parties,” he said.

Noor Mohammad Baba, another political analyst in Kashmir, says the results reveal that the BJP’s “policies weren’t popular” in the region.

“The result is a message to Delhi that they need to mend their policies towards Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

One surprising outcome of the election has been the poor showing by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), led by former Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Mufti, who earlier ruled in coalition with the BJP, has managed to win only three seats.

Responding to a query about her party’s poor performance, she said it was the “people’s choice”.

“Winning or losing is a part of politics. People feel that Congress and National Conference will give them a stable government and keep the BJP at bay. We respect their verdict,” she added.

Russia’s intelligence agency has been on a mission to generate “sustained mayhem on British and European streets”, the head of MI5 has said.

Giving his annual update on security threats faced by the UK, Ken McCallum said GRU agents had carried out “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness” in Britain after the UK backed Ukraine in its war with Russia.

MI5 had also responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022, he said, although he added the majority of its work still mostly involved Islamist extremism followed by extreme right-wing terrorism.

The complex mix of terror-related threats and threats from nation states meant MI5 had “one hell of a job on its hands”, he warned.

In a wide-ranging speech, he said:

• Young people were increasingly being drawn into online extremism, with 13% of those investigated for terrorism involvement aged under 18
• A total of 43 late-stage plots involving firearms and explosives to commit “mass murder” in the UK had been foiled since 2017
• The number of state-threat investigations by MI5 had increased by 48%
• Counter-terrorism work remained split between “75% Islamist extremism, 25% extreme right-wing terrorism”

There was a “dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies” MI5 had to deal with, he told the briefing at MI5’s counter-terrorism operations centre in London.

“The first 20 years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats.

“We now face those alongside state-backed assassination and sabotage plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war,” he said.

The UK’s “leading role” in supporting Ukraine means “we loom large in the fevered imagination of Putin’s regime” and further acts of aggression on UK soil should be expected, he warned.

The UK’s current terror threat level is substantial – meaning an attack is likely.

More than 750 Russian diplomats had been expelled from Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “the great majority of them” spies, Mr McCallum said.

This affected the Russian intelligence services’ capability, he explained, and added that diplomatic visas had been denied to those who Britain and allies considered Russian spies.

Russian state actors turned to proxies, such as private intelligence operatives and criminals, to do “their dirty work”, but this affected the professionalism of their operations and made them easier to disrupt.

While Mr McCallum has spoken publicly before about both the Russian and Iranian threats, he has not previously accused Moscow in such stark terms.

On Iran, he said the 20 Iran-backed plots MI5 had responded to presented “potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents”.

He said that since the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini – the 22-year-old who died in Iranian police custody after being arrested for allegedly violating rules requiring women to wear the headscarf – “we’ve seen plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale”.

In a previous public address he referred to 10 plots against Iranians in the UK. That number has now doubled, implying that Iranian state activity is undeterred by the threat of being caught.

He added that, as the war in the Middle East continues, MI5 would give its “fullest attention to the risk of an increase in – or a broadening of – Iranian state aggression in the UK”.

In both cases, Russia and Iran, the MI5 boss stressed that because it was difficult – to almost impossible – for their accredited diplomats to carry out such actions, they were turning increasingly to underworld criminal gangs.

Speaking about China, he said the economic relationship with the UK helped to underpin security.

However, he later told reporters the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a programme to steal data and information, and “we have seen 20,000 obfuscated approaches to individuals by China”.

The number of young people being drawn into online extremism is growing, Mr McCallum warned.

About 13% of those investigated for involvement in terrorism were under 18 – a threefold increase in the last three years.

The security agency was seeing “far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism”.

“Extreme right-wing terrorism in particular skews heavily towards young people, driven by propaganda that shows a canny understanding of online culture,” he said.

Responding to questions from reporters, he reiterated concerns about the role of the internet being the “biggest factor” driving the trend, and described how easily youngsters could access material from their bedrooms.

A high proportion of the threat was made up by “lone individuals indoctrinated online” he said.

“In dark corners of the internet, talk is cheap. Sorting the real plotters from armchair extremists is an exacting task,” he said.

“Anonymous online connections are often inconsequential, but a minority lead to deadly, real world actions.”

Home Office figures published last month show that of 242 people detained on suspicion of terror offences in the year to June, 17% (40) were aged 17 and under.

Sir Keir Starmer acknowledged the “sober findings” outlined by Mr McCallum but said the public should be “reassured that our security services are world class and will do everything necessary to keep us safe”.

Boeing says it has withdrawn its pay rise offer to striking workers after negotiations with union representatives reached a stalemate.

The aviation giant accused the union of not giving its proposals serious consideration.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union (IAM) said Boeing was “hell-bent on standing on the non-negotiated offer” which it says was rejected by its members.

Last month, Boeing announced what it called its “best and final” offer to workers, which proposed a 30% rise over four years – lower than the 40% being demanded by the union.

“The union made non-negotiable demands far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stephanie Pope said in a letter sent to employees.

“Given that position, further negotiations do not make sense at this point and our offer has been withdrawn.”

But union representatives said Boeing was not willing to negotiate the terms of plane maker’s latest offer.

Negotiators “attempted to address multiple priorities that could have led to an offer we could bring to a vote, but the company wasn’t willing to move in our direction,” IAM said in a statement.

More than 30,000 Boeing workers in the northwest of the US went on strike last month over pay and retirement packages.

In response to the walkout that has shut down production of some of its planes, the company has suspended the jobs of tens of thousands of staff .

Boeing has said US-based executives, managers and staff would be asked to take one week of furlough every four weeks as long as the strike lasts.

The firm has said the impact of the strike will depend on its duration, but analysts say an extended stoppage could cost the firm and its suppliers billions of dollars.

The last strike at Boeing in 2008 lasted about eight weeks.

Before the walkout company had already been dealing with historic losses. Production has slowed as the firm responds to concerns about the quality of its manufacturing.

The US Department of Justice has arrested a man who allegedly planned an attack on Election Day in the name of the Islamic State group.

The suspect, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, is a citizen of Afghanistan residing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, according to prosecutors.

“This defendant, motivated by ISIS, allegedly conspired to commit a violent attack, on Election Day, here on our homeland,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement on Tuesday.

The FBI said he was attempting stockpile firearms, and had taken steps to liquidate his family’s assets and relocate members overseas.

Mr Tawhedi is charged with providing, attempting to provide, and conspiracy to provide support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization; and with trying to procure firearms and ammunition to use to commit a felony or act of terrorism.

The FBI said Mr Tawhedi worked with an unnamed co-conspirator, who is a juvenile relative and also a citizen of Afghanistan. It accuses him of consuming Islamic State propaganda via the internet, based on Google records obtained by law enforcement, and donating to a charity used as a front for IS.

“We will continue to combat the ongoing threat that ISIS and its supporters pose to America’s national security, and we will identify, investigate, and prosecute the individuals who seek to terrorize the American people,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

According to the BBC news partner CBS, federal investigators’ affidavit alleges that Mr Tawhedi searched for surveillance cameras in Washington, and webcams showing the White House and Washington Monument. It also alleges that he researched states with more lax gun laws.

Mr Tawhedi sought AK-47 assault rifles to use in the attack, authorities claim. On 7 October, he and the co-conspirator met with individuals who actually worked undercover for the FBI to purchase the weapons and ammunition.

After the purchase, Mr Tawhedi and his co-conspirator were arrested.

In an interview conducted after his arrest on Monday, the FBI said Mr Tawhedi allegedly confirmed he planned an Election Day attack that would target “large gatherings of people” and that he planned to die carrying it out.

Mr Tawhedi arrived in the US in September 2021 on a special immigrant visa with his wife and young child. He lived in Oklahoma City at the time of his arrest.

It is not immediately clear if he has legal representation.

Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley has alleged in a new memoir that he was abused for years by the Canadian rock band’s former manager.

In the memoir, Whibley accuses the band’s first manager, Greig Nori, of grooming and sexually abusing him starting when he was a teenager.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the singer says he kept the dark side of the relationship secret from his bandmates for years.

Mr Nori has said called Whibley’s allegations “false”.

Sum 41 is a multi-award winning punk band formed in 1996 that has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.

Whibley’s memoir, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell, which was published Tuesday, documents the ups and downs of the band’s early start in the Toronto music scene and its rise to international stardom.

Its beginning was aided in part by Mr Nori – then in his 30s and the frontman of a popular Canadian indie band. He met Whibley after a show and begin to mentor him.

Mr Nori later became the fledgling band’s manager.

Whibley said one night, Mr Nori suddenly, “passionately” kissed him in a bathroom stall at a rave, surprising and confusing the then-18 year old, who was high on ecstasy at the time.

He alleges Mr Nori coerced him into an unwanted sexual relationship that lasted about four years.

“Greig kept pushing for things to happen when we were together,” he writes in the memoir, according to the Toronto Star.

“I started feeling like I was being pressured to do something against my will.”

When the physical relationship ended, Whibley, now 44, alleges Mr Nori continued with verbal and psychological abuse.

Whibley alleges he revealed the relationship to his former wife, Canadian singer Avril Lavigne, who said: “That’s abuse! He sexually abused you.”

The couple were married from 2006 to 2009.

The Sum 41singer told the Toronto Star in an interview that he thought the relationship with Mr Nori would be “a deep, dark secret I was going to take to my grave”.

“But I didn’t know how to tell the story [of the band] without it, because it was so intertwined with everything that was going on in my life back at that point, almost on a daily basis.”

The band parted ways with Mr Nori in 2005.

Mr Nori told the Globe and Mail that Whibley’s claims were “false allegations”, and said he had retained a defamation lawyer.

The BBC has reached out to Mr Nori for comment.

Whibley told the LA Times he did not warn Mr Nori about the allegations in the memoir before it was published.

“I’ve had an inner battle, like, ‘Why do I want to tell him? Because I feel like I’m supposed to? Because he still has this thing over me?” he told the newspaper.

Sum 41 is currently on its farewell world tour and will be disbanding after 28 years together.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has said it is lifting a ban on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

In his decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes said that he authorised the “immediate return” of X’s activities in the country after it paid hefty fines and blocked accounts accused of spreading misinformation.

According to a statement, the site has paid fines totalling 28 million reais ($5.1m; £3.8m) and agreed to appoint a local representative, as required by Brazilian law.

Moraes had blocked access to the platform, owned by Elon Musk, after it had refused to ban several profiles deemed by the government to be spreading misinformation about the 2022 Brazilian Presidential election.

Anatel, Brazil’s telecoms watchdog, has been instructed to ensure service has resumed for more than 20 million users in the country within 24 hours.

After months of defying the court’s orders, Musk fired the company’s Brazilian staff in late August and closed X’s office in Brazil.

“The decision to close X offices in Brazil was difficult,” Musk, who also runs electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, wrote at the time.

A self-declared “free-speech absolutist”, the billionaire entrepreneur had described Justice Moraes’ move to ban several dozen accounts as an abuse of power and a violation of free speech.

Several days later, Justice Moraes ordered for the entire platform to be blocked across the country.

Many users switched to alternative sites such as Bluesky, and demand for VPNs (Virtual Proxy Networks) in Brazil soared.

But in September, the platform began to comply with the court’s orders in an apparent U-turn.

On Tuesday, X said that it was “proud to return to Brazil”.

“Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process,” its government affairs team wrote in a statement.

It appears that X has now complied with all of the judge’s demands in order to have the ban lifted.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for the platform across the globe, as well as its largest in Latin America, with an estimated 22 million users.

A year ago, after the October 7 attacks and the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Joe Biden became the first US president to visit Israel at a time of war. I watched him fix his gaze at the TV cameras after meeting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war cabinet in Tel Aviv, and tell the country: “You are not alone”. But he also urged its leadership not to repeat the mistakes an “enraged” America made after 9/11.

In September this year at the United Nations in New York, President Biden led a global roll call of leaders urging restraint between Israel and Hezbollah. Netanyahu gave his response. The long arm of Israel, he said, could reach anywhere in the region.

Ninety minutes later, Israeli pilots fired American-supplied “bunker buster” bombs at buildings in southern Beirut. The strike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It marked one of the most significant turning points in the year since Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel on 7 October.

Biden’s diplomacy was being buried in the ruins of an Israeli airstrike using American-supplied bombs.

I’ve spent the best part of a year watching US diplomacy close up, travelling in the press pool with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on trips back to the Middle East, where I worked for seven years up until last December.

The single greatest goal for diplomacy as stated by the Biden administration has been to get a ceasefire for hostage release deal in Gaza. The stakes could barely be higher. A year on from Hamas smashing its way through the militarised perimeter fence into southern Israel where they killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped 250, scores of hostages – including seven US citizens – remain in captivity, with a significant number believed to be dead. In Gaza, Israel’s massive retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, while the territory has been reduced to a moonscape of destruction, displacement and hunger.

Thousands more Palestinians are missing. The UN says record numbers of aid workers have been killed in Israeli strikes, while humanitarian groups have repeatedly accused Israel of blocking shipments – something its government has consistently denied. Meanwhile, the war has spread to the occupied West Bank and to Lebanon. Iran last week fired 180 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group. The conflict threatens to deepen and envelop the region.

Covering the US State Department, I have watched the Biden administration attempt to simultaneously support and restrain Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. But its goal of defusing the conflict and brokering a ceasefire has eluded the administration at every turn.

Biden officials claim US pressure changed the “shape of their military operations“, a likely reference to a belief within the administration that Israel’s invasion of Rafah in Gaza’s south was more limited than it otherwise would have been, even with much of the city now lying in ruins.

Before the Rafah invasion, Biden suspended a single consignment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs as he tried to dissuade the Israelis from an all-out assault. But the president immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Netanyahu himself who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. Biden has since partially lifted the suspension and never repeated it.

The State Department asserts that its pressure did get more aid flowing, despite the UN reporting famine-like conditions in Gaza earlier this year. “It’s through the intervention and the involvement and the hard work of the United States that we’ve been able to get humanitarian assistance into those in Gaza, which is not to say that this is… mission accomplished. It is very much not. It is an ongoing process,” says department spokesman Matthew Miller.

In the region, much of Biden’s work has been undertaken by his chief diplomat, Anthony Blinken. He has made ten trips to the Middle East since October in breakneck rounds of diplomacy, the visible side of an effort alongside the secretive work of the CIA at trying to close a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

But I have watched multiple attempts to close the deal being spiked. On Blinken’s ninth visit, in August, as we flew in a C-17 US military transporter on a trip across the region, the Americans became increasingly exasperated. A visit that started with optimism that a deal could be within reach, ended with us arriving in Doha where Blinken was told that the Emir of Qatar – whose delegation is critical in communicating with Hamas – was ill and couldn’t see him.

A snub? We never knew for sure (officials say they later spoke by phone), but the trip felt like it was falling apart after Netanyahu claimed he had “convinced” Blinken of the need to keep Israeli troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt as part of the agreement. This was a deal breaker for Hamas and the Egyptians. A US official accused Netanyahu of effectively trying to sabotage the agreement. Blinken flew out of Doha without having got any further than the airport. The deal was going nowhere. We were going back to Washington.

On his tenth trip to the region last month, Blinken did not visit Israel.

For critics, including some former officials, the US call for an end to the war while supplying Israel with at least $3.8bn (£2.9bn) of arms per year, plus granting supplemental requests since 7 October, has amounted either to a failure to apply leverage or an outright contradiction. They argue the current expansion of the war in fact marks a demonstration, rather than a failure, of US diplomatic policy.

“To say [the administration] conducted diplomacy is true in the most superficial sense in that they conducted a lot of meetings. But they never made any reasonable effort to change behaviour of one of the main actors – Israel,” says former intelligence officer Harrison J. Mann, a career US Army Major who worked in the Middle East and Africa section of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time of the October 7th attacks. Mr Mann resigned earlier this year in protest at US support for Israel’s assault in Gaza and the number of civilians being killed using American weapons.

Allies of Biden flat-out reject the criticism. They point, for example, to the fact that diplomacy with Egypt and Qatar mediating with Hamas resulted in last November’s truce which saw more than 100 hostages released in Gaza in exchange for around 300 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. US officials also say the administration dissuaded the Israeli leadership from invading Lebanon much earlier in the Gaza conflict, despite cross border rocket fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

Senator Chris Coons, a Biden loyalist who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who travelled to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia late last year, says it’s critical to weigh Biden’s diplomacy against the context of the last year.

“I think there’s responsibility on both sides for a refusal to close the distance, but we cannot ignore or forget that Hamas launched these attacks,” he says.

“He has been successful in preventing an escalation – despite repeated and aggressive provocation by the Houthis, by Hezbollah, by the Shia militias in Iraq – and has brought in a number of our regional partners,” he says.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert says Biden’s diplomacy has amounted to an unprecedented level of support, pointing to the huge US military deployment, including aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear power submarine, he ordered in the wake of October 7.

But he believes Biden has been unable to overcome the resistance of Netanyahu.

“Every time he came close to it, Netanyahu somehow found a reason not to comply, so the main reason for the failure of this diplomacy was the consistent opposition of Netanyahu,” says Olmert.

Olmert says a stumbling block for a ceasefire deal has been Netanyahu’s reliance on the “messianic” ultranationalists in his cabinet who prop up his government. They are agitating for an even stronger military response in Gaza and Lebanon. Two far-right ministers this summer threatened to withdraw support for Netanyahu’s government if he signed a ceasefire deal.

“Ending the war as part of an agreement for the release of hostages means a major threat to Netanyahu and he’s not prepared to accept it, so he’s violating it, he’s screwing it all the time,” he says.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly rejected claims he blocked the deal, insisting he was in favour of the American-backed plans and sought only “clarifications”, while Hamas continually changed its demands.

But whatever the shuttle diplomacy, much has turned on the relationship between the US president and Netanyahu. The men have known each other for decades, the dynamics have been often bitter, dysfunctional even, but Biden’s positions predate even his relationship with the Israeli prime minister.

Passionately pro-Israel, he often speaks of visiting the country as a young Senator in the early 1970s. Supporters and critics alike point to Biden’s unerring support for the Jewish state – some citing it as a liability, others as an asset.

Ultimately, for President Biden’s critics, his biggest failure to use leverage over Israel has been over the scale of bloodshed in Gaza. In the final year of his only term, thousands of protesters, many of them Democrats, have taken to American streets and university campuses denouncing his policies, holding “Genocide Joe” banners.

Biden’s mindset, which underpins the administration’s position, was shaped at a time when the nascent Israeli state was seen as being in immediate existential peril, says Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York.

“American diplomacy has basically been, ‘whatever Israel’s war demands and requires we will give them to fight it’,” says Prof Khalidi.

“That means, given that this [Israeli] government wants an apparently unending war, because they’ve set war aims that are unattainable – [including] destroying Hamas – the United States is a cart attached to an Israeli horse,” he says.

He argues Biden’s approach to the current conflict was shaped by an outdated conception of the balance of state forces in the region and neglects the experience of stateless Palestinians.

“I think that Biden is stuck in a much longer-term time warp. He just cannot see things such as… 57 years of occupation, the slaughter in Gaza, except through an Israeli lens,” he says.

Today, says Prof Khalidi, a generation of young Americans has witnessed scenes from Gaza on social media and many have a radically different outlook. “They know what the people putting stuff on Instagram and TikTok in Gaza have shown them,” he says.

Kamala Harris, 59, Biden’s successor as Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election against Donald Trump, 78, doesn’t come with the same generational baggage.

However, neither Harris nor Trump has set out any specific plans beyond what is already in process for how they would reach a deal. The election may yet prove the next turning point in this sharply escalating crisis, but quite how is not yet apparent.

A year ago, the images were searing.

With Israel still reeling from the worst attack in its history and Gaza already under devastating bombardment, it felt like a turning point.

The Israel-Palestine conflict, largely absent from our screens for years, had exploded back into view.

It seemed to take almost everyone by surprise. The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had famously declared just a week before the attacks: “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

A year on, the region is in flames.

More than 41,000 Palestinians are dead. Two million Gazans have been displaced. In the West Bank, another 600 Palestinians have been killed. In Lebanon, another one million people are displaced and more than 2,000 dead.

More than 1,200 Israelis were killed on that first day. Since then, Israel has lost 350 more soldiers in Gaza. Two hundred thousand Israelis have been forced from their homes close to Gaza and along the volatile northern border with Lebanon. Around 50 soldiers and civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rockets.

Across the Middle East, others have joined the fight. Dogged US efforts to prevent the crisis from escalating, involving presidential visits, countless diplomatic missions and the deployment of vast military resources, have all come to nothing. Rockets have been fired from far away in Iraq and Yemen.

And mortal enemies Israel and Iran have exchanged blows too, with more almost certain to come.

Washington has rarely looked less influential.

As the conflict has spread and metastasised, its origins have faded from view, like the scene of a car crash receding in the rear view mirror of a juggernaut hurtling towards even bigger disasters.

• Listen to Paul read this article
• Follow live updates on this story
• Analysis: Year of killing and broken assumptions has taken Middle East to edge of deeper, wider war
• Gaza then and now – a visual guide to how life has changed in 12 months
• These are the hostages still held by Hamas

The lives of Gazans, before and after October 7, have been almost forgotten as the media breathlessly anticipates “all-out war” in the Middle East.

Some Israelis whose lives were turned upside down that terrible day are feeling similarly neglected.

“We have been pushed aside,” Yehuda Cohen, father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, told Israel’s Kan news last week. Mr Cohen said he held Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for a “pointless war that has pitted all possible enemies against us”.

“He is doing everything, with great success, to turn the event of October 7 into a minor event,” he said.

Not all Israelis share Mr Cohen’s particular perspective. Many now see the Hamas attacks of a year ago as the opening salvo of a wider campaign by Israel’s enemies to destroy the Jewish state.

The fact that Israel has struck back – with exploding pagers, targeted assassinations, long-range bombing raids and the sort of intelligence-led operations the country has long prided itself on – has restored some of the self-confidence the country lost a year ago.

“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Mr Netanyahu confidently declared last week.

The prime minister’s poll ratings were rock bottom for months after October 7. Now he can see them creeping up again. A license, perhaps, for more bold action?

But where’s it all going?

“None of us know when the music is going to stop and where everybody will be at that point,” Simon Gass, Britain’s former ambassador to Iran, told the BBC’s Today Podcast on Thursday.

The US is still involved, even if the visit to Israel of US Central Command (Centcom) chief Gen. Michael Kurilla feels more like crisis management than an exploration of diplomatic off-ramps.

With a presidential election now just four weeks away and the Middle East more politically toxic than ever before, this doesn’t feel like a moment for bold new American initiatives.

For now, the immediate challenge is simply to prevent a wider regional conflagration.

There’s a general assumption, among her allies, that Israel has the right – even the duty – to respond to last week’s ballistic missile attack by Iran.

No Israelis were killed in the attack and Iran appeared to be aiming at military and intelligence targets, but Mr Netanyahu has nevertheless promised a harsh response.

After weeks of stunning tactical success, Israel’s prime minister seems to harbour grand ambitions.

In a direct address to the Iranian people, he hinted that regime change was coming in Tehran. “When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different,” he said.

For some observers, his rhetoric carried uncomfortable echoes of the case made by American neoconservatives in the run up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

But for all the danger of the moment, fragile guardrails do still exist.

The Iranian regime may dream of a world without Israel, but it knows that it’s far too weak to take on the region’s only superpower, especially at a time when Hezbollah and Hamas – its allies and proxies in the so-called “axis of resistance” – are being crushed.

And Israel, which would dearly like to get rid of the threat posed by Iran, also knows that it cannot do this alone, despite its recent successes.

Regime change is not on Joe Biden’s agenda, nor that of his vice president, Kamala Harris.

As for Donald Trump, the one time he seemed poised to attack Iran – after Tehran shot down a US surveillance drone in June 2019 – the former president backed down at the last moment (although he did order the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, seven months later).

Few would have imagined, a year ago, that the Middle East was heading for its most perilous moment in decades.

But looked at through that same juggernaut’s rear view mirror, the past 12 months seem to have followed a terrible logic.

With so much wreckage now strewn all across the road, and events still unfolding at an alarming pace, policy makers – and the rest of us – are struggling to keep up.

As the conflict that erupted in Gaza grinds on into a second year, all talk of the “day after” – how Gaza will be rehabilitated and governed when the fighting finally ends – has ceased, or been drowned out by the din of a wider war.

So too has any meaningful discussion of a resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, the conflict which got us here in the first place.

At some point, when Israel feels it has done enough damage to Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel and Iran have both had their say – assuming this doesn’t plunge the region into an even deeper crisis – and the US presidential election is over, diplomacy may get another chance.

But right now, that all feels a very long way off.

Israel has invaded southern Lebanon in a dramatic escalation of its conflict with Hezbollah.

The Israeli ground operation began on 30 September, days after an air strike killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed armed group.

Hezbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel as Lebanon has endured three weeks of aerial bombardment that Lebanese authorities say has killed more than 1,000 people and forced up to a million to flee their homes.

Israel has a decades-long history of conflict with Hezbollah but the war in Gaza has sparked a year of deadly cross-border fighting between them.

We will be continually updating maps in this page to help explain the conflict.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Watch: Moment giant explosions seen near Beirut airport
• Explained: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
• Listen: Israel-Gaza war one year on
• Six hours at hands of Hamas – new accounts show how Israeli base fell on 7 October

Lebanon is a small country with a population of about 5.5 million people, which borders Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. It is about 170km (105 miles) away from Cyprus.

Israeli troops and tanks that had gathered close to the border crossed into Lebanon on 1 October.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it is carrying out “limited, localised, and targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon to dismantle what it calls Hezbollah’s “terrorist infrastructure”.

Israeli troops are fighting directly with Hezbollah fighters on the ground.

Several Israeli soldiers have been killed in mortar attacks and ambushes by Hezbollah during operations in southern Lebanon aimed at “eliminating terrorists”, according to the IDF.

Hezbollah said its fighters had clashed with Israeli forces in Adaisseh, Kafr Kila, Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun – all Lebanese villages close to the border with Israel.

A ground operation in southern Lebanon comes with many risks for Israeli forces. Unlike the flat coastal plains of Gaza, southern Lebanon has rolling hills and some mountainous terrain that makes it difficult for tanks to move easily without fear of being ambushed.

Hezbollah is also thought to have a network of tunnels in the region, with the group having been preparing for another full-scale conflict with Israel since the 34-day war in 2006.

As part of its invasion of southern Lebanon, the IDF has ordered people living in some villages to evacuate, telling those remaining to leave their homes and “immediately head to the north of the Awali River” – which meets the coast about 50km (30 miles) from the border with Israel.

At first the evacuation orders were concentrated in the south east of Lebanon, but in recent days more have been been issued for villages in the south west, perhaps indicating that Israeli operations are about to extend to that part of the border.

Lebanese civilians have also been warned by the IDF not to use vehicles to travel south across the Litani River, located about 30km (20 miles) north of the border.

About a million people lived in southern Lebanon before the conflict escalated almost a year ago.

Tens of thousands have been fleeing north since Israeli air strikes in the region intensified in late September. The main route for civilians trying to leave the south is the coastal road that runs the length of the country – but areas along that route have been hit by air strikes.

• How Israel-Hezbollah conflict escalated to a ground invasion

Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon came after nearly two weeks of intense air strikes that Israel’s military says target Hezbollah in the south of the country, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Israel says it is hitting Hezbollah sites, including weapons stores and ammunition dumps, but Lebanese officials say more than 100 women and children have been killed.

The majority of the rockets recently fired by Hezbollah have targeted northern areas of Israel. But some rockets have reached further south and damaged homes near the coastal city of Haifa.

There has been almost a year of cross-border hostilities between Israel’s forces and Hezbollah, sparked by the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets at northern Israel during that time, forcing some Israelis living there to flee south, while the IDF has launched air strikes and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

As the chart below shows, the number of weekly Israeli attacks on Lebanon more than tripled in the week before the IDF launched its ground invasion. The number of Hezbollah attacks, while small in comparison, also increased in the same week.

Israel has intensified strikes on Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in recent days.

The majority of the strikes have hit the southern suburbs of the city, densely populated areas that are home to thousands of civilians.

These areas, close to the international airport, also have a strong Hezbollah presence and a series of Israeli strikes on buildings there killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September.

There have also been Israeli aerial attacks on locations closer to the centre of the city. A strike on an apartment block close to the Lebanese parliament building on 2 October killed several people, including rescue officers and paramedics, according to Beirut’s civil defence.

The map below – using analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University – shows which areas have sustained concentrated damage – including Dahieh in Beirut and areas along the border with Israel.

Israel is now engaged in hostilities with armed forces and non-state armed groups in several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Syria and Iran-backed groups operating in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on Tuesday was the latest major escalation.

What happens next is unclear, but Israel has vowed to respond, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing the attack as “a big mistake” that Iran “will pay for”.

• How could Israel respond, and what might Iran do then?

A couple in India have said they are “delighted” after a court ordered a hospital to hand over the frozen semen sample of their dead son to them so they could have a grandchild through surrogacy.

The landmark Delhi High Court order came after a four-year legal battle.

“We were very unlucky, we lost our son. But the court has given us a very precious gift. We would now be able to get our son back,” the mother, Harbir Kaur, told the BBC.

Ms Kaur and her husband Gurvinder Singh petitioned the court after Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital in December 2020 refused to release their son’s semen which was stored in their fertility lab.

The couple’s 30-year-old son, Preet Inder Singh, had been diagnosed in June 2020 with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma – a form of blood cancer – and admitted to the hospital for treatment.

“Before he began chemotherapy, the hospital advised him to store his semen as the treatment could adversely affect the quality of his sperm,” Gurvinder Singh told the BBC.

Preet Inder, who was unmarried, agreed and his sample was frozen on 27 June 2020. He died in early September.

A few months later, when the grief-stricken parents sought access to their son’s frozen sperm, the hospital declined their request. The couple then petitioned the Delhi High Court.

The couple, who are in their 60s, told the court that they would bring up any child born using their son’s semen sample. And in the event of their death, their two daughters have given an undertaking in court that they will take full responsibility for the child.

In her order last week, Justice Prathiba Singh said that “under Indian law, there was no prohibition against posthumous reproduction” if the sperm owner had given consent.

She added that parents were entitled to the sample as in the absence of a spouse or children, they became legal heirs under the Hindu Succession Act.

The couple say they approached the court because they wanted to carry on his “legacy” and that the order would help them preserve a connection with him and help their family name to continue.

“He loved his sisters and was much loved by his friends. He is the screensaver on my phone. I start my day by looking at his face every morning,” Ms Kaur said. She did not want to share a photo of him with the BBC over privacy concerns.

She added that the family was considering using his sperm in surrogacy and that one of her daughters had agreed to be the surrogate. “We will keep it in the family,” she said.

The case is rare, but not without precedent, her lawyer Suruchii Aggarwal told the BBC.

In court, she cited the 2018 case of a 48-year-old woman in the western Indian city of Pune who got twin grandchildren through surrogacy using the semen of her 27-year-old son who had died of brain cancer in Germany.

Her son, who was also unmarried, had authorised his mother and sister to use his semen after his death and the hospital in Germany handed over his sample to them.

Ms Aggarwal also gave the example of a case from 2019 where the New York Supreme Court allowed the parents of a 21-year-old military cadet killed in a skiing accident to use his frozen sperm to have a grandchild.

In her order, Justice Singh also cited a number of cases of posthumous reproduction, including a 2002 case from Israel where the parents of a 19-year-old soldier killed in Gaza had obtained legal permission to use their son’s sperm to have a child through a surrogate mother.

So if there is a precedent, why did the hospital reject the couple’s request?

As Justice Singh noted in her order, there is no international consensus on the issue.

The US, UK, Japan, Czech Republic and some other countries allow posthumous reproduction with written consent. Australia imposes an additional condition of a one-year wait period after the death to allow time for emotions to settle.

The practice is prohibited in a number of countries such as Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Malaysia, Pakistan, Hungary and Slovenia, while most of India’s South Asian neighbours – Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh – have no guidelines.

And even in countries that have laws on posthumous reproduction, a majority of cases involve a spouse who wants to use frozen eggs or sperm to conceive.

The number of bereaved parents seeking sperm of their sons has risen in Israel, and as the conflict with Russia has escalated, soldiers in Ukraine are offered semen cryopreservation free of charge. But in India, this is still relatively rare.

In court, Ganga Ram Hospital said legally they could only release the sample to the spouse. They said there were no clear laws or guidelines that governed the release of semen samples of an unmarried deceased male to his parents or legal heirs.

The Indian government also opposed the couple’s petition, saying that surrogacy laws in India were meant to assist infertile couples or women, not people who wanted to have a grandchild.

The authorities also pointed out that Preet Inder was unmarried – India’s Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Act 2021 bars single people from having children via surrogacy – and that he had not left any written or oral consent for the use of his frozen sperm so his parents did not have an automatic right to use it.

Ms Aggarwal, the couple’s lawyer, argued in court that while filling in the form for storing his semen, Preet Inder had clearly specified that it was for the purpose of IVF.

The form, she told the BBC, had the mobile numbers of both father and son, which implied consent. She pointed out that the father had been paying the lab for preserving the sample.

The ART Act, she said, was introduced to stop commercial use of surrogacy, to regulate and supervise clinics, not to impinge upon personal freedoms of aggrieved parents.

Justice Singh agreed with Ms Aggarwal’s argument that Preet Inder had given consent for his sperm to be used for the purpose of having children.

“He was not married and did not have any partner. He intended for the sample to be used in order to bear a child. When he passed away, the parents being the heirs of the deceased, and semen samples being genetic material and constituting property, the parents are entitled for release of the same.”

Under those circumstances, the court said they could not prohibit the couple from accessing the semen sample of their son.

The court order, Ms Kaur says, has offered her a “glimmer of hope, a light” that “we will be able to bring our son back”.

“I have prayed every day to fulfil all my child’s unfulfilled desires. It’s taken four years, but my prayers have been answered,” she adds.

US officials are warning about the potentially life-threating impacts of Hurricane Milton as it barrels towards the Florida coast.

Milton is one of the most powerful storms to form in the North Atlantic in recent years.

It comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused substantial damage across the US.

The storm is expected to hit Wednesday.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Milton to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in the US state of Florida on Wednesday night, local time.

It could strike near the city of Tampa, whose wider metropolitan area has a population of more than three million people.

Forecasters are warning of torrential rain, flash flooding, high winds and possible storm surges – which occur when water moves inland from the coast.

They say Milton could be the worst storm to hit the area in about a century – with a surge of 10-15ft (3-4.5m) possible, and localised rainfall of up to 1.5ft.

• Florida warned of ‘potentially catastrophic’ Hurricane Milton
• What is a storm surge and how serious is the threat from Milton?

Milton became a category one hurricane on Sunday and has been steadily moving eastwards, through the Gulf of Mexico, after brushing past Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

BBC weather presenter Chris Fawkes said it had undergone explosive intensification in a 24-hour period, culminating in sustained wind gusts of 200mph (321km/h).

It was placed in the most powerful hurricane category – five – though it has fluctuated in strength.

While the hurricane dropped in intensity on Tuesday before returning to category five status, officials warned that it could double in size before striking Florida on Wednesday.

The core of the hurricane is expected to pass over west-central Florida, with a large storm surge expected along a swathe of the state’s coast ahead of landfall.

In an update on Tuesday night the NHC said the hurricane had “wobbled” to the south, leading forecasters to alter its track slightly. Even the most accurate forecasts are typically off by about 60 miles (100km) when the storm is 36 hours away, forecasters said.

Milton is then due to cut across the peninsula before ending up in the Atlantic Ocean.

Floridians have been told to prepare for the state’s largest evacuation effort in years, with Governor Ron DeSantis warning that a “monster” is on the way.

Most counties are in an official state of emergency, and evacuations have been ordered up and down Florida’s west coast.

Disaster management authorities have issued a list and map of the evacuation orders.

Several large shelters have also been prepared as a last resort for those stranded.

Airports in Milton’s expected path have announced closures, and queues of traffic have been observed as people start to leave their homes.

• Are you in Florida? Please share your experiences
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms
• How is climate change affecting hurricanes?
• BBC Verify: Fact checking misinformation about Hurricane Helene

Hurricanes – sometimes known as cyclones or typhoons – are a type of tropical storm that form in the North Atlantic. They bring strong winds and heavy rain.

When ocean air is warm and moist, it rises, and then starts to cool – which causes clouds to form.

Sometimes this rising air can move away at the top of the hurricane more quickly than it can be replaced at the surface, causing the surface pressure to fall.

The falling pressure causes the winds to accelerate with more air then getting pulled in as the hurricane strengthens.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (Noaa) predicted that the 2024 hurricane season would be more active than usual. Rising average sea level temperatures due to human-caused climate change were partly to blame, it said.

Category five hurricanes are considered “catastrophic” by Noaa.

They carry wind speeds greater than 155mph (249km/h) and can cause “very severe and extensive damage”.

The US government agency urges “massive evacuations” in residential areas near shorelines, since a category five hurricane can also bring storm surges that exceed 18ft (5m) and destroy many homes.

Trees and power lines can also be downed, causing the isolation of residential areas and lengthy power cuts. Noaa says affected areas can be left uninhabitable for weeks or months.

A database from Noaa shows that at least 40 storms in the Atlantic have reached category five status since 1924, though only four have actually hit land at that strength. Here are some of the most damaging:

Hurricane Camille

Camille crashed into Mississippi in 1969, producing a peak storm surge of 24ft and destroying almost everything along the coast.

It killed 259 people, most of them in Virginia, and caused about $1.4bn (£1.06bn) in damage.

Hurricane Andrew

Hurricane Andrew decimated southern Florida in 1992 with sustained wind speeds of up to 165mph and gusts as high as 174mph.

It claimed 26 lives directly and was blamed for dozens of other deaths. After causing $30bn in damage, it was considered the costliest natural disaster in US history at the time.

Hurricane Michael

Hurricane Michael slammed into Florida in 2018 with 160mph wind speeds and was the strongest storm to make landfall in the Sunshine State.

At least 74 deaths were attributed to the storm – 59 in the US and 15 in Central America – and Michael caused an estimated $25.1bn in damage.

Lower-category storms

Milton comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the US as a category four storm, killing more than 200 people and becoming the deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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

Two grey shapes, visible from satellites for most of this year at Cambodia’s Ream naval base, seem to confirm growing fears in Washington: that China is expanding its military footprint, beyond the three disputed islands in the South China Sea which it has already seized and fortified.

The shapes are type 056A corvettes of the Chinese navy – 1,500-tonne warships – and they have been berthed alongside a new, Chinese-built pier that is big enough to accommodate much larger vessels. Onshore there are other facilities, also built by China, which are presumed to be for the use of the Chinese navy.

The Cambodian government has repeatedly denied such a possibility, citing its constitution which bans any permanent foreign military presence, and stating that Ream is open to use by all friendly navies.

“Please understand this is a Cambodian, not a Chinese base,” said Seun Sam, a Policy Analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia. “Cambodia is very small, and our military capacities are limited.

“We need more training from outside friends, especially from China.”

Others, however, are watching with suspicion.

For all the talk about the rapid rise of Chinese sea power – the country now has more ships in its navy than the US – China currently has only one overseas military base, in the African state of Djibouti, which it built in 2016.

The United States, by contrast, has around 750 – one also in Djibouti, and many others in countries close to China like Japan and South Korea.

The US believes the imbalance is changing, however, because of China’s stated ambition to be a global military power. That, and the scale of its investments in overseas infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative, which under Chinese law must be built to military standards.

Some in Washington predict that China will eventually have a global network of bases, or civilian ports that it can use as bases. And one of the first of these is Ream.

Until a few years ago, Ream – which sits on Cambodia’s southern tip – was being upgraded with US assistance; part of the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of yearly military aid provided to Cambodia. But the US cut back this aid after 2017, when Cambodia’s main opposition party was banned and its leaders exiled or jailed.

Already increasingly dependent on Chinese aid and investment, the Cambodian government abruptly switched partners. It cancelled the regular joint military exercises held with the US, and switched to the so-called Golden Dragon exercises it now holds with China.

By 2020, two US-funded buildings in Ream had been torn down and an extensive, Chinese-funded expansion of the facilities there had begun. By the end of last year the new pier had been built. It was almost identical to the 363 metre-long pier at the base in Djibouti, and long enough to accommodate China’s largest aircraft carrier.

Soon the two corvettes were docked at Ream – and either they, or identical replacements, have stayed there for most of this year.

Cambodia claims the ships are for training, and to prepare for this year’s Golden Dragon exercises. It also says China is constructing two new 056A corvettes for its own navy, and insists that the Chinese presence in Ream is not permanent, so does not count as a base.

That has not stopped US officials from expressing their concern over the expansion of the site, though, which satellite photographs show has, in addition to the new pier, a new dry dock, warehouses, and what look like administrative offices and living quarters with four basketball courts.

In 2019 the Wall Street Journal reported on what it said was a leaked agreement between Cambodia and China to lease 77 hectares of the base for 30 years. This allegedly included the stationing of military personnel and weapons.

The Cambodian government dismissed the report as fake news – but it is noteworthy that only Chinese warships have so far been allowed to dock at the new pier. Two Japanese destroyers visiting in February were instead told to dock at the nearby town of Sihanoukville.

Even if the Chinese presence does start to become more permanent and exclusive, however, some analysts doubt it would violate Cambodia’s constitution.

It is technically true that Ream is not a permanent base. And while its expansion is Chinese-funded, the base itself is not leased to China, said Kirsten Gunness, a Senior Policy Researcher at the California-based Rand Corporation.

“We are seeing a pattern of Chinese ships being continuously docked [at Ream],” she said. “One way to get around the constitutional prohibition is not to call it a foreign base, but allow foreign forces continuous access on a rotational basis.”

The US and the Philippines operate under similar agreements, Gunness added.

Most analysts believe a long-term Chinese presence at Ream would offer very few real advantages to China. They point to the three bases it has already built on Mischief, Fiery Cross and Subi Reefs in the South China Sea, and the formidable naval forces it maintains on its south coast.

But a Chinese base in Ream, at the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, does worry Cambodia’s neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam. Together with other bases further north, it could be seen as an attempt by China to encircle the long Vietnamese coast.

Like the Philippines, Vietnam disputes China’s claim to almost all the islands in the South China Sea, and its forces have clashed with China’s in the past.

Thai national security officials have also privately expressed alarm at the thought of a Chinese base just south of the Thai navy’s main port in Sattahip, covering their exit from the Gulf of Thailand. Thailand and Cambodia still have unresolved territorial disputes, after all.

Neither country is likely to voice these complaints publicly, though. Thailand will want to avoid causing ripples in its economically vital relationship with China, while Vietnam will want to avoid stirring up anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Cambodia. Public resentment of China in Vietnam, where such feelings are never far from the surface, is also something the Vietnamese government will want to steer clear of.

US and Indian strategists, meanwhile, are more concerned about the future possibility of a Chinese base in the Indian Ocean – like the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, which a Chinese state-owned company acquired a 99-year lease for in 2017, or the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, which has also been redeveloped with Chinese funding.

But these are still very distant prospects. Few analysts believe China will be able to rival the global military reach of the US for many more years.

“The Ream base does not add much in the way of power projection – it doesn’t get the Chinese navy any closer to places it wants to go,” said Greg Poling, director of the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

What it could do is make a big difference in gathering intelligence, tracking satellites and detecting or monitoring long-range targets.

“These are not necessarily the best options for China,” Mr Poling added. “But they are the only ones on offer.”

A US teenager is the first known person to get classic video game Tetris to reset to level 0 after beating it.

Michael Artiaga, 16, claimed the historic moment of so-called “rebirth” while livestreaming himself playing Nintendo’s version of the game on Twitch on Sunday.

It took him 82 minutes to successfully clear level 255 on Tetris – the game’s highest. Artiaga, who streams as “dogplayingtetris”, celebrated and watched in shock as it started again from scratch.

“Am I dreaming, bro?” he asked viewers, saying he was in “disbelief”.

The teen carried on playing and eventually finished with 29.4 million points.

“I’m so glad that game is over,” he added, as he prepared to wrap up his stream.

“I never want to play this game again”.

He was reportedly playing an edition of the game made for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console that prevents crashes after level 155.

The game’s crashes and kill screens have marked the efforts of other young streamers hoping to set new records.

Oklahoma teen Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson claimed to be the first to ever beat the game earlier this year when he reached level 157 in 38 minutes before it crashed.

Tetris was first created in 1984 by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov, and has spawned into hundreds of versions for arcades, consoles and PCs.

The classic video game has remained popular ever since for its simplicity, yet frustrating difficulty.

Players have to arrange falling different shapes, each composed of four blocks, to make them fit together like a jigsaw into horizontal lines that vanish when completed.

If you fail to clear lines of blocks, which fall more quickly as players progress through levels, before they pile up to the top of the window – it’s game over.

Artiaga is one of several teenage gamers who have livestreamed their attempts to break previous, and each others’, records for the number of levels reached or lines cleared without the game crashing.

He became the world’s youngest Tetris world champion at the age of 13 when he beat his older brother in the Classic Tetris World Championship final in 2020.

“I still cannot believe it… first ever to get Rebirth!” he wrote in the description for his two hour-long stream on YouTube.

“I’m so happy about finally getting this after all of the attempts. Thanks to everyone for the support over the years.

“It’s finally over,” he added.

Ian Khama’s well-mannered voice barely disguises the anger that he feels.

In several interviews that Botswana’s former president has given since 2019, when he began to express dissatisfaction with his hand-picked successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, he has talked about him in damning terms.

Masisi was “drunk on power”, Khama told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme five years ago.

Since then the 71-year-old has gone into exile, spoken about a plot to poison him and been charged in Botswana with several crimes including money laundering and owning illegal firearms.

Having previously dismissed the charges as being “fabricated”, last month he returned home and appeared in court for an initial hearing.

The tension between Khama and Masisi is likely to colour the diamond-rich country’s imminent general election – just three weeks away – as the former president is actively campaigning for an opposition party.

At a further, brief, court appearance on Tuesday, Khama was all smiles.

The authorities are now believed to be considering if the case should proceed.

There is a strong possibility that things will come to a halt as Khama’s co-accused are no longer facing the charges. But the court will not reconvene until a month after the election.

To the outsider, who might have the general feeling that Botswana is one of the continent’s most stable democracies with strong institutions, this dispute between the current and former presidents may seem surprising.

The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has governed since independence from the UK in 1966.

In a constituency-based system, it has dominated parliament for the last five decades though its share of the vote in recent elections has hovered around 50%.

The country’s first president, and Khama’s father, Sir Seretse Khama, was descended from royalty and helped cement Botswana’s reputation for orderly government in the 14 years he was in power up to his death in 1980.

His 1948 marriage to a white British woman, Ruth Williams, was controversial and led to his exile in the UK.

Ian Khama, the couple’s second child, likened his own recent time in South Africa to that of his father’s period away from Botswana.

After having been in the military, he went on to become president in 2008, serving for 10 years.

Despite the dynastic appeal, the shine came off Khama’s government and in the 2014 election the BDP won less than 50% of the vote for the first time.

Concerns about corruption, human rights and the state of the economy – with high levels of unemployment – all dented Khama’s popularity.

In the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, funded by Sudanese telecoms mogul Mo Ibrahim, Botswana’s score dropped during his period in power.

The country’s huge diamond reserves have proved lucrative and seen the economy grow, but not enough jobs were being created for the young population and the wealth was not being spread around.

In 2018, Khama handed over the reins of power to his loyal vice-president, Masisi, perhaps hoping that he could still have some influence, but things soon went awry.

One theory is that there was a gentleman’s agreement that Masisi would appoint Khama’s brother, Tshekedi, as vice-president, which he refused to do.

Khama began complaining that his security detail was being cut and that democracy within the BDP was being undermined.

Masisi also reversed some key policies such as a ban on trophy hunting and ended the scepticism towards having closer relations with China.

A year after stepping down as president, Khama then joined the newly formed opposition Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) telling the BBC at the time that the “democracy that we’ve been proud of in this country is now in decline”.

He then went into self-imposed exile in late 2021 alleging that there were threats to his life.

Masisi has batted away the criticism and earlier this year described the poisoning allegation as “shocking”.

“If you look at the history of either killings or murders in Botswana and the methods used, poisoning is not one of the ones we know best, but of late he [Khama] seems to be an expert,” Masisi told France 24, adding that the former president had nothing to fear.

Masisi also said that the arguments Khama has been using against the government and his leadership have been “a litany of inconsistencies”.

There is absolutely no chance of reconciliation between the former allies, and Khama is hoping to end the 58 years in power of the BDP – the party his father helped found.

There are opportunities to take votes from the government as the problems with the lack of jobs and the accusations of corruption have also dogged the current administration.

Furthermore, the former president still commands a lot of respect in the country, especially among the older voters and in his home area around Serowe, where he is paramount chief and where the BPF launched its manifesto at the weekend.

But Masisi and the BDP remain in a strong position, especially as the opposition is divided.

The 30 October poll offers an opportunity for the Khama dynasty to once again have an impact on the future of the country.

• World’s second-largest diamond found in Botswana
• Botswana welcomes Tebogo home with stadium spectacular
• Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

China has imposed taxes on imports of European brandy in a move that France has said is retaliation for recent big tariffs the EU announced on Chinese electric vehicles.

The European Commission said it would challenge China’s tax at the World Trade Organization (WTO), calling it an “abuse” of trade defence measures.

But China said the move was an “anti-dumping” measure that would protect its domestic producers.

French brandy producers said the duties, which will hit big brands including Hennessy and Remy Martin, would be “catastrophic” for the industry.

Shares in brandy companies dropped after the announcement.

China announced new restrictions on European brandy just days after EU countries approved steep tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.

China’s commerce ministry said brandy imports threaten “substantial damage” to its own producers. Importers will have to pay “security deposits” on European brandy.

China is also considering new tariffs on other EU imports including cars, pork, and dairy.

It has said EU tariffs on its electric vehicles are a breach of global trade rules.

French Trade Minister Sophie Primas said the brandy tax “seems to be a retaliatory measure” after the European Union decision to raise tariffs on Chinese electric cars.

She said that kind of retaliation would be “unacceptable”, and a “total contradiction” of international trade rules, adding that France would work with the European Union to take action at the WTO.

France accounts for 99% of brandy exported to China, and French cognac lobby group BNIC said the move would be “catastrophic” for the industry.

“The French authorities cannot abandon us and leave us alone to deal with Chinese retaliation that has nothing to do with us,” BNIC said, adding that the taxes “must be suspended before it’s too late”.

Shares in companies that sell spirits took a battering after the Chinese announcement.

Luxury firm LVMH, which produces Hennessy, fell more than 3%, while Remy Cointreau, which makes Remy Martin, fell more than 8%.

Analysts at Jefferies estimate that the tariffs could translate into a 20% price increase for consumers, which would probably lead to volumes and supplier sales falling by a fifth.

Shares in German carmakers, which could also be hit by tariff moves from China, also slid.

Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and BMW were all down after the announcement.

Residents of a town in north-western Nigeria are celebrating after a rare but feared hippo – along with its calf – was killed by rice farmers and fishermen in a hunt lasting several weeks.

People in Yauri, in Kebbi state, have been terrified of the hippo after she killed a fisherman who worked for the local traditional leader.

It prompted the Kebbi state government to order that the animal be killed for the safety of the community living along the River Niger.

Nigeria’s hippo population has declined rapidly over the last few decades – estimates suggest there are now around 100 animals, which mainly live in conservation areas.

The hippo in Yauri was tracked down by young men, who used locally made spears known as a “zagos” to kill it.

Its carcass has since been ferried in a canoe to the palace of one of the Emir of Yauri’s high-ranking administrators, where it has been butchered and its meat given to those in local community.

“We are a town of fishermen and farmers and this hippo has made many to stop going out due to fear of an attack,” resident Sani Yauri told the BBC.

“Apart from killing a member of the emir’s staff, it also seriously injured another person – not also forgetting the damage it regularly does to our farmlands.”

There are many paddy fields along the banks of the river near the town, where the hippo had sometimes been spotted.

“We are happy it has been killed and people came out in jubilation – and also got their share of the meat,” Mr Yauri said.

Another resident, Isa Jamilu, said he was relieved that could now go to his farm, which he had abandoned weeks ago.

Photos of the dead animal have been widely shared on social media – with mixed reactions: some hailed members of the local community for standing up for themselves while others expressed concern about the welfare of the animal.

The common hippopotamus is on the red list of threatened species put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“This is an endangered species and I was sad when I saw the video clip of people celebrating after it was killed,” Isyaku Abdullahi, animal rights activist and founder of Nigeria’s African Voice for Animals Initiative, told the BBC.

“What the people of Yauri ought to have done was to report to relevant authorities who would capture and relocate it.”

He said communities living in rural areas, especially places like Kebbi state where there are several rivers and lakes, needed to be made aware of other options when dealing with the dangerous mammals.

Kebbi is renowned for hosting the annual Argungu Fishing Festival, which is on the United Nations’ cultural heritage list.

Hippos are the third-largest land mammal and their teeth can reach up to 50.8cm (20in) in length. Despite their size, they can also reach speeds of up to 20mph (32km/h).

While the animals are herbivores, they can become highly aggressive when they feel threatened or their habitats are disturbed – and kill around 500 people every year in Africa.

• Zoo animals escape as flood hits Nigerian state
• Zookeeper mauled to death by lion in Nigeria
• ‘I’ve been sleeping under a bridge in Lagos for 30 years’

The northern Indian state of Haryana and Indian-administered Kashmir sprang surprises on Tuesday as votes were counted in assembly elections there.

Most exit polls had predicted a hung assembly in Kashmir but an alliance of the main opposition Congress and the National Conference Party (NCP) are on course for a landslide in the 90-member house and poised to form a government.

In Haryana, which also has 90 seats, predictions of a Congress landslide were upended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has proved the pollsters wrong.

The BJP-led government appears on course to return for a rare third consecutive term in Haryana.

The polls in Kashmir are significant as these are first assembly elections there in a decade – and also the first since the federal government revoked the region’s autonomy and changed the former state into a federally- governed territory in 2019.

Unlike Kashmir – which India and its neighbour Pakistan have fought wars over – Haryana does not often command global headlines.

But the tiny state grabs much attention in India as it is next to the capital, Delhi. Along with Punjab, it is called the bread basket of India for its large wheat and paddy farms, and the city of Gurugram is home to offices of some of the biggest global brands such as Google, Dell and Samsung.

The results are being watched keenly in India as these are the first state assembly polls since the summer parliamentary election. Analysts say Tuesday’s results will set the tone as the country heads into more regional elections, including in the state of Maharashtra and Delhi, over the next few months.

Perhaps the best description of what transpired in the state has come from political scientist Sandeep Shastri.

“The Congress has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” he told the BBC.

For weeks, political circles had been abuzz that the BJP was facing a huge wave of anti-incumbency and analysts were confidently saying that the party’s government was on its way out.

After most of the post-election exit polls predicted a Congress landslide, many said it was an election for the party to lose.

Shastri blames the Congress defeat on overconfidence and infighting within the party.

“They were confident they would win and became complacent. BJP, on the other hand, worked on issues quietly on the ground and successfully fought anti-incumbency to return to power.”

Both parties, he said, tried to form social coalitions by bringing together different caste groups – the results show the majority chose to support the BJP.

Shastri says differences between two top Congress leaders – Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja, who were contenders for the chief minister’s post – did not go down well with the voters.

Tuesday’s count, however, has been mired in controversy with the Congress accusing the Election Commission (EC) of delaying updating numbers on their website.

After party leader Jairam Ramesh submitted a complaint letter to the Election Commission, Selja said her party may still come out on top.

“I am telling you… there is something going on. If all goes well, Congress will form the government in Haryana,” she said.

But with numbers not on their side, that will likely remain a dream.

The EC has denied the allegations.

In the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the Hindu nationalist BJP has little support, but it enjoys tremendous goodwill in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. And the results reflect that divide. But the Congress-NC alliance has enough seats and is headed to form a government in the state.

The Modi government’s 2019 decision to scrap Article 370 of the constitution, which granted special status to Kashmir, and carve the state into two sent shockwaves around the valley, which elects 47 assembly seats.

At his campaign rallies, Modi had promised to restore the region’s “statehood”. But as the results show, that failed to placate angry voters.

The region saw a surprisingly high turnout – but as political analyst Sheikh Showkat Hussain says, they were voting against the BJP and the revocation of the region’s special status.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters
• Modi’s BJP ahead in Haryana election but trails in Kashmir

“The BJP made this election into a sort of referendum on its decision [to revoke Article 370]. However, people voted in favour of the stand taken by the regional parties,” he said.

Noor Mohammad Baba, another political analyst in Kashmir, says the results reveal that the BJP’s “policies weren’t popular” in the region.

“The result is a message to Delhi that they need to mend their policies towards Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

One surprising outcome of the election has been the poor showing by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), led by former Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Mufti, who earlier ruled in coalition with the BJP, has managed to win only three seats.

Responding to a query about her party’s poor performance, she said it was the “people’s choice”.

“Winning or losing is a part of politics. People feel that Congress and National Conference will give them a stable government and keep the BJP at bay. We respect their verdict,” she added.

A new book by veteran Watergate reporter Bob Woodward says Donald Trump secretly sent coveted Covid-19 testing machines to Vladimir Putin for personal use when they were in short supply, a claim angrily dismissed by the Trump campaign.

The book – titled War- also includes a claim that Trump secretly has stayed in touch with Putin since leaving office, according to excerpts cited by US media.

The Trump campaign said none of these “made-up stories” were true.

“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement to the BBC.

The new book, due out next week, attributes the continuing communications between the former president and Putin to a single Trump aide who is not named in the book.

According to a report by the New York Times, the book describes one scene in which a Trump aide was ordered out of Trump’s office in Mar-a-Lago so the former president could conduct a call with Putin.

The unnamed aide reportedly said that the two may have spoken a half-dozen times since Trump left the White House in 2021.

The book does not say what they discussed, and it quotes a Trump campaign official casting doubt on the supposed contact.

The BBC has not seen a copy of the book. The Times reported that Mr. Woodward wrote that he could not corroborate the aide’s claim, and that other sources it reached out to were unaware of Trump and Putin contacting each other after he left office.

Woodward, who rose to fame for his role in uncovering the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency, has written several best-selling books based on access to high-level sources.

Calling Woodward “demented” and “deranged”, Trump campaign spokesperson said: “Woodward is an angry little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”

Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist’s 2021 book – titled Rage. He later sued him over it, claiming Woodward did not have permission to release recordings of their interviews, an allegation denied by the author.

In War, Woodward writes that while the former president was in office, Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use”.

Putin was reportedly anxious about falling ill with the virus, according to the retelling of Woodward’s book in US media.

The report adds that Putin had asked Trump not to publicly share that he had sent him the tests, fearful that it would damage Trump’s reputation.

“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin reportedly told Trump, according to the book cited by the Times.

Trump reportedly said: “I don’t care. Fine.”

The claims have resurfaced questions about the relationship between Trump and Putin just weeks before the 05 November election.

The former president has been accused in the past of colluding with Russia to interfere with US elections, though a probe by the Department of Justice found no evidence of this and reached no conclusion as to whether Trump had obstructed the inquiry.

The book also examines the long shadow cast by Trump over the foreign conflicts of the past four years and over the bitter US political environment in which they have unfolded, according to the Washington Post.

It also includes candid assessments by President Joe Biden of his own missteps, including his decision to make Merrick Garland attorney general.

Reacting to the prosecution of his son Hunter — by a special prosecutor named by Garland — the president told an associate, “Should never have picked Garland”, the Post reported.

Sixty of the wealthiest people in the UK collectively contributed more than £3bn a year in income tax, the BBC has learned.

The amount of income tax they paid is roughly equivalent to around two-thirds of Labour’s entire additional spending commitments in their manifesto earlier this year.

Each of the 60 individuals had an income of at least £50m a year in 2021/22, but many will have earned far more and probably pay large amounts in other taxes too.

There is concern tax rises in this month’s Budget could prompt an exit of the super-rich, hurting UK finances. Labour ruled out income tax changes, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves left the door open for other tax hikes.

A Treasury spokesperson said the government was committed to “addressing unfairness in the tax system”.

Swiss banking giant UBS predicted in July the UK would lose half a million of its millionaires by 2028, partly as a result of some switching to low-tax countries.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the Treasury needed to be aware that a small number of this super-rich group leaving the country would create a “relatively big hole in its finances”.

But the Green Party argued claims taxing the wealthy more would lead to them leaving the UK were not credible.

The BBC reported last month about concerns within the Treasury that one of the main fundraisers for those pledges, the scrapping of the non-dom scheme, would raise far less money than first hoped.

Scrapping that scheme, which allows a UK resident to be registered abroad for tax purposes, was initially thought to be worth £1bn.

Government ministers have also said the previous Conservative government left a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances.

This has led to discussions within government about potential tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and in August the chancellor refused to rule out an increase in capital gains tax.

Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the IFS, said reports of wealthy individuals leaving the UK were currently just anecdotal.

But he warned that it would not take a mass exodus to cause issues for the public coffers, as “tax payments are very concentrated on a small number of people”.

“There’s clearly a risk there that Rachel Reeves has to think about,” Mr Adam said.

“Some of the tax changes that have been speculated are very concentrated on those at the top of the income distribution.”

There could “be more at stake from these people than just the income tax they’re paying” as the individuals in question would likely be paying large amounts in other forms of taxation such as capital gains, Mr Adam added.

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer warned against taking threats by the super rich to leave the country seriously.

“This didn’t happen when changes were made to non-dom status in 2017,” she said.

“There are lots of reasons that the wealthy choose to live in the UK, including work, family and culture, and many are happy to pay a bit more if it means a happier and healthier society.”

The figures, which were compiled by HMRC, have been obtained through Freedom of Information laws and relate to 2021/22, the latest year for which data is available.

That year, the UK had a total income tax receipt of £225bn, with contributions from some 33m taxpayers.

The 60 people with incomes of more than £50m made up just 0.0002% of UK taxpayers and together paid 1.4% of the income tax receipt.

HMRC initially blocked the release of the information on the grounds that disclosing the figures would identify the individuals in question.

But the authority agreed to release the data after further requests by the BBC.

The IFS has said a way to dissuade wealthy individuals from leaving the UK could be to introduce an “exit tax”.

Some other countries “say that if you leave the UK, we will tax you on gains that have accrued while you’re here, even if you don’t sell the asset until later”, Mr Adam said.

“And symmetrically, we will exempt people who built up gains before they came to the UK, even if they sell assets while they’re here.”

A Treasury spokesperson said: “We are addressing unfairness in the tax system so we can raise the revenue to rebuild our public services.

“That is why we are removing the outdated non-dom tax regime and replacing it with a new internationally competitive residence-based regime focused on attracting the best talent and investment to the UK.”

Florida residents are rushing to finish emergency preparations – or just leave – as Hurricane Milton races toward landfall on the heavily-populated Tampa Bay.

Milton is currently a category five storm, packing ferocious winds of up to 165mph (270km/h). It is expected to hit with full force on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after the state was struck by the devastating Hurricane Helene.

President Joe Biden warned people in Florida on Tuesday to leave their homes as a “matter of life and death” while the state undertakes its largest evacuation effort in years.

“A category five, that is like a giant tornado coming at you,” one resident of the Gulf Coast city of Bradenton told the BBC from the hotel that he has evacuated to in Kissimmee.

• When will the hurricane hit? Everything we know so far
• Full coverage of Hurricane Milton

“I wouldn’t want to be there,” said Gerald Lemus. “This will be a life-changing storm no matter where it hits.”

Mr Lemus, who has lived in Bradenton his entire life, said he has never evacuated for any previous storm. But he decided he has to for the safety of his eight-year-old daughter.

“I just looked at her and I couldn’t traumatise her to something like this,” he said on Tuesday night. “It’s a gamble we weren’t willing to make.”

ML Ferguson has been struggling to rebuild her home in Anna Maria, Florida, after it was severely damaged last month by Helene, a powerful category four hurricane when it hit.

“This one is going to be way worse than Helene,” she said on the phone while stalled in highway traffic out of the city.

“My car is totalled, we all were laid off of our job, and [my] belongings were ruined. After this storm hits, I will officially become homeless.”

Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that Florida had prepared dozens of shelters outside of evacuation zones to help house residents left stranded in the wake of the “monster” storm.

Long queues at petrol stations formed in south Florida, as some stations began running out of fuel.

Chynna Perkins told the BBC she is remaining in Tampa, where she lives in a newly constructed home outside the mandatory evacuation zones.

“I don’t think people really understand how much planning has to go into a decision like this,” she said, adding that she has two large Great Danes.

“There’s so much traffic and barely any gas available right now. People are running out of gas on the highway.”

DeSantis said that petrol was being trucked to stations, and electric vehicle charging stations also were deployed along roadways to ease the evacuation.

Tampa resident Steve Crist, spoke to the BBC while boarding up the windows of his dentist office. “Everyone’s gone. I’ve never seen it so quiet,” he said.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, President Biden said the storm could be one of Florida’s worst in a century.

“Evacuate now, now, now,” he told Florida residents.

The White House cancelled Biden’s planned visit to Germany and Angola in order to oversee preparations for Milton and ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene.

Less than two weeks ago Hurricane Helene – the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005 – pummelled the US south-east, killing at least 225. Hundreds more are missing.

At least 14 of those deaths were in Florida, where 51 of 67 counties are now under emergency warnings as Milton approaches.

The National Hurricane Center has warned people to brace for strong winds that could potentially send debris still on the streets from Helene to destructively fly through the air.

Rainfall totals could reach highs of 15in (38cm), and coastal areas could see storm surges of 10-15ft (3-4.5m).

Hurricanes are categorize based on wind speed. Category three and higher are considered major because of their potential for damage and loss of life, according to the National Weather Service.

Counties began issuing evacuation orders on Monday, with tolls suspended on roads in western and central Florida.

School closures in several counties began on Tuesday. Airports in Tampa and Orlando announced they would be suspending flight operations until the storm passes.

Parts of Pinellas County, where at least a dozen people were killed by Helene, were placed under evacuation orders on Monday.

• Are you in Florida? Please share your experiences
• How is climate change affecting hurricanes like Milton?
• What made Hurricane Helene so damaging?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms
• What is a storm surge and how serious is the threat from Milton?

The approach of the new hurricane comes as the US government warns that clean-up efforts could take years after Hurricane Helene.

Over 12,000 cubic yards of debris have been removed in Helene-affected areas of Florida in less than two days, officials said.

Hundreds of roads remain closed, hampering efforts to send aid to hard-hit communities.

As well as in Florida, deaths were recorded in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – and the worst-hit state, North Carolina.

Biden has ordered another 500 soldiers to be deployed to North Carolina. The troops – who now number 1,500 in all – will work with thousands of government relief workers and National Guard.

He has so far approved nearly $140m (£107m) in federal assistance.

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The northern Indian state of Haryana and Indian-administered Kashmir sprang surprises on Tuesday as votes were counted in assembly elections there.

Most exit polls had predicted a hung assembly in Kashmir but an alliance of the main opposition Congress and the National Conference Party (NCP) are on course for a landslide in the 90-member house and poised to form a government.

In Haryana, which also has 90 seats, predictions of a Congress landslide were upended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has proved the pollsters wrong.

The BJP-led government appears on course to return for a rare third consecutive term in Haryana.

The polls in Kashmir are significant as these are first assembly elections there in a decade – and also the first since the federal government revoked the region’s autonomy and changed the former state into a federally- governed territory in 2019.

Unlike Kashmir – which India and its neighbour Pakistan have fought wars over – Haryana does not often command global headlines.

But the tiny state grabs much attention in India as it is next to the capital, Delhi. Along with Punjab, it is called the bread basket of India for its large wheat and paddy farms, and the city of Gurugram is home to offices of some of the biggest global brands such as Google, Dell and Samsung.

The results are being watched keenly in India as these are the first state assembly polls since the summer parliamentary election. Analysts say Tuesday’s results will set the tone as the country heads into more regional elections, including in the state of Maharashtra and Delhi, over the next few months.

Perhaps the best description of what transpired in the state has come from political scientist Sandeep Shastri.

“The Congress has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” he told the BBC.

For weeks, political circles had been abuzz that the BJP was facing a huge wave of anti-incumbency and analysts were confidently saying that the party’s government was on its way out.

After most of the post-election exit polls predicted a Congress landslide, many said it was an election for the party to lose.

Shastri blames the Congress defeat on overconfidence and infighting within the party.

“They were confident they would win and became complacent. BJP, on the other hand, worked on issues quietly on the ground and successfully fought anti-incumbency to return to power.”

Both parties, he said, tried to form social coalitions by bringing together different caste groups – the results show the majority chose to support the BJP.

Shastri says differences between two top Congress leaders – Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja, who were contenders for the chief minister’s post – did not go down well with the voters.

Tuesday’s count, however, has been mired in controversy with the Congress accusing the Election Commission (EC) of delaying updating numbers on their website.

After party leader Jairam Ramesh submitted a complaint letter to the Election Commission, Selja said her party may still come out on top.

“I am telling you… there is something going on. If all goes well, Congress will form the government in Haryana,” she said.

But with numbers not on their side, that will likely remain a dream.

The EC has denied the allegations.

In the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the Hindu nationalist BJP has little support, but it enjoys tremendous goodwill in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. And the results reflect that divide. But the Congress-NC alliance has enough seats and is headed to form a government in the state.

The Modi government’s 2019 decision to scrap Article 370 of the constitution, which granted special status to Kashmir, and carve the state into two sent shockwaves around the valley, which elects 47 assembly seats.

At his campaign rallies, Modi had promised to restore the region’s “statehood”. But as the results show, that failed to placate angry voters.

The region saw a surprisingly high turnout – but as political analyst Sheikh Showkat Hussain says, they were voting against the BJP and the revocation of the region’s special status.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters
• Modi’s BJP ahead in Haryana election but trails in Kashmir

“The BJP made this election into a sort of referendum on its decision [to revoke Article 370]. However, people voted in favour of the stand taken by the regional parties,” he said.

Noor Mohammad Baba, another political analyst in Kashmir, says the results reveal that the BJP’s “policies weren’t popular” in the region.

“The result is a message to Delhi that they need to mend their policies towards Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

One surprising outcome of the election has been the poor showing by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), led by former Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Mufti, who earlier ruled in coalition with the BJP, has managed to win only three seats.

Responding to a query about her party’s poor performance, she said it was the “people’s choice”.

“Winning or losing is a part of politics. People feel that Congress and National Conference will give them a stable government and keep the BJP at bay. We respect their verdict,” she added.

Israel’s prime minister has made a direct appeal to urge the Lebanese people to throw out Hezbollah and avoid “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal on Tuesday came as Israel expanded its ground invasion against Hezbollah by sending thousands more troops into a new zone in south-west Lebanon.

Netanyahu also claimed the Israel Defense Forces had killed the successor to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but the IDF later said it could not confirm Hashem Safieddine’s death.

Elsewhere, Hezbollah’s fighters launched barrages of rockets towards the Israeli port city of Haifa for the third consecutive day, injuring 12 people.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Lebanon abandoned by international community – ex PM
• Analysis: Year of killing and broken assumptions has taken Middle East to edge of deeper, wider war
• Analysis: What will it take to end the conflict?

During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.

“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”

Hezbollah has remained defiant despite three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks that Lebanese officials say have killed more than 1,400 people and displaced another 1.2 million.

Earlier on Tuesday Hassan Nasrallah’s former deputy, Naim Qassem, insisted Hezbollah had overcome the recent “painful blows” from Israel and that its capabilities were “fine”.

Israel has gone on the offensive after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks.

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.

On Tuesday morning, the IDF announced that reservists from its 146th Division had begun “limited, localized, targeted operational activities” in south-western Lebanon.

It joined three standing army divisions which have been operating in central and eastern areas of southern Lebanon since the invasion began on 30 September – reportedly bringing the total number of soldiers deployed to over 15,000.

The IDF said troops had taken control of what it called a Hezbollah “combat compound” in the border village of Maroun al-Ras and published photos showing what it said was a loaded rocket launcher in an olive grove, as well as weapons and equipment inside a residential building.

Drone footage meanwhile showed widespread destruction in the nearby village of Yaroun, which was an initial target of the invasion.

Meanwhile, the UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned in a joint statement that the humanitarian impact of the conflict was “nothing short of catastrophic”.

Lebanon’s government says as many as 1.2 million people have fled their homes over the past year. Almost 180,000 people are in approved centres for the displaced.

In addition, more than 400,000 people have fled into war-torn Syria, including more than 200,000 Syrian refugees – a situation that the head of the UN’s refugee agency described as one of “tragic absurdity”.

The World Food Programme said there was “extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself” because thousands of hectares of farmland had been burned or abandoned.

The IDF also said its aircraft had carried out a new round of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group has a strong presence, and other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday.

Earlier, it announced that a strike in the capital on Monday had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s headquarters, Suhail Husseini.

Hezbollah did not comment on the claim. But if confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of severe blows Israel has dealt to the group, with Hassan Nasrallah and most of its military commanders having been killed in similar recent strikes.

Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official widely expected to succeed his cousin Nasrallah as leader, has not been heard from publicly since an Israeli air strike reportedly targeted him in Beirut last Thursday.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday evening the military could not confirm claims by Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister that Safieddine was killed in the attack, adding that the IDF was examining the results of the operation.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader said in a defiant televised address from an undisclosed location on Tuesday that its command and control was “solid” and had “no vacant positions”, citing its attacks on Israel in recent days.

“We are hurting them and we will prolong the time. Dozens of cities are within range of the resistance’s missiles. We assure you that our capabilities are fine,” Naim Qassem said.

But, for the first time, he made no mention of ending the war in Gaza as a pre-condition where previously Hezbollah has said it would not stop attacking Israel until the Gaza conflict is over.

“We support the political efforts that (Lebanese Parliament Speaker) Nabih Berri is undertaking towards a ceasefire,” Qassem said in a televised speech.

“Once a ceasefire is achieved, diplomacy can look into all the other details.”

It was not clear if this meant a change in Hezbollah’s position.

The speech coincided with the launch of more than 100 rockets towards Haifa Bay, as well as the Lower, Central and Upper Galilee regions.

The IDF said most of the rockets were intercepted. There were no serious casualties.

On Sunday night, there was a direct hit on Haifa – something which had not happened since Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war in 2006.

A new book by veteran Watergate reporter Bob Woodward says Donald Trump secretly sent coveted Covid-19 testing machines to Vladimir Putin for personal use when they were in short supply, a claim angrily dismissed by the Trump campaign.

The book – titled War- also includes a claim that Trump secretly has stayed in touch with Putin since leaving office, according to excerpts cited by US media.

The Trump campaign said none of these “made-up stories” were true.

“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement to the BBC.

The new book, due out next week, attributes the continuing communications between the former president and Putin to a single Trump aide who is not named in the book.

According to a report by the New York Times, the book describes one scene in which a Trump aide was ordered out of Trump’s office in Mar-a-Lago so the former president could conduct a call with Putin.

The unnamed aide reportedly said that the two may have spoken a half-dozen times since Trump left the White House in 2021.

The book does not say what they discussed, and it quotes a Trump campaign official casting doubt on the supposed contact.

The BBC has not seen a copy of the book. The Times reported that Mr. Woodward wrote that he could not corroborate the aide’s claim, and that other sources it reached out to were unaware of Trump and Putin contacting each other after he left office.

Woodward, who rose to fame for his role in uncovering the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency, has written several best-selling books based on access to high-level sources.

Calling Woodward “demented” and “deranged”, Trump campaign spokesperson said: “Woodward is an angry little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”

Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist’s 2021 book – titled Rage. He later sued him over it, claiming Woodward did not have permission to release recordings of their interviews, an allegation denied by the author.

In War, Woodward writes that while the former president was in office, Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use”.

Putin was reportedly anxious about falling ill with the virus, according to the retelling of Woodward’s book in US media.

The report adds that Putin had asked Trump not to publicly share that he had sent him the tests, fearful that it would damage Trump’s reputation.

“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin reportedly told Trump, according to the book cited by the Times.

Trump reportedly said: “I don’t care. Fine.”

The claims have resurfaced questions about the relationship between Trump and Putin just weeks before the 05 November election.

The former president has been accused in the past of colluding with Russia to interfere with US elections, though a probe by the Department of Justice found no evidence of this and reached no conclusion as to whether Trump had obstructed the inquiry.

The book also examines the long shadow cast by Trump over the foreign conflicts of the past four years and over the bitter US political environment in which they have unfolded, according to the Washington Post.

It also includes candid assessments by President Joe Biden of his own missteps, including his decision to make Merrick Garland attorney general.

Reacting to the prosecution of his son Hunter — by a special prosecutor named by Garland — the president told an associate, “Should never have picked Garland”, the Post reported.

Russia’s intelligence agency has been on a mission to generate “sustained mayhem on British and European streets”, the head of MI5 has said.

Giving his annual update on security threats faced by the UK, Ken McCallum said GRU agents had carried out “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness” in Britain after the UK backed Ukraine in its war with Russia.

MI5 had also responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022, he said, although he added the majority of its work still mostly involved Islamist extremism followed by extreme right-wing terrorism.

The complex mix of terror-related threats and threats from nation states meant MI5 had “one hell of a job on its hands”, he warned.

In a wide-ranging speech, he said:

• Young people were increasingly being drawn into online extremism, with 13% of those investigated for terrorism involvement aged under 18
• A total of 43 late-stage plots involving firearms and explosives to commit “mass murder” in the UK had been foiled since 2017
• The number of state-threat investigations by MI5 had increased by 48%
• Counter-terrorism work remained split between “75% Islamist extremism, 25% extreme right-wing terrorism”

There was a “dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies” MI5 had to deal with, he told the briefing at MI5’s counter-terrorism operations centre in London.

“The first 20 years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats.

“We now face those alongside state-backed assassination and sabotage plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war,” he said.

The UK’s “leading role” in supporting Ukraine means “we loom large in the fevered imagination of Putin’s regime” and further acts of aggression on UK soil should be expected, he warned.

The UK’s current terror threat level is substantial – meaning an attack is likely.

More than 750 Russian diplomats had been expelled from Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “the great majority of them” spies, Mr McCallum said.

This affected the Russian intelligence services’ capability, he explained, and added that diplomatic visas had been denied to those who Britain and allies considered Russian spies.

Russian state actors turned to proxies, such as private intelligence operatives and criminals, to do “their dirty work”, but this affected the professionalism of their operations and made them easier to disrupt.

While Mr McCallum has spoken publicly before about both the Russian and Iranian threats, he has not previously accused Moscow in such stark terms.

On Iran, he said the 20 Iran-backed plots MI5 had responded to presented “potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents”.

He said that since the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini – the 22-year-old who died in Iranian police custody after being arrested for allegedly violating rules requiring women to wear the headscarf – “we’ve seen plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale”.

In a previous public address he referred to 10 plots against Iranians in the UK. That number has now doubled, implying that Iranian state activity is undeterred by the threat of being caught.

He added that, as the war in the Middle East continues, MI5 would give its “fullest attention to the risk of an increase in – or a broadening of – Iranian state aggression in the UK”.

In both cases, Russia and Iran, the MI5 boss stressed that because it was difficult – to almost impossible – for their accredited diplomats to carry out such actions, they were turning increasingly to underworld criminal gangs.

Speaking about China, he said the economic relationship with the UK helped to underpin security.

However, he later told reporters the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a programme to steal data and information, and “we have seen 20,000 obfuscated approaches to individuals by China”.

The number of young people being drawn into online extremism is growing, Mr McCallum warned.

About 13% of those investigated for involvement in terrorism were under 18 – a threefold increase in the last three years.

The security agency was seeing “far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism”.

“Extreme right-wing terrorism in particular skews heavily towards young people, driven by propaganda that shows a canny understanding of online culture,” he said.

Responding to questions from reporters, he reiterated concerns about the role of the internet being the “biggest factor” driving the trend, and described how easily youngsters could access material from their bedrooms.

A high proportion of the threat was made up by “lone individuals indoctrinated online” he said.

“In dark corners of the internet, talk is cheap. Sorting the real plotters from armchair extremists is an exacting task,” he said.

“Anonymous online connections are often inconsequential, but a minority lead to deadly, real world actions.”

Home Office figures published last month show that of 242 people detained on suspicion of terror offences in the year to June, 17% (40) were aged 17 and under.

Sir Keir Starmer acknowledged the “sober findings” outlined by Mr McCallum but said the public should be “reassured that our security services are world class and will do everything necessary to keep us safe”.

US officials are warning about the potentially life-threating impacts of Hurricane Milton as it barrels towards the Florida coast.

Milton is one of the most powerful storms to form in the North Atlantic in recent years.

It comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused substantial damage across the US.

The storm is expected to hit Wednesday.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Milton to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in the US state of Florida on Wednesday night, local time.

It could strike near the city of Tampa, whose wider metropolitan area has a population of more than three million people.

Forecasters are warning of torrential rain, flash flooding, high winds and possible storm surges – which occur when water moves inland from the coast.

They say Milton could be the worst storm to hit the area in about a century – with a surge of 10-15ft (3-4.5m) possible, and localised rainfall of up to 1.5ft.

• Florida warned of ‘potentially catastrophic’ Hurricane Milton
• What is a storm surge and how serious is the threat from Milton?

Milton became a category one hurricane on Sunday and has been steadily moving eastwards, through the Gulf of Mexico, after brushing past Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

BBC weather presenter Chris Fawkes said it had undergone explosive intensification in a 24-hour period, culminating in sustained wind gusts of 200mph (321km/h).

It was placed in the most powerful hurricane category – five – though it has fluctuated in strength.

While the hurricane dropped in intensity on Tuesday before returning to category five status, officials warned that it could double in size before striking Florida on Wednesday.

The core of the hurricane is expected to pass over west-central Florida, with a large storm surge expected along a swathe of the state’s coast ahead of landfall.

In an update on Tuesday night the NHC said the hurricane had “wobbled” to the south, leading forecasters to alter its track slightly. Even the most accurate forecasts are typically off by about 60 miles (100km) when the storm is 36 hours away, forecasters said.

Milton is then due to cut across the peninsula before ending up in the Atlantic Ocean.

Floridians have been told to prepare for the state’s largest evacuation effort in years, with Governor Ron DeSantis warning that a “monster” is on the way.

Most counties are in an official state of emergency, and evacuations have been ordered up and down Florida’s west coast.

Disaster management authorities have issued a list and map of the evacuation orders.

Several large shelters have also been prepared as a last resort for those stranded.

Airports in Milton’s expected path have announced closures, and queues of traffic have been observed as people start to leave their homes.

• Are you in Florida? Please share your experiences
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms
• How is climate change affecting hurricanes?
• BBC Verify: Fact checking misinformation about Hurricane Helene

Hurricanes – sometimes known as cyclones or typhoons – are a type of tropical storm that form in the North Atlantic. They bring strong winds and heavy rain.

When ocean air is warm and moist, it rises, and then starts to cool – which causes clouds to form.

Sometimes this rising air can move away at the top of the hurricane more quickly than it can be replaced at the surface, causing the surface pressure to fall.

The falling pressure causes the winds to accelerate with more air then getting pulled in as the hurricane strengthens.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (Noaa) predicted that the 2024 hurricane season would be more active than usual. Rising average sea level temperatures due to human-caused climate change were partly to blame, it said.

Category five hurricanes are considered “catastrophic” by Noaa.

They carry wind speeds greater than 155mph (249km/h) and can cause “very severe and extensive damage”.

The US government agency urges “massive evacuations” in residential areas near shorelines, since a category five hurricane can also bring storm surges that exceed 18ft (5m) and destroy many homes.

Trees and power lines can also be downed, causing the isolation of residential areas and lengthy power cuts. Noaa says affected areas can be left uninhabitable for weeks or months.

A database from Noaa shows that at least 40 storms in the Atlantic have reached category five status since 1924, though only four have actually hit land at that strength. Here are some of the most damaging:

Hurricane Camille

Camille crashed into Mississippi in 1969, producing a peak storm surge of 24ft and destroying almost everything along the coast.

It killed 259 people, most of them in Virginia, and caused about $1.4bn (£1.06bn) in damage.

Hurricane Andrew

Hurricane Andrew decimated southern Florida in 1992 with sustained wind speeds of up to 165mph and gusts as high as 174mph.

It claimed 26 lives directly and was blamed for dozens of other deaths. After causing $30bn in damage, it was considered the costliest natural disaster in US history at the time.

Hurricane Michael

Hurricane Michael slammed into Florida in 2018 with 160mph wind speeds and was the strongest storm to make landfall in the Sunshine State.

At least 74 deaths were attributed to the storm – 59 in the US and 15 in Central America – and Michael caused an estimated $25.1bn in damage.

Lower-category storms

Milton comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the US as a category four storm, killing more than 200 people and becoming the deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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Australia’s prime minister has apologised for making a “hurtful” comment in parliament, after he mocked opposition lawmakers by asking them if they had Tourette’s syndrome.

The remark – which was quickly withdrawn – has angered disability advocates and been labelled “ableist” and “despicable” by MPs across the political spectrum.

Late on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese returned to the chamber to ask for forgiveness from Australians living with the disorder.

“I regret saying it. It was wrong. It was insensitive and I apologise,” he said in his address.

Albanese made the taunt after facing interjections from frontbenchers, including shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, during a speech on tax changes.

“Have you got Tourette’s or something? You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble,” he said, responding to the interruptions.

Tourette’s syndrome is a condition that causes people to make involuntary movements or sounds, called tics.

The President of the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia said Albanese’s comment demonstrated the need to increase awareness about the disorder.

“For him to just flippantly use it in such an offhanded manner speaks volumes… we have a lot of work to do,” Mandy Maysey told Seven News.

“If people see Albanese doing that in parliament, then it will trickle down, and people already use it as a punchline or an insult,” she added.

The Australian Greens disability spokesman Jordon Steele-John, who has cerebral palsy, criticised Albanese for “using disability as the butt of his jokes” – saying that “casual ableism is still ableism”.

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston had earlier called the taunt “despicable” and demanded the PM apologise to the “entire Tourette’s community”.

“Mocking a disability is no laughing matter,” she wrote on X.

Research estimates one in every 100 school-aged children may have Tourette’s syndrome in Australia and that roughly 1-2% live with the disorder in the UK.

Tourette’s syndrome is a genetic inherited neurological condition, which means it can be passed on from birth parents to their children.

A couple in India have said they are “delighted” after a court ordered a hospital to hand over the frozen semen sample of their dead son to them so they could have a grandchild through surrogacy.

The landmark Delhi High Court order came after a four-year legal battle.

“We were very unlucky, we lost our son. But the court has given us a very precious gift. We would now be able to get our son back,” the mother, Harbir Kaur, told the BBC.

Ms Kaur and her husband Gurvinder Singh petitioned the court after Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital in December 2020 refused to release their son’s semen which was stored in their fertility lab.

The couple’s 30-year-old son, Preet Inder Singh, had been diagnosed in June 2020 with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma – a form of blood cancer – and admitted to the hospital for treatment.

“Before he began chemotherapy, the hospital advised him to store his semen as the treatment could adversely affect the quality of his sperm,” Gurvinder Singh told the BBC.

Preet Inder, who was unmarried, agreed and his sample was frozen on 27 June 2020. He died in early September.

A few months later, when the grief-stricken parents sought access to their son’s frozen sperm, the hospital declined their request. The couple then petitioned the Delhi High Court.

The couple, who are in their 60s, told the court that they would bring up any child born using their son’s semen sample. And in the event of their death, their two daughters have given an undertaking in court that they will take full responsibility for the child.

In her order last week, Justice Prathiba Singh said that “under Indian law, there was no prohibition against posthumous reproduction” if the sperm owner had given consent.

She added that parents were entitled to the sample as in the absence of a spouse or children, they became legal heirs under the Hindu Succession Act.

The couple say they approached the court because they wanted to carry on his “legacy” and that the order would help them preserve a connection with him and help their family name to continue.

“He loved his sisters and was much loved by his friends. He is the screensaver on my phone. I start my day by looking at his face every morning,” Ms Kaur said. She did not want to share a photo of him with the BBC over privacy concerns.

She added that the family was considering using his sperm in surrogacy and that one of her daughters had agreed to be the surrogate. “We will keep it in the family,” she said.

The case is rare, but not without precedent, her lawyer Suruchii Aggarwal told the BBC.

In court, she cited the 2018 case of a 48-year-old woman in the western Indian city of Pune who got twin grandchildren through surrogacy using the semen of her 27-year-old son who had died of brain cancer in Germany.

Her son, who was also unmarried, had authorised his mother and sister to use his semen after his death and the hospital in Germany handed over his sample to them.

Ms Aggarwal also gave the example of a case from 2019 where the New York Supreme Court allowed the parents of a 21-year-old military cadet killed in a skiing accident to use his frozen sperm to have a grandchild.

In her order, Justice Singh also cited a number of cases of posthumous reproduction, including a 2002 case from Israel where the parents of a 19-year-old soldier killed in Gaza had obtained legal permission to use their son’s sperm to have a child through a surrogate mother.

So if there is a precedent, why did the hospital reject the couple’s request?

As Justice Singh noted in her order, there is no international consensus on the issue.

The US, UK, Japan, Czech Republic and some other countries allow posthumous reproduction with written consent. Australia imposes an additional condition of a one-year wait period after the death to allow time for emotions to settle.

The practice is prohibited in a number of countries such as Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Malaysia, Pakistan, Hungary and Slovenia, while most of India’s South Asian neighbours – Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh – have no guidelines.

And even in countries that have laws on posthumous reproduction, a majority of cases involve a spouse who wants to use frozen eggs or sperm to conceive.

The number of bereaved parents seeking sperm of their sons has risen in Israel, and as the conflict with Russia has escalated, soldiers in Ukraine are offered semen cryopreservation free of charge. But in India, this is still relatively rare.

In court, Ganga Ram Hospital said legally they could only release the sample to the spouse. They said there were no clear laws or guidelines that governed the release of semen samples of an unmarried deceased male to his parents or legal heirs.

The Indian government also opposed the couple’s petition, saying that surrogacy laws in India were meant to assist infertile couples or women, not people who wanted to have a grandchild.

The authorities also pointed out that Preet Inder was unmarried – India’s Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Act 2021 bars single people from having children via surrogacy – and that he had not left any written or oral consent for the use of his frozen sperm so his parents did not have an automatic right to use it.

Ms Aggarwal, the couple’s lawyer, argued in court that while filling in the form for storing his semen, Preet Inder had clearly specified that it was for the purpose of IVF.

The form, she told the BBC, had the mobile numbers of both father and son, which implied consent. She pointed out that the father had been paying the lab for preserving the sample.

The ART Act, she said, was introduced to stop commercial use of surrogacy, to regulate and supervise clinics, not to impinge upon personal freedoms of aggrieved parents.

Justice Singh agreed with Ms Aggarwal’s argument that Preet Inder had given consent for his sperm to be used for the purpose of having children.

“He was not married and did not have any partner. He intended for the sample to be used in order to bear a child. When he passed away, the parents being the heirs of the deceased, and semen samples being genetic material and constituting property, the parents are entitled for release of the same.”

Under those circumstances, the court said they could not prohibit the couple from accessing the semen sample of their son.

The court order, Ms Kaur says, has offered her a “glimmer of hope, a light” that “we will be able to bring our son back”.

“I have prayed every day to fulfil all my child’s unfulfilled desires. It’s taken four years, but my prayers have been answered,” she adds.

A year ago, after the October 7 attacks and the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Joe Biden became the first US president to visit Israel at a time of war. I watched him fix his gaze at the TV cameras after meeting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war cabinet in Tel Aviv, and tell the country: “You are not alone”. But he also urged its leadership not to repeat the mistakes an “enraged” America made after 9/11.

In September this year at the United Nations in New York, President Biden led a global roll call of leaders urging restraint between Israel and Hezbollah. Netanyahu gave his response. The long arm of Israel, he said, could reach anywhere in the region.

Ninety minutes later, Israeli pilots fired American-supplied “bunker buster” bombs at buildings in southern Beirut. The strike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It marked one of the most significant turning points in the year since Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel on 7 October.

Biden’s diplomacy was being buried in the ruins of an Israeli airstrike using American-supplied bombs.

I’ve spent the best part of a year watching US diplomacy close up, travelling in the press pool with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on trips back to the Middle East, where I worked for seven years up until last December.

The single greatest goal for diplomacy as stated by the Biden administration has been to get a ceasefire for hostage release deal in Gaza. The stakes could barely be higher. A year on from Hamas smashing its way through the militarised perimeter fence into southern Israel where they killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped 250, scores of hostages – including seven US citizens – remain in captivity, with a significant number believed to be dead. In Gaza, Israel’s massive retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, while the territory has been reduced to a moonscape of destruction, displacement and hunger.

Thousands more Palestinians are missing. The UN says record numbers of aid workers have been killed in Israeli strikes, while humanitarian groups have repeatedly accused Israel of blocking shipments – something its government has consistently denied. Meanwhile, the war has spread to the occupied West Bank and to Lebanon. Iran last week fired 180 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group. The conflict threatens to deepen and envelop the region.

Covering the US State Department, I have watched the Biden administration attempt to simultaneously support and restrain Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. But its goal of defusing the conflict and brokering a ceasefire has eluded the administration at every turn.

Biden officials claim US pressure changed the “shape of their military operations“, a likely reference to a belief within the administration that Israel’s invasion of Rafah in Gaza’s south was more limited than it otherwise would have been, even with much of the city now lying in ruins.

Before the Rafah invasion, Biden suspended a single consignment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs as he tried to dissuade the Israelis from an all-out assault. But the president immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Netanyahu himself who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. Biden has since partially lifted the suspension and never repeated it.

The State Department asserts that its pressure did get more aid flowing, despite the UN reporting famine-like conditions in Gaza earlier this year. “It’s through the intervention and the involvement and the hard work of the United States that we’ve been able to get humanitarian assistance into those in Gaza, which is not to say that this is… mission accomplished. It is very much not. It is an ongoing process,” says department spokesman Matthew Miller.

In the region, much of Biden’s work has been undertaken by his chief diplomat, Anthony Blinken. He has made ten trips to the Middle East since October in breakneck rounds of diplomacy, the visible side of an effort alongside the secretive work of the CIA at trying to close a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

But I have watched multiple attempts to close the deal being spiked. On Blinken’s ninth visit, in August, as we flew in a C-17 US military transporter on a trip across the region, the Americans became increasingly exasperated. A visit that started with optimism that a deal could be within reach, ended with us arriving in Doha where Blinken was told that the Emir of Qatar – whose delegation is critical in communicating with Hamas – was ill and couldn’t see him.

A snub? We never knew for sure (officials say they later spoke by phone), but the trip felt like it was falling apart after Netanyahu claimed he had “convinced” Blinken of the need to keep Israeli troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt as part of the agreement. This was a deal breaker for Hamas and the Egyptians. A US official accused Netanyahu of effectively trying to sabotage the agreement. Blinken flew out of Doha without having got any further than the airport. The deal was going nowhere. We were going back to Washington.

On his tenth trip to the region last month, Blinken did not visit Israel.

For critics, including some former officials, the US call for an end to the war while supplying Israel with at least $3.8bn (£2.9bn) of arms per year, plus granting supplemental requests since 7 October, has amounted either to a failure to apply leverage or an outright contradiction. They argue the current expansion of the war in fact marks a demonstration, rather than a failure, of US diplomatic policy.

“To say [the administration] conducted diplomacy is true in the most superficial sense in that they conducted a lot of meetings. But they never made any reasonable effort to change behaviour of one of the main actors – Israel,” says former intelligence officer Harrison J. Mann, a career US Army Major who worked in the Middle East and Africa section of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time of the October 7th attacks. Mr Mann resigned earlier this year in protest at US support for Israel’s assault in Gaza and the number of civilians being killed using American weapons.

Allies of Biden flat-out reject the criticism. They point, for example, to the fact that diplomacy with Egypt and Qatar mediating with Hamas resulted in last November’s truce which saw more than 100 hostages released in Gaza in exchange for around 300 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. US officials also say the administration dissuaded the Israeli leadership from invading Lebanon much earlier in the Gaza conflict, despite cross border rocket fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

Senator Chris Coons, a Biden loyalist who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who travelled to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia late last year, says it’s critical to weigh Biden’s diplomacy against the context of the last year.

“I think there’s responsibility on both sides for a refusal to close the distance, but we cannot ignore or forget that Hamas launched these attacks,” he says.

“He has been successful in preventing an escalation – despite repeated and aggressive provocation by the Houthis, by Hezbollah, by the Shia militias in Iraq – and has brought in a number of our regional partners,” he says.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert says Biden’s diplomacy has amounted to an unprecedented level of support, pointing to the huge US military deployment, including aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear power submarine, he ordered in the wake of October 7.

But he believes Biden has been unable to overcome the resistance of Netanyahu.

“Every time he came close to it, Netanyahu somehow found a reason not to comply, so the main reason for the failure of this diplomacy was the consistent opposition of Netanyahu,” says Olmert.

Olmert says a stumbling block for a ceasefire deal has been Netanyahu’s reliance on the “messianic” ultranationalists in his cabinet who prop up his government. They are agitating for an even stronger military response in Gaza and Lebanon. Two far-right ministers this summer threatened to withdraw support for Netanyahu’s government if he signed a ceasefire deal.

“Ending the war as part of an agreement for the release of hostages means a major threat to Netanyahu and he’s not prepared to accept it, so he’s violating it, he’s screwing it all the time,” he says.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly rejected claims he blocked the deal, insisting he was in favour of the American-backed plans and sought only “clarifications”, while Hamas continually changed its demands.

But whatever the shuttle diplomacy, much has turned on the relationship between the US president and Netanyahu. The men have known each other for decades, the dynamics have been often bitter, dysfunctional even, but Biden’s positions predate even his relationship with the Israeli prime minister.

Passionately pro-Israel, he often speaks of visiting the country as a young Senator in the early 1970s. Supporters and critics alike point to Biden’s unerring support for the Jewish state – some citing it as a liability, others as an asset.

Ultimately, for President Biden’s critics, his biggest failure to use leverage over Israel has been over the scale of bloodshed in Gaza. In the final year of his only term, thousands of protesters, many of them Democrats, have taken to American streets and university campuses denouncing his policies, holding “Genocide Joe” banners.

Biden’s mindset, which underpins the administration’s position, was shaped at a time when the nascent Israeli state was seen as being in immediate existential peril, says Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York.

“American diplomacy has basically been, ‘whatever Israel’s war demands and requires we will give them to fight it’,” says Prof Khalidi.

“That means, given that this [Israeli] government wants an apparently unending war, because they’ve set war aims that are unattainable – [including] destroying Hamas – the United States is a cart attached to an Israeli horse,” he says.

He argues Biden’s approach to the current conflict was shaped by an outdated conception of the balance of state forces in the region and neglects the experience of stateless Palestinians.

“I think that Biden is stuck in a much longer-term time warp. He just cannot see things such as… 57 years of occupation, the slaughter in Gaza, except through an Israeli lens,” he says.

Today, says Prof Khalidi, a generation of young Americans has witnessed scenes from Gaza on social media and many have a radically different outlook. “They know what the people putting stuff on Instagram and TikTok in Gaza have shown them,” he says.

Kamala Harris, 59, Biden’s successor as Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election against Donald Trump, 78, doesn’t come with the same generational baggage.

However, neither Harris nor Trump has set out any specific plans beyond what is already in process for how they would reach a deal. The election may yet prove the next turning point in this sharply escalating crisis, but quite how is not yet apparent.

Sixty of the wealthiest people in the UK collectively contributed more than £3bn a year in income tax, the BBC has learned.

The amount of income tax they paid is roughly equivalent to around two-thirds of Labour’s entire additional spending commitments in their manifesto earlier this year.

Each of the 60 individuals had an income of at least £50m a year in 2021/22, but many will have earned far more and probably pay large amounts in other taxes too.

There is concern tax rises in this month’s Budget could prompt an exit of the super-rich, hurting UK finances. Labour ruled out income tax changes, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves left the door open for other tax hikes.

A Treasury spokesperson said the government was committed to “addressing unfairness in the tax system”.

Swiss banking giant UBS predicted in July the UK would lose half a million of its millionaires by 2028, partly as a result of some switching to low-tax countries.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the Treasury needed to be aware that a small number of this super-rich group leaving the country would create a “relatively big hole in its finances”.

But the Green Party argued claims taxing the wealthy more would lead to them leaving the UK were not credible.

The BBC reported last month about concerns within the Treasury that one of the main fundraisers for those pledges, the scrapping of the non-dom scheme, would raise far less money than first hoped.

Scrapping that scheme, which allows a UK resident to be registered abroad for tax purposes, was initially thought to be worth £1bn.

Government ministers have also said the previous Conservative government left a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances.

This has led to discussions within government about potential tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and in August the chancellor refused to rule out an increase in capital gains tax.

Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the IFS, said reports of wealthy individuals leaving the UK were currently just anecdotal.

But he warned that it would not take a mass exodus to cause issues for the public coffers, as “tax payments are very concentrated on a small number of people”.

“There’s clearly a risk there that Rachel Reeves has to think about,” Mr Adam said.

“Some of the tax changes that have been speculated are very concentrated on those at the top of the income distribution.”

There could “be more at stake from these people than just the income tax they’re paying” as the individuals in question would likely be paying large amounts in other forms of taxation such as capital gains, Mr Adam added.

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer warned against taking threats by the super rich to leave the country seriously.

“This didn’t happen when changes were made to non-dom status in 2017,” she said.

“There are lots of reasons that the wealthy choose to live in the UK, including work, family and culture, and many are happy to pay a bit more if it means a happier and healthier society.”

The figures, which were compiled by HMRC, have been obtained through Freedom of Information laws and relate to 2021/22, the latest year for which data is available.

That year, the UK had a total income tax receipt of £225bn, with contributions from some 33m taxpayers.

The 60 people with incomes of more than £50m made up just 0.0002% of UK taxpayers and together paid 1.4% of the income tax receipt.

HMRC initially blocked the release of the information on the grounds that disclosing the figures would identify the individuals in question.

But the authority agreed to release the data after further requests by the BBC.

The IFS has said a way to dissuade wealthy individuals from leaving the UK could be to introduce an “exit tax”.

Some other countries “say that if you leave the UK, we will tax you on gains that have accrued while you’re here, even if you don’t sell the asset until later”, Mr Adam said.

“And symmetrically, we will exempt people who built up gains before they came to the UK, even if they sell assets while they’re here.”

A Treasury spokesperson said: “We are addressing unfairness in the tax system so we can raise the revenue to rebuild our public services.

“That is why we are removing the outdated non-dom tax regime and replacing it with a new internationally competitive residence-based regime focused on attracting the best talent and investment to the UK.”