At least 28 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Red Crescent says.

More than 50 others were injured in the attack on Rufaida al-Aslamia school, which the medical organisation said was close to its headquarters in the town of Deir al-Balah.

A video from the scene showed people running to help the injured amid a cloud of smoke and dust, while several children were pictured being treated at the local al-Aqsa hospital.

The Israeli military said the “precise” strike targeted Hamas fighters operating inside a “command-and-control centre” at the school.

It also said it had taken steps to mitigate harm to civilians and accused Hamas of systematically abusing civilian infrastructure – an allegation the group has previously denied.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also put the death toll at 28 and denounced what it called a “new massacre” by the Israeli military.

Many schools have been turned into shelters for the 1.9 million Palestinians who have fled their homes since the war in Gaza started a year ago.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 42,060 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

President William Lai has pledged to uphold Taiwan’s self-governing status in his most high-profile public address since taking office earlier this year.

In a thinly-veiled reference to China’s claim over the island, Lai said he would “uphold the commitment to resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty.”

At the same time, Lai promised to maintain “the status quo of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and pledged to cooperate with Beijing on issues such as climate change, combating infectious diseases and maintaining regional security.

Responding to Lai’s speech, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “exposed his intransigent position” on Taiwan independence.

Lai was speaking to a crowd in Taipei to commemorate Taiwan’s National Day, only nine days after Communist China celebrated its 75th anniversary.

“The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinates to each other,” he said, in a reference to the governments of Taipei and Beijing respectively.

“On this land, democracy and freedom are thriving. The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he added.

Lai previously told visitors there would be “no surprises” in his national day address, in a bid to reassure them that he would not do anything further to agitate Beijing.

The disclaimer followed several speeches by President Lai over the past few months that some viewed as being provocative.

“The speech was much softer and less snarky than his recent speeches,” Lev Nachman, a political scientist at the National Taiwan University, told the BBC in reference to Thursday’s address. “It gives China far less ammunition to use against him.”

“Nevertheless,” he added, “Beijing will still find many reasons to hate this speech.”

Mr Nachman said he expected a strong reaction from Beijing in the form of more military exercises in the next few days.

Calling him “intransigent” on independence, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised Lai’s speech and his “sinister intention to escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait in order to seek political gains.”

“No matter what the Lai Ching-te Administration says or does, it will not be able to change the objective fact that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the same China, nor will it be able to stop the historical trend that China is bound to be reunified, and will be reunified eventually,” Mao Ning told reporters on Thursday, using Lai’s Chinese name.

Last week, Lai said it was “absolutely impossible” for China to be the “motherland” of Taiwan because the island’s government was founded in 1911, decades before the current Communist regime of mainland China was founded in 1949.

“On the contrary, the Republic of China may actually be the motherland of citizens of the People’s Republic of China who are over 75 years old,” Lai said at a concert to mark Taiwan’s National Day on Saturday.

Taiwan maintains the constitution of the Republic of China, which was founded on the Chinese mainland. When it lost a long civil war with the Communists in 1949, the Republic of China government fled to Taiwan and has been based there ever since.

Last month, Lai also questioned China’s assertion that its claim over the self-ruled island was based on territorial integrity. If that were the case, he suggested, Beijing would also be pushing to reclaim other so-called historic lands that once belonged to the Chinese empire.

“If China wants to annex Taiwan… it’s not for the sake of territorial integrity,” Lai said, in an interview to mark his first 100 days in office.

“If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?”

Lai referenced the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, which saw China concede large swathes of Manchuria to Russia. The concession occurred during what China refers to as the “century of humiliation,” when Western powers and Japan exploited the weakened Qing Dynasty.

On Wednesday, China’s government responded by saying President Lai was escalating tensions with “sinister intentions”.

“Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan independence fallacy is just old wine in a new bottle, and again exposes his obstinate stance on Taiwan independence and his sinister intentions of escalating hostility and confrontation,” said the statement from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

After his election in January, Lai succeeded Taiwan’s previous president Tsai Ing-wen, who also came from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Lai’s public comments until now are regarded by many political observers as going further than anything said by his predecessor, who was much more cautious in her public speeches.

In spite of his administration’s more confrontational tone, however, Lai has stressed his position of maintaining the “status quo” between Taiwan and China.

He insists Taiwan has no need to declare independence because it is already an independent sovereign nation that has never been controlled by the People’s Republic of China.

Lai also devoted a considerable amount of Thursday’s speech to domestic issues such as energy, climate change and housing.

The funeral has taken place in Mumbai of Ratan Tata, the former chairman of one of India’s biggest conglomerates, Tata Group, who died on Wednesday aged 86.

Business leaders, politicians and celebrities were among thousands of people who paid their last respects at the centre where his body lay in state before being cremated.

Maharashtra state declared a day of mourning and his coffin was given a military salute as it was taken away for the funeral rites.

Ratan Tata took over as group chairman in 1991 and is credited with transforming it into a global powerhouse.

Thousands turned up at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, where Ratan Tata’s body was taken in the morning, to pay their respects.

His casket was wrapped in the Indian flag and covered with wreaths of white flowers.

Fellow business tycoon Mukesh Ambani, Home Minister Amit Shah and Bollywood star Aamir Khan were among those present to say goodbye.

Also in attendance was Ratan Tata’s dog, Goa, accompanied by two Tata employees. The dog was rescued from the streets of Goa state, which gave it its name.

The tycoon, who had a reputation for being modest and shy, was known for his philanthropic work, including animal welfare, health and education.

Tata’s death was announced on Wednesday night. He had been admitted to hospital earlier in the week.

“His legacy will continue to inspire us as we strive to uphold the principles he so passionately championed,” a company statement said.

The Tata Group is one of India’s largest companies, with annual revenues in excess of $100bn (£76.5bn), and he was one of India’s most internationally-recognised business leaders.

Founded 155 years ago, the group straddles a business empire ranging from Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel, to aviation and salt pans.

During his 20-year tenure, the conglomerate made several high-profile acquisitions, including the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover, and Tetley, the world’s second-largest tea company.

Some of those decisions paid off, while others – including a failed telecom venture and the Nano, which was billed as the world’s cheapest car but flopped – lost money.

Tata was born in a traditional Parsi family in 1937. He studied architecture and structural engineering at Cornell University in the US.

In 1962, he joined Tata Industries – the promoter company of the group – as an assistant and spent six months training at a company plant in Jamshedpur.

From there, he went on to work at the Tata Iron and Steel Company (now Tata Steel), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and National Radio and Electronics (Nelco).

In 1991, JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor. “He [JRD Tata] was my greatest mentor… he was like a father and a brother to me – and not enough has been said about that,” Tata later told an interviewer.

In 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian honour.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Tata as a “visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being”.

Ratan Tata, the philanthropist and former chairman of Tata Group who has died aged 86, played an instrumental role in globalising and modernising one of India’s oldest business houses.

His ability to take bold, audacious business risks informed a high-profile acquisition strategy that kept the salt-to-steel conglomerate founded 155 years ago by his forefathers relevant after India liberalised its economy in the 1990s.

At the turn of the millennium, Tata executed the biggest cross-border acquisition in Indian corporate history – buying Tetley Tea, the world’s second largest producer of teabags. The iconic British brand was three times the size of the small Tata group company that had bought it.

In subsequent years, his ambitions grew only bigger, as his group swallowed up major British industrial giants like the steelmaker Corus and the luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover.

While the acquisitions didn’t always pay off – Corus was bought at very expensive valuations just before the global financial crisis of 2007, and remained a drag on Tata Steel’s performance for years – they were big power moves.

They also had a great symbolic effect, says Mircea Raianu, historian and author of Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism. He adds that they “represented ‘the empire striking back’ as a business from a former colony took over the motherland’s prize assets, reversing the sneering attitude with which British industrialists looked upon the Tata Group a century earlier”.

The Tata Group’s outlook had been “outward-oriented” from the very beginning, according to Andrea Goldstein, an economist who published a study in 2008 on the internationalisation of Indian companies, with a particular focus on Tata.

As early as in the 1950s, Tata companies operated with foreign partners.

But Ratan Tata was keen to “internationalise in giant strides, not in token, incremental steps”, Ms Goldstein pointed out.

His unconventional education in architecture and a ring side view of his family group companies may have played a part in the way he thought about expansion, says Mr Raianu. But it was the “structural transformation of the group” he steered, that allowed him to execute his vision for a global footprint.

Tata had to fight an exceptional corporate battle at Bombay House, the group headquarters, when he took over as the chairman of Tata Sons in 1991 – an appointment that coincided with India’s decision to open up its economy.

He began centralising increasingly decentralised, domestic-focused operations by showing the door to a string of ‘satraps’ (a Persian term meaning an imperial governor) at Tata Steel, Tata Motors and the Taj Group of Hotels who ran operations with little corporate oversight from the holding company.

Doing this allowed him not only to surround himself with people who could help him execute his global vision, but also prevent the Tata Group – protected thus far from foreign competition – from fading into irrelevance as India opened up.

At both Tata Sons, the holding company, as well as individual groups within it, he appointed foreigners, non-resident Indians and executives with contacts and networks across the world in the management team.

He also set up the Group Corporate Centre (GCC) to provide strategic direction to group companies. It provided “M&A [mergers and acquisitions] advisory support, helped the group companies to mobilise capital and assessed whether the target company would fit into the Tata’s values”, researchers at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore wrote in a 2016 paper.

The GCC also helped Tata Motors raise money for high-profile buyouts like Jaguar Land Rover which dramatically changed the global perception of a company that was essentially a tractor manufacturer.

“The JLR takeover was widely seen as ‘revenge’ on Ford, which had derisively refused to acquire Tata Motors in the early 90s and then was beaten to the punch on the deal by Tata Motors. Taken together, these acquisitions suggested that Indian corporates had ‘arrived’ on the global stage just as growth rates were picking up and the liberalising reforms bearing fruit,” says Mr Raianu.

Today, the $128bn group operates across 100 countries with a substantial portion of its total revenues coming from outside India.

While the Tata Group made significant strides overseas in the early 2000s, domestically the failure of the Tata Nano – launched and marketed as the world’s cheapest car – was a setback for Tata.

This was his most ambitious project, but he had clearly misread India’s consumer market this time.

Brand experts say an aspirational India didn’t want to associate with the cheap car tag. And Tata himself eventually admitted that the “poor man’s car” tag was a “stigma” that needed to be undone.

He believed there could be a resurrection of his product, but the Tata Nano was eventually discontinued after sales plummeted year on year.

Succession at the Tata Group also became a thorny issue.

Mr Tata remained far too involved in running the conglomerate after his retirement in 2012, through the “backdoor” of the Tata Trust which owns two-thirds of the stock holding of Tata Sons, the holding company, say experts.

“Without assigning Ratan Tata blame for it, his involvement in the succession dispute with [Cyrus] Mistry undoubtedly tarnished the image of the group,” says Mr Rainu.

Mistry, who died in a car crash in 2022 was ousted as Tata chairman in 2016 following a boardroom coup that sparked a long-running legal battle which the Tatas eventually won.

In spite of the many wrong turns, Tata retired in 2012, leaving the vast empire he inherited in a much stronger position both domestically and globally.

Along with big-ticket acquisitions, his bid to modernise the group with a sharp focus on IT has served the group well over the years.

When many of his big bets went sour, one high-performing firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), along with JLR carried the “dead weight of other ailing companies”, Mr Raianu says.

TCS is today India’s largest IT services company and the cash cow of the Tata Group, contributing to three-quarters of its revenue.

In 2022, the Tata Group also brought back India’s flagship carrier Air India into its fold approximately 69 years after the government took control of the airline. This was a dream come true for Ratan Tata, a trained pilot himself, but also a bold bet given how capital intensive it is to run an airline.

But the Tatas seem to be in a stronger position than ever before to take big bold bets on everything from airlines to semiconductor manufacturing.

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have clearly adopted an industrial policy of creating “national champions” whereby a few large conglomerates are built up and promoted in order to achieve rapid economic outcomes that extend across priority sectors.

Along with newer industrial groups like Adani, the decks are clearly stacked in favour of the Tata Group to benefit from this.

South Korean author Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The 53-year-old fiction writer is a former winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian.

At the ceremony she was praised “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

The Nobel Prize committee has awarded the literary award since 1901 and this marks the 18th time a woman has won the prize.

She has won 11m krona (£810,000) which is the amount awarded to each Nobel Prize winner this year.

Han is the first South Korean winner of the prize, who was described by the Nobel Prize board as someone who has “devoted herself to music and art”.

The statement also added that her work crosses boundaries by exploring a broad span of genres – these include violence, grief and patriarchy.

A turning point for her career came in 2016, when she won the International Man Booker prize for The Vegetarian – a book which had been released nearly a decade before, but was first translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith.

It depicts the violent consequences for a woman who refuses to submit to the norms of food intake.

Han’s other works include The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.

Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm said at the ceremony that “she wasn’t really prepared” to win the prize.

Committee chair Anders Olsen also said she “confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life”.

He praised her “poetic and experimental style”, and called her “an innovator in contemporary prose”.

The chair added she has “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead”.

Han is the first female recipient of the literature prize since 2022, when it was awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux.

She is also the first female Nobel laureate this year.

The prize is awarded for a body of work, rather than a single item – there is no shortlist and it is notoriously difficult to predict.

Han is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won and was born in the South Korean city of Gwangju.

She moved to capital Seoul at a young age and studied Korean literature at a university in the city.

Her first published works were five poems in 1993, and she made her debut in fiction the following year with a short story.

Han, who has taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and is writing her sixth novel, has been published in more than 30 languages.

Last year’s prize was won by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, and previous winners include Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Bob Dylan.

South Korean pop star Hanni has made a surprise announcement, saying she will testify to the country’s National Assembly in a hearing about bullying in the music industry.

The singer, who is part of the girl group NewJeans, said she had made the decision without telling her managers or her record label, Ador.

“I believe going forward is the right thing to do, no matter how much I think about it,” she wrote to fans on social media.

It comes after she and the other four members of her band raised concerns about their treatment by Ador during an impromptu YouTube livestream on 11 September.

The group were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, scoring international hits with feathery, throwback songs like SuperShy and OMG.

However, their mentor and record label chief executive, Min Hee-Jin, was removed earlier this year over allegations that she had planned a hostile takeover that would make NewJeans and Ador independent of their parent label, Hybe. Min has denied the accusations against her.

In the band’s YouTube video, which has since been deleted, they demanded Min’s reinstatement; and made claims of workplace harassment.

Hanni said that when she greeted the members of another band at their record label offices, their manager had instructed them to “ignore her”.

The 20-year-old reported the incident to Ador’s new chief executive, Kim Joo-Young – but said her concerns had been brushed off.

“She told me it was too late and that I had no evidence. Seeing her ignoring the issue made me feel like there was no one to protect us,” Hanni alleged during the livestream.

The accusation sparked a war of words between fans of NewJeans and the girl group Illit – who were rumoured to be the antagonists.

As the row escalated, the agency managing Illit, Belift Lab, was forced to issue a denial.

“Illit’s managers never instructed anyone to ‘ignore’ NewJeans members, and the Illit members have always greeted NewJeans when passing by,” the agency said.

Belift said they had reviewed a video that showed Illit’s members bowing to Hanni on the day of the incident – but that footage of their subsequent interactions was not available.

The agency also denied claims from the parents of NewJeans members that this later footage had been deleted on purpose.

The row eventually caught the attention of South Korea’s Environment and Labour Committee, who have summoned both Hanni and Kim Joo-Young to testify to an audit on workplace harassment later this month.

In her statement, Hanni told fans: “I’ve made my decision. I’m going to go the National Assembly. A parliamentary inspection!

“I’m going alone. They still don’t know… neither my managers nor the company.”

The singer thanked fans for their support, and reassured them that they don’t “need to worry”.

“I’m doing this for myself and for the members [of NewJeans], and also for the Bunnies [fans],” she added.

“No, it’s not difficult. I want to do this.”

The British rapper and online personality Yung Filly has been charged over rape allegations in Australia.

Real name Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, he is best known for his work with the YouTube collective Beta Squad and has presented shows on BBC Three.

He was arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday and extradited to Perth the following day to attend a court hearing.

Barrientos, 29, was charged on Thursday and has had his bail application approved. His representatives have been contacted for comment.

The full charges include four counts of sexual penetration without consent, three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of impeding a person’s normal breathing or circulation by applying pressure on or to their neck.

It is alleged he brought a woman in her 20s back to his hotel room after he had performed at the nightclub Bar1 in Perth.

The attack is alleged to have taken place on 28 September.

He was represented in Perth Magistrates Court by barrister Seamus Rafferty SC, who applied for bail on Barrientos’ behalf.

The 29-year-old, who was in Australia touring his music, has also appeared in the UK on Soccer Aid on ITV and The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer on Channel 4.

Barrientos also won a MOBO Award for best media personality in 2021.

The Princess of Wales has made an unexpected appearance alongside the Prince of Wales on a visit to Southport, where they held a private meeting with the bereaved families of three children killed in a knife attack in July.

This was Catherine’s first official public engagement since she finished her chemotherapy treatment.

Royal sources say she decided to join Prince William to show her “support, empathy and compassion to the local community”.

The couple spoke to emergency responders who helped at the scene of the devastating knife attack in the north-west seaside town.

Catherine gave a hug to some of the emergency workers, with fire chief Phil Garrigan saying “she could see the emotion in them”.

The royal visit to Southport had been planned as a low key event, to allow time to be spent in private with families of the three children who died and with the dance teacher who was present during the attack.

But Catherine was a surprise addition as she made one of only a handful of public appearances this year, since revealing her cancer diagnosis.

Wearing a long brown, autumnal-looking coat, she arrived with her husband to meet the bereaved families and emergency workers described by Prince William as “heroes”.

With her chemotherapy having ended, Catherine has begun a gradual return to work, including meetings about her early years campaign last month.

However, this is the biggest moment so far in returning to royal duties.

Catherine has spoken of having “good days and bad days” and Kensington Palace has cautioned that her appearances might have to be flexible and be subject to last minute changes.

The visit to Southport was intended by Prince William and Catherine to show the community that it had “not been forgotten”.

The prince and princess heard about efforts to bring the community together after the knife attack – and the wave of riots that followed.

Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, were killed on 29 July, 2024, in the attack on a children’s dance group.

The royal couple spent 90 minutes talking to the families of the three children – and later passed on the families’ thanks to emergency responders, in a meeting in Southport Community Centre.

Catherine told the emergency workers they had supported families through their “darkest times” – and she said: “On behalf of them, thank you.”

Ten other people – eight of whom were children – were injured in the stabbings.

Axel Rudakubana, 17, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

The royal couple told emergency workers from police and the health services about the importance of protecting their own well-being and mental health.

“The first thing we thought about was actually how on earth you guys are going to handle having seen what you’ve seen. So please take your time, don’t rush back to work, do whatever you need to,” said Prince William, who with Catherine has campaigned for people to be more open about mental health concerns.

The couple had made a donation, via their charity, to a fundraiser to help provide physical and psychological help for police and ambulance staff who were caught up in the attack and the riots that followed.

Former chief constable Andy Rhodes described the visit as a “massive boost” for emergency workers.

“It was quite emotional. It is still raw for people,” he said.

Ethel Kennedy, a human rights advocate and the widow of Robert F Kennedy, has died aged 96, her family says.

A matriarch of one of America’s most famous political dynasties, she died on Wednesday after suffering a stroke a week ago, the family member said.

Her grandson, Joe Kennedy, posted a statement online to announce the passing of “our amazing grandmother”.

She was by her husband Robert F Kennedy’s side when the Democratic presidential candidate was fatally shot in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen in 1968. Five years earlier, her brother-in-law, President John F Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

She founded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights foundation months later, while still pregnant with their 11th child.

Joe Kennedy posted on X, formerly Twitter, of his grandmother: “It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother, Ethel Kennedy.

“Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly.”

He described her as a “devout Catholic”, adding: “We are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.

“Please keep her in your hearts and prayers.”

New Zealand’s defence minister has criticised “armchair admirals” for suggesting that a female captain’s gender was to blame for the sinking of one of the nation’s naval ships.

HMNZS Manawanui ran aground one nautical mile from the Samoan island of Upolu on Saturday night while surveying a reef. It later caught fire and capsized.

All 75 people on board were evacuated onto lifeboats and rescued early on Sunday, New Zealand’s Defence Force said in a statement.

Officials are now investigating the cause of the incident and assessing the wreck’s potential environmental damage.

“A court of inquiry has been stood up to establish what caused this terrible incident,” said Judith Collins, New Zealand’s first female defence minister.

“The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain.”

British-born Commander Yvonne Gray, who previously served in the UK’s Royal Navy, was the captain of HMNZS Manawanui.

She told the New Zealand Herald the incident saw her “very worst imagining” become a reality.

But Cdr Gray added that the crew had responded to the emergency “exactly the way I needed them to” and “acted with commitment, with comradeship and, above all, with courage”.

Collins said she was appalled to see online trolling from “armchair admirals, people who will never have to make decisions which mean life or death for their subordinates”.

She added: “I thought seriously in 2024 what the hell is going on here with people who are sitting there in their armchair operating a keyboard making comments about people that they do not know, about an area they do not know and they are just vile. Where’s a bit of decency.”

Collins said that women in uniform had been abused in the street in recent days.

“This is outrageous behaviour and New Zealand is not known for this and we are better than it.”

HMNZS Manawanui is the first ship New Zealand’s Navy has lost to the sea since World War Two.

Collins previously indicated that it had been in an area that had not been surveyed since 1987.

On Thursday morning, Samoa’s Marine Pollution Advisory Committee (MPAC) said the ship was “leaking oil from three separate locations”, but that there continues to be “no trace” of oil washing up onshore.

Samoan officials said it was believed that most of the ship’s fuel had burnt off during the fire onboard, and that oil in the sea had been observed dissipating quickly.

But some have expressed concern about the possible environmental effects.

Local resident Manu Percival told Radio NZ on Monday that he had seen oil along the coastline.

“There’s so many green sea turtles in that area, so many sting rays,” he said.

“Right where the ship went down just inland, there’s a huge lagoon of brackish water and it houses all sort of animals. Coconut crabs, everything. They’ll all be affected.”

New Zealand’s Defence Force said a navy team had been established “to react to any contamination of local beaches and to remove debris that has started to come ashore”.

It added that divers from the Samoan Ministry of Resources and Natural Environment had also “observed damage to the reef where the collision occurred”.

Military officials in New Zealand have said the inquiry into the sinking will investigate the sequence of events leading up to it, as well as the cause of the grounding and sinking.

New Zealand has a long history of gender equality and was the first country to grant women the right to vote.

But the nation’s most recent female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, received frequent misogynistic abuse while in office – a topic often debated in the country’s media.

About 20% of New Zealand’s uniformed defence force personnel are women.

For days, residents of Florida’s Gulf Coast were warned to evacuate as Hurricane Milton approached – less than two weeks after the south-eastern US was thrashed by Hurricane Helene.

But from her home in Tampa, squarely in the path of the coming storm, Chynna Perkins decided to stay.

By Thursday morning, she said she, her husband Sterling and their pets had weathered the storm but lost power.

As the storm came and went, Perkins talked the BBC through her situation with a series of voice notes and calls, describing how Milton barrelled through her neighbourhood of West Tampa.

Her decision to stay was a matter of gut instinct, she said, after years living through Florida’s storms. Twenty-five miles (40km) east of the sea, and half a mile west of Tampa’s Hillsborough River, she felt protected from any storm surge.

“And then, as far as evacuation zones, we’re in one of the last ones. So, you know, I’m not concerned,” she said.

The couple had also worried about finding accommodation. “With two dogs over 200lbs (91kg), it’s a big thing,” she said.

Here is her account of the storm as it came and went.

The morning in Tampa was typical, Perkins said. “When I woke up, it was grey, light drizzle.”

She and Sterling had spent days preparing. They bought canned goods, sandwich supplies, water and extra dog food. They filled their bathtubs with water, charged their phones, emergency lamps and batteries.

“Our neighbourhood is boarded up,” she said. The historic homes in her West Tampa neighbourhood were half-hidden by plywood.

Her own home, a modern and neat single-storey house painted white, had temporary Kevlar covers on all the doors and windows. “We’re prepared as much as we can be,” she said.

For now, she felt safe. “There’s no reason for us to be on the road taking up resources, and hotel rooms, and contributing to traffic and congestion,” she said.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Where is Hurricane Milton heading?
• Why Hurricane Milton is causing tornadoes
• Evacuees: ‘Waiting out Milton was gamble we weren’t willing to make’
• BBC Verify: No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’

Within hours, the weather seemed to have shifted for the worse. The skies above Perkins’ home had turned entirely grey.

“Rain and wind are definitely picking up, you can hear it,” she said, walking outside on her patio, where small pools of water had begun to form on her back lawn.

At 17:30 EDT (21:30 GMT), the rain became more intense, carried by the whipping wind diagonally through the sky.

“The wind is really starting to pick up,” Perkins said again. The gusts roared over her voice, nearly drowning her out on the phone.

By this point, Milton’s eye was creeping towards the coast, just about an hour away from landfall.

“The wind is really starting to whip,” Perkins said. “We’re getting 20-30 minutes of really strong rain, then a dead period.”

“My anxiety has been through the roof this whole time. I’m trying not to throw up thinking about it. It is very, very eerie, just to see and hear how powerful it is,” she added.

“The anxiety comes from the waiting game. We’ve known for four days that this hurricane is coming. I just want to get through it so I can stop feeling this way.”

Soon after Milton reached Florida, the lights went out.

“We’re still good, minus losing power, which we expected,” Perkins said. “It feels like we’re in a tornado, without the whistling sound. We’ve already seen a few transformers blow in our neighbourhood just by looking out the back porch.”

They have no generator, so they played a game of Jenga in the dark. Sterling took up a temporary post by the sliding glass door that leads to their backyard. “He kind of went into the mode of ‘what happens in a worst case scenario,’” Perkins said.

She did not expect the storm to be so powerful. But she did not regret staying.

“There’s a kind of a relief, in the sense that it’s here.”

“OK, morning after,” Perkins said, sending a video clip of her backyard. “We’ve got clear skies.”

It was windy still, she said, but no sight of any fallen trees and no real damage to her home.

“We fared the storm well,” she said. “You can hear people’s generators already kicking on and chainsaws in the background, so it sounds like people are already getting to work.”

But there was no power yet. Perkins’ home is close to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where members of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department are being housed.

“I’m hoping that means we’ll get power sooner, rather than later.”

• Does US lack relief money for Hurricane Milton?
• How Hurricane Milton compares to Hurricane Helene
• Is climate change making hurricanes and typhoons worse?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms

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After tearing across Florida’s peninsula, Hurricane Milton has weakened into a category one storm and its centre has moved away from the state into the Atlantic Ocean.

But forecasters have warned that hurricane-force winds and rain are continuing in the eastern parts of the state.

The storm struck just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused major damage across the south-eastern US.

Milton made landfall as a category three hurricane in Siesta Key, Florida – a coastal community about 50 miles (80km) south of Tampa – at about 20:30 EST on Wednesday (03:30 BST on Thursday), according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Nearly 3.4 million homes and businesses were without power by Thursday morning, dozens of homes have been destroyed, and at least four deaths have been reported.

Forecasters continue to warn of torrential rain, flash flooding, high winds and possible storm surges – which occur when water moves inland from the coast – of several feet in height along Florida’s north-eastern coast.

At least 116 tornado warnings were issued across Florida on Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis told a news conference on Wednesday evening, with 19 twisters confirmed so far in the state.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Watch: Destruction in Florida as Milton makes landfall
• Why is Hurricane Milton causing tornadoes?
• Evacuees: ‘Waiting out Milton was gamble we weren’t willing to make’
• BBC Verify: No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’

With wind gusts most recently recorded reaching up to 85mph (140km/h), Milton is now heading into the Atlantic Ocean and is forecast to pass to the north of the Bahamas later on Thursday.

Its sheer size means its effects are being felt much wider than the shaded cone shown above.

In addition to most of Florida, the impact of the storm has also been felt in Georgia and South Carolina.

During its days-long journey, Milton tracked eastwards from the Gulf of Mexico, where it was classified as a category one hurricane on Sunday. It also brushed Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Before striking Florida, it was said by forecaster to have “wobbled” to the south, leading forecasters to alter its track slightly.

The storm has affected some of the areas recently decimated by Hurricane Helene. Tampa, which has a population of more than three million people in its wider metropolitan area, is just north of Siesta Key, where the storm made landfall.

Traffic jams formed and airports announced closures as Floridians were told to prepare for the state’s largest evacuation effort in years. Officials said Milton could be the worst storm to hit the area in about a century.

As the hurricane approached, most counties were in an official state of emergency, and evacuations were ordered up and down Florida’s west coast.

Disaster management authorities issued a list and map of the evacuation orders spanning dozens of counties. Several large shelters were also prepared as a last resort for those stranded.

• Are you in Florida? Please share your experiences

• Does US lack relief money for Hurricane Milton?
• How Hurricane Milton compares to Hurricane Helene
• Is climate change making hurricanes and typhoons worse?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms

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 temperatures due to human-caused climate change were partly to blame, it said.

Hurricanes are separated into five categories based on their wind speed.

Milton was classified more than once as a category five storm – the highest – but weakened as it approached the US coast, striking as a category three storm.

After making landfall, it was further downgraded to category one.

Hurricane Milton intensified quickly as it passed over exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where sea surface temperatures are around 1-2C above average.

Warmer waters mean that hurricanes can pick up more energy, potentially leading to higher wind speeds.

A warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture – up to about 7% for every 1C of temperature rise. This means that rainfall from hurricanes can be more intense.

And global sea-levels have been rising in recent decades, largely thanks to global warming.

This makes it more likely that a given storm surge will lead to coastal flooding.

In Florida, average sea-levels have risen by more than 7in (18cm) since 1970, according to US government data.

A full scientific analysis will be needed to quantify the exact role of climate change in Hurricane Milton.

But its rapid intensification fits with expectations of how these storms are changing in a warming world.

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False claims suggesting that Hurricane Milton was “engineered” and that the weather in Florida is being “manipulated” have been spreading on social media.

There is no technology that allows humans to create and control hurricanes.

But on platforms like X and TikTok, posts alleging – without evidence – that the US government is secretly controlling the weather have been viewed millions of times.

Many were published by accounts known for spreading conspiracy theories, as well as misinformation about Covid-19 or vaccines.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden described the claims as “beyond ridiculous”, adding “it’s so stupid, it’s got to stop”.

He was responding to Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in recent days suggested on her social media accounts that the US government “can control the weather”.

Posts seen by BBC Verify mainly suggest Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest storms in recent US history, was purposefully created by shadowy forces at the heart of US politics.

But the accounts making that claim proposed several different explanations for how that was supposedly done.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Watch: Webcams show Milton making landfall
• Where is Hurricane Milton heading?
• No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’
• Explainer: Why is Hurricane Milton causing tornadoes in Florida?

Some users alleged weather manipulation techniques like cloud seeding are to blame.

Cloud seeding involves manipulating existing clouds to try to produce more rain, for example in countries with a dry climate.

But the south-east of the US had already been hit by huge amounts of rainfall from Hurricane Helene, which triggered deadly flooding in several states just two weeks ago.

“When we cloud seed, it is because we do not have enough aerosols or water vapor within the atmosphere to see condensation occur, so we try and force it through cloud seeding,” says Jill Trepanier, an expert in extreme weather phenomena from Louisiana State University.

“Over the western Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, that is not a problem. The Earth will make a hurricane all on its own.”

Other users blamed “geoengineering” instead – a wide array of methods to manipulate the environment with a view to reducing the effects of climate change.

But there are no tools that would allow humans to create or control storms like this one.

“There is no possibility using current knowledge and technology to use geoengineering to modify hurricanes,” says Suzana Camargo from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Hurricanes are natural weather systems.

Typically they begin as what is known as a tropical wave – a low pressure area where thunderstorms and clouds develop.

As strong winds push this system away from Africa and towards the Americas, warm, moist air rises from the tropical Atlantic Ocean, and the system of clouds and winds begins to spin.

With sufficient energy from the warm ocean waters, combined with favourable circulation patterns in the atmosphere, it may be able to strengthen into a full hurricane.

Social media posts seen by BBC Verify wrongly suggest hurricanes like this one are being created for sinister reasons, including to attempt to sway next month’s presidential election.

Those assertions are false, but there is a link to human activity because of the way climate change is making these storms generally more intense.

• Does US lack relief money for Hurricane Milton?
• Watch: Vast size of Hurricane Milton seen from above
• How does Hurricane Milton compare to Hurricane Helene?
• Is climate change making hurricanes and typhoons worse?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms

Climate change – caused by emissions of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide from human activities – is not thought to be increasing the number of tropical storms worldwide.

But rising temperatures do make the strongest hurricanes more likely.

Warmer seas mean that these storms can pick up more energy, potentially leading to higher wind speeds.

Hurricane Milton strengthened particularly quickly as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico, where sea surface temperatures were around 1-2C warmer than average.

Peak sustained wind speeds increased from 90mph (150km/h) to 175mph (280km/h) in just 12 hours on 7 October, according to National Hurricane Center data.

For some social media users, this sudden change was perceived as “evidence” to back their suggestions this was not a “natural” storm, but instead one manufactured by humans.

But this trend fits with expectations of hurricanes generally intensifying more quickly in a warming world.

“As we warm the planet, we anticipate a lot of potential impacts to hurricanes that can make them more damaging – including the ability to strengthen more quickly over unnaturally warm ocean waters,” explains Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University in New Jersey.

Hurricane Helene – which hit Florida around two weeks ago – also intensified rapidly over the Gulf of Mexico.

A new study released on Wednesday found that the exceptionally high sea surface temperatures over its track were made hundreds of times more likely by human-caused warming.

“[Helene] was significantly more destructive because of climate change,” explains Ben Clarke of the World Weather Attribution group, which led the study.

Beyond typically stronger winds, climate change is also affecting other hurricane hazards.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – up to about 7% for every 1C of temperature rise. This means that rainfall can be more intense.

And global sea-levels have been rising in recent decades, largely thanks to global warming. This makes it more likely that a given storm surge – short-term increases to sea-levels from storms – will lead to coastal flooding.

In Florida, average sea-levels have risen by more than 18cm (7in) since 1970, according to US government data.

For some of the users spreading conspiracy theories around Hurricane Milton, this too amounts to “scaremongering”. But the evidence suggests otherwise.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

US President Joe Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have held a much-anticipated 30-minute phone call – believed to be their first contact since August – which included discussions on Israel’s intended retaliation to Iran’s missile strike last week.

The White House described the dialogue as “direct” and “productive”, and said Biden and Netanyahu had agreed to stay in “close contact” in coming days. Vice President Kamala Harris also joined the call.

Speaking shortly afterwards, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said its attack against Iran would be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”.

Two forces are at work. One is Joe Biden’s reluctance to see the US dragged into a war with Iran that it believes would be unnecessary and dangerous.

The other is a strong sense among some in Israel that they have an opportunity to deal a body blow to Iran – their mortal enemy.

Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah has energised Israelis who were desperate to break out of the grinding war of attrition on their border with Lebanon.

Lebanon, for them, felt like success and progress, a stark contrast to the position in Gaza.

Despite Israel’s onslaught on Gaza that has killed at least 42,000 people, most of them civilians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been able to deliver his two war aims – the destruction of Hamas and the recovery of the hostages.

Hamas is still fighting, and still holds around 100 hostages, many of whom might be dead.

The damage done to Israel’s enemies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, has produced in some Israelis an urgent conviction to go further and mount a direct assault on Iran.

For them, a devastating air attack on Iran is a seductive prospect.

Top of the target list for many Israelis are the heavily fortified sites, some driven deep into mountains where Iran houses nuclear facilities that Israel and others fear could be used to make a bomb.

President Biden has made clear the US opposes the idea.

The US believes Iran is not about to make a nuclear weapon. An attack could push them to construct one.

One of the most prominent voices in Israel pressing Netanyahu to ignore US wishes is former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who says Israel must not hesitate to act against what he calls the Iranian octopus.

He told me that it was “the 11th hour”.

Like the opposition politician and former general Benny Gantz, Bennett believes Iran is weaker than it has been for decades because of the damage done to Hezbollah and Hamas.

“Essentially Iran was defending itself with two arms, Hezbollah and Hamas. They were sort of its insurance policy against a strike,” Bennett says.

“But now both of those arms are pretty much neutralised.”

Bennett sees the moment as a once in a generation opportunity to do real damage to Iran’s Islamic Regime.

He adds: “Here’s the thing. The strategy with Iran – ultimately it’s not going to happen tomorrow.

“We need to accelerate the demise of this regime. This is a regime that will fall.

“If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the likelihood that they’ll use it in order to save the regime is high. And that means that they’re going to turn the whole Middle East into a nuclear nightmare.”

• Middle East conflict: How will it end?

Bennett recalled two Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities he believes made the Middle East much safer – in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

“People don’t like it,” Bennett says. “But we saved the world from [Bashar al-] Assad with nuclear weapons.

“We have the thankless job of taking out the nuclear facilities of the worst regimes in the world. Everyone likes to criticise us, but we’re doing that job.

“And if they get that bomb, it’s everyone’s problem. It’s not our problem. I want to see how Londoners will feel when there’s an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow that to happen.”

Iran and Israel have been in direct conflict since April, after Israel assassinated leading Iranian generals with a big airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Syria.

Iran’s retaliation was a missile strike on Israel. The escalation has continued.

The latest came on Tuesday last week in response to Israel’s assault on Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Iran unleashed a huge ballistic missile attack, and Israel’s prime minister vowed to hit back.

President Biden was reluctant to restrain Israel in Gaza. And has “urged” Israel to minimise harm to civilians in Lebanon. But he has been adamant that Israel must not answer the Iranians with a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The US believes Iran is not about to make a nuclear weapon.

President Biden has said Israel must defend itself – but not by attacking Iranian nuclear sites – or its oil industry.

The US fears getting dragged into a war it doesn’t want. And there are concerns that if Iran can ride out an attack it will go for broke to produce a nuclear warhead for its missiles.

The next phases in this spiralling war depend on the extent of Israel’s retaliation – which may come any day now.

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 Antony Blinken on trips back to the Middle East, where I worked for seven years up until last December.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Analysis: What will it take to end the conflict?
• BBC Verify examines footage revealing scale of damage in Lebanon
• Gaza then and now – a visual guide to how life has changed in 12 months
• Watch: How do young Palestinians and Israelis see their future?

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, Antony 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.

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

Two civilians have been killed and several others wounded after the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired at least 150 rockets into northern Israel.

Paramedics said a man and a woman in their 40s were fatally wounded by shrapnel in the border town of Kiryat Shmona. They were a couple who had been out walking their dog along a wooded street.

Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli forces in Kiryat Shmona, which most residents have evacuated after a year of cross-border fighting.

These were the first Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah since the conflict escalated two weeks ago, when Israel launched an intense air campaign targeting the Iran-backed group before invading southern Lebanon.

• Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut
• BBC Verify examines footage revealing scale of damage in Lebanon
• Analysis: Why has America failed to broker a ceasefire?

The rocket or fragments that hit Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday also sparked several fires.

We could smell the fires burning before we saw them. In one street, neighbours watched as three teams of firefighters tackled plumes of smoke from a house where a rocket had landed.

Katy Krelshtein watched in disbelief from the other side of the road – the house next door belonged to her father.

“I saw red,” she replied, when I asked for her reaction. “It’s gone beyond fear now – it’s just anger.”

Rockets have been a daily reality for a year now in Kiryat Shmona, and many people there said they wanted their military to do whatever it takes to make them stop.

As we arrived and began filming, there were several more rocket alerts and interceptions. This close to the border, residents have just seconds to reach a shelter.

We watched as one large barrage of more than 20 rockets, followed by what looked like a missile, were all intercepted in the sky overhead – part of what the Israeli military said were 90 projectiles launched from Lebanon in a single eight-minute window.

Earlier on Wednesday, we were in another town to the west, where the border cuts straight down the hill overlooking it. Burned patches of forest mark where artillery and rockets have landed.

In the deserted streets below, the sound of gunfire from across the hill echoed around empty houses.

Shelley Barkan, one of very few who have stayed there, said there were sometimes eight or nine rocket alerts each day now.

“I’ve got pieces of rockets in my garden,” she said. “Their aim is to murder us, to kill us, to send Israel to the sea, and our aim is to defend ourselves.”

She showed us the catering hall where she helps prepare food for the local soldiers.

While we were there, we heard a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon over our heads towards Israeli towns further south.

Minutes later, rockets landed in the coastal city of Haifa, wounding another five people, including a teenage boy.

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.

The military says the aim of its ground invasion, which began nine days ago, is to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure along the border that it says poses an imminent threat to Israeli communities.

There were reports of intense battles between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters in several southern Lebanese areas on Wednesday.

Hezbollah said its fighters had pushed back Israeli troops advancing towards the western village of Labbouneh, attacked others inside the eastern village of Maroun al-Ras, and shelled troops near Mays al-Jabal, which is near Kiryat Shmona.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, said its troops and aircraft had destroyed more than 100 Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon over the past day.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least four people had been killed and 10 injured in an Israeli air strike on the village of Wardaniyeh, to the north-east of the coastal city of Sidon.

The state-run National News Agency reported that the strike hit a hotel housing displaced families.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed directly to the people of Lebanon in a video published on Tuesday, telling them to turn against the Iran-backed Shia group Hezbollah or risk destruction on the scale of Gaza.

“Christians, Druze, Muslims Sunni and Shia, all of you are suffering because of Hezbollah’s futile war against Israel,” he said. “Stand up and take your country back.”

But in Shia, Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods of Beirut on Wednesday morning, Netanyahu’s appeal was falling largely – if not entirely – on deaf ears.

“Yes we heard the address but nobody here listens to Netanyahu,” said Yusuf Habbal, 31, as he cut pieces of the traditional Lebanese sweet Kunafah in his shop in Tariq El Jdideh, a Sunni area.

“Nobody told Netanyahu to occupy Palestine, nobody told him to occupy Lebanon. It is the Israelis who are driving this conflict.”

But Habbal and his fellow Sunnis “also do not accept what Hezbollah is doing”, he said.

“Before Netanyahu ever spoke about Hezbollah, we were against them. Beiruti people know that Hezbollah has their own agenda. And now they are driving us into a war we do not want.”

Hezbollah, which is a better-armed and more powerful force in Lebanon than the country’s own military, began firing rockets into northern Israel a year ago, in support for Hamas the day after the brutal 7 October attack.

The Hezbollah rockets signalled the beginning of a new phase of its clash with Israel. Last month, Israel escalated that simmering conflict when it expanded its bombing campaign of Lebanon, including in Beirut, before launching a ground invasion in the south of the country.

“They are striking very close to us now and it is terrifying,” said Mohammed Khair, 43, as he had his hair cut in a barber shop in Tariq El Jdideh.

“Nobody here wants this war, but nobody is going to be turned against Hezbollah by something Netanyahu said in a video,” he said.

Netanyahu was “always talking to the Palestinians, to the Lebanese,” said Tarraf Nasser, a 76-year-old retiree who was passing by the barber shop. “Nobody listens to Netanyahu,” he said. “He is not really talking to us.”

In Achrafieh, Beirut’s main Christian neighbourhood, there was a sense of futility at the Lebanese people’s ability to heed Netanyahu’s advice, even if they wanted to.

Antoine, a 75-year-old Catholic retiree, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was smoking a cigarette outside the neighbourhood’s Brewholic Café.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel, not Lebanon. He should take care of his people, not ours,” Antoine said.

“At the same time, it is true that we have to do something to be free from the influence of Iran. But we don’t have weapons and we don’t have politicians who can be truly Lebanese. All our politicians are affiliated to other states or groups, mostly Iran.”

Nobody in Lebanon was going to have domestic conflict because Netanyahu instructed them to, Antoine said. “We will do that on our own.”

Across the road in her shoe shop, Maya Habib, 35, gave a tired shrug at the Israeli prime minister’s video appeal. “Everyone here knows that Israel lies,” she said. “But listen, maybe he has a point. He warned everyone – don’t attack us, don’t come close to us, and it won’t be your war. Now it is.”

Among the Christians of Achrafieh, “people are paying attention” to Netanyahu, Habib said. “But nobody can do anything anyway,” she said, shrugging again. “We don’t even have a president. Netanyahu is saying all the weapons should go to the Lebanese army, but how?”

Hezbollah can still rely on staunch support in the neighbourhoods where it is the dominant force in political and social life, and among the Shia communities of mixed areas. Several Shia residents of the Mar Elias neighbourhood said they stood completely behind the group.

“We are all Hezbollah here, whatever Hezbollah does we will support them,” said Fadi Ali Kiryani, a 52-year-old corner shop owner. Like other people in Mar Elias, Kiryani said he was not concerned by Netanyahu’s threat that Lebanon would suffer the same destruction and suffering as Gaza.

“Even if it becomes worse here than Gaza, we will still fly the flag,” he said.

“My house in Dahieh has already been destroyed. I would rather my house was gone than the shoe on the foot of one Hezbollah fighter was damaged.”

Sitting behind the desk of her 40-year-old towel and bedlinens shop, 75-year-old Fany Sharara said that Hezbollah was the only force defending the people of Lebanon.

“Nothing Netanyahu could say could change my mind,” she said. “He is a criminal, an assassin, he cannot leave one child alive.”

Israel had “all of Europe and all of America” on its side, Sharara added. “We are with Hezbollah because they are the only ones defending us. Not the Lebanese government.”

A few doors down, and a few years younger, 24-year-old jewellery shop owner Ali Shoura was simply weary of everyone involved, he said. “Nobody really cares – the politicians, the people in power, the Lebanese government, Iran, Israel, America, Hezbollah too.”

He shook his head. “It’s all just theatre,” he said. “And we are all the victims.”

Amid gunfire and Israeli artillery shelling, Palestinian medics say that they have begun moving premature babies and other patients away from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp, as troops and tanks encircle it.

The Israeli military has been carrying out its third ground offensive in the area since the war in Gaza began, saying it is targeting regrouping Hamas fighters who aim to launch attacks.

Two other local hospitals are virtually inaccessible and face evacuation orders, Gazan health officials say.

Dozens of people are reported to have been killed and wounded in the north in recent days.

The Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said on Monday that its first responders had recovered the bodies of 15 people following an Israeli strike on a tented camp for displaced people next to the al-Yemen al-Saeed Hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “struck terrorists operating within a command-and-control centre embedded in an area in Jabalia that previously served as a medical compound”, and that it had taken steps to mitigate harm to civilians.

The Civil Defence also said five people were killed in a strike on a family home in the camp, which had more than 110,000 registered residents before the war.

Meanwhile, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) warned that its own shelters and services were being forced to shut.

“With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading and deepening again,” Philippe Lazzarini said, adding that the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign for children in Gaza was also threatened.

Residents have been speaking to the BBC about their fear and desperation.

“I have been displaced more than 10 times. I’ve moved from house to house, from school to school, under shelling, and from street to street,” said Ahmed Leki, a 50-year-old father from the Falluja area of Jabalia.

“We are exhausted, completely worn out. There’s nothing left. Where can we go? We have small children, and there’s no safe place in Gaza, not a single safe inch,” he added.

“We left our homes with shells raining down on us, with bombing, destruction, and dismemberment all around us. Enough is enough.”

In recent days, new evacuation orders have been issued by the Israeli military covering a wide area in the north of the enclave, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and parts of Gaza City.

All those remaining in the north – estimated at 400,000 people – have been told to head to the south.

“Displacement is extremely difficult, a tragedy. There is no transportation, no necessities for survival. Men, women, and children ask, ‘Where do we go?’ and the answer is, ‘I don’t know,’” said Bilal al-Amreeti, a local man.

“The sound of Israeli warplanes is above us, there is bombing, and the shelling continues everywhere.”

Despite Israel’s assurances, many Gazans fear that it aims to depopulate the north of the strip and turn it into a closed military zone or a Jewish settlement.

Ratan Tata, who has died aged 86, was one of India’s most internationally recognised business leaders.

The tycoon led the Tata Group – known as a “salt-to-software” conglomerate of more than 100 companies, employing some 660,000 people – for more than two decades. Its annual revenues are in excess of $100bn (£76.5bn).

Founded by Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer of Indian business, the 155-year-old Tata Group straddles a business empire ranging from Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel to aviation and salt pans.

The ethos of the company “yokes capitalism to philanthropy, by doing business in ways that make the lives of others better”, according to Peter Casey, author of The Story of Tata, an authorised book on the group.

Tata Sons, the holding company of the group, has a “number of companies that includes privately held and publicly traded companies, yet they are in essence all owned by a philanthropic trust”, he explains.

Ratan Tata was born in 1937 in a traditional family of Parsis – a highly educated and prosperous community that traces its ancestry to Zoroastrian refugees in India. His parents separated in the 1940s.

Tata went to college in the US, where he got a degree in architecture at Cornell University. During his seven-year-long stay, he learned to drive cars and fly. He had some harrowing experiences: he once lost an engine while flying a helicopter in college and twice lost the single engine in his plane. “So I had to glide in,” he told an interviewer. Later, he would often fly his company’s business jet.

He returned to India in 1962 when his grandmother Lady Navajbai fell ill and called for him. It was then that JRD Tata – a relative from a different branch of the family – asked him to join the Tata Group. “He [JRD Tata] was my greatest mentor… he was like a father and a brother to me – and not enough has been said about that,” Tata told an interviewer.

Ratan Tata was sent to a company steel plant in Jamshedpur in eastern India where he spent a couple of years on the factory floor before becoming the technical assistant to the manager. In the early 70s, he took over two ailing group firms, one making radios and TVs and the other textiles. He managed to turn around the first, and had mixed results with the textile company.

In 1991, JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor over senior company aspirants for that position. “If you were to find the publications of that time, the criticism was personal – JRD got clubbed with nepotism and I was branded as the wrong choice,” Ratan Tata later said.

Peter Casey writes that under Ratan Tata’s leadership, a “great but rather stodgy Indian manufacturer began emerging as a global brand with great emphasis on consumer goods”.

But the journey was a mixed one.

During his tenure the group made many bold acquisitions, among them the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus and UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover. Some of those decisions paid off, while others – including a failed telecom venture – have cost the company a lot of money.

A high point came in 2000, when Tata bought Tetley and became the world’s second-largest tea company. The deal was the largest takeover of an international brand by an Indian company.

A few years later, a visiting journalist from a UK-based newspaper asked Tata whether he liked the irony of an Indian company buying a leading British brand. “Tata is too shrewd and too shy to be caught gloating about his successes like some territory-grabbing East India Company nabob,” the journalist later wrote.

Tata’s foray into building a safe, affordable car turned out to be a disappointment. It was launched amid great fanfare in 2009 as a compact with the base model costing just 100,000 rupees ($1,222; £982). But after the initial success and euphoria, the brand began to lose out to other manufacturers due to issues with production and marketing.

Tata later said it was a “huge mistake to brand Nano as the world’s cheapest car. People don’t want to be seen driving the world’s cheapest car!”

His resilience was also tested during the Mumbai terror attacks of 26 November, 2008. Tata’s marquee Taj Mahal Palace was one of the two luxury hotels that was attacked, along with a train station, a hospital, a Jewish cultural centre, and some other targets in Mumbai.

Thirty-three of the 166 people who died in the 60-hour siege were at the Taj. This included 11 hotel employees, a third of the hotel’s total casualties. Tata pledged to look after the families of employees who were killed or injured, and paid the relatives of those killed the salaries they would have earned for the rest of their lives. He also spent more than $1bn to restore the damaged hotel within 21 months.

Towards the end of his career, Tata found himself embroiled in an unsavoury controversy. In October 2016 he returned to Tata Sons as interim chairman for a few months after the previous incumbent, Cyrus Mistry, was ousted, sparking a bitter management feud (Mistry died in a car crash in September 2022). The role was eventually given to Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who was formerly the chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s most valuable company with a market capitalisation of $67bn.

Peter Casey described Tata as a “modest, reserved and even shy man”. He found a “stately calm” about him and a “fierce discipline”, which included preparing a handwritten to-do list every day. He also described himself as a “bit of an optimist”.

Tata was also a modest and reflective businessman. After the police were called in to end a strike that crippled operations at one of his firm’s factories in Pune in 1989, Tata told journalists: “Perhaps we took our workers for granted. We assumed that we were doing all that we could do for them, when probably we were not.”

In 2009, Tata spoke at a school alumni function about his dream for his country, “where every Indian has an equal opportunity to shine on merit”.

“In a country like ours,” he said, “you have to try and lead by example, not flaunt your wealth and prominence.”

Eight-year-old Grace Welch has been waiting since 2019 for her older sister to occupy the bed next to hers.

Her parents had told her that, Penelope, a 10-year-old born in China, would be joining the family, who live in Kentucky in the US.

Grace, also adopted from China, was born without her left forearm. Her mother, Aimee Welch, said Penelope too has a “serious but manageable” special need, although she did not wish to disclose it.

The Welch family, who have four biological sons, sought to adopt children with disabilities after the birth of a nephew without arms.

“He taught us all what a person with limb differences can achieve with the right love and support. His birth started us on the path towards adopting Grace,” Ms Welch said. “We believe in the dignity and worth of each person, just as they are, in all their diversity.”

But the pandemic delayed their plans.

Then in September, China announced that it was putting a stop to international adoptions, including cases where families were already matched with adoptee children.

The painful wait will particularly determine the fates of China’s most vulnerable children – those with special needs.

Up-to-date statistics are not readily available, but Beijing’s civil affairs ministry said that 95% of international adoptions between 2014 and 2018 involved children with disabilities.

These children “will have no future” without international adoption as they are unlikely to be adopted domestically, says Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Ms Welch said Grace was especially saddened by the news that Penelope may never come home: “She told me, ‘We were meant to be a family of eight so that everyone could have a buddy.’”

Ms Welch called on China to “keep the promises made to the children already matched with adoptive parents”.

Beijing has not commented since the September announcement, when it thanked families for their “love in adopting children from China”. It said the ban was in line with international agreements and showed China’s “overall development and progress”.

China began allowing international adoptions in 1992 as the country was opening up, and they peaked in the mid 2000s. More than 160,000 children have been adopted by families across the world in the last three decades.

A contentious one-child policy had forced families to give up children, especially girls and kids with special needs. Social stigma around disability had also led to more children with special needs ending up in orphanages.

Dani Nelson, who was adopted to the US in 2017, said she was given basic care at an orphanage in the southwestern city of Guiyang, but it was “not enough for me to live a normal life”.

The 21-year-old was born with spina bifida – a spinal defect – and hydrocephalus, which is a neurological disorder that causes water to gather around her brain.

In her first three years in the US, she had seven surgeries which she said helped her “lead a normal life”.

“I joined a swim team. I got a job… Adoption saved my life,” said Ms Nelson, who now works as a cashier at a coffee shop.

Like in many Asian societies, disabled people in China face discrimination and are sometimes even seen as a source of “bad luck”.

China has made some strides in improving accessibility to the disabled, but public infrastructure, especially in rural areas, are still weaker than countries in the West. It has only recently started developing education institutions and curricula for students with special needs.

Only the most seriously disabled receive financial support from the government.

The BBC had previously interviewed Chinese adults with special needs whose parents have had to stop working to care for them.

Aware of these challenges, waiting families are concerned about what will happen to the children they were meant to adopt, some of whom need urgent medical treatment.

Meghan and David Briggs were matched with a boy in Zhengzhou, Henan, in 2020. The 10-year-old has a “moderate special need that requires medical intervention”, Mrs Briggs said.

The couple live with their biological son, also 10, in Pennsylvania. Mr Briggs said the family made a “wilful choice” to adopt a child who is more vulnerable and less likely to get the specialised care and therapy in an institution in China than with a family in the US.

“Such care is a financial and emotional responsibility. We were prepared to offer this care because we view this child as our family,” said Mr Briggs, who himself was adopted from South Korea.

“He was promised a family by his own government,” Ms Briggs said. “The children are the ones who will suffer with this decision,” she said.

Not everyone agrees.

Some, including adult adoptees, are relieved about that Beijing has ended foreign adoption.

“My experience as a transracial adoptee being raised in a predominantly white, Christian city is that you often get looked down upon. I was constantly reminded that I don’t belong,” said Lucy Sheen, who was adopted by a white family in the UK.

Ms Sheen, now in her 60s, added that her adoptive family had little knowledge of her Chinese culture and heritage. She was once told off for asking to learn Mandarin.

“Some adopters have a ‘white-saviour’ mentality or have the ideology that they are bringing us where they come from because ‘West is best’, I think that needs to change,” she added.

Nanchang Project, a non-profit group that helps connect adoptees to their roots in China, said it felt “a sense of relief that no more children will be separated from their birthplace, culture, and identity”.

“We hope this moment can shift focus toward the need for post-adoptive services to support Chinese adoptees and their families for the rest of their lives,” the group said in a statement last month.

Under the new policy, China will only send children overseas for adoption if the adoptive parents are blood relatives. The BBC understands that US authorities are in talks with Beijing on whether a further exception can be made for waiting families.

John and Anne Contant who were matched with five-year-old Corrine in 2019, said they “honour China’s decision to change course on their adoption policy”.

“If there have been more families wanting to adopt domestically, that’s wonderful… Our ask is for these 300 children who have been matched [to families in the US] to be allowed to come home,” he said.

The couple live in Chicago with six children. Three of them were adopted from China and live with albinism, as does Corinne.

The Contants spoke to Corinne via WeChat when their plans to travel to China were shelved because of the pandemic.

“Corinne met our children, saw her home and the room that had been prepared for her, and experienced the excitement our children felt in preparation for her arrival,” Mr Contant said.

“In one of our conversations, she pointedly asked, ‘When are you coming to get me?’”

The White House’s address may be 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the real road to the presidency runs through the state of Pennsylvania, the biggest prize among the electoral battleground map.

According to calculations by elections analyst Nate Silver, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania has more than a 90% of winning the White House.

“It’s the granddaddy of all the swing states,” said former congressman Patrick Murphy, who represented north-eastern Pennsylvania as a Democrat from 2007-11.

With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania – the fifth most populous US state – is the lynchpin of the swing-state electoral firewalls for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

If the Democrats win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with one congressional district in Nebraska, she’s the next president. If the Republicans carry Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, Trump is back in the White House next year.

Without Pennsylvania, there is no way Trump can win without flipping at least three of the states Joe Biden won in 2020.

Nicknamed the Keystone State, Pennsylvania could in fact be the key to the White House.

It is also where BBC Question Time will broadcast a US election special on Thursday 10 October, diving into the issues and voter concerns behind the presidential contest.

Pennsylvania is not only the most valuable swing state, it also can be seen as a microcosm of the US as a whole – demographically, economically and politically.

It is a former manufacturing state that has been transitioning to newer industries and businesses, but it has a large energy sector because of its abundant oil shale deposits. Agriculture is still the second-largest industry in the state.

The majority of the population is white, but there are growing immigrant communities. Some areas, like Allentown – the working-class factory city made famous by a Billy Joel song – are now majority Hispanic. The state’s black population, at 12%, is just under the US total of 13%.

As for the politics, the state’s two large urban areas, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, heavily favour the Democrats. Between the two are vast stretches of rural territory where Republicans dominate. And the suburbs that once were reliably conservative are now tilting to the left.

That gives rise to the old quip that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with (deeply Republican) Alabama in the middle.

Somehow, all these political cross-currents and shifting dynamics have kept Pennsylvania at a near dead-even balance when it comes to presidential elections. President Joe Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes in 2020. Donald Trump carried it by about 40,000 in his surprise 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.

Only once in the last 40 years has a candidate won Pennsylvania by double-digits – Barack Obama in his 2008 electoral landslide.

Current polling puts the race between Harris and Trump in the state at a virtual dead heat. According to the 538/ABC News poll tracker, Harris holds a lead by less than a percent – a margin that has hardly shifted over the course of this tumultuous political year.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been pouring enormous resources into Pennsylvania. They are spending more on television advertising there than any other swing state. Both candidates make regular visits.

Harris introduced her running mate pick, Tim Walz, at a rally in Philadelphia. She spent days preparing for her presidential debate in Pittsburgh. She made a tentpole economic speech there two weeks ago.

Last Saturday, Trump held a massive rally in Butler, where in July he was nearly assassinated. On Wednesday he was in Biden’s hometown of Scranton and Reading.

And when the principals aren’t around, both campaigns have other politicians and officials to drum up support.

“A candidate can’t go into a county to talk to 1,200 people,” says former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. “The state is too big. There’s just not time. That’s what surrogates are for.”

Rendell notes that the current governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, is a big help for Democrats here, as he is very popular in the state and a dynamic speaker – qualities that had made him the odds-on favourite to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick.

For Harris, her keys to victory are to post dominating numbers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win the suburbs by enough to offset Trump’s margins in the rest of the state.

An essential part of this strategy is to win over moderate voters and some Republicans – including the more than 160,000 who turned out to vote for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the state’s Republican primary, held earlier this year, well after Trump had already locked up the party’s nomination.

“What these people need to hear is ways in which both the past record of Kamala Harris and the future plans of Kamala Harris are basically centrist positions – that she is not this crazy, wild-eyed radical leftist,” said Craig Snyder, former Republican Senate staffer who is running Pennsylvania’s “Haley Voters for Harris” effort.

He added that the Harris campaign is making the most extensive effort to reach Republican voters that he’s seen in a generation.

Trump’s strategy is to squeeze all the support he can out of the conservative parts of the state, including by registering and mobilising those who may not have participated in past elections – a move Trump’s campaign officials say is a central focus of their grass-roots effort.

There are signs their work may be paying off, too. Registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans in the state, but the margin is just a few hundred thousand – the smallest its been since the state first began releasing figures in 1998.

While the college-educated voters in the suburbs may be difficult to convince, the Trump team thinks it can also chip away at traditionally Democratic support among blue-collar union voters and young black men.

“We’ve seen nationally that Trump has made some real inroads with African American men,” said Farah Jimenez, a conservative education activist. “They’re here in Philadelphia, and if you can convince them that he speaks more clearly to the things that concern them, it can at least start to provide a base for Republicans in Philadelphia.”

• The BBC’s flagship political debate programme heads to Pennsylvania on Thursday, 10 October
• It will be recorded at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, presented by Fiona Bruce and featuring a local audience
• They will quiz a panel including the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher, former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza and commentator Mehdi Hasan
• Watch the discussion on the BBC website from 16:00 EST (21:00 BST)
• UK audiences can also watch on BBC One and iPlayer, global audiences on the BBC News channel

Four years ago, the results in Pennsylvania took days to come in – due, in large part, to the more than two million mail-in ballots cast because of the Covid pandemic. Major media outlets didn’t project Biden as the winner until four days after the election.

Mail-in voting is expected to be lower this year, but the state reports that it has already received 217,000 completed ballots that, by Pennsylvania law, cannot be opened and tabulated until election night.

Another wildcard is the more than 27,000 military and overseas voter ballots that have been distributed by Pennsylvania state officials so far. If the race is as close as polls indicate, those votes could make a difference – even if they take longer to arrive and be recorded.

“I can’t imagine that it’s not going to take several days after to get a count,” said Snyder. “And if the count is very close, we’re going to get into lawsuits and recounts and all the rest of it. So everybody needs to buckle up.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ANALYSIS: What could be the ‘October Surprise’?
• FACT-CHECK: Debunking Trump claim about hurricane funds
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

Like many Americans, Hayden Cook decided long ago who to vote for in this year’s presidential election.

And yet, every day, the 19-year-old from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania is bombarded with political ads, despite installing a blocker on YouTube and opting out of cable television.

“It’s still so constant,” Cook said. “Work is six minutes away – you’re already hearing two or three ads; then we have the radio on at work and there’s ads there.”

More than $10bn (£7.6bn) is expected to be spent on political advertising this election. That is up some 20-25% from 2020 – itself a record-setting cycle – depending on which forecaster is consulted.

Most of that money will be funnelled through a handful of critical, highly competitive states that are expected to decide the election, with almost $1bn going towards one state alone: Pennsylvania.

The Keystone State is expected to attract $935m in ad spending this election, including $450m on the presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris, according to research firm AdImpact.

And that does not include all the free media coverage the candidates have received as they repeatedly return to the state on the campaign trail.

Cook, a political junkie, doesn’t mind the barrage – but has been bemused by some of it.

At one point, the family home was getting multiple mailers each day from a conservative group, despite everyone being a registered Democrat.

“It’s absolutely non-stop,” Cook said. “It’s everywhere.”

In the UK, election campaigns are limited to 25 working days, spending is capped, and political advertising on radio and television is banned.

So the frenzy in the US can seem nonsensical – especially in a contest where so many voters like Cook have already made up their minds about the candidates.

Polling this year has suggested only a tiny fraction of voters – about 3%, much smaller than in historic elections – are undecided.

But surveys also indicate Trump and Harris are locked in a dead heat while even some decided voters are expressing dissatisfaction and uncertainty, raising the possibility of an election-day surprise.

“Advertising in presidential races typically matters only at the margins – it doesn’t matter very much – but if the margin is in play, it matters a lot to the overall outcome,” said Erika Fowler, professor of government at Wesleyan University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.

If election success were determined by dollars alone, Harris could be declared the winner now.

Her campaign – and that of Joe Biden before he quit the race – has been significantly out-fundraising and out-spending her Republican rival’s.

At the start of September, it had $235m in the bank, almost twice as much as Trump’s $135m.

Her campaign spent roughly $135m on media product and ad buys the month prior, which amounted to nearly 80% of $174m in total expenditures in August, the most recent official figures available, according to federal filings.

That was more than double the roughly $57m the Trump campaign spent on advertising and mailers the same month, and his overall $61m in spending was also far lower.

But elections are about more than a bottom line.

In the 2016 and 2020 election, Trump was also outspent but he dominated the headlines, giving him free coverage that helped to narrow the gap, Prof Fowler said.

• the BBC’s flagship political debate programme heads to Pennsylvania on Thursday, 10 October
• it will be recorded at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, presented by Fiona Bruce and featuring a local audience
• panel will include the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher, former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza and commentator Mehdi Hasan
• will be streamed on BBC website from 16:00 EST (21:00 BST)
• UK audiences can also watch on BBC One and iPlayer, global audiences on the BBC News channel

This year, since Harris became the nominee, she has appeared to close Trump’s lead with free press, while the Democrats’ spending advantage has continued to widen, according to Prof Fowler. Over some weeks in September, Harris had been outspending Trump on Facebook and Instagram by a factor of 16:1.

“I have never seen margins like that before,” Prof Fowler said.

When you factor in spending by outside groups, the gap between Trump and Harris narrows.

But Geoff Pereira, head of content and insights at Media Radar CMAC, which tracks advertising on traditional television and radio, said Trump may be gambling, based on past experience and tight polls, that commercials won’t be the deciding factor.

After all, pro-Trump groups backed by some of his wealthiest supporters, such as Elon Musk’s America PAC, have claimed they plan to steer their spending to other areas, such as turnout.

“He was outspent in 2016 and 2020 and he’s being outspent to a greater extent this cycle, at least so far,” Mr Pereira said. “Will it matter?”

“Reading between the lines, he thinks he doesn’t necessarily need it.”

Advertising by a candidate has been found to help boost turnout by supporters, said Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College. That makes it potentially important in states like Pennsylvania, where polls suggest margins will be slim.

But unless it is targeted, the messages can also backfire, Prof Shelton warned.

His research on the 2012 and 2016 elections found that political ads were as likely to propel opponents to the polls in anger as they were to bring in supporters.

“Ads don’t persuade,” he said. “What happens is the ad just pushes you towards your preconceptions. It polarises, it enflames.”

“If you get a balanced audience, it looks like you’re increasing the other side’s votes just as much as your own,” he said.

Harris’s Facebook page is currently running more than 300 ads targeting voters in Pennsylvania, compared with 22 on Trump’s page, many of them pitched to younger audiences and women, a BBC Verify analysis found.

But mass advertising on traditional television – which tends to reach a population of older, more reliable voters – continues to account for the majority of spending for both campaigns.

Over the summer, campaign ads focused on issues important to each candidates’ base: immigration for Trump and healthcare and abortion for Harris.

But in more recent weeks, the economy – an issue of importance to voters in both camps and one in which Trump and Republicans have historically held the advantage – has gained focus, Prof Fowler said.

In Pennsylvania, Trump has attacked Harris over fracking, an advanced oil and gas drilling technique which she previously supported banning. Fracking plays a key role in the state, which is the second biggest producer of natural gas in the US.

Harris has spotlighted adverts aimed at traditional Republicans and rural voters, in which former Trump voters and farmers argue that he worked only for the wealthy.

All the ads can make for awkward moments in politically diverse company, said Tim Anzelone, a 36-year-old from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who recently hosted a watch party to celebrate the start of the season for his NFL team, the Steelers.

Worried about political ads spurring arguments among his guests, he strategised ahead of time to mute the television during every commercial break.

The plan worked, he said: “People didn’t pay attention… I would guess 50% of the ads were presidential [election-related] and nobody talked about it.”

He said he was ready for the election to be over, having already made up his mind about the race – a private decision he declined to share.

“The ads definitely don’t sway me at all,” he said. “I always do think it’s a huge waste of money but it must be working for someone.”

In future elections, Prof Shelton said he expected targeting to become much more precise, reducing the risk of backlash and uncomfortable party dynamics – but also likely pushing America further apart.

“My sad projection would be then we’re going to get even more siloed and polarised,” he said. “I’m going to see a certain set of ads that make me believe one thing and you’re going to see a certain set of ads that make you believe another.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ANALYSIS: What could be the ‘October Surprise’?
• FACT-CHECK: Debunking Trump claim about hurricane funds
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

There are few stars whose impact on Bollywood is as enduring as that of Rekha. As the actor turns 70 on Thursday, film writer Yasser Usman explores her charm and legacy.

Rekha is one of India’s most glamorous icons – a woman who captured headlines and people’s imaginations for decades while blazing a path for generations of female actors in India.

In the 1970s, she was widely covered for her transformation from a loud, gauche young girl from southern India who entered Bollywood with no knowledge of the Hindi language to a discerning National Award-winning actor who spoke impeccable Urdu and Hindi and brimmed with confidence.

But the unrelenting attention on her personal life took a toll as she withdrew from public life in the years since, choosing to fiercely protect her privacy.

Yet, time and again over the past few decades, Rekha has proved that the air of enigma surrounding her has only left audiences wanting more.

With almost every public appearance, she still captures hearts and creates viral moments on the internet.

Born in Chennai (then Madras) in 1954 as Bhanurekha, she was deeply affected by her mother’s – actress Pushpavalli – struggles and hurt by the absence of her father, Tamil film star Gemini Ganesan.

She was still a teenager when she started acting, mainly because her family faced financial difficulties. In Bombay (now Mumbai), the home of Hindi cinema, she had to grapple with an unfamiliar language and a male-dominated industry.

“Bombay was like a jungle, and I had walked in unarmed. It was one of the most frightening phases of my life… Guys did try and take advantage of my vulnerability,” she once said.

As her early work garnered attention, she faced relentless body-shaming, with viewers, journalists and even other actors ridiculing her weight and skin colour.

In her later interviews, she also spoke about how, as a teenager, she was forced to do some scenes she wasn’t comfortable.

Just as everything seemed to stack up against her, the young actor flipped the script.

With candid interviews and statements unheard of in 1970s India, Rekha became a headliner act for gossip magazines. The young starlet’s unapologetic frankness about her sexuality was nothing short of revolutionary.

Rekha was unflinchingly open about her relationships with her co-actors. But due to a lack of reciprocation in public by the men in question, she was often humiliated, with the press using unsavoury headlines to describe her.

In part challenged by the narrative around her, Rekha underwent a dramatic makeover in the mid-70s when she started fitness trends and learnt to pick the right make-up that worked for her.

An early pioneer of fitness trends, she brought liquid diets into popular conversations, became an ambassador for aerobics and embraced yoga long before it became a celebrity craze.

Once derided for her unconventional appearance, Rekha managed to redefine beauty and fitness standards and create a more democratic industry for actors of all skin tones.

But it was the re-invention of her craft that truly made her an ambassador of transformations.

Along with her appearance, she also honed her acting with meticulous attention to diction and technique.

Her performances were marked by a rare emotional depth in critically acclaimed films like Ghar (1978), where she delicately portrayed the trauma of a rape survivor. She effortlessly transitioned to comedy in Khoobsurat (1980) and her alluring performance in Silsila (1981) cemented her iconic mainstream appeal.

That same year, her career-defining role in Umrao Jaan elevated her to the ranks of India’s most celebrated actresses and earned her a national award.

Her foray into arthouse cinema showcased her immense versatility, with exquisite performances in Kalyug (1981), Utsav (1984) and Ijaazat (1987). Her versatility was on full display in the action-packed intensity of the blockbuster Khoon Bhari Maang (1988).

Her ability to seamlessly transition between genres and characters was the hallmark of her career.

Rekha heralded a new era in the Hindi film industry where she owned her narrative, built an aura around herself, and was rightfully crowned a diva.

In 1990, she married businessman Mukesh Aggarwal but the couple soon grew apart. The same year, when she was in the US for a programme, her estranged husband of just a few months tragically took his own life.

She returned home to lurid media headlines such as “The Macabre Truth Behind Mukesh’s Suicide” and “The Black Widow”.

Posters of her film Sheshnaag (1990) were vandalised, and she was shunned for a while by the film industry.

Being cast out overnight set off her final transformative phase.

For about a year, she put all her energy into the action-packed revenge-drama Phool Baney Angaare (1991), which did well at the box office.

But despite the audience’s love and her successful comeback, Rekha, once known for her fierce and candid persona, now presented a significantly toned-down, melancholic, and philosophical approach.

In an interview to BBC, she once said “[The media] would write whatever they want adding their own spicy takes… I was very angry and hurt. And whenever I am very hurt I tend to shut up. So that’s exactly what I did – I stopped talking.”

This was perhaps her final makeover, a metamorphosis which firmly established her as the enigmatic diva we know today.

Since then, not much is known of her personal life and her film appearances have grown sparser.

Yet, when she leans into her diva image, like in the sensuous song Kaisi Paheli Zindagani from Parineeta (2005), or when she takes to the stage to dance to one of her old hits, her fans are still glad to celebrate.

Kylie Minogue loves a puzzle.

Waiting for a concert to begin, she’ll chip away at crosswords, sudoku grids and the New York Times’ Spelling Bee to keep her nerves at bay.

Her friend, author Kathy Lette, once claimed the pop star is a fiend at Scrabble, saying: “She knows how to score big and doesn’t mess around.” (Coincidentally, Kylie’s name is a valid Scrabble word, scoring a respectable 12 points.)

But when she plays Wordle, the daily word-guessing game, she has an unusual strategy: Deliberately getting it wrong.

“It’s annoying if you get it in two lines,” she says. “I want it to be more of a challenge.

“I like to get down to the pointy end, where everything’s at stake.”

You could call it a metaphor for her career. Kylie thrives on challenges, and she’s faced more than a few over the last 37 years – from spiteful critics and creative mis-fires to a life-changing encounter with breast cancer.

Right now, she’s on a high, thanks to her global hit Padam Padam.

Released just in time for Pride month in 2023, the slinky, sinuous club anthem became an unexpected viral smash. Its onomatopoeic title, meant to represent a heartbeat, was quickly adopted as gay slang for anything and everything.

In the UK, Padam Padam gave Kylie her first top 10 hit in more than a decade. In February, she Padam-ed her first Grammy Award in 20 years. In March, she was Padam-ed a “global icon” at the Brit Awards.

In the fluctuating market of pop stardom, Kylie’s stock has never been higher.

“It’s so weird, because I never stop working,” she says, “but then there’s these peaks.

“I look at it like surfing – not that I’m surfer, but I have caught a wave once in my life, so I understand the principle.

“We’re paddling, paddling, paddling, and sometimes you catch a wave. So I really want to ride this one and enjoy the view – because I know how exhausting it is to paddle and miss the wave.”

• Watch the full interview with Kylie Minogue on BBC iPlayer.

That’ll be why Padam Padam’s parent album, Tension, is getting a sequel – an ex, if you please. Thirteen new tracks that dive deeper into the slick electro aesthetics of the original.

“I guess I’m really stretching it out!” Kylie laughs.

In the era of Eras, it’s unusual for a pop star to repeat themselves but, in this case, success bred success. After Tension topped the charts, writers from all over the world started pitching their best new material to team Kylie.

“I couldn’t say no,” she says. “The list kept getting longer and I said, ‘Maybe this is a shaping up to be… well, not the next album, because the next album will be a different thing, but a whole lot more than a little bit more’.”

The album features collaborations with Sia, The Blessed Madonna, Tove Lo, Diplo and Orville Peck. But the lead single, Lights, Camera, Action, reunites Kylie with Padam Padam’s co-writer Ina Wroldsen.

Packed with pulsing beats, it’s all about serving the fiercest of fierce looks. Karl Lagerfeld and John Paul Gaultier are namechecked in the lyrics. In the video, Kylie rocks a dress made from crime scene tape.

Does she still get a thrill from pulling the perfect outfit together?

“Um, the thought of fittings makes me go like this,” she says, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation.

“But when you find the outfit that works, there’s a real high. Then the next high is getting it all off – face, hair, outfit, shoes, all of it, and getting comfy again.

“I call it the debunk,” she says. “I’ll slip into a very worn pair of track pants and that one T-shirt that’s in favour for six months.

“Fifty shades of comfortable – that’s my buzz.”

When on tour, she’s required to change her outfit mid-show seven or eight times a night, navigating her way into corsets and sequins and feathered headdresses as a clock ticks down to the next song.

“It’s frantic, it’s really stressful,” she admits. “I might swear a lot.

“It just takes one thing to go wrong, and you’re all freaking out.”

She adds: “I did pass by the wardrobe [department] on a gig I did recently, and I said, ‘I’m a despicable human being. I’m so sorry.’

“They were like, ‘No, what happens in quick change stays in quick change’.”

The thought of the singer losing her temper is intriguing.

Of course she flips out sometimes – we all do – but “angry Kylie” is so antithetical to her public persona that it’s hard to imagine.

She’s one of pop’s most poised stars, choosing her words carefully and brushing away personal questions with a practised affability. In conversation, she offers glimpses of intimacy and vulnerability, but typically closes them off with a positive affirmation, neatly steering the discussion back towards her career.

The only people who know her true feelings are her family.

“When it’s not going well, that’s who I turn to – mum, dad, my brother and my sister,” she says.

Her younger brother Brendan, a camera operator, has even taught her a technique for shaking off stress, which she calls “the foofer valve”.

“When the emotion has got to come out, or you’ve got to have a big cry or a moan, you let out a noise, , like a kettle letting off steam, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I feel so much better’.”

The foofer valve was crucial at the start of Kylie’s pop career.

Early reviews called her music “hackneyed”, “lightweight” and “emotionless”. After watching her first Australian tour in 1990, the Sydney Morning Herald declared: “It is amazing how successful mediocrity can become.”

“It wasn’t cool that people were as nasty as they were,” she says now, “and it wasn’t some invisible person behind a keyboard.

“These were grown adults who should have known better.”

How did she cope?

“To be honest, I don’t know what made me keep going,” she replies. “But one of the blessings is that I had a job and I had to show up to work.

“There were definitely times when I would have liked to hide in a cave, so it’s good if you have that responsibility [of acting]. You have to show up, and then you’re distracted by other things.”

Critics might not have warmed to her, but the public were always on Kylie’s side.

Even during her ill-fated “indie years”, fans snapped up experimental and wayward songs like Confide In Me and the Nick Cave duet Where The Wild Roses Grow.

“I’m very proud of the times I swam against the current when it felt like things were going against me,” she says. “It’s a rewarding feeling.”

The new millennium brought a major reset.

Spinning Around, released in 2000, was a textbook comeback single, and she followed it up with the hypnotically cool Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – still the biggest-selling single of her career.

Then, in 2005, on the UK leg of her greatest hits tour, Kylie started experiencing blurred vision on stage.

Putting it down to exhaustion, she soldiered on, especially after a health check gave her the all-clear.

“When they say, ‘You don’t need to worry’, that’s what you want to hear, so you believe it,” she recalls.

But a second test revealed that Kylie had early-stage breast cancer. Her career was put on hold as she had chemotherapy and a lumpectomy.

The public responded with an outpouring of love that she describes as “really moving”.

To this day, she’s kept all the letters, drawings and cards that fans sent her.

“There were envelopes that just said, ‘Kylie Minogue, Australia’, and the post department bothered to [deliver] them,” she says.

“I just felt there was a trail of love and support. It really made such a difference to me.”

Kylie got the all-clear in 2006, and she hit the road again almost immediately.

Determination and persistence have been the keys to her longevity, and today it’s the search for the next Padam Padam that keeps her motivated.

It all links back to her love of word games. “Music’s a bit of a puzzle, too, trying to figure it all out.”

But where Brainteasers are bound by logic, pop music is more like gambling. Luck and timing are just as important as creative choices. And the public is petulant, demanding more of the same, but losing interest if you don’t evolve.

Kylie has successfully walked that tightrope for five decades, something that fellow pop icon Madonna acknowledged when she asked her to duet on stage in Los Angeles this March.

“It was kind of mind-blowing,” Kylie recalls. “I spoke to her manager and he said, ‘M would really like to sing I Will Survive with you’.

“The reasoning for that is she lost her mother to breast cancer, and she knows some of my story. But even more relevant, for her and I, was that we’re women who’ve survived this industry.

“It’s never easy,” she adds. “I don’t think anyone it to be easy, because where’s the challenge? But we’re still here, doing what we love.”

Pausing to reflect, the singer is momentarily overawed.

“There’s so much that’s happened that eight-year-old me, or even 20-year-old me, wouldn’t have been able to compute,” she says.

“You’re going to meet Prince one day. He’s going to write a song for you. You’re going to sing on stage with Madonna.

“I mean, I’m amazed. I’m like, ‘Is this even my life?'”

That’s one puzzle where the answer is self-evident.

Speculation over the wellbeing and whereabouts of Cameroon’s 91-year-old President Paul Biya has become a hot topic across Africa this week.

After attending the China-Africa summit in Beijing in early September, it was perhaps no surprise that he gave the UN General Assembly in New York a miss.

But when he stayed away from this week’s summit of French-speaking countries (La Francophonie) at Viller Cotterêts, north of Paris, the rumour mill went into overdrive, as he had not been seen in public for about a month.

Cameroon’s ambassador in France insisted that Biya was “in good health” and in Geneva – his habitual base when away from home.

Other sources suggested this was because he needed to rest under medical supervision after a heavy diplomatic schedule in July and August.

After all, he is Africa’s oldest head of state and the second longest-serving, narrowly beaten to that record by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.

Such mundane indications were not enough to still speculative guesswork about Biya in Africa-interested media and political circles.

So finally the government spokesman, René Sadi, issued a formal denial of the rumours, adding that the president would return home “in the next few days”.

And the head of the president’s private office, with him in Geneva, also said he was “in excellent health”.

Cameroon occupies a key strategic location, as the gateway to landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Apart from struggling to fully suppress jihadist violence around Lake Chad, it also wrestles with a complex and often violent crisis in its English-speaking regions.

In leading the response to these challenges, Biya has brought an unusual personal style that often eschews the front of the stage, without any apparent personal need to engage in diplomatic presenteeism or performative summitry.

He is a habitual non-attendee at many gatherings of African leaders.

Even back home, with his measured speech and cautious tone, Biya has for many years spaced his personal interventions, largely delegating the day-to-day running of the government, and handling of technical dossiers, to a succession of prime ministers.

Unexplained absences from public view have been nothing out of the ordinary for this most enigmatic of presidents.

Rumours that he has died do surface from time to time, largely because of these unannounced disappearances from the scene.

But this low-key style belies the determination with which he contrived his arrival in power in 1982, elbowing aside his patron and predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo, promising liberalising change before entrenching a hold on the presidency that no subsequent challenger or campaign of protest has managed to shift.

As a wave of multi-party democratising change swept across much of Africa at the beginning of the 1990s, Biya was one of several incumbent leaders to shrewdly adapt, allowing sufficient reform to take the heat out of mass protest while nevertheless firmly keeping control.

Since one narrow election victory back in 1992, he has shrugged off subsequent political challenges, helped perhaps by manipulation of the polls and certainly by the divisions among often tactically inept opponents.

Now, with Biya’s current seven-year term drawing to an end in November 2025, supporters have even been pressing the 91-year-old to stand again.

Critics feel that it is long past time for Cameroon’s national leadership to pass to a younger generation who could tackle national problems and explore opportunities for development and progress with more speed and dynamism.

In 2016 teachers and lawyers in the two mainly English-speaking regions, South-West and North-West, protested over the failure to properly resource English language rights and public services.

If Biya had responded more rapidly and with a more assertively generous and loudly touted reform package, perhaps he could have assuaged discontent early on – and thus averted the eventual slide into violent confrontation between the security forces and armed militants demanding outright secession.

Biya did later bring forward reforms – to meet the grievances of the English-speaking regions and, nationwide, to decentralise power to regional councils.

But sometimes citizens have faced long waits before the regime addresses their concerns – decentralised structures were not set up until many years after the original framework legislation had been passed.

Some Cameroonians are, however, comfortable with Biya’s restrained approach to leadership and his readiness to leave successive prime ministers to handle routine decisions.

They see his role as more symbolic and distant, akin almost to a constitutional monarch.

Certainly, this representational role is a dimension of the presidency with which he has seemed at ease.

On 15 August, for example, he was at Boulouris, on the Côte d’Azur in France, where he gave a detailed 12-minute address at the commemoration of the 1944 Allied landings to liberate southern France from the Nazis – an operation in which many troops from the French African territories took part.

And in fact, despite frequent absences from the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé – usually retreating either to his home village in the forested south or to his preferred international base, Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel – Biya has continued to take the key sensitive political and strategic decisions.

The main gatekeeper to the heart of power at the Étoudi presidential palace is the Secretary General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

A power system where Biya, as the head of state, keeps his cards so close to his chest inevitably generates gossip about his own intentions for the 2025 election and about potential successors.

But some of the senior regime figures most frequently tipped, such as Laurent Esso and René Sadi, are by now themselves far from youthful.

Support groups have also appeared to promote a passing of the torch to the president’s elder son Franck Biya, a businessman – although Franck himself has never shown any interest in politics or given any hint of such ambitions.

But in today’s Africa, where disenchantment with the political establishment runs deep, particularly among young urban populations, establishment attempts to secure the continuation of power can carry risks.

In neighbouring Gabon, President Ali Bongo was deposed by the army last year after the regime manipulated the 2023 election to deliver him a further seven-year term despite his fragile state of health.

And when Senegal’s President Macky Sall lined up his Prime Minister Amadou Ba as his successor, he was decisively rebuffed by the voters who opted instead for the young reformist opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

Biya and his inner circle may feel confident of avoiding such scenarios. But that will require a shrewd reading of popular sentiment, especially among youth and the middle-class in big cities such as Yaoundé and Douala.

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A fault with the BBC Weather website and app is leading to incorrect forecasts of hurricane force winds in the UK and across the globe.

Graphics show estimated wind speeds of 13,508mph in London and 5,293mph in Rome – far in excess of any genuine hurricane such as Milton which struck Florida overnight.

And temperatures of 404C in Nottingham, 384C in New York and 378C in Sydney were among those being wrongly displayed.

BBC Weather said it was aware of a data issue with a third-party supplier and it was working hard to fix the problem.

BBC News understands the fault is mostly affecting wind speed forecasts.

Presenter Matt Taylor said in a post on X: “Don’t be alarmed folks – Hurricane Milton hasn’t made it to us here in the UK! There’s been a data glitch between our suppliers and the app/online. Folk are working to solve the issue.”

In another post, lead presenter Simon King said: “Oops, don’t be alarmed by some of our BBC Weather app data this morning.

“Be assured there won’t be 14408mph winds, hurricane force winds or overnight temperatures of 404C.”

Forecasters have also acknowledged the issue on TV bulletins, which have not been affected by the fault.

In a statement, BBC Weather said: “We have an issue with some of the weather data from our forecast provider which is generating incorrect numbers and text on our BBC Weather app and website.

“It’s mainly been impacting wind readings but some temperatures are also displaying wrongly.

“We recognise there is huge interest in weather today and this is incredibly frustrating.

“We are really, really sorry about this and working very hard to fix the problem.”

A BBC spokesperson also apologised and said it was working with its supplier to fix the issue as soon as possible.

Meteorological forecasting company DTN, which supplies BBC Weather with data, said it was aware of the issue but did not know when it would be fixed.

A spokesperson for the US-based firm said: “There has been a problem, but at this moment we have no exact time when it will be working again.”

In Edinburgh, the glitch suggested winds speed would be 17,246mph. In Belfast, it was suggested gusts would reach 14,398mph, and in Cardiff winds were said to be 12,585mph.

Meanwhile, Truro in Cornwall was displaying wind speeds of 16,309mph and they were said to be 15,227mph in Liverpool.

Forecasts also currently say Paris will see hurricane force winds of 13,322mph and Bangkok 13,491mph.

In reality, on Thursday there will colder air moving in, be rain and drizzle in the south of the UK and blustery showers near the east coast.

Wind gusts will reach a maximum of 33mph in Aberdeen, according to the Met Office.

Next week Florida’s Hurricane Milton could bring uncertainty to UK weather if its remnants end up in the Atlantic, but the Met Office said it was “highly unlikely to reach the UK.

Hurricanes are powerful storms which develop over tropical waters.

They involve sustained winds near the surface of at least 74 mph. In a category 5 hurricane, the most severe on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, winds can reach over 157mph.

Hurricane Milton, which made landfall as a category 3, storm has battered Florida, bringing tornadoes, floods, and the risk of storm surges.

More than three million homes and businesses are without power, and there have been “a number of deaths” reported on the Atlantic coast.

After more than 100 years hidden in the icy waters of Antarctica, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance has been revealed in extraordinary 3D detail.

For the first time we can see the vessel, which sank in 1915 and lies 3,000m down at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, as if the murky water has been drained away.

The digital scan, which is made from 25,000 high resolution images, was captured when the ship was found in 2022.

It’s been released as part of a new documentary called Endurance, which will be shown at cinemas.

The team has scoured the scan for tiny details, each of which tell a story linking the past to the present.

In the picture below you can see the plates that the crew used for daily meals, left scattered across the deck.

In the next picture there’s a single boot that might have belonged to Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command.

Perhaps most extraordinary of all is a flare gun that’s referenced in the journals the crew kept.

The flare gun was fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, as the ship that had been the crew’s home was lost to the ice.

“Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship,” explains Dr John Shears who led the expedition that found Endurance.

“And then in the diary, he talks about putting it down on the deck. And there we are. We come back over 100 years later, and there’s that flare gun, incredible.”

Sir Ernest Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish explorer who led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which set out to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.

But the mission was doomed from the outset.

Endurance became stuck in pack ice within weeks of setting off from South Georgia.

The ship, with the crew on board, drifted for months before the order was eventually given to abandon ship. Endurance finally sank on 21 November 1915.

Shackleton and his men were forced to travel for hundreds of miles over ice, land and sea to reach safety – miraculously all 27 of the crew survived.

Their extraordinary story was recorded in their diaries, as well as in Frank Hurley’s photographs, which have had colour added for the Endurance documentary.

The ship itself remained lost until 2022.

Its discovery made headlines around the world – and the footage of Endurance revealed that it is beautifully preserved by the icy waters.

The new 3D scan was made using underwater robots that mapped the wreck from every angle, taking thousands of photographs. These were then “stitched” together to create a digital twin.

While footage filmed at this depth can only show parts of Endurance in the gloom, the scan shows the complete 44m long wooden wreck from bow to stern – even recording the grooves carved into the sediment as the ship skidded to a halt on the seafloor.

The model reveals how the ship was crushed by the ice – the masts toppled and parts of the deck in tatters – but the structure itself is largely intact.

Shackleton’s descendants say Endurance will never be raised – and its location in one of the most remote parts of the globe means visiting the wreck again would be extremely challenging.

But Nico Vincent from Deep Ocean Search, who developed the technology for the scans, along with Voyis Imaging and McGill University, said the digital replica offers a new way to study the ship.

“It’s absolutely fabulous. The wreck is almost intact like she sank yesterday,” said Mr Vincent, who was also a co-leader for the expedition.

He said the scan could be used by scientists to study the sea life that has colonised the wreck, to analyse the geology of the sea floor, and to discover new artefacts.

“So this is really a great opportunity that we can offer for the future.”

The scan belongs to the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust who also funded and organised the expedition to find Shackleton’s ship.

The Endurance documentary is premiering at the London Film Festival on 12 October and will be released in cinemas in the UK on 14 October.

A group of Sub-Saharan African men are playing bingo in a conference room of a hotel near the northern Spanish city of León.

They laugh and celebrate when their numbers are called out, but many of these asylum seekers have harrowing stories.

Among them is Michael, who fled Ghana to escape a violent feud that saw his sister and father killed. After travelling by land to Morocco, he paid a trafficker who put him on an inflatable boat crammed with people which took him to the Canary Islands.

“I was so happy, because I knew all my troubles, and the people trying to kill me, were behind me,” he says. “Because once you are in Spain you are safe.”

In Ghana he worked as a petrol pump attendant and a storekeeper. He also started studying human resource management, which he hopes to be able to continue in Spain once he has settled.

“Spain is one of the most respected countries in the world,” he says. “Being here is an opportunity for me.”

Around 170 asylum seekers are staying in this hotel, in the town of Villaquilambre, which has been converted into a migrant centre.

They are among the many thousands of people who take the maritime route between the African coast and Spain each year.

So far this year, more than 42,000 undocumented migrants have arrived in Spain, an increase of 59% on 2023, the vast majority having undertaken the perilous crossing to the Canary Islands.

The archipelago’s difficulties in managing these large numbers have contributed to a fierce political debate about immigration, mirroring that in many other European countries. In Spain the controversy is driven in great part by the far-right Vox party, which frequently describes the trend as an “invasion”.

However, the arrivals have also underlined a major potential source of manpower for an economy which faces stiff demographic challenges.

Javier Díaz-Giménez, a professor of economics at the IESE business school and an expert in pensions, says that a baby boom which lasted from the mid-50 to the late-70s has created a generation of Spaniards who are heading for pension age, and the “baby crash” that followed means there are not enough workers to replace them.

“The next 20 years are going to be critical, because more and more people are going to retire,” he says. “According to the most recent demographic scenario, 14.1 million people will retire during that time.”

One way of tackling the workforce deficit, he says, is to ape the kind of economic model implemented by Japan, which has a similarly low birth rate, by investing heavily in algorithms and machines. The obvious alternative to that is immigration.

“If you want to grow GDP, if you want to pay pensions for all the retiring baby boomers, you need to grow GDP in a different way to how we’re growing it now, because there will not be as many people, unless we bring them in through immigration,” adds Prof Díaz-Giménez.

Spain’s central bank has put a figure on the projected labour shortfall. In a report published in April, it said that the country will need around 25 million immigrants over the next 30 years.

The left-wing Spanish government has also made the economic case for immigrants, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez describing them as representing “wealth, development and prosperity” for his country, while on a recent tour of Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal.

“The contribution of migrant workers to our economy is fundamental, as is the sustainability of our social security system and pensions,” he said.

Mr Sánchez’s coalition is hoping that a proposal to legalise the status of up to 500,000 undocumented migrants, mainly from Latin America, will get through parliament. Spain has seen nine such mass regularisations in its democratic era, most recently in 2005 under a previous government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.

However, the country’s economic needs contrast with ordinary Spaniards’ perception of immigration. A new poll shows that 41% of people are “very worried” by the phenomenon, making it their fifth-biggest concern after inflation, housing, inequality and unemployment.

While only 9% of Spaniards associate immigrants with economic progress, 30% link them to insecurity, and 57% believe that there are too many of them.

Villaquilambre, meanwhile, is an example of how undocumented new arrivals can integrate into the workforce.

The asylum seekers here are allowed to work six months after their arrival in Spain.

“Before they receive the authorisation to start working we place great emphasis on them learning Spanish, as well as offering them training courses and classes on risk avoidance,” says Dolores Queiro, of the San Juan de Dios Foundation, the non-governmental organisation that manages the migrant centre in Villaquilambre.

“When the date for them being able to start working approaches we get in touch with different companies – and they contact us as well – and we start looking for jobs for them.”

Companies get in touch, she says, “because they know that we have people here who want to work.”

Makan, from Mali, has just started working for a local business, GraMaLeon, which makes walls, bathrooms and kitchen counters out of marble and granite. He commutes the short distance from the hotel to the factory each day on an electric scooter.

“I’m happy to be working,” he says, in halting Spanish, after completing a shift hauling slabs of marble around the factory.

Ramiro Rodríguez Alaez, co-owner of the business, which employs around 20 people, says that finding workers is not easy.

“We need a lot of manpower in this profession. But it’s tough, it gets cold, you have to lift heavy weight, so it’s not a job that many young people here want to do.

“There aren’t a lot of companies in this industry around here, but those that do exist all need people. We’re all looking for people locally and we can’t find them.”

He adds: “Immigrants provide an important source of manpower for us.”

The winner of Fat Bear Week has finally been crowned – and she’s no stranger to the title.

Voters chose 128 Grazer, a mother bear who won Fat Bear Week last year, and whose cub was recently killed by her last remaining opponent in the competition, 32 Chunk.

The competition, which started a decade ago, allows viewers to watch live cameras of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve and pick their favourite brown bear after the animals have beefed up on salmon in preparation for winter.

In a post on X, explore.org, the nature network that runs the contest, said 128 Grazer was “the first working mom to ever be crowned champion”.

In July, two of Grazer’s cubs were swept over a waterfall, where Chunk – the most dominant bear on the river – attacked them both, according to explore.org. One later succumbed to its injuries.

The two bears were later pitted against each other in Fat Bear Week’s competition, with Grazer eventually coming out on top, winning more than double Chunk’s votes with more than 71,000 votes.

A highly defensive mother bear, the 20-year-old Grazer is raising her third litter.

“Her fearless nature is respected by other bears who often choose to give her space instead of risking a confrontation. This elevates Grazer’s rank in the bear hierarchy above almost all bears except for the largest males,” her bear profile states.

Fat Bear Week came after a grisly series of events this year. The beginning of the contest was delayed by one day after a female bear was killed by a male bear on camera.

Each year, 12 bears are chosen for the Fat Bear Week bracket and fans can vote online to decide the winner.

Grazer also beat Chunk in 2023, when nearly 1.4 million votes were cast from more than 100 countries, according to Katmai Conservancy and explore.org.

South Korean pop star Hanni has made a surprise announcement, saying she will testify to the country’s National Assembly in a hearing about bullying in the music industry.

The singer, who is part of the girl group NewJeans, said she had made the decision without telling her managers or her record label, Ador.

“I believe going forward is the right thing to do, no matter how much I think about it,” she wrote to fans on social media.

It comes after she and the other four members of her band raised concerns about their treatment by Ador during an impromptu YouTube livestream on 11 September.

The group were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, scoring international hits with feathery, throwback songs like SuperShy and OMG.

However, their mentor and record label chief executive, Min Hee-Jin, was removed earlier this year over allegations that she had planned a hostile takeover that would make NewJeans and Ador independent of their parent label, Hybe. Min has denied the accusations against her.

In the band’s YouTube video, which has since been deleted, they demanded Min’s reinstatement; and made claims of workplace harassment.

Hanni said that when she greeted the members of another band at their record label offices, their manager had instructed them to “ignore her”.

The 20-year-old reported the incident to Ador’s new chief executive, Kim Joo-Young – but said her concerns had been brushed off.

“She told me it was too late and that I had no evidence. Seeing her ignoring the issue made me feel like there was no one to protect us,” Hanni alleged during the livestream.

The accusation sparked a war of words between fans of NewJeans and the girl group Illit – who were rumoured to be the antagonists.

As the row escalated, the agency managing Illit, Belift Lab, was forced to issue a denial.

“Illit’s managers never instructed anyone to ‘ignore’ NewJeans members, and the Illit members have always greeted NewJeans when passing by,” the agency said.

Belift said they had reviewed a video that showed Illit’s members bowing to Hanni on the day of the incident – but that footage of their subsequent interactions was not available.

The agency also denied claims from the parents of NewJeans members that this later footage had been deleted on purpose.

The row eventually caught the attention of South Korea’s Environment and Labour Committee, who have summoned both Hanni and Kim Joo-Young to testify to an audit on workplace harassment later this month.

In her statement, Hanni told fans: “I’ve made my decision. I’m going to go the National Assembly. A parliamentary inspection!

“I’m going alone. They still don’t know… neither my managers nor the company.”

The singer thanked fans for their support, and reassured them that they don’t “need to worry”.

“I’m doing this for myself and for the members [of NewJeans], and also for the Bunnies [fans],” she added.

“No, it’s not difficult. I want to do this.”

Human activity is continuing to drive what conservation charity the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls a “catastrophic” loss of species.

From elephants in tropical forests to hawksbill turtles off the Great Barrier Reef, populations are plummeting, according to a stocktake of the world’s wildlife.

The Living Planet Report, a comprehensive overview of the state of the natural world, reveals global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past 50 years.

The loss of wild spaces was “putting many ecosystems on the brink”, WWF UK head Tanya Steele said, and many habitats, from the Amazon to coral reefs, were “on the edge of very dangerous tipping points”.

The report is based on the Living Planet Index of more than 5,000 bird, mammal, amphibian, reptile and fish population counts over five decades.

Among many snapshots of human-induced wildlife loss, it reveals 60% of the world’s Amazon pink river dolphins have been wiped out by pollution and other threats, including mining and civil unrest.

It also captured hopeful signs of conservation success.

A sub-population of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Mountains of East Africa increased by about 3% per year between 2010 and 2016, for example.

But the WWF said these “isolated successes are not enough, amid a backdrop of the widespread destruction of habitats”.

Tom Oliver, professor of ecology at the University of Reading, who is unconnected with the report, said when this information was combined with other datasets, insect declines for example, “we can piece together a robust – and worrying – picture of global biodiversity collapse”.

The report found habitat degradation and loss was the biggest threat to wildlife, followed by overexploitation, invasive species, disease, climate change and pollution.

Lead author and WWF chief scientific adviser Mike Barrett said through human action, “particularly the way that we produce and consume our food, we are increasingly losing natural habitat”.

The report also warns nature loss and climate change are fast pushing the world towards irreversible tipping points, including the potential “collapse” of the Amazon rainforest, whereby it can no longer lock away planet-warming carbon and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

“Please don’t just feel sad about the loss of nature,” Mr Barrett said.

“Be aware that this is now a fundamental threat to humanity and we’ve really got to do something now.”

Valentina Marconi, from the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, told BBC News the natural world was in a “precarious position” but with urgent, collective action from world leaders “we still have the chance to reverse this”.

This alarm call for the planet’s wildlife comes as world leaders prepare to gather for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, in Colombia, to discuss how to restore nature.

Almost 200 countries have committed to a landmark 2022 UN agreement to tackle nature loss, including setting aside 30% of the planet for nature by 2030.

The UK has signed up to the pledge, with the foreign secretary announcing the climate issue and decline in nature would be “central” to government policy.

Ms Steele said the report was an “incredible wake-up call”.

“Healthy ecosystems underpin our health, prosperity and wellbeing,” she told BBC News.

“We don’t think this sits on the shoulders of the average citizen – it’s the responsibility of business and of government.

“We need to look after our land and our most precious wild places for future generations.”

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A Spanish couple on their honeymoon in Singapore have been held in the country after protesting against the Singaporean owner of the football club they support.

Dani Cuesta posted photographs of himself outside the home of Peter Lim, the billionaire owner of Valencia CF, holding a banner criticising the business magnate.

Mr Cuesta and his partner Mireia Sáez were stopped while trying to leave Singapore airport on Friday and had their passports confiscated, Valencia Mayor María José Catalá told Spanish radio station Onda Cero.

The pair are assisting with ongoing investigations into the alleged offence of “taking part in a public assembly”, Singapore police told the BBC.

Singapore has some of the world’s strictest laws on public assembly, which includes assemblies even of one person.

The government says these laws are necessary to maintain order and safety.

In 2020, a Singaporean activist who had long campaigned for freedom of speech was arrested for posing with a placard of a smiley face.

Shortly after arriving in Singapore on Thursday, Mr Cuesta posted on X that he would “take some photos with my lovely flag”, which reads “Lim Go Home”.

Mr Lim is deeply unpopular with Valencia fans, who have seen their club’s fortunes decline significantly over the course of his ten year tenure.

Encouraged by users online, Mr Cuesta posted a series of photos of himself at various tourist spots in Singapore holding the yellow banner.

Another image shows him outside what is believed to be the luxury complex where Mr Lim lives in Singapore.

A video he posted shows Mr Cuesta placing a yellow sticker reading “Lim out” – a common sight in the city of Valencia – on the residence’s gate.

The images quickly went viral among Valencia fans and Mr Cuesta even gave a light-hearted interview to a Valencia football podcast on Thursday.

He explained that as soon as his wife suggested going to Singapore, he had a “lightbulb moment” and decided to bring a banner and some stickers, which he placed on lampposts around the city.

“I told her ‘this is something I have to do’… perhaps it will be for nothing but it sends the message that we don’t want these people in Valencia,” Mr Cuesta told Tribuna Deportiva.

“I’ve not been detained yet,” he joked. “My wife’s been reading up about the laws in Singapore – she’s looking forward to getting through immigration tomorrow.”

Earlier that day, Mr Cuesta had joked on X that he did not want to “end up in a Singapore prison as that’s not the way I see my honeymoon going”.

The following day, as they attempted to board a flight to Bali, Singapore authorities stopped Mr Cuesta and Ms Sáez, according to Valencia’s mayor.

“[The Spanish embassy in Singapore] confirmed that two people had their passports taken away, due to an ongoing police investigation,” Ms Catalá told Spanish radio station Onda Cero.

“They can leave their hotel but not the country,” she added.

Valencia CF, meanwhile, said it was aware of the situation of two of the club’s supporters in Singapore.

“Valencia CF and La Liga are in contact with the Spanish embassy in Singapore, who have assured us that both are being advised and assisted in everything necessary with the objective of this being resolved as quickly as possible,” the club said in a statement.

Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the BBC that its embassy in Singapore is “providing assistance to those affected and is in permanent contact with their families”.

One of Singapore’s richest men, Mr Lim purchased Valencia CF in 2014 and became the first foreign owner in the club’s history.

After an initial honeymoon period, he quickly became unpopular with fans as the team’s performances declined and the club ran up huge debts off the pitch.

Traditionally a team that would challenge for domestic and European titles, Valencia currently lie third-bottom in the league.

Mr Lim has particularly been criticised for his friendship with Portuguese “super agent” Jorge Mendes and his alleged influence on the club’s recruitment of players and coaches.

Another associate of Mr Lim is former Manchester United defender Gary Neville, with whom he co-owned English lower-league club Salford City until earlier this year.

Despite having no managerial experience, Mr Neville was appointed Valencia’s head coach in 2015 but was sacked four months later after a disastrous spell in charge.

Libertad VCF, a Valencia fan group, said in a statement it had “total support and solidarity” with the recently married couple and called for them to be “freed immediately”.

“Their freedom of movement has been violated, simply for peacefully exercising their right to expression,” the statement added.

The Princess of Wales has made an unexpected appearance alongside the Prince of Wales on a visit to Southport, where they held a private meeting with the bereaved families of three children killed in a knife attack in July.

This was Catherine’s first official public engagement since she finished her chemotherapy treatment.

Royal sources say she decided to join Prince William to show her “support, empathy and compassion to the local community”.

The couple spoke to emergency responders who helped at the scene of the devastating knife attack in the north-west seaside town.

Catherine gave a hug to some of the emergency workers, with fire chief Phil Garrigan saying “she could see the emotion in them”.

The royal visit to Southport had been planned as a low key event, to allow time to be spent in private with families of the three children who died and with the dance teacher who was present during the attack.

But Catherine was a surprise addition as she made one of only a handful of public appearances this year, since revealing her cancer diagnosis.

Wearing a long brown, autumnal-looking coat, she arrived with her husband to meet the bereaved families and emergency workers described by Prince William as “heroes”.

With her chemotherapy having ended, Catherine has begun a gradual return to work, including meetings about her early years campaign last month.

However, this is the biggest moment so far in returning to royal duties.

Catherine has spoken of having “good days and bad days” and Kensington Palace has cautioned that her appearances might have to be flexible and be subject to last minute changes.

The visit to Southport was intended by Prince William and Catherine to show the community that it had “not been forgotten”.

The prince and princess heard about efforts to bring the community together after the knife attack – and the wave of riots that followed.

Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, were killed on 29 July, 2024, in the attack on a children’s dance group.

The royal couple spent 90 minutes talking to the families of the three children – and later passed on the families’ thanks to emergency responders, in a meeting in Southport Community Centre.

Catherine told the emergency workers they had supported families through their “darkest times” – and she said: “On behalf of them, thank you.”

Ten other people – eight of whom were children – were injured in the stabbings.

Axel Rudakubana, 17, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

The royal couple told emergency workers from police and the health services about the importance of protecting their own well-being and mental health.

“The first thing we thought about was actually how on earth you guys are going to handle having seen what you’ve seen. So please take your time, don’t rush back to work, do whatever you need to,” said Prince William, who with Catherine has campaigned for people to be more open about mental health concerns.

The couple had made a donation, via their charity, to a fundraiser to help provide physical and psychological help for police and ambulance staff who were caught up in the attack and the riots that followed.

Former chief constable Andy Rhodes described the visit as a “massive boost” for emergency workers.

“It was quite emotional. It is still raw for people,” he said.

The funeral has taken place in Mumbai of Ratan Tata, the former chairman of one of India’s biggest conglomerates, Tata Group, who died on Wednesday aged 86.

Business leaders, politicians and celebrities were among thousands of people who paid their last respects at the centre where his body lay in state before being cremated.

Maharashtra state declared a day of mourning and his coffin was given a military salute as it was taken away for the funeral rites.

Ratan Tata took over as group chairman in 1991 and is credited with transforming it into a global powerhouse.

Thousands turned up at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, where Ratan Tata’s body was taken in the morning, to pay their respects.

His casket was wrapped in the Indian flag and covered with wreaths of white flowers.

Fellow business tycoon Mukesh Ambani, Home Minister Amit Shah and Bollywood star Aamir Khan were among those present to say goodbye.

Also in attendance was Ratan Tata’s dog, Goa, accompanied by two Tata employees. The dog was rescued from the streets of Goa state, which gave it its name.

The tycoon, who had a reputation for being modest and shy, was known for his philanthropic work, including animal welfare, health and education.

Tata’s death was announced on Wednesday night. He had been admitted to hospital earlier in the week.

“His legacy will continue to inspire us as we strive to uphold the principles he so passionately championed,” a company statement said.

The Tata Group is one of India’s largest companies, with annual revenues in excess of $100bn (£76.5bn), and he was one of India’s most internationally-recognised business leaders.

Founded 155 years ago, the group straddles a business empire ranging from Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel, to aviation and salt pans.

During his 20-year tenure, the conglomerate made several high-profile acquisitions, including the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover, and Tetley, the world’s second-largest tea company.

Some of those decisions paid off, while others – including a failed telecom venture and the Nano, which was billed as the world’s cheapest car but flopped – lost money.

Tata was born in a traditional Parsi family in 1937. He studied architecture and structural engineering at Cornell University in the US.

In 1962, he joined Tata Industries – the promoter company of the group – as an assistant and spent six months training at a company plant in Jamshedpur.

From there, he went on to work at the Tata Iron and Steel Company (now Tata Steel), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and National Radio and Electronics (Nelco).

In 1991, JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor. “He [JRD Tata] was my greatest mentor… he was like a father and a brother to me – and not enough has been said about that,” Tata later told an interviewer.

In 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian honour.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Tata as a “visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being”.

Israel’s armed forces have moved away from their positions near Irish troops in Lebanon, the Irish Defence Forces have confirmed.

It comes after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) expressed concern about the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) proximity to an outpost where a number of Irish peacekeepers are stationed.

Irish officials said there are now no IDF personnel or vehicles nearby, “having moved north of the post” on Tuesday evening.

“The cessation of activity and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from their positions around the Irish post marks a positive development amidst heightened tensions in the region,” they said.

On Tuesday, Israel announced troops had entered western Lebanon, with its invasion previously focused on the east.

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said a quarter of Lebanese territory is now under “Israeli military displacement orders”.

About 1.2m people have been displaced in Lebanon since Israel began intense air strikes last month in its conflict with Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had hit 185 targets in the previous 24 hours.

The situation around Irish positions remained “relatively calm overnight”, the Irish Defence Forces said.

“Although clashes between both parties to the conflict persist in other areas of the Irish sector,” they added.

The British rapper and online personality Yung Filly has been charged over rape allegations in Australia.

Real name Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, he is best known for his work with the YouTube collective Beta Squad and has presented shows on BBC Three.

He was arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday and extradited to Perth the following day to attend a court hearing.

Barrientos, 29, was charged on Thursday and has had his bail application approved. His representatives have been contacted for comment.

The full charges include four counts of sexual penetration without consent, three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of impeding a person’s normal breathing or circulation by applying pressure on or to their neck.

It is alleged he brought a woman in her 20s back to his hotel room after he had performed at the nightclub Bar1 in Perth.

The attack is alleged to have taken place on 28 September.

He was represented in Perth Magistrates Court by barrister Seamus Rafferty SC, who applied for bail on Barrientos’ behalf.

The 29-year-old, who was in Australia touring his music, has also appeared in the UK on Soccer Aid on ITV and The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer on Channel 4.

Barrientos also won a MOBO Award for best media personality in 2021.

For days, residents of Florida’s Gulf Coast were warned to evacuate as Hurricane Milton approached – less than two weeks after the south-eastern US was thrashed by Hurricane Helene.

But from her home in Tampa, squarely in the path of the coming storm, Chynna Perkins decided to stay.

By Thursday morning, she said she, her husband Sterling and their pets had weathered the storm but lost power.

As the storm came and went, Perkins talked the BBC through her situation with a series of voice notes and calls, describing how Milton barrelled through her neighbourhood of West Tampa.

Her decision to stay was a matter of gut instinct, she said, after years living through Florida’s storms. Twenty-five miles (40km) east of the sea, and half a mile west of Tampa’s Hillsborough River, she felt protected from any storm surge.

“And then, as far as evacuation zones, we’re in one of the last ones. So, you know, I’m not concerned,” she said.

The couple had also worried about finding accommodation. “With two dogs over 200lbs (91kg), it’s a big thing,” she said.

Here is her account of the storm as it came and went.

The morning in Tampa was typical, Perkins said. “When I woke up, it was grey, light drizzle.”

She and Sterling had spent days preparing. They bought canned goods, sandwich supplies, water and extra dog food. They filled their bathtubs with water, charged their phones, emergency lamps and batteries.

“Our neighbourhood is boarded up,” she said. The historic homes in her West Tampa neighbourhood were half-hidden by plywood.

Her own home, a modern and neat single-storey house painted white, had temporary Kevlar covers on all the doors and windows. “We’re prepared as much as we can be,” she said.

For now, she felt safe. “There’s no reason for us to be on the road taking up resources, and hotel rooms, and contributing to traffic and congestion,” she said.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Where is Hurricane Milton heading?
• Why Hurricane Milton is causing tornadoes
• Evacuees: ‘Waiting out Milton was gamble we weren’t willing to make’
• BBC Verify: No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’

Within hours, the weather seemed to have shifted for the worse. The skies above Perkins’ home had turned entirely grey.

“Rain and wind are definitely picking up, you can hear it,” she said, walking outside on her patio, where small pools of water had begun to form on her back lawn.

At 17:30 EDT (21:30 GMT), the rain became more intense, carried by the whipping wind diagonally through the sky.

“The wind is really starting to pick up,” Perkins said again. The gusts roared over her voice, nearly drowning her out on the phone.

By this point, Milton’s eye was creeping towards the coast, just about an hour away from landfall.

“The wind is really starting to whip,” Perkins said. “We’re getting 20-30 minutes of really strong rain, then a dead period.”

“My anxiety has been through the roof this whole time. I’m trying not to throw up thinking about it. It is very, very eerie, just to see and hear how powerful it is,” she added.

“The anxiety comes from the waiting game. We’ve known for four days that this hurricane is coming. I just want to get through it so I can stop feeling this way.”

Soon after Milton reached Florida, the lights went out.

“We’re still good, minus losing power, which we expected,” Perkins said. “It feels like we’re in a tornado, without the whistling sound. We’ve already seen a few transformers blow in our neighbourhood just by looking out the back porch.”

They have no generator, so they played a game of Jenga in the dark. Sterling took up a temporary post by the sliding glass door that leads to their backyard. “He kind of went into the mode of ‘what happens in a worst case scenario,’” Perkins said.

She did not expect the storm to be so powerful. But she did not regret staying.

“There’s a kind of a relief, in the sense that it’s here.”

“OK, morning after,” Perkins said, sending a video clip of her backyard. “We’ve got clear skies.”

It was windy still, she said, but no sight of any fallen trees and no real damage to her home.

“We fared the storm well,” she said. “You can hear people’s generators already kicking on and chainsaws in the background, so it sounds like people are already getting to work.”

But there was no power yet. Perkins’ home is close to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where members of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department are being housed.

“I’m hoping that means we’ll get power sooner, rather than later.”

• Does US lack relief money for Hurricane Milton?
• How Hurricane Milton compares to Hurricane Helene
• Is climate change making hurricanes and typhoons worse?
• Hurricanes: A look inside the deadly storms

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Ratan Tata, the philanthropist and former chairman of Tata Group who has died aged 86, played an instrumental role in globalising and modernising one of India’s oldest business houses.

His ability to take bold, audacious business risks informed a high-profile acquisition strategy that kept the salt-to-steel conglomerate founded 155 years ago by his forefathers relevant after India liberalised its economy in the 1990s.

At the turn of the millennium, Tata executed the biggest cross-border acquisition in Indian corporate history – buying Tetley Tea, the world’s second largest producer of teabags. The iconic British brand was three times the size of the small Tata group company that had bought it.

In subsequent years, his ambitions grew only bigger, as his group swallowed up major British industrial giants like the steelmaker Corus and the luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover.

While the acquisitions didn’t always pay off – Corus was bought at very expensive valuations just before the global financial crisis of 2007, and remained a drag on Tata Steel’s performance for years – they were big power moves.

They also had a great symbolic effect, says Mircea Raianu, historian and author of Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism. He adds that they “represented ‘the empire striking back’ as a business from a former colony took over the motherland’s prize assets, reversing the sneering attitude with which British industrialists looked upon the Tata Group a century earlier”.

The Tata Group’s outlook had been “outward-oriented” from the very beginning, according to Andrea Goldstein, an economist who published a study in 2008 on the internationalisation of Indian companies, with a particular focus on Tata.

As early as in the 1950s, Tata companies operated with foreign partners.

But Ratan Tata was keen to “internationalise in giant strides, not in token, incremental steps”, Ms Goldstein pointed out.

His unconventional education in architecture and a ring side view of his family group companies may have played a part in the way he thought about expansion, says Mr Raianu. But it was the “structural transformation of the group” he steered, that allowed him to execute his vision for a global footprint.

Tata had to fight an exceptional corporate battle at Bombay House, the group headquarters, when he took over as the chairman of Tata Sons in 1991 – an appointment that coincided with India’s decision to open up its economy.

He began centralising increasingly decentralised, domestic-focused operations by showing the door to a string of ‘satraps’ (a Persian term meaning an imperial governor) at Tata Steel, Tata Motors and the Taj Group of Hotels who ran operations with little corporate oversight from the holding company.

Doing this allowed him not only to surround himself with people who could help him execute his global vision, but also prevent the Tata Group – protected thus far from foreign competition – from fading into irrelevance as India opened up.

At both Tata Sons, the holding company, as well as individual groups within it, he appointed foreigners, non-resident Indians and executives with contacts and networks across the world in the management team.

He also set up the Group Corporate Centre (GCC) to provide strategic direction to group companies. It provided “M&A [mergers and acquisitions] advisory support, helped the group companies to mobilise capital and assessed whether the target company would fit into the Tata’s values”, researchers at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore wrote in a 2016 paper.

The GCC also helped Tata Motors raise money for high-profile buyouts like Jaguar Land Rover which dramatically changed the global perception of a company that was essentially a tractor manufacturer.

“The JLR takeover was widely seen as ‘revenge’ on Ford, which had derisively refused to acquire Tata Motors in the early 90s and then was beaten to the punch on the deal by Tata Motors. Taken together, these acquisitions suggested that Indian corporates had ‘arrived’ on the global stage just as growth rates were picking up and the liberalising reforms bearing fruit,” says Mr Raianu.

Today, the $128bn group operates across 100 countries with a substantial portion of its total revenues coming from outside India.

While the Tata Group made significant strides overseas in the early 2000s, domestically the failure of the Tata Nano – launched and marketed as the world’s cheapest car – was a setback for Tata.

This was his most ambitious project, but he had clearly misread India’s consumer market this time.

Brand experts say an aspirational India didn’t want to associate with the cheap car tag. And Tata himself eventually admitted that the “poor man’s car” tag was a “stigma” that needed to be undone.

He believed there could be a resurrection of his product, but the Tata Nano was eventually discontinued after sales plummeted year on year.

Succession at the Tata Group also became a thorny issue.

Mr Tata remained far too involved in running the conglomerate after his retirement in 2012, through the “backdoor” of the Tata Trust which owns two-thirds of the stock holding of Tata Sons, the holding company, say experts.

“Without assigning Ratan Tata blame for it, his involvement in the succession dispute with [Cyrus] Mistry undoubtedly tarnished the image of the group,” says Mr Rainu.

Mistry, who died in a car crash in 2022 was ousted as Tata chairman in 2016 following a boardroom coup that sparked a long-running legal battle which the Tatas eventually won.

In spite of the many wrong turns, Tata retired in 2012, leaving the vast empire he inherited in a much stronger position both domestically and globally.

Along with big-ticket acquisitions, his bid to modernise the group with a sharp focus on IT has served the group well over the years.

When many of his big bets went sour, one high-performing firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), along with JLR carried the “dead weight of other ailing companies”, Mr Raianu says.

TCS is today India’s largest IT services company and the cash cow of the Tata Group, contributing to three-quarters of its revenue.

In 2022, the Tata Group also brought back India’s flagship carrier Air India into its fold approximately 69 years after the government took control of the airline. This was a dream come true for Ratan Tata, a trained pilot himself, but also a bold bet given how capital intensive it is to run an airline.

But the Tatas seem to be in a stronger position than ever before to take big bold bets on everything from airlines to semiconductor manufacturing.

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have clearly adopted an industrial policy of creating “national champions” whereby a few large conglomerates are built up and promoted in order to achieve rapid economic outcomes that extend across priority sectors.

Along with newer industrial groups like Adani, the decks are clearly stacked in favour of the Tata Group to benefit from this.

New Zealand’s defence minister has criticised “armchair admirals” for suggesting that a female captain’s gender was to blame for the sinking of one of the nation’s naval ships.

HMNZS Manawanui ran aground one nautical mile from the Samoan island of Upolu on Saturday night while surveying a reef. It later caught fire and capsized.

All 75 people on board were evacuated onto lifeboats and rescued early on Sunday, New Zealand’s Defence Force said in a statement.

Officials are now investigating the cause of the incident and assessing the wreck’s potential environmental damage.

“A court of inquiry has been stood up to establish what caused this terrible incident,” said Judith Collins, New Zealand’s first female defence minister.

“The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain.”

British-born Commander Yvonne Gray, who previously served in the UK’s Royal Navy, was the captain of HMNZS Manawanui.

She told the New Zealand Herald the incident saw her “very worst imagining” become a reality.

But Cdr Gray added that the crew had responded to the emergency “exactly the way I needed them to” and “acted with commitment, with comradeship and, above all, with courage”.

Collins said she was appalled to see online trolling from “armchair admirals, people who will never have to make decisions which mean life or death for their subordinates”.

She added: “I thought seriously in 2024 what the hell is going on here with people who are sitting there in their armchair operating a keyboard making comments about people that they do not know, about an area they do not know and they are just vile. Where’s a bit of decency.”

Collins said that women in uniform had been abused in the street in recent days.

“This is outrageous behaviour and New Zealand is not known for this and we are better than it.”

HMNZS Manawanui is the first ship New Zealand’s Navy has lost to the sea since World War Two.

Collins previously indicated that it had been in an area that had not been surveyed since 1987.

On Thursday morning, Samoa’s Marine Pollution Advisory Committee (MPAC) said the ship was “leaking oil from three separate locations”, but that there continues to be “no trace” of oil washing up onshore.

Samoan officials said it was believed that most of the ship’s fuel had burnt off during the fire onboard, and that oil in the sea had been observed dissipating quickly.

But some have expressed concern about the possible environmental effects.

Local resident Manu Percival told Radio NZ on Monday that he had seen oil along the coastline.

“There’s so many green sea turtles in that area, so many sting rays,” he said.

“Right where the ship went down just inland, there’s a huge lagoon of brackish water and it houses all sort of animals. Coconut crabs, everything. They’ll all be affected.”

New Zealand’s Defence Force said a navy team had been established “to react to any contamination of local beaches and to remove debris that has started to come ashore”.

It added that divers from the Samoan Ministry of Resources and Natural Environment had also “observed damage to the reef where the collision occurred”.

Military officials in New Zealand have said the inquiry into the sinking will investigate the sequence of events leading up to it, as well as the cause of the grounding and sinking.

New Zealand has a long history of gender equality and was the first country to grant women the right to vote.

But the nation’s most recent female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, received frequent misogynistic abuse while in office – a topic often debated in the country’s media.

About 20% of New Zealand’s uniformed defence force personnel are women.

South Korean author Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The 53-year-old fiction writer is a former winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian.

At the ceremony she was praised “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

The Nobel Prize committee has awarded the literary award since 1901 and this marks the 18th time a woman has won the prize.

She has won 11m krona (£810,000) which is the amount awarded to each Nobel Prize winner this year.

Han is the first South Korean winner of the prize, who was described by the Nobel Prize board as someone who has “devoted herself to music and art”.

The statement also added that her work crosses boundaries by exploring a broad span of genres – these include violence, grief and patriarchy.

A turning point for her career came in 2016, when she won the International Man Booker prize for The Vegetarian – a book which had been released nearly a decade before, but was first translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith.

It depicts the violent consequences for a woman who refuses to submit to the norms of food intake.

Han’s other works include The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.

Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm said at the ceremony that “she wasn’t really prepared” to win the prize.

Committee chair Anders Olsen also said she “confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life”.

He praised her “poetic and experimental style”, and called her “an innovator in contemporary prose”.

The chair added she has “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead”.

Han is the first female recipient of the literature prize since 2022, when it was awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux.

She is also the first female Nobel laureate this year.

The prize is awarded for a body of work, rather than a single item – there is no shortlist and it is notoriously difficult to predict.

Han is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won and was born in the South Korean city of Gwangju.

She moved to capital Seoul at a young age and studied Korean literature at a university in the city.

Her first published works were five poems in 1993, and she made her debut in fiction the following year with a short story.

Han, who has taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and is writing her sixth novel, has been published in more than 30 languages.

Last year’s prize was won by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, and previous winners include Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Bob Dylan.

South Korean pop star Hanni has made a surprise announcement, saying she will testify to the country’s National Assembly in a hearing about bullying in the music industry.

The singer, who is part of the girl group NewJeans, said she had made the decision without telling her managers or her record label, Ador.

“I believe going forward is the right thing to do, no matter how much I think about it,” she wrote to fans on social media.

It comes after she and the other four members of her band raised concerns about their treatment by Ador during an impromptu YouTube livestream on 11 September.

The group were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, scoring international hits with feathery, throwback songs like SuperShy and OMG.

However, their mentor and record label chief executive, Min Hee-Jin, was removed earlier this year over allegations that she had planned a hostile takeover that would make NewJeans and Ador independent of their parent label, Hybe. Min has denied the accusations against her.

In the band’s YouTube video, which has since been deleted, they demanded Min’s reinstatement; and made claims of workplace harassment.

Hanni said that when she greeted the members of another band at their record label offices, their manager had instructed them to “ignore her”.

The 20-year-old reported the incident to Ador’s new chief executive, Kim Joo-Young – but said her concerns had been brushed off.

“She told me it was too late and that I had no evidence. Seeing her ignoring the issue made me feel like there was no one to protect us,” Hanni alleged during the livestream.

The accusation sparked a war of words between fans of NewJeans and the girl group Illit – who were rumoured to be the antagonists.

As the row escalated, the agency managing Illit, Belift Lab, was forced to issue a denial.

“Illit’s managers never instructed anyone to ‘ignore’ NewJeans members, and the Illit members have always greeted NewJeans when passing by,” the agency said.

Belift said they had reviewed a video that showed Illit’s members bowing to Hanni on the day of the incident – but that footage of their subsequent interactions was not available.

The agency also denied claims from the parents of NewJeans members that this later footage had been deleted on purpose.

The row eventually caught the attention of South Korea’s Environment and Labour Committee, who have summoned both Hanni and Kim Joo-Young to testify to an audit on workplace harassment later this month.

In her statement, Hanni told fans: “I’ve made my decision. I’m going to go the National Assembly. A parliamentary inspection!

“I’m going alone. They still don’t know… neither my managers nor the company.”

The singer thanked fans for their support, and reassured them that they don’t “need to worry”.

“I’m doing this for myself and for the members [of NewJeans], and also for the Bunnies [fans],” she added.

“No, it’s not difficult. I want to do this.”

Indian tycoon Ratan Tata has died aged 86, says the Tata Group, the conglomerate he led for more than two decades.

Tata was one of India’s most internationally recognised business leaders.

The Tata Group is one of India’s largest companies, with annual revenues in excess of $100bn (£76.5bn).

In a statement announcing Tata’s death, the current chairman of Tata Sons described him as a “truly uncommon leader”.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran added: “On behalf of the entire Tata family, I extend our deepest condolences to his loved ones.

“His legacy will continue to inspire us as we strive to uphold the principles he so passionately championed.”

During his tenure as chairman of the Tata Group, the conglomerate made several high-profile acquisitions, including the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover, and Tetley, the world’s second-largest tea company.

UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said in tribute that Tata was a “titan of the business world” who “played a huge role in shaping British industry”.

A profile published in the Economist magazine in 2011 called Tata a “titan”, crediting him with transforming the family group into “a global powerhouse”.

“He owns less than 1% of the group that bears his family name. But he is a titan nonetheless: the most powerful businessman in India and one of the most influential in the world,” the magazine said.

In 2012, he retired as chairman of the group and was appointed chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, the group’s holding company.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Tata as a “visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being”.

Paying tribute on X, formerly known as Twitter, Modi recounted “countless interactions” with Tata and said he was “extremely pained” by his death.

Tata – whose body is lying at a cultural centre in Mumbai to allow people to pay their respects – is to receive a state funeral later on Thursday.

• Obituary: Ratan Tata, the ‘modest’ Indian tycoon

Tata was born in a traditional Parsi family in 1937. He studied architecture and structural engineering at Cornell University in the US.

In 1962, he joined Tata Industries – the promoter company of the group – as an assistant and spent six months training at a company plant in Jamshedpur.

From there, he went on to work at the Tata Iron and Steel Company (now Tata Steel), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and National Radio and Electronics (Nelco).

In 1991, JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor. “He [JRD Tata] was my greatest mentor… he was like a father and a brother to me – and not enough has been said about that,” Tata later told an interviewer.

In 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian honour.

Peter Casey, author of The Story of Tata, described Tata as a “modest, reserved and even shy man” who had a “stately calm” about him and a “fierce discipline”.

He was drawn into a rare unsavoury controversy in 2016, when his successor as Tata Sons chairman, Cyrus Mistry, was ousted from the role, sparking a bitter management feud. Mistry died in a car crash in 2022.

The business tycoon also had a lighter side to him. His love for fast cars and planes was well-known – the Tata group website describes these as some of his “enduring passions”.

Tata was also a scuba diving enthusiast, a hobby that fizzled with age “as his ears could take the pressure no more”.

He was also a dog lover and fondly remembered the many pets who gave him company over the decades.

“My love for dogs as pets is ever strong and will continue for as long as I live,” the industrialist said in a 2021 interview.

“There is an indescribable sadness every time one of my pets passes away and I resolve I cannot go through another parting of that nature. And yet, two-three years down the road, my home becomes too empty and too quiet for me to live without them, so there is another dog that gets my affection and attention, just like the last one,” he said.

He was also often praised for his simplicity. In 2022, a video of him travelling in a Nano car – one of the world’s cheapest cars, now mostly remembered as one of Tata’s failed dreams – went viral on social media.