India and Canada have expelled their top envoys along with other diplomats as the row intensifies over last year’s assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.

Trudeau said his government responded after police began pursuing credible allegations that Indian agents were directly involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Canadian police accused Indian agents of involvement in “homicides, extortion and violent acts” and targeting supporters of the pro-Khalistan movement, which seeks a separate homeland for Sikhs in India.

Delhi rejected the allegations as “preposterous”, accusing Trudeau of pandering to Canada’s large Sikh community for political gain.

Speaking on live television on Monday afternoon, Trudeau said India had made a “fundamental error” in supporting “criminal” acts in Canada and his government had to act on the latest findings.

“The evidence brought to light by the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police service] cannot be ignored,” the prime minister said.

“It leads to one conclusion, it is necessary to disrupt the criminal activities that continue to pose a threat to public safety in Canada. That is why we acted.” 

India has vehemently denied all allegations and maintained that Canada has provided no evidence to support its claims.

Relations between Delhi and Ottawa have been strained since Trudeau said Canada had credible evidence linking Indian agents to Nijjar’s murder.

The row led to a deterioration in ties, with India asking Canada to withdraw dozens of its diplomatic staff and suspending visa services.

On Monday, a furious statement from India’s foreign ministry said Canada’s allegations were influenced by Sikh separatist campaigners.

Later in the day, it announced six Canadian diplomats, including acting High Commissioner Stewart Ross Wheeler, had been asked to leave India by 19 October.

Mr Wheeler was also summoned by India’s external affairs ministry to explain Canada’s move.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Wheeler said Canada had given India the evidence it had demanded, it now needed to investigate the allegations.

“It is in the interests of both our countries and the peoples of our countries to get to the bottom of this,” he said.

Delhi has defended its High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, referring to his “distinguished career spanning 36 years”.

“The aspersions cast on him by the government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt,” it said.

The Indian foreign ministry also said it was “withdrawing” its top envoy and other diplomats.

“We have no faith in the current Canadian government’s commitment to ensure their security. Therefore, the government of India has decided to withdraw the High Commissioner and other targeted diplomats and officials.”

Earlier on Monday, Canadian police said they had taken the unusual step of publicly disclosing information about ongoing investigation “due to significant threat to public safety in our country”.

RCMP commissioner Mike Duheme told reporters at a news conference on Monday that there had been “over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life” which he said “specifically” focussed on members of the pro-Khalistan movement.

He added that the threats were sufficiently serious to warrant the RCMP’s public intervention.

“We reached a point where we felt it was imperative to confront the government of India.”

Officials said a dozen Indian agents were involved in the alleged criminal activities, but did not confirm if they were directly linked to the June 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Nijjar .

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot and killed by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia.

He had been a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement, which demands a separate Sikh homeland, and publicly campaigned for it.

India has in the past described him as a terrorist who led a militant separatist group – accusations his supporters called unfounded.

Canadian police called his killing a “targeted attack”.

In September 2023, Trudeau had told Canada’s parliament that allegations of Indian involvement in the killing were based on Canadian intelligence.

He called the act a violation of Canada’s sovereignty.

Frosty ties between the two countries seemed to have thawed slightly after India resumed processing visas in October 2023.

But last week, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly called the country’s relations with India “tense” and “very difficult”.

She also said there remained a threat of more killings like Nijjar’s on Canadian soil.

Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside India, a religious minority that lives mostly in the state of Punjab.

At least 21 people have been killed and eight others injured in a rare Israeli air strike in northern Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry says.

The strike hit a residential building in Aitou, a predominantly Christian village far from the areas where the Israeli military has carried out thousands of strikes targeting the armed Shia Islamist group Hezbollah.

Residents said a family recently displaced by the war had been living there.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reports. But it came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “continue to strike Hezbollah without mercy everywhere in Lebanon – including Beirut”.

“Everything is according to operational considerations. We have proven this recently and we will continue to prove it in the coming days as well,” he added.

He was speaking during a visit to a military base in northern Israel where a drone launched by the Iran-backed group killed four Israeli soldiers and wounded dozens on Sunday night.

The military said it was investigating how the drone evaded its sophisticated air defence systems and hit the Golani Brigade training facility near the town of Binyamina.

It was one of Hezbollah’s deadliest attacks on Israel in over a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah said it was a response to deadly Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which the country’s health ministry says has killed almost 1,700 people over the past month.

Most of the Israeli air strikes over the past week have struck in the majority Shia south and the Bekaa Valley in the east – areas where Hezbollah is strong.

Aitou, a Maronite Christian community located in the mountains near the north-western coastal city of Tripoli, was not a place which would have expected to be attacked.

“Oh mother Mary,” gasped one man as he walked through the devastation wrought on the village.

In the smoke and dust, bodies could be seen on the ground.

Residents said there was no warning, just a single, massive blast.

However, they also said several families displaced by the war in the south had recently moved to Aitou, and that the house which was hit had been rented out to new people just two weeks ago.

A Lebanese security source told AFP news agency that the building was “targeted shortly after a man had arrived in a car”.

The Lebanese health ministry said it was carrying out DNA tests to determine the identities of the remains recovered by first responders at the scene.

Also on Monday, the Israeli military said a strike in the southern Nabatieh area had killed the commander of the anti-tank unit of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.

Hezbollah has not commented on the report.

The military also said it had struck Hezbollah launchers used to fire a number of rockets into central and northern Israel on Monday.

Most of the rockets were intercepted or fell in open areas, according to the military.

One woman was lightly injured by a barrage of 15 rockets that were fired towards the northern town of Karmiel.

Israeli police also said debris from an interception fell in the Holon area, south of Tel Aviv, without causing any injuries or damage.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing new allegations of rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault after a series of fresh lawsuits were filed on Monday.

At least six lawsuits were filed in New York federal court by two women and four men. They include allegations that span from 1995 to 2021.

The unnamed accusers allege some of the assaults happened at Mr Combs’ parties, which were attended by major celebrities and music artists.

Lawyers for Mr Combs denied the allegations, saying in a statement to the BBC that he “has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman”.

One of the accusers said he was 16 when he attended one of the parties in the Hamptons in 1998. In the lawsuit, he describes being thrilled to get an invitation to Mr Combs’ party, which became a premier A-list annual event for celebrities.

The accuser said he saw countless celebrities and music artists as he walked around, and ran into Mr Combs while he was on the way to the bathroom. He said he started talking to Mr Combs about breaking into the music industry when they went to somewhere more private.

The accuser alleges that during their conversation, Mr Combs abruptly ordered him to undress.

The lawsuit includes a photo of the pair together at the party with the teen’s face blurred out.

According to the lawsuit, Mr Combs said it was “a rite of passage” and “the route to becoming a star”. The rapper told the teen he could make anyone a star and the teen had the right “look”, the lawsuit states.

Another lawsuit filed on Monday includes allegations by a woman who claims Mr Combs raped her in a hotel room in 2004 when she was a 19-year-old college student.

According to the lawsuit, she met the music mogul at a photoshoot, where he then invited her and a friend to attend a private party at his hotel. Once they arrived, the lawsuit alleges that Mr Combs “fondled, molested, and ultimately raped her” despite her repeatedly asking him to stop.

Texas-based lawyer Tony Buzbee, who is representing the accusers, said he is representing more than 100 people who plan to sue the rapper on allegations of sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

Mr Buzbee said that some of the alleged victims include children. He said the lawsuits are being brought under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, which allows victims to file older claims.

“We will let the allegations in the filed complaints speak for themselves, and will work to see that justice is done,” Mr Buzbee said in a statement after filing the lawsuits Monday.

“We expect to be filing many more cases over the next several weeks naming Mr Combs and others as defendants as we continue to gather evidence and prepare the filings.”

The lawsuits are the latest of more than a dozen that have been filed against Mr Combs recently, accusing the music mogul of assaults, rate and sexual extortion.

He has denied all civil and criminal claims against him.

Mr Combs is facing federal criminal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. A judge last week tentatively scheduled his trial to begin on 5 May 2025.

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York since his 16 September arrest. His lawyers have argued for his release until the trial, citing the jail’s “horrific” conditions.

A New York federal judge denied their request for bail, arguing that Mr Combs was a “serious flight risk”.

Google has signed a deal to use small nuclear reactors to generate the vast amounts of energy needed to power its artificial intelligence (AI) data centres.

The company says the agreement with Kairos Power will see it start using the first reactor this decade and bring more online by 2035.

The companies did not give any details about how much the deal is worth or where the plants will be built.

Technology firms are increasingly turning to nuclear sources of energy to supply the electricity used by the huge data centres that drive AI.

“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies,” said Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google.

“This agreement helps accelerate a new technology to meet energy needs cleanly and reliably, and unlock the full potential of AI for everyone.”

The deal with Google “is important to accelerate the commercialisation of advanced nuclear energy by demonstrating the technical and market viability of a solution critical to decarbonising power grids,” said Kairos executive Jeff Olson.

The plans still have to be approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as local agencies before they are allowed to proceed.

Last year, US regulators gave California-based Kairos Power the first permit in 50 years to build a new type of nuclear reactor.

In July, the company started construction of a demonstration reactor in Tennessee.

The startup specialises in the development of smaller reactors that use molten fluoride salt as a coolant instead of water, which is used by traditional nuclear plants.

Nuclear power, which is virtually carbon free and provides electricity 24 hours a day, has become increasingly attractive to the tech industry as it attempts to cut emissions even as it uses more energy.

Global energy consumption by data centres is expected to more than double by the end of the decade, according to Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs.

At a United Nations Climate Change Conference last year, the US joined a group of countries that want to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050 as part of efforts to move away from fossil fuels.

However, critics say nuclear power is not risk-free and produces long-lasting radioactive waste.

Last month, Microsoft reached a deal to restart operations at the Three Mile Island energy plant, the site of America’s worst nuclear accident in 1979.

In March, Amazon said it would buy a nuclear-powered data centre in the state of Pennsylvania.

With just weeks to go until the US presidential election, Kamala Harris is ramping up efforts to court black and Latino voters. Despite holding a clear lead among both groups, some Democrats have warned she needs to do more to energise these voters to turn out for her in November.

That’s in part due to recent polling which suggests Harris’s Republican rival Donald Trump is having success in winning over black and Latino voters, a continuation of gains he made in 2016 and 2020.

One New York Times and Siena poll indicated Harris had 78% support among black voters, compared to around 90% support for Democrats in recent elections, with men accounting for most of this drop-off.

This could prove crucial in a race that looks set to be decided by razor-thin margins. And even if this polling is off, in key battleground states modest gains among black or Latino voters could ultimately sway result.

In Arizona, for example, nearly one in four voters on 5 November is expected to be Latino, along with almost 20% in nearby Nevada. In another key state, Georgia, black voters constitute about 30% of the total. These are a significant amount of votes in seriously important states.

So what could be driving Trump’s apparent gains with these voters?

The economy, particularly inflation and the cost of living, is the primary issue for a majority of voters.

This is the case for many black and Latino voters, with the New York Times suggesting a sizable majority of both groups are dissatisfied with the current state of the American economy.

Among them is Quenton Jordan, a 30-year-old Virginia resident who once voted for Barack Obama, but has voted for Trump since he first entered the national political stage in 2016.

“Inflation has pretty much made it impossible, or extremely challenging, for people to provide basic necessities for their families,” Mr Jordan said.

“It’s tangible things like that, that make people say [they] don’t like the pressure I’m getting from the cost of goods. It’s making it harder for me,” he added.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

Across the country in notoriously “purple” Nevada, which has a large Latino population, Las Vegas resident Lydia Dominguez said that many Latinos “remember the economy under Trump”, adding that economic concerns means there’s “no longer a stigmatism” about supporting the former president.

“They can’t afford to live. That’s a really big part of it,” she told the BBC. “It’s no longer taboo to support him.”

Even some voters who are leaning towards Harris acknowledge that “pocketbook” issues have helped swing voters towards the right in their communities.

“There’s many people in my community who are switching. Lots of people will vote for Trump, on economics alone,” said Diego Arancivia, a former Republican voter in Nevada who is now voting for Harris.

“They’d never want to get a beer with him, but they think he has the tools to lift them up economically.”

Echoing the broader US electorate, both black and Latino voters have expressed concern about immigration and the handling of the US-Mexico border by the Biden administration.

Strong border controls and a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants form a central part of the Trump campaign’s platform.

The campaign has also found a receptive audience among some black and Latino voters who say they perceive the border as having been chaotic and dangerous under the Biden administration and, by extension, under Harris.

Rolando Rodriguez, a Trump supporter and one-time Democrat from Texas, said the everyday realities of the record migrant crossings during recent years are weighing heavily on the minds of some voters, even if those numbers have fallen this year.

“I live so close to the border, and I have never before witnessed a disaster like the one we’ve seen under Kamala and Biden,” he said.

Similarly, Mr Jordan – the black voter in Virginia – said that he believes asylum seekers and other foreign nationals are “taking resources that the black community has been asking for for decades”.

This was something Trump addressed directly on Monday, referring to an “invasion” of undocumented migrants having a “huge negative impact” on black and Latino communities.

Political science Professor Quadricos Driskel said black male voters in particular have turned away from what some see as a Democratic “embrace” of social agendas contrary to their own views.

“There’s this perception that there has been this assault on masculinity and what that means,” he said. “I think that’s what some black male voters are railing against.”

“It’s not necessarily the party itself,” he added. “It’s more the voters within the party and the verbiage around human sexuality and gender.”

Mr Driskell’s assessment was echoed by 49-year-old black South Carolina voter Clarence Pauling.

A barbershop owner and former police officer, Mr Pauling said the Republican Party’s views align more with his own religious values on gender and sexuality.

“You can’t go create your own agenda,” he said of the Democrats. “[If] you’re going to lead a whole country, you’re supposed to lead them the right way.”

On Monday, as Trump courted black and Latino voters at a town hall event in Pennsylvania, Harris ramped up her own efforts by releasing a list of policy proposals her campaign dubbed an “opportunity agenda for black men”.

She will also meet with black entrepreneurs this week in cities in key swing states, and speak with popular black media figures including radio host Charlamagne Tha God at an event in Detroit.

Trump, meanwhile, referenced the recent polling directly. “Our poll numbers have gone through the roof with black and Hispanic [voters], have gone through the roof,” he said. “And I like that.”

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

VOICES: ‘I’m uneasy’ – first-time voters weigh in

POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

The government says it is allowing some “eligible” Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside the British military to resettle in the UK, after they were previously rejected.

Under the previous government, about 2,000 Afghans who served with specialist units – known at the “Triples” – were denied permission to relocate to the UK after the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Armed forces minister Luke Pollard told the House of Commons a review had now found some applications were wrongly turned down.

Pollard said there was no evidence of “malicious intent” in the initial decision-making process, instead blaming poor record-keeping for any errors.

The so-called “Triples” were elite units of Afghan soldiers set up, funded and run by the UK.

On Monday, Pollard said the government has so far overturned 25% of the rejections.

He said a review had found new evidence that some of the Afghan soldiers had been directly paid by the UK government, meaning they were eligible for resettlement – and this evidence had been “overlooked” during the initial resettlement applications.

These errors were caused by a “failure to access and share the right digital records, and challenges with information flows across departmental lines”, he said.

He criticised the previous government for a “critical failure” in locating the correct paperwork.

The defence minister said the government had reviewed many of the cases as a matter of urgency because many of the Afghan troops “remain at risk” under Taliban rule.

Some of the Triples are reported to have been targeted and killed by the Taliban.

The review into the rejected applications was announced by the previous Conservative government in February, after former armed forces minister James Heappey said the decision-making process behind some rejections had not been “robust”.

Pollard said the review’s findings did not mean that all Triples would be eligible for relocation, adding officials were still re-assessing some of the applications.

Shadow veterans minister Andrew Bowie welcomed the continuation of the review.

He said the Conservatives wanted the correct decisions made on the “very important and highly sensitive applications as speedily and fairly as possible”.

A Canadian boba tea company has apologised after Marvel actor Simu Liu accused them of cultural appropriation on an episode of a Shark Tank-style reality TV series.

On an episode of CBC’s Dragon’s Den, the owners of a Quebec bubble tea brand called Bobba pitched their drink to potential investors, including Liu, arguing that they were “disturbing” the popular bubble tea market by using only three simple ingredients to “transform” the beverage into a “convenient and healthier” experience.

Liu pushed back against the entrepreneurs, accusing them of appropriating the Taiwanese drink, known as boba or bubble tea, which has became popular around the world.

“I’m concerned about this idea of disrupting or disturbing bubble tea”, Liu said as a guest on the star show.

“There’s an issue of taking something that’s very distinctly Asian in its identity and ‘making it better,’ which I have an issue with,” he added.

The Canadian-Chinese actor also pressed the business owners, Sebastien Fiset and Jess Frenette, about whether they had members of staff who understood the cultural significance of the “very Asian drink”, which is made with tapioca balls.

Mr Fiset responded that their “best partner” was in Taiwan – “they make all the recipes, all the boba”.

The episode quickly blew up on social media, where users attacked the Bobba owners.

The owners responded by issuing an apology on social media on Monday, saying they were sorry for the harm they caused “with our words and actions on the show”.

“Simu Liu raised very valid points regarding cultural appropriation and we welcome this learning opportunity,” the business owners said.

They added that they would be re-evaluating their branding, packaging and marketing strategies to “ensure that they reflect a respectful and accurate representation of our Taiwanese partnership and bubble tea’s cultural roots”.

Earlier Liu took to social media as well to try to de-escalate the conflict, arguing that the pair came on the show “in good faith”.

He said he ultimately decided not to contribute to the $1m (£765,000) investment Mr Fiset and Ms Frenette were seeking for an 18% stake in their company because of the issues he pointed out with their product.

“That doesn’t mean that I believe that they deserve harassment,” Liu said in the social media video.

Another judge on the show, Manjit Minhas, had agreed to invest in Bobba, arguing that “there can be new takes on things… Not everything has to be traditional,” when first hearing Liu’s criticism of the Canadian duo’s pitch on the show.

But following the social media storm the show created, she changed her mind, saying on Sunday: “After more reflection, due diligence and listening to many of your opinions, I will not be investing in Bobba Tea.”

In a video posted to her Instagram account, she added that she’d had to turn off comments on her social media platforms due to abuse received since the show.

“It is never OK to send hate and threatening messages to the entrepreneurs,” she said.

China on Monday launched new military drills off the coast of Taiwan in what it described as “punishment” for a speech given by its president William Lai, when he vowed to “resist annexation” or “encroachment upon our sovereignty”.

China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its own and its president Xi Jinping has vowed to retake it by force if necessary.

Taiwan said it detected 34 naval vessels and 125 aircraft in formation around the island on Monday.

Maps published by Chinese state media indicated its forces were positioned around the whole island. It said later that the drills had been successfully concluded.

The Chinese military, known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said the drills involved all wings of the army and were designed to simulate attacking Taiwan by land, sea and air.

Senior Captain Li Xi, spokesperson of the PLA Eastern Theater Command said the drills “fully tested the integrated joint operation capabilities” of its troops.

Taiwan’s airports and ports continued functioning as normal.

An earlier statement from the Taiwanese defence ministry condemned the Chinese move and said its priority was to avoid direct clashes which could escalate the stand-off further. Outlying islands were put on high alert, it added.

China’s foreign ministry confirmed it had simulated military assaults and port blockades, and described Taiwanese independence as being “incompatible” with peace in the region.

A post by the Chinese coast guard on its Weibo account later depicted the route of the patrol in the shape of a heart.

China has held several major military drills off the coast of Taiwan since 2022 and its fighter jets regularly enter Taiwanese airspace.

The latest exercise has been dubbed Joint Sword 2024-B by Beijing and had been widely expected since May, when drills bearing the same name and officially labelled as part A were staged.

That exercise, which China described as its largest yet, were timed to coincide with the inauguration of President Lai, who Beijing has long seen as a “troublemaker” advocating for Taiwan’s independence.

His latest comments, made on Taiwan’s national day, were condemned by China, which said he was escalating tensions with “sinister intentions”.

But while these drills were widely expected, the deployment and how close Chinese ships and aircraft were to Taiwan – as well as the fiery rhetoric – could be seen as very aggressive behaviour.

In any other context, it would have been seen as a dramatic escalation – but it came against the backdrop of tensions that were already very high.

The US reacted by saying that there was no justification for the drills after Lai’s “routine” speech, and that China should avoid further actions which may jeopardise peace and stability in the region.

The recent history of China’s military intimidation of Taiwan goes back to 1996, after Taiwan held its first direct presidential elections. China declared several areas around Taiwan off limits, and fired short-range ballistic missiles into those areas off the north and south coasts.

US President Bill Clinton quietly moved US Navy forces into the Taiwan strait to demonstrate to Beijing that the US would prevent an attack on the island.

Tensions eased considerably between 2008 and 2016 – until the leader of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen was elected as president. China considers the DPP to be a hard line pro-independence party, and responded by cutting off all direct contacts with the government in Taipei.

That situation has remained ever since.

In August 2022 US house speaker Nancy Pelosi flew into Taipei – the first time a sitting house speaker had visited the island since 1997. Pelosi’s visit and her open support for Taiwan was seen by Beijing as a huge provocation – coming close to a formal recognition of the government here by a very senior US politician.

It reacted with fury – holding two days of exercises and for the first time ever flying ballistic missiles over the island and in to the Pacific Ocean.

Lilly Ledbetter, whose name graces an equal pay law in the US, has died aged 86.

CBS, the BBC’s news partner in the US, quoted her children as saying she died peacefully on Saturday surrounded by family and loved ones.

“Our mother lived an extraordinary life,” added a family statement.

Ms Ledbetter’s activism led to the first bill signed into law by Barack Obama after he became US president in 2009.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act made it easier for workers to sue after discovering they were being discriminated through pay.

Mr Obama said that the law sent the message “that there are no second-class citizens in our workplaces”.

President Biden, who was vice-president during the Obama administration, described Ms Ledbetter as a “fearless leader and advocate for equal pay”.

He paid tribute, saying “her fight began on the factory floor and reached the Supreme Court and Congress” and she “never stopped fighting for all Americans to be paid what they deserve”.

“Before she was a household name, Lilly was like so many other women in the workforce: she worked hard, with dignity, only to find out she was being paid less than a man for the same work.”

Biden added it was “an honour to stand with Lilly as the bill that bears her name was made law”, describing the Fair Pay Restoration Act as a “critical step forward in the fight to close the gender and racial wage gaps”.

Ms Ledbetter worked as a supervisor for Goodyear, the tyre manufacturer, in Alabama for nearly 20 years before discovering she was being paid less than men doing the same job.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that she had no grounds to sue because her complaint had not been lodged within six months of the discrimination first taking place. Her law overturned that ruling.

The former president paid tribute on Twitter/X, saying Ms Ledbetter “never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work”.

“Lilly did what so many Americans before her have done: setting her sights high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren,” Mr Obama said.

Ms Ledbetter continued her advocacy after the law was signed.

She received the Future Is Female Lifetime Achievement Award from Advertising Week last week, according to the Alabama news site AL.com.

A new film about her life, called Lilly and starring Patricia Clarkson, has recently been shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif called police from Pakistan and admitted he killed her at their Surrey home, a court heard.

Urfan Sharif made the confession in an eight minute-call about an hour after his family’s flight had landed in Islamabad on 10 August last year, before Sara’s body was found.

Mr Sharif, 42, Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and her uncle Faisal Malik, 29, have denied murdering the girl at the Old Bailey.

Jurors were told Mr Sharif’s case was that Ms Batool was responsible for Sara’s death and his confession on the phone call and also in a note was false to protect her.

Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC told the court Sara had been the victim of violent assaults for “weeks and weeks, at least”, before he listed a series of injuries she had suffered.

He said Sara had external and internal injuries, including extensive bruising, burns and broken bones, old and new.

She had burns to her buttocks, caused by a domestic iron, and six “probable human bite marks” to her arms and legs, the prosecution said.

Dental impressions ruled out that the bite marks had been caused by the male defendants, but Ms Batool had refused to provide the impressions, the court heard.

Sara also suffered injuries to her ribs, shoulder blades, fingers and 11 separate fractures to her spine, as well as signs of a traumatic brain injury, the prosecution added.

Mr Sharif called Surrey Police from Pakistan where the family had fled before her body was found and told the operator that he killed his daughter.

The prosecutor said that in the call, which lasted eight minutes and 34 seconds, Mr Sharif told the operator that he “legally punished her” and she died.

Later in the call to police, Sara’s father was said to have told the operator that Sara had been naughty and that he then beat her up, jurors heard.

“It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”, the prosecutor said Mr Sharif went on to tell the operator.

However, Mr Emlyn Jones KC added: “Sara had not just been beaten up. Her treatment, certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling and brutal.”

The court also heard that next to Sara’s body was a note in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting.

Mr Emlyn Jones KC said it read: “Whoever see this note it’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating. I am running away because I am scared but I promise I will hand over myself and take punishment.

“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her but I lost it.”

Mr Emlyn Jones KC added: “As in the 999 call, on the face of it, the note appears to be a confession to having caused Sara’s death by beating her up.”

Jurors also heard that police found Sara’s body on a bottom bunkbed under covers as if she was asleep.

“But she was not asleep, she was dead,” Mr Emlyn Jones KC told the jury.

The three defendants, who lived with Sara before her death in August last year, are also charged with causing or allowing the death of a child, which they deny.

Mr Emlyn Jones KC added that each defendant was seeking to “deflect the blame” onto one or both of the others.

The prosecution said it was “inconceivable” that any of the adults could have carried out the abuse “without the complicity, participation, assistance and encouragement of the others”.

“None of them ever reported Sara’s abuse to any outside agency, who could have intervened,” Mr Emlyn Jones KC added.

The trial continues.

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The Godfather has never been a godfather.

At least, he is pretty sure that is the case.

One of the biggest film stars of all time, Al Pacino is sitting in a suite in a Beverly Hills hotel, looking surprised at the idea that this is an honour which has passed him by.

“I’m not convinced, but I don’t hang with people who’d ask me that, I guess,” he muses.

“I don’t remember anybody asking me that.”

If you are Al Pacino’s godchild and he has forgotten, as his character Michael Corleone famously said in The Godfather, “it’s not personal.”

Pacino has spent a lot of time recently looking back over his life, because at the age of 84, the star of films including Dog Day Afternoon, Heat and The Irishman has written his autobiography, titled Sonny Boy, after what his mother called him.

He explains that “part of the reason” he wanted to commit his life to paper was becoming a father for a fourth time last year – to a boy, who is now 16 months old, called Roman.

The book is a way of guaranteeing that the baby will have the opportunity to learn about his father’s story.

“I want to be around for this child. And I hope I am,” he shares.

“I hope I stay healthy, and he knows who his dad is, of course.”

Pacino, who has never married, is no longer with Roman’s mother, the film producer Noor Alfallah, but they are co-parenting. However, from what he says, most of his day-to-day involvement is limited to online contact.

“He does text me from time to time,” is what Pacino says about Roman.

“Everything he does is real. Everything he does is interesting to me. So, we talk. I play the harmonica with him on the other video thing, and we have made this kind of contact. So, it’s fun.”

Al Pacino, once again winning hearts and minds with an on-screen performance.

Friends have been contacting Al Pacino asking him why he’s written a memoir, and he admits to “sort of regretting it”.

Over the years he had turned down several offers but decided that now “enough has happened in my life it could possibly be interesting enough for someone to read”.

What he found particularly enjoyable was looking back over his childhood, growing up in New York’s South Bronx.

And it is clear that he has no problem revisiting his biggest films.

It is more than 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather made Pacino famous. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, has its 50th anniversary this December. Both films won Best Picture at the Oscars. (There was also The Godfather Part III in 1990, which Pacino says had “problems”).

The truth is that Pacino was almost not part of them.

At the time, things were rather different. He was literally almost made an offer he could not refuse.

Sitting back with a beaming smile, Pacino tells with relish the story of exactly how close he came to being sacked during the first two weeks of filming: “When your director talks to you and says, ‘You know, I had a lot of faith in you. What’s happening? You’re not delivering.’

“And you hear the chirping all around. You start to feel, I don’t think I’m wanted here.”

The studio was putting pressure on Coppola to replace Pacino, whose performance they felt was flat.

Everything would change with the filming of one of The Godfather’s most famous scenes, where his character Michael Corleone uses a gun hidden in a restaurant toilet to kill a mob boss and a crooked cop, a sequence which allowed Pacino to unleash the power in a performance which is now regarded as an all-time great.

He believes that Coppola moved the scene up the filming schedule to “Get to the meat, because that’s what the studio wanted to see”.

“He now claims he didn’t,” Pacino laughs.

Either way, it changed his life.

He then shares a fascinating theory about who would have replaced him if he had been sacked.

He pauses: “Bob De Niro comes to mind.”

This would certainly have changed film history – Robert De Niro entering the Godfather series a film early and playing Michael rather than the young Vito.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” chuckles Pacino. “Well, you know, I’m not irreplaceable.”

However, it is 1983’s Scarface which seems to hold a special place in his heart.

“It’s got something. It was powerful,” he beams when the ultra-violent, cocaine-fuelled gangster film is brought up, describing its rise from box office under-achiever and Razzie nominee to cult classic, as “a happy story”.

“It was the hip-hop community that embraced it and were able to see the story in there,” he says, pointing out that the film broke VHS sales records.

When I put the theory to him that perhaps this is the film for which he would like to have won his Oscar, rather than his triumph a decade later for playing a blind veteran in Scent of a Woman, he replies with a “Yes, that’s interesting”, doubling down with a “Yeah. I would like to even have got nominated”, before back-tracking slightly with a “Not that I’m turning my back on Scent of a Woman”.

But the implication is clear.

What also shines through throughout the interview is just how much Pacino still loves the big screen.

Despite box office ticket sales having fallen 40% in a decade, he cannot imagine a Los Angeles without cinemas.

“It can’t happen.”

He pauses before repeating “It can’t happen” and then reeling off a list of directors (one in his 60s and two in their 80s) who he believes will keep cinema safe: “That’s what Scorsese is doing. That’s what Tarantino is doing. Francis Coppola is doing it.”

The latter is a particularly bold choice to mention, when Coppola’s current self-financed film Megalopolis is being regarded as one of the biggest box office flops of all time.

Pacino would do well to remember the classic Godfather quote: “A friend should always underestimate your virtues.”

There is, however, something deeply reassuring when he sums up why he believes everything will be all right for cinema by saying: “Maybe it’s my age talking. Things go on and then they change, because that’s who we are.”

He is also very laid back when it comes to AI being used to replicate his likeness after his death: “My children will take over when I’m gone, and they will take care of it. I trust them.”

He will not be leaving any stipulations about what he can and cannot appear in, shrugging as he says: “I don’t care about that.”

Our allotted 45 minutes have turned into almost 1 hour and 20 minutes as it is clear how much he enjoys storytelling.

Highlights included his long tale of how he believes he may have died during the pandemic, after collapsing in his house.

(“People now think I don’t believe in the afterlife because I said I saw nothing. No white tunnels. Maybe there’s no afterlife for me, but maybe someone else is going somewhere, because they did what I didn’t do.”)

He is also happy to talk in depth about finding out in 2011 that his bank accounts were empty.

(“I was out of money. It was gone and my accountant was in prison. I was spending $400 000 a month and didn’t know it was happening. You’ve got to be dumb.”)

And when it comes to the question of what he is watching at the moment, Pacino has just blitzed the second season of Netflix’s Monster, dealing with the Menendez Brothers. That morning he handwrote Javier Bardem a letter to congratulate him on his performance.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver are two other younger actors he really admires, while he sums up his own career with the borrowed quote: “The standouts usually have me with a gun. They say give Pacino a gun. You’ve got a hit.”

Oh, and he reveals that Jamie Foxx is the best chess player in Hollywood. Pacino used to play a lot, and laughs when I ask if he has ever taken on Robert De Niro. “I don’t even know if he knows the rules,” he says.

One very unexpected piece of information emerges when he places his mobile on the table. His phone case is a montage of pictures of Shrek. He explains that a few years ago his youngest daughter Olivia put it on, and he’s kept it there to please her.

But despite carrying Shrek around, one thing he does not want to do is provide voices for animated films: “I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”

I put it to him that is he really saying that one of the great method actors cannot do cartoon voices? Not even, say, a panda?

“OK, I think I can,” he relents, before chortling and adding: “I seriously don’t want to.”

Finally, as well as never having been a godfather, there is another glaring omission for Pacino’s list of awards – the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

As soon as the topic is brought up, he interrupts: “Oh, I don’t have a star.”

This is something he has known for a while and turns and asks his assistant Mike: “Is there a mechanism for all of this? To be a star?”

“You’ve been a busy man?” shouts back Mike as a way of explanation.

And does he want one?

“Oh yeah. Sure.”

At 84, Pacino is still a man with Hollywood dreams.

A spacecraft that will hunt for signs of alien life on one of Jupiter’s icy moons has blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Nasa launched the spacecraft at 12:06 local time (16:06 GMT) after hurricane Milton forced the mission to postpone plans last week.

Europa Clipper will now travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa, a deeply mysterious moon orbiting Jupiter.

It will not arrive until 2030 but what it finds could change what we know about life in our solar system.

Trapped under the moon’s surface could be a vast ocean with double the amount of water on Earth.

The spacecraft is chasing a European mission that left last year, but using a cosmic piggyback, it will overtake and arrive first.

Years in the making, the Europa Clipper launch was delayed at the last minute after hurricane Milton blasted Florida this week.

The spacecraft was rushed indoors for shelter, but after checking the launchpad at Cape Canaveral for damage, engineers have now given the go-ahead for lift-off at 12:06 local time (16:06 GMT).

“If we discover life so far away from the Sun, it would imply a separate origin of life to the Earth,” says Mark Fox-Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University.

“That is hugely significant, because if that happens twice in our solar system, it could mean life is really common,” he says.

Located 628 million kilometres from Earth, Europa is just a bit bigger than our moon, but that is where the similarity ends.

If it was in our skies, it would shine five times brighter because the water ice would reflect much more sunlight.

Its icy crust is up to 25km thick, and sloshing beneath, there could be a vast saltwater ocean. There may also be chemicals that are the ingredients for simple life.

Scientists first realised Europa might support life in the 1970s when, peering through a telescope in Arizona, they saw water ice.

Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts captured the first close-up images, and then in 1995 Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew past Europa taking some deeply puzzling pictures. They showed a surface riddled with dark, reddish-brown cracks, fractures that may contain salts and sulfur compounds that could support life.

The Hubble space telescope has since taken pictures of what might be plumes of water ejected 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the moon’s surface

But none of those missions got close enough to Europa for long enough to really understand it.

Now scientists hope that instruments on Nasa’s Clipper spacecraft will map almost the entire moon, as well as collect dust particles and fly through the water plumes.

Britney Schmidt, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell university in the US, helped to design a laser onboard that will see through the ice.

“I’m most excited about understanding Europa’s plumbing. Where’s the water? Europa has the ice version of Earth’s subduction zones, magma chambers and tectonics – we’re going to try to see into those regions and map them,” she says.

Her instrument, which is called Reason, was tested in Antarctica.

But unlike on Earth, all the instruments on Clipper will be exposed to huge amounts of radiation which Prof Schmidt says is a “major concern.”

The spacecraft should fly past Europa about 50 times, and each time, it will be blasted with radiation equivalent to one million X-rays.

“Much of the electronics are in a vault that’s heavily shielded to keep out radiation,” Prof Schmidt explains.

The spaceship is the largest ever built to visit a planet and has a long journey ahead. Travelling 1.8 billion miles, it will orbit both the Earth and Mars to propel itself further towards Jupiter in what is called the sling-shot effect.

It cannot carry enough fuel to motor itself all the way alone, so it will piggyback off the momentum of Earth and Mars’s gravitational pull.

It will overtake JUICE, the European Space Agency’s spaceship that will also visit Europa on its way to another of Jupiter’s moons called Ganeymede.

Once Clipper approaches Europa in 2030 it will switch on its engines again to carefully manoeuvre itself into the right orbit.

Space scientists are very cautious when talking about the chances of discovering life – there is no expectation that they will find human-like creatures or animals.

“We are searching for the potential for habitability and you need four things – liquid water, a heat source, and organic material. Finally those three ingredients need to be stable over a long enough period of time that something can happen,” explains Michelle Dougherty, professor of space physics at Imperial College in London.

And they hope that if they can understand the ice surface better, they will know where to land a craft on a future mission.

An international team of scientists with Nasa, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab will oversee the odyssey.

At a time when there is a space launch virtually every week, this mission promises something different, suggests Professor Fox-Powell.

“There’s no profit being made. This is about exploration and curiosity, and pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge of our place in the universe,” he says.

The UN has condemned the “large number of civilian casualties” caused by Israeli strikes on northern Gaza in recent days.

The comments – made by a spokesperson for Secretary General Antonio Guterres – come as at least 10 people have reportedly been killed by Israeli artillery fire at a food distribution centre at Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where Israeli tanks and troops are continuing a ground offensive.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said shells hit inside and outside the centre on Monday morning as some hungry people were trying to get food handouts.

The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident, adding that it operates “only against terror targets”.

Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed since the military said it was launching the offensive in the area and two neighbouring northern towns nine days ago to root out Hamas fighters who had regrouped there.

The UN said on Sunday that more than 50,000 people had fled the Jabalia area, but that others remained stranded in their homes amid increased bombardment and fighting on the ground. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said civilians must “be protected at all times”.

“The secretary general condemns the large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza, including its schools, displacing sheltered Palestinian civilians,” he told reporters at a news conference in New York.

The offensive had also forced the closure of water wells, bakeries, medical points and shelters, as well as the suspension of other humanitarian services, including malnutrition treatment, it warned.

The UN said it had not been allowed to deliver essential supplies, including food, since 1 October, with two nearby border crossings closed and no deliveries allowed from the south.

The Israeli military said a convoy of 30 aid lorries entered through a crossing south of Gaza City on Sunday, when US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of what the White House called the “imperative to restore access to the north”.

The military has ordered residents of Jabalia and neighbouring areas to evacuate to the Israeli-designated “humanitarian area” in southern Gaza, saying it is “operating with great force against the terrorist organisations and will continue to do so for a long time”.

But many of the estimated 400,000 Palestinians living in the north say they are reluctant to flee to the south, fearing that if they do they will not be allowed to return home.

They believe the Israeli military is planning to implement a plan, proposed by retired Israeli generals, to completely empty the north of civilians and besiege Hamas fighters remaining there until they release Israeli hostages held since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

The Israeli military has denied it is implementing the plan. “We are making sure we’re getting civilians out of harm’s way while we operate against those terror cells in Jabalia,” spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani told reporters.

Overnight, four people were killed when an Israeli aircraft struck a tented camp for displaced people next to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah.

The Israeli military said it had conducted a “a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a command-and-control centre in the area of a parking lot”, and that it took measures to mitigate harm to civilians.

“Shortly after the strike, a fire ignited in the hospital’s parking lot, most likely due to secondary explosions. The incident is under review,” Lt Col Shoshani wrote on X. “The hospital and its functionality were not affected from the strike.”

A video posted online appeared to show secondary explosions, but it was not clear whether they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.

A spokesman for al-Aqsa hospital, Dr Khalil al-Daqran, said more than 50 tents were burned and that it was struggling to treat about 50 people who were injured, including children, women and the elderly, as well as casualties from other recent Israeli strikes.

A resident of the camp, Umm Mahmoud Wadi, said her family lost everything.

“Where should I take my daughters? Winter is coming. There’s no bedding, no clothes, nothing. I’m devastated. The gas bottle exploded – and we [our world] exploded.”

On Sunday night, more than 20 people were reportedly killed by tank fire at a UN-run school being used as a shelter for displaced families in Nuseirat refugee camp, which just north of Deir al-Balah.

A spokeswoman for Unrwa told the BBC that it had been “another night of absolute horror for people in the Gaza Strip”.

Louise Wateridge said the severe damage to al-Mufti school in Nuseirat meant it could not be used for the second round of the major polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, which began in the centre of the territory on Monday.

Local medics and Unrwa workers are leading the effort to give drops of the vaccine to 590,000 children aged under 10 over the next two weeks.

The campaign was organised by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef after the first case of polio in two decades was discovered in an unvaccinated baby in central Gaza, where 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now sheltering.

UN officials are pressing for humanitarian pauses to be respected during the vaccination drive.

“This is critical because we cannot issue vaccinations for children who are fleeing for their lives, who are forcibly displaced. We cannot issue vaccination while there are bombs coming from the sky,” Ms Wateridge said.

She added: “These pauses are in the daytime, there are very specific timeframes for us to reach these thousands of children. The strikes and the military operations do continue around that and it’s incredibly dangerous and terrifying experience to run any kind of humanitarian response in these conditions.”

Israel 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 42,280 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Slow, small and relatively cheap to make, drones have become a deadly headache for Israelis in this year-long war.

Hezbollah’s attack on an army base near Binyamina in northern Israel on Sunday, which killed four men and injured dozens more, was the most damaging drone strike on the country to date.

It’s lead to fresh questions about how well equipped Israel’s hugely expensive air defence system is to stop them.

Visiting the damaged army base on Monday morning, Israeli Defence Minister Yoan Gallan said “significant efforts” were being put into solutions that would prevent future drone attacks.

Some parts of the air defence system work well. Here in northern Israel we hear booms at regular intervals as Iron Dome intercept rockets that Hezbollah fires from southern Lebanon. Israel says it hits more than 90% of its targets.

But Iron Dome works because Hezbollah’s rockets are crude – and it’s possible to calculate where it’s rockets will go at take-off and then intercept them.

Stopping drones is more complicated. And has in this war become a recurring problem.

In July a drone fired by Yemen’s Houthis reached Tel Aviv. Earlier in October the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a drone launched from Iraq killed two soldiers in the Golan Heights. Just last week another drone hit a nursing home in central Israel.

“Most, if not all, of the drones are manufactured by the Iranians and then supplied to the armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen,” Dr Yehoshua Kalisky, senior researcher of the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the BBC.

Drones have a small radar signature and can fly at low altitudes which makes early detection difficult. They can even occasionally be confused for birds.

“They’re also difficult to intercept with aircraft because the UAV’s (drones) fly slowly,” Dr Kalisky explained. “They’re going about 200km/h (124mph) compared to 900km/h (559mph) of a jet plane.”

Israeli media reports suggest that on Sunday two Hezbollah drones, most likely Ziyad 107s, crossed from Lebanese air space above the Mediterranean. One was shot down and the other disappeared – presumed crashed – so no warning siren was triggered. It then went on to hit the canteen of an army base.

But Sarit Zehani from the Alma Research Institute – which specialises in security on the northern border – does not think it was luck that the drones got through.

“It was planned,” she said. “They’ve been trying to do this for a long time”.

Ms Zehani lives 9km from the Lebanese border in western Galilee and saw Sunday’s events unfold from her balcony. She said there was rocket fire and alerts all across the border area as the drones were launched, “overwhelming” the air defence system and helping the drone to get through.

The Alma Research Institute has counted 559 incidents of drones crossing the northern border for surveillance or attack missions since the war began a year ago. Excluding Sunday’s attack on Binyamina, it says there have been 11 casualties from drone attacks.

In addition to Iron Dome, systems such as Adam’s Sling, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are designed to destroy ballistic missiles. And they will soon be bolstered by the arrival of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) battery from the United States which will be operated by nearly 100 US military personnel.

More permanent solutions to take down drones are currently being developed.

“High powered lasers are being worked on and the other technology is using microwave cannons to burn the drone electronics,” Dr Kalisky said. “These technologies will hopefully be available in the very near future.”

The Pentagon has confirmed it is sending a high-altitude anti-missile system operated by US troops to Israel.

Officials say the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) battery will bolster Israeli air defences after Iran’s missile attack on the country earlier this month.

President Joe Biden has said it is meant “to defend Israel”, which is still expected to retaliate against an Iranian strike involving more than 180 ballistic missiles fired at Israel on 1 October.

The move has become the focus of attention as it involves putting American boots on the ground in Israel.

There are already a small number of US forces in the country – but this new deployment of about 100 troops is significant as it signals further US entanglement in the expanding regional war.

It is also being scoured for clues as to what it means about the effectiveness of Israel’s missile defences as the crisis grows.

Israel has yet to launch its retaliation for Iran’s attack, which will be “lethal, precise and above all, surprising” according to Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Tehran said it fired on Israel because it assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Beirut.

It’s still unclear whether the Thaad deployment is part of US contingency planning to bridge gaps identified in Israel’s aerial defences, or whether it points to growing concerns in Washington of a more forceful Israeli strike on Iran.

President Biden has opposed any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as on its oil or energy infrastructure, amid fears that it would trigger a spiralling conflict and affect the global economy.

Whatever the background to the decision, it signals a further need by Israel for US defence assistance amid the expanding Middle East war.

Ballistic missiles like the Fattah-1used by Iran earlier this month are fired upwards into the Earth’s atmosphere, where they change trajectory and descend towards their target. One of their military advantages is their immense speed compared with cruise missiles or drones.

The Thaad system is highly effective against ballistic missiles, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the biggest US arms maker.

Raytheon, another American weapons firm, builds its advanced radar.

The system counts six truck-mounted launchers, with eight interceptors on each launcher. It costs about $1bn (£766m) a battery and requires a crew of about 100 to operate it.

Thaad is much sought after including by Ukraine to counter Russian missile attacks.

Saudi Arabia has orders in for it, and reportedly wanted more as part of an American weapons bonanza in return for officially recognising Israel: a so-called “normalisation” deal which was largely derailed after the 7 October attack by Hamas.

Iran’s 1 October strikes on Israel killed one man in Jericho in the occupied West Bank, who was hit by part of a missile that was apparently shot down.

Israel has a much vaunted aerial defence system, developed with the US, including Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 exo-atmospheric missiles.

These fly at hypersonic speed and can shoot down ballistic missiles in space. The system’s Israeli designers said Arrow “performed as expected” with “wonderful” results against the Iranian strike.

The US supported the defensive operation, firing interceptors from two naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, alongside support from some European and Arab countries.

Washington presented the Iranian strike as “defeated and ineffective”.

But damage on the ground told a less emphatic picture. Satellite images showed damage at the Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base, which houses F-35 fighter planes, including craters on a runway and taxiway.

Decker Eveleth from the Washington-based Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) said the images showed 32 impact points, including multiple hits in the area of F-35 hangers.

“Some F-35s got really lucky,” Mr Eveleth posted on X.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that it was still unclear whether damage was caused directly by missiles or interception shrapnel.

There were other direct impacts, including in Tel Aviv. One missile reportedly blew a 30ft (nine metre) deep crater in a densely populated area close to the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

Politically, the Thaad announcement is couched in terms of the Biden administration’s “ironclad” support for Israel’s defence.

The US has sent more than 50,000 tonnes worth of weapons to Israel in the last year, according to Israeli figures.

But it also highlights some of the policy contortions carried out by Washington: first trying to pressure Israel and its adversaries not to escalate the war, instead urging diplomacy.

When that has failed the White House has then firmly backed its Israeli ally’s decisions while moving to shield it diplomatically and militarily.

The Iranian missile strikes followed Israel’s assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh (a negotiator in the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks), Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Israeli air strikes in densely populated parts of Beirut and its ground invasion of Lebanon.

Israel said it has been striking against Hezbollah’s leadership and destroying its vast missile stores due to 11 months of cross-border rocket fire into Israel.

It argues only military pressure and degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities will ensure 60,000 Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel.

The Pentagon describes the Thaad deployment as part of “the broader adjustments the US military has made in recent months” to support Israel and defend American personnel from attacks by Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

It says a Thaad was deployed in southern Israel for an exercise in 2019, the last and only time it was known to be there.

A US military deployment to Israel outside of drills is extremely rare, given Israel’s own capabilities.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi warned on Sunday that the US was putting the lives of its troops “at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel”.

“Let’s smile so we look better in the pictures they are taking,” jokes Marwan, the chief waiter at a Beirut hotel.

He and a colleague are gazing at the sky, trying to spot the Israeli surveillance drone buzzing overhead.

Neither the music playing in the background nor birdsong can mask its deep, humming noise. It’s like someone has left a hairdryer on, or a motorbike is doing laps of the clouds.

Marwan’s hotel is not in an area with a strong Hezbollah presence.

It’s in Achrafieh, a wealthy Christian quarter that’s not been targeted by Israel in previous wars. It’s also where I am based.

Days later, two Israeli missiles roar over Achrafieh.

I hear children and adults in the neighbourhood scream. People run to their balconies or open their windows trying to figure out what’s just happened.

Within seconds a strong explosion shakes the tree-lined streets.

Everyone in my building looks towards Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburb of Beirut which is partly visible from Achrafieh.

But soon we realise the strike has hit an area just a five-minute drive away from us.

Local media say the target is Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking Hezbollah security official who’s also the brother-in-law of recently killed leader Hassan Nasrallah. He reportedly survives.

The building that was hit was full of people who’d recently fled to Beirut. No warning was issued by the Israeli army, and at least 22 people were killed. It was the deadliest attack yet.

“Oh my God. What if we were passing through that street?” a neighbour exclaims. “I pass that street to go to work.”

“What is the guarantee that next time they won’t hit a building on our street, if they have a target?” another asks.

The recent turmoil in Lebanon started on 17 and 18 September, when waves of pager blasts killed at least 32 and left more than 5,000 injured, both Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Many lost their eyes or hands, or both.

Air strikes intensified in the south, as well as on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing high-rank Hezbollah commanders including Nasrallah. On 30 September, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.

Officials say more than 1,600 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment over the past weeks.

I’ve seen many of the strikes from my own balcony.

The past three weeks have felt like a “fast-forward”, Marwan the waiter tells me. “We haven’t digested what exactly happened.”

I’ve spoken to him many times in the past 12 months since tensions erupted between Hezbollah and Israel.

He’s lived here his entire life and seen all the wars between the two sides. But he’s always been an optimist, and never believed that this round of fighting would escalate into a war.

“I withdraw what I was telling you,” he tells me now. “I didn’t want to believe it but we are at war.”

The face of Beirut has completely changed.

Streets are packed with cars, some parked in the middle of boulevards. Hundreds fleeing Israeli operations in the south of the country have fled to the capital’s suburbs, sheltering in schools in “safer” neighbourhoods. Many have found themselves sleeping on the streets.

On the motorway towards the airport and the south, billboards show Hassan Nasrallah’s face. Both pro- and anti-Hezbollah people tell me these feel surreal.

In other areas, posters that previously read “Lebanon doesn’t want war” now say “Pray for Lebanon”.

The city’s iconic Martyrs’ Square – usually host to protests and huge Christmas celebrations – has turned into a tent city.

Families squeeze under the skeleton of an iron Christmas tree. Around a cut-out clenched fist installed above the square after youth protests in 2019, there are blankets, mattresses and tents made of whatever else people could find.

More of the same awaits around every corner. Makeshift homes stretch from the square all the way down to the sea.

Most of the families here are Syrian refugees, who’ve found themselves displaced again and barred from shelters which are limited to Lebanese nationals.

But many Lebanese families have found themselves homeless too.

Just over a kilometre away, 26-year-old Nadine is trying to take her mind off everything for a few hours.

She’s one of very few customers at Aaliya’s Books, a bookshop-bar in Beirut’s Gemmayze neighbourhood.

“I don’t feel safe any more,” she tells me. “We keep hearing explosions all night.

“I keep asking myself: what if they bomb here? What if they target a car in front of us?”

For a long time, Beirutis believed that tensions would stay limited to Hezbollah-run border villages in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah, who led the powerful Shia political and military organisation, said he didn’t want to take the country to war, and that the front against Israel was solely to support Palestinians in Gaza.

That all changed.

In Beirut, although strikes mostly land in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah dominates, they send shockwaves across the city – resulting in sleepless nights.

Businesses are affected. Aaliya’s Books is usually a lively place, hosting local bands, podcasts and wine-tasting nights.

We were filming here for a report right after the first air strike on Dahieh, on 30 July, which killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command Fuad Shukr.

Intense sonic booms could be heard overhead as Israeli jets broke the sound barrier.

But a jazz band played all night, with dancing patrons crowding the bar. Now the place is empty, with no music and no dancing.

“It is sad and frustrating,” says bar manager Charlie Haber. “You come here to change your mood but again you will end up talking about the situation. Everyone is asking, what is next?”

His place closed for two weeks after Nasrallah’s killing. Now they’ve reopened, but shut at 20:00 instead of midnight.

Day by day, the psychological strain on staff and customers worsens, says Charlie. Even a post on Instagram takes half a day to write, he adds, because you “don’t want to look like ‘hey, come and enjoy and we’ll give you a discount on drinks’ in this situation”.

It’s hard to find anywhere open late any more in this area.

Loris, a well-loved restaurant, never used to shut before 01:00 – but now the streets are deserted by 19:00, says one of its owners, Joe Aoun.

Three weeks ago you couldn’t get a table here without a reservation. Now, barely two or three tables are taken each day.

“We take it day by day. We are sitting here and talking together now, but maybe in five minutes we’ll have to close down and leave.”

Most of Loris’s staff come from Beirut’s southern suburbs or villages in the country’s south. “Each day one of them hears that his house is destroyed,” says Joe.

One employee, Ali, didn’t come to work for 15 days as he was trying to find somewhere for his family to stay. They’d slept under olive trees in the south for weeks.

Joe says Loris is trying to stay open to help staff make a living but he’s not sure how long this can continue. Fuel for the generators is extremely expensive.

I see the frustration on his face.

“We are against war,” he says. “My staff from the south are Shia but they are against war too. But no one asked for our opinion. We can’t do anything else. We just need to to hold on.”

Back at Aaliya’s, both Charlie and Nadine are worried about community tensions rising.

These parts of Beirut are mostly Sunni Muslim and Christian – but the new arrivals are largely Shia.

“I personally try to help people regardless of their religion or sect but even in my family there are divisions over it. Part of my family only help and accommodate displaced Christians,” she says.

Out in the squares and alleys of Achrafieh and Gemmayze, more and more flags can be seen of Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that strongly opposes Hezbollah.

The party has a long history of armed conflict with Shia Muslims, as well as Muslim and Palestinian parties during the civil war, three decades ago.

Nadine thinks this is a message to displaced Shias who have recently arrived, saying “don’t come here”.

With the movement of people, there are also fears that Israel can now target any building in any neighbourhood in its search for Hezbollah fighters or members of allied groups.

Hezbollah says its high-ranking officials do not stay in places assigned to displaced people.

None of this bodes well for local businesses.

Many in Gemmayze were already badly affected by the Beirut port explosion four years ago, which killed 200 people and destroyed more than 70,000 buildings. They’d only recently started getting back on their feet.

Despite the financial crisis, new places were springing up in the area – but many of them have closed now.

Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur and board member of the restaurant and bar owners’ syndicate, estimates that 85% of food and drink spots in downtown Beirut have shut down or limited their opening hours.

“Everything happened so fast and we couldn’t do any statistics yet but I can tell you more around 85 percent of food and beverage places in downtown Beirut are closed or working for limited hours only.”

“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people are sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby.”

Despite the tough situation in Beirut, you can still find bustling restaurants and bars around a 15 minute-drive north. But Maya says that too is temporary.

“Strikes may happen in other locations too. There have been attacks on some places in the north. There is no guarantee they will be safe either.”

It’s like someone pressed a button and life stopped in Beirut, she says.

“We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south – and somehow affected by it too – but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”

Donald Trump has pledged to drastically increase tariffs on foreign goods entering the US if he is elected president again.

He has promised tariffs – a form of tax – of up to 20% on goods from other countries and 60% on all imports from China. He has even talked about a 200% tax on some imported cars.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision – he sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

He has claimed on the campaign trail that these taxes are “not going to be a cost to you, it’s a cost to another country”.

This is almost universally regarded by economists as misleading.

In practical terms, a tariff is a domestic tax levied on goods as they enter the country, proportional to the value of the import.

So a car imported to the US with a value of $50,000 (£38,000) subject to a 10% tariff, would face a $5,000 charge.

The charge is physically paid by the domestic company that imports the goods, not the foreign company that exports them.

So, in that sense, it is a straightforward tax paid by domestic US firms to the US government.

Over the course of 2023, the US imported around $3,100bn of goods, equivalent to around 11% of US GDP.

And tariffs imposed on those imports brought in $80bn in that year, around 2% of total US tax revenues.

The question of where the final “economic” burden of tariffs falls, as opposed to the upfront bill, is more complicated.

If the US importing firm passes on the cost of the tariff to the person buying the product in the US in the form of higher retail prices, it would be the US consumer that bears the economic burden.

If the US importing firm absorbs the cost of the tariff itself and doesn’t pass it on, then that firm is said to bear the economic burden in the form of lower profits than it would otherwise have enjoyed.

Alternatively, it is possible that foreign exporters might have to lower their wholesale prices by the value of the tariff in order to retain their US customers.

In that scenario, the exporting firm would bear the economic burden of the tariff in the form of lower profits.

All three scenarios are theoretically possible.

But economic studies of the impact of the new tariffs that Trump imposed in his first term of office between 2017 and 2020 suggest most of the economic burden was ultimately borne by US consumers.

A survey by the University of Chicago in September 2024 asked a group of respected economists whether they agreed with the statement that “imposing tariffs results in a substantial portion of the tariffs being borne by consumers of the country that enacts the tariffs, through price increases”. Only 2% disagreed.

Let’s use a concrete example.

Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imports of washing machines in 2018.

Researchers estimate the value of washing machines jumped by around 12% as a direct consequence, equivalent to $86 per unit, and that US consumers paid around $1.5bn extra a year in total for these products.

There is no reason to believe the results of even higher import tariffs from a future Trump administration would be any different in terms of where the economic burden would fall.

The non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated Trump’s new proposed tariffs would lower the incomes of Americans, with the impact ranging from around 4% for the poorest fifth to around 2% for the wealthiest fifth.

A typical household in the middle of the US income distribution, the think tank estimates, would lose around $1,700 each year.

The left-of-centre think tank Centre for American Progress, using a different methodology, has an estimate of a $2,500 to $3,900 loss for a middle-income family.

Various researchers have also warned that another major round of tariffs from the US would risk another spike in domestic inflation.

Yet Trump has used another economic justification for his tariffs: that they protect and create US domestic jobs.

“Under my plan, American workers will no longer be worried about losing your jobs to foreign nations, instead, foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to America,” he said on the campaign trail.

The political context for Trump’s tariffs was longstanding concern about the loss of US manufacturing jobs to countries with lower labour costs, particularly after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Mexico in 1994 and the entry of China into the World Trade Organisation in 2001.

In January 1994, when Nafta came into effect, the US had just under 17 million manufacturing jobs. By 2016, this had declined to around 12 million.

Yet economists say it is misleading to attribute this decline to trade, arguing that growing levels of automation are also an important factor.

And researchers who studied the impact of Trump’s first-term tariffs found no substantial positive effects on overall employment in US industrial sectors that were protected.

Trump imposed 25% tariffs on imported steel in 2018 to protect US producers.

By 2020, total employment in the US steel sector was 80,000, still lower than the 84,000 it had been in 2018.

It is theoretically possible that employment might have dropped even further without the Trump steel tariffs but detailed economic studies of their impact on US steel still showed no positive employment impact.

And economists have also found evidence suggesting that, because the domestic price of steel rose after the tariffs were imposed, employment in some other US manufacturing sectors, which relied on steel as an input – including the agricultural machinery manufacturer Deere & Co – was lower than it otherwise would have been.

Trump has criticised America’s trade deficit, which is the difference between the value of all the things the country imports and the value of its exports in a given year.

“Trade deficits hurt the economy very badly,” he has said.

In 2016, just before Trump took office, the total goods and services deficit was $480bn, around 2.5% of US GDP. By 2020, it had grown to $653bn, around 3% of GDP, despite his tariffs.

Part of the explanation, according to economists, is that Trump’s tariffs increased the international relative value of the US dollar (by automatically reducing demand for foreign currencies in international trade) and that this made the products of US exporters less competitive globally.

Another factor behind this failure to close the trade deficit is the fact that tariffs, in a globalised economy with multinational companies, can sometimes be bypassed.

For example, the Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on Chinese imported solar panels in 2018.

The US Commerce Department presented evidence in 2023 that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had shifted their assembly operations to countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and then sent the finished products to the US from those countries, effectively evading the tariffs.

There are some economists who support Trump’s tariff plans as a way to boost US industry, such as Jeff Ferry of the Coalition for A Prosperous America, a domestic lobby group, but they are a small minority of the profession.

Oren Cass, the director of the conservative think tank American Compass, has argued tariffs can incentivise firms to keep more of their manufacturing operations in America, which he argues has national defence and supply chain security benefits.

And the Biden/Harris administration, while sharply criticising Trump’s proposed extension of tariffs, has kept in place many of the ones he implemented after 2018.

It has also imposed new tariffs on imports of things like electric vehicles from China, justifying them on the grounds of national security, US industrial policy and unfair domestic subsidies from Beijing.

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In China, people are following the US election with keen interest and some anxiety. They fear what could happen next at home and abroad, whoever wins the White House.

“None of us wants to see a war,” says Mr Xiang, as the music in the park reaches a crescendo and a nearby dancer elegantly spins his partner.

He has come to Ritan Park to learn dance with other seniors.

They gather here regularly, just a few hundred metres from the Beijing home of the American ambassador in China.

In addition to new dance moves, the looming US election is also on their minds.

It comes at a pivotal time between the two superpowers, with tensions over Taiwan, trade and international affairs running high.

“I am worried that Sino-US relations are getting tense,” says Mr Xiang who’s in his sixties. Peace is what we want, he adds.

A crowd has gathered to listen to this conversation. Most are reluctant to give their full names in a country where it is permissible to talk about the US president, but being critical of their own leader could get them in trouble.

They say they are worried about war – not just about a conflict between Washington and Beijing but an escalation of current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

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That is why Mr Meng, in his 70s, hopes Donald Trump will win the election.

“Although he imposes economic sanctions on China, he does not wish to start or fight a war. Mr Biden starts more wars so more ordinary people dislike him. It is Mr Biden who supports Ukraine’s war and both Russia and Ukraine suffer great loss from the war,” he said.

Some sisters recording a dance routine for their social media page chip in. “Donald Trump said in the debate that he will end the war in Ukraine 24 hours after he takes office,” says one.

“About Harris, I know little about her, we think she follows the same route as President Biden who supports war.”

Their opinions echo a key message being propagated on Chinese state media.

China has called on the international community to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza while aligning itself with what it describes as its “Arab brothers” in the Middle East and has been quick to blame the US for its unwavering support of Israel.

On Ukraine, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the United Nations that China was playing a “constructive role” as he accused Washington of “exploiting the situation for selfish gain”.

While most analysts believe Beijing does not have a favourite in this race for the White House, many would agree that Kamala Harris is an unknown quantity to Chinese people and the country’s leaders.

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But some believe she will be more stable than Trump when it comes to one of the biggest flashpoints between the US and China – Taiwan.

“I don’t like Trump. I don’t think there is a good future between the US and China – there are too many problems, the global economy, and also the Taiwan problem,” says a father of a four-year-old boy in the park for a family day out.

He fears their differences over Taiwan could eventually lead to conflict.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want my son to go to the military,” he says as the young boy pleads to go back on the slide.

China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its own and President Xi has said “reunification is inevitable”, vowing to retake it by force if necessary.

The US maintains official ties with Beijing and recognises it as the only Chinese government under its “One China policy” but it also remains Taiwan’s most significant international supporter.

Washington is bound by law to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons and Joe Biden has said that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, breaking with a stance known as strategic ambiguity.

Harris has not gone that far. Instead, when asked in a recent interview she stated a “commitment to security and prosperity for all nations.”

Donald Trump is instead focused on a deal – not diplomacy. He has called on Taiwan to pay for its protection.

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we? They’re immensely wealthy,” he said in a recent interview. “Taiwan should pay us for defence.”

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One of their biggest worries when it comes to the former US president is that he has also made it clear he plans to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods.

This is the last thing many businesses in China want right now as the country is trying to manufacture enough goods to export itself out of an economic downturn.

Ministers in China bristle with contempt at US-led trade tariffs which were first imposed by Donald Trump.

President Biden has also levied tariffs, targeting Chinese electronic vehicles and solar panels. Beijing believes these moves are an attempt to curb its rise as a global economic power.

“I don’t think it will do any good to the US to impose tariffs on China,” says Mr Xiang, echoing the sentiments of many we met. The tariffs will hit the US people, he adds, and increase costs for ordinary people.

Many of the the younger generation, while patriotic, also look towards the US for trends and culture – and that, perhaps more than any diplomatic mission, has power too.

In the park, Lily and Anna, aged 20 and 22, who get their news from TikTok, echo some of the national messages of pride spread by Chinese state media when it comes to this competitive relationship.

“Our country is a very prosperous and powerful country,” they say, dressed in their national costumes. They love China, they said, although they also adore the Avengers and particularly Captain America.

Taylor Swift is on their playlists too.

Others like 17-year-old Lucy hope to study in America one day.

As she cycles on an exercise bike, newly installed in the park, she dreams about visiting Universal Studios one day – after her graduation.

Lucy says she is excited to see there is a female candidate. “Harris’s candidacy marks an important step forward for gender equality, and it’s encouraging to see her as a presidential candidate.”

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The People’s Republic of China has never had a female leader and not a single woman currently sits on the 24-member team known as the Politburo that makes up the most senior members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Lucy is also worried about the intense competition between the two countries and believes the best way for China and the United States to improve their relationship is to have more people-to-people exchanges.

Both sides have vowed to work towards this, and yet the number of US students studying in China has fallen from around 15,000 in 2011 to 800.

Xi hopes to open the door for 50,000 American students to come to China in the next five years. But in a recent interview with the BBC, the US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, accused parts of the Chinese government of not taking this pledge seriously.

He said that on dozens of occasions the security forces or a government ministry have prevented Chinese citizens from participating in public diplomacy run by the US.

On the other side, Chinese students and academics have reported being unfairly targeted by US border officials.

Lucy, however, remains optimistic that she will be able to travel to America one day, to promote Chinese culture. And, as the music strikes up nearby, she urges Americans to visit and experience China.

“We may be a little bit reserved sometimes and not as outgoing or as extrovert as US people, but we are welcoming,” she says as she heads off to join her family.

Senegalese farmer Mouhamed Oualy has never been to sea, but he is about to embark on a perilous sea journey – one that has turned the Atlantic Ocean into a mass grave.

“The boat guys have called me – they said I should get ready. I am asking you to pray for me – the time has come,” he says.

BBC Africa Eye has gained unprecedented access to the secretive world of the migrants hoping to reach Europe via the dangerous crossing between West Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands.

And Mr Oualy wants to be one of the migrants to reach the archipelago – whose numbers have reached an all-time high.

The regional government there warns that what awaits them on the rocky shores of the archipelago is a system “overwhelmed” and “at breaking point” – but nothing will dent Mr Oualy’s determination.

Packed on to an overcrowded pirogue, a traditional wooden fishing canoe, Mr Oualy could face days, even weeks, at the mercy of one of the most unforgiving seas in the world.

From Senegal, it is an estimated distance of between 1,000km (600 miles) and 2,000km on the open ocean – depending on where you leave from, around 10 times the distance of other migrant routes crossing the Mediterranean.

Battling the ocean’s storms and strong sea currents, migrants often run out of water while suffering from severe motion sickness and intense fear.

At night, surrounded by dark waters, people often become delirious, overwhelmed by panic and dehydration.

Far away from the coast, in Senegal’s eastern region of Tambacounda, Mr Oualy’s children and extended family depend on the little money he made through farming.

The 40-year-old has not seen them for almost a year, after he moved closer to one of the major departure points along the coast.

There he has been working as a motorbike taxi driver, and borrowing money from friends, to gather the $1,000 (£765) fee to board one of the vessels leaving for the Canary Islands.

Fearing he could be scammed, he has agreed with the smugglers that he will only hand over the full amount if the boat makes it all the way.

“Nobody knows what could happen to me in these waters. The evil spirits of the sea could kill me,” he tells the BBC from the safety of the beach.

“The boat could capsize, killing everyone. If you fall into the water, what would you hold on to? The only possibility is death, but you have to take risks.”

Dozens of boats have disappeared with hundreds of lives on board. Without proper navigation systems, some veer off course and end up drifting all the way across the Atlantic, washing up on the coasts of Brazil.

If Mr Oualy survives the journey, he hopes to make a living to take care of his extended family, but he is keeping his plans secret to avoid worrying them.

Dark Waters: Africa’s Deadliest Migration Route – BBC Africa Eye investigates the perilous Atlantic crossing from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands.

Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)

While Senegal recorded a solid economic performance during the decade from 2010, more than a third of the country still lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.

“I did any job you can imagine, but things didn’t get any better. If you don’t have money, you don’t matter. I am their only hope and I don’t have money,” he says.

Like Mr Oualy, most migrants on this route are sub-Saharan Africans fleeing poverty and conflict, exacerbated by climate change.

The Canary Islands have become a main gateway for irregular migrants and refugees hoping to reach Europe, especially after countries such as Italy and Greece introduced measures to crack down on other routes crossing the Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia.

Almost 40,000 arrived in 2023, the highest number in three decades. So far this year, already more than 30,800 have made it to its tourist beaches, more than double the number from the same period last year.

As the weather conditions improve in the Atlantic, the Canary Islands government fears “the worst” is yet to come.

In an exclusive interview with BBC Africa Eye, Fernando Clavijo, the president of the Canary Islands government, described an “oversaturated” emergency system where sea rescuers, police and Red Cross volunteers are stretched beyond their limits.

“The consequence is that more people will die, we won’t be able to assist migrants as they deserve,” explains Mr Clavijo.

“Right now, Europe has the Mediterranean Sea blocked, which means that the Atlantic route, which is more dangerous and lethal, has become the escape valve.”

The BBC spoke to members of Spain’s emergency services, who asked to remain anonymous as they described their exhaustion.

One said: “Workers can’t bear witnessing death and devastation any longer.”

In El Hierro, the archipelago’s smallest island, the number of migrants who have arrived since the start of 2023 has already more than doubled the local population to nearly 30,000.

Mr Clavijo says locals cannot use public buses because they are all being used to carry migrants, which he fears could fuel xenophobia and create social unrest.

“We will all have to take responsibility, from the European Union to the Spanish government, because you cannot leave the Canary Islands facing this crisis on our own.”

In recent months, the sharp rise in arrivals has fuelled a fierce national debate in Spain over how to tackle irregular migration, with the Canaries calling for more state aid to care for those arriving, especially unaccompanied children.

Back in Senegal, Mr Oualy has finally been summoned by the smugglers to join other migrants in a secret hideout. His fate is now in their hands.

“There are a lot of us, we’ve filled the house. There are people from Mali and Guinea too. They take us in small boats of 10 to 15 people until we get to the big boat, then we leave,” he says.

To survive the long journey, Mr Oualy has only taken a few bottles of water and a handful of biscuits.

For the first two days, he is constantly sick. He stands up most of the time because of the lack of space and sleeps in sea water mixed with fuel.

He also runs out of water and has to drink from the sea.

Some people on the boat start to scream and become delirious. The crew tells the others to hold them down, so they do not fall overboard or push someone else in.

According to data from the United Nations migration body (IOM), the Atlantic route is fast becoming the deadliest migrant journey in the world.

An estimated 807 people have died or disappeared so far in 2024 – an increase of 76% compared to the same period last year.

But the number of casualties is likely to be significantly higher, because fatal accidents tend to go unrecorded on this route.

“Every 45 minutes, a migrant dies trying to reach our beaches. This means trafficking mafias are increasingly becoming more powerful,” says Mr Clavijo, referencing data sourced from the Spanish rights group Walking Borders.

The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that criminals make around $150m a year on this route.

“The mafias that organise trips have realised that this is like drug trafficking, with little chance of being detected,” Lieutenant Antonio Fuentes, from a team in Spain’s Guardia Civil set up to tackle the smugglers, tells the BBC.

“For them, a migrant is a mere commodity. They carry people like they could carry drugs or weapons. They are simply victims.”

To better understand these criminal networks, the BBC spoke to one Senegalese smuggler organising boat trips – who asked to remain anonymous.

“If you take a big boat, one that can carry 200 to 300 people, and each of them pay around $500, we are talking about a lot of money,” he says.

When challenged about his criminal responsibility as a trafficker, on a trip that has killed many in his community, the smuggler is unrepentant and tells the BBC: “It is a crime, whoever gets caught should be put in prison, but there’s no solution.

“You will see people in the water who have died, but the boats keep going.”

For five days, the BBC receives no news from Mr Oualy. Then, one evening, he calls.

“The motor was heating up and the wind was so strong, some of the fishermen suggested we head to Morocco. But the captain refused. He said if we moved slowly, we’d be in Spain by 6am.”

Mr Oualy was less than a day away from reaching the Canary Islands when the ship’s engine ran into trouble – and many of the migrants, fearful of stronger winds once they went further out into the Atlantic Ocean, rebelled against their captain.

“Everyone started arguing and insulting each other. The captain gave in and turned back to Senegal.”

Mr Oualy survived the journey, but he sustained injuries and serious health problems from the journey.

He is in constant pain and moves slowly.

After a year planning the trip, Mr Oualy is back to square one – and has now returned to his family and is saving enough money for another passage.

“I wish to go back and try again. Yes, honest to God, that is my belief. That is better for me. If I die, it is God’s choice.”

If Mr Oualy makes it to Europe, it is likely he will not see his family for years. If he dies at sea, he will be lost to them forever.

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The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) has launched a campaign branding King Charles’s upcoming visit to the country as the “farewell tour” of the British monarchy.

They say the tongue-in-check push – which includes a merchandise collection – is aimed at sparking debate about the role of the Crown in modern Australia, but monarchists say it is offensive.

The tour, from 18 to 26 October, marks the first royal visit down under in more than a decade and will be King Charles’s longest trip since his cancer diagnosis.

It also comes a year after Australia’s unsuccessful Voice to Parliament vote, which has stalled momentum for another referendum.

Referendums are the only way to change Australia’s constitution and have an 80% failure rate.

The nation held one on the question of becoming a republic once before in 1999, which failed, however public support for the movement has grown since then.

On satirical posters, T-shirts, beer coasters and other paraphernalia, ARM’s campaign depicts the King, Queen and Prince of Wales as aging rock stars and urges Australians “young and old” to “wave goodbye to royal reign”.

“We expect a full-time, fully committed head of state whose only allegiance is to us – a unifying symbol at home and abroad,” the movement’s Co-Chair Esther Anatolitis said in a statement on Monday.

“It’s time for Australia to say ‘thanks, but we’ve got it from here’,” she added.

The organisation cited research it commissioned suggesting 92% of Australians are either “supporters of a republic” or “open to it”, as well as a finding that at least 40% of people surveyed didn’t know the country’s head of state was a foreign monarch.

Independent polling paints a different picture though, with one survey suggesting that roughly 35% of people want to remain a constitutional monarchy.

The Australian Monarchist League (AML) has described the ARM polling as “inflated”, while also criticising its new campaign as “terribly disrespectful to Charles given his ongoing cancer battle”.

“He should be applauded for his bravery, not insulted,” National Chairman Philip Benwell said.

Australia’s Prime Minister is a long-term republican but his government put any plans to hold a vote on breaking away from the British monarchy on ice earlier this year, saying it was no longer a priority issue.

Over the weekend, King Charles confirmed he had exchanged letters with the ARM ahead of his visit, reiterating the palace’s longstanding policy that it was up to Australians to make decisions about their future.

Constitutional votes in Australia are rare and difficult to pass, requiring a ‘double majority’ – support from more than half of the nation overall, and a majority in at least four of its six states. Only eight of 44 referendums have succeeded and almost all had bipartisan support.

The Voice referendum – which would have recognised First Nations people in the constitution and allowed them to form a body to advise the parliament – was overwhelmingly rejected after a bruising debate.

On a Tuesday morning in September, a 10-year-old boy was approaching the gates of a Japanese school in Shenzhen in southern China, when a stranger walked up and stabbed him.

He died of his injuries. The killing shocked Japan and China, and sparked a diplomatic furore.

The Japanese government said it believed what happened was motivated by xenophobia, with the country’s foreign minister blaming the attack on “malicious and anti-Japanese” social media posts.

Online commentators have noted the killing happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, which is the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

For some, what happened is a sign of online nationalism – manifesting in recent years as rising anti-foreigner rhetoric – spilling over into the real world.

For years, posts related to events during World War Two have proliferated on the Chinese internet, with the Japanese invasion during the war remaining a sensitive topic for nationalists on both sides. In China, Japan’s wartime atrocities have long been a sore point as Beijing maintains that Tokyo has never fully apologised.

The online posts are part of a wider phenomenon, which encompasses both xenophobia and attacks on Chinese nationals for being unpatriotic. One argument by analysts is that this digital nationalism has gone mostly unchecked by the Chinese government, with online patriotism fanning flames of anti-foreigner sentiment as well as accusations against Chinese figures.

Some are asking if this has gone too far. They have dubbed the online attacks calling Chinese figures unpatriotic a “Cultural Revolution 2.0”, the latest in a series of drives ensuring ideological purity. They see echoes of the violent, state-sponsored campaign against so-called enemies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that traumatised the country in the 1960 and 1970s. Hundreds of thousands died in purges often led by youth militias known as the Red Guards. Families and neighbours turned on each other.

In a recent essay, author and university professor Zhang Sheng noted that “in the past people summoned the Red Guards, now people summon the ‘little pinks’” – a popular nickname for the virtual army of online nationalists.

While many on Chinese social media mourned the killing of the Japanese schoolboy, a few cyber-nationalists struck a very different tone.

“I have no opinion on how Japanese die if they don’t apologise for history,” read one popular comment on Weibo, while another pointed out that the Japanese had killed many Chinese during World War Two “and haven’t apologised till this day. How could they be even close to being described as civilised?”

A Chinese official reportedly wrote messages in a private group chat saying it is “not a big deal to kill a Japanese child” and “it’s in our regulations to kill Japanese”. He has since been placed under investigation, according to local media outlet Phoenix News.

As Japanese officials demanded answers for the “despicable” crime, Beijing sought to play it down, heavily censoring discussion of the incident online and calling it an “accidental, individual case” and an “isolated incident”.

But this is the third high-profile attack on foreigners in recent months, all of which China has described as “isolated incidents”.

In June, a Japanese mother and her son were attacked at a bus stop outside a Japanese school, and a Chinese woman died while trying to shield them. This happened just weeks after four US university tutors were stabbed in a park in Jilin. While the motives for both attacks were also unclear, they spurred anxious discussion that they were linked to xenophobic rhetoric online.

It is not just foreigners facing the ire of cyber-nationalists. In recent months, Chinese public figures and companies have also been castigated for being insufficiently patriotic.

Beverage giant Nongfu Spring is considered a Chinese business success story, with its mineral water bottles a ubiquitous sight across the country’s convenience stores and restaurant tables. But in March, nationalists accused the company of using Japanese elements in its product design. One of its logos was said to resemble a Shinto temple, while the iconic mineral water bottle’s red cap was deemed to be a reference to the Japanese flag.

It resulted in a brief but intense online campaign: some called for a boycott, while videos of people angrily stamping on Nongfu Spring bottles and chucking their drinks down the toilet were all over social media.

Similarly, the author and Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mo Yan was accused of “beautifying” Japanese soldiers and being unpatriotic in his works by a nationalist blogger, who controversially sued the writer for insulting China.

These moves have sparked deep concern. Hu Xijin, the former editor of state-run newspaper Global Times, warned that nationalistic attacks on creatives like Mo Yan could have a chilling effect.

And the outspoken liberal intellectual Yu Jianrong said the recent stabbings of foreigners were fuelled by “dangerous populist tendencies, which deserve our utmost vigilance”.

Even state media has accused online nationalists of “making patriotism a business”. One commentary by CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily said those who “stir up public opinion and add fuel to the flames in order to… gain traffic and make personal gains, should be severely punished”.

But the ruling party has had a hand in stoking the fire, some say.

“State-endorsed patriotism” and Beijing’s constant warnings about foreign influence has contributed to the “intense nationalism” we see today, says Rose Luqiu, an associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s communication school. What has aggravated it, she says, is the legal risk of being deemed unpatriotic.

The Chinese government has now criminalised the “distortion and smearing [of] heroes and martyrs” – this was used in the lawsuit against the author Mo Yan. It has also passed a sweeping anti-espionage law and launched a campaign encouraging the public to report suspicious activity by foreigners.

To legitimise its rule, it has stepped up efforts to strengthen patriotism in schools, where from a young age Chinese children are taught to love not just their country but also the CCP.

Meanwhile, a global surge in Sinophobic sentiment during the Covid pandemic and growing suspicion of China in the West due to trade tensions has fed a sense among some Chinese that their country is being unfairly discriminated against by foreigners.

China’s slowing economy and a spreading social malaise have also played a role. “Many people in China are confronted with severe social and economic worries. Inflation, housing crises, youth unemployment, and evaporating pensions are all causing anxieties. Nationalism is a readily available and highly potent framework for venting those frustrations,” says Florian Schneider, an expert in online Chinese nationalism at Leiden University.

All these factors have resulted in nationalist bloggers becoming a prominent fixture of the Chinese internet in the last few years. Well-known influencers can amass millions of followers – and potentially earn income from the traffic – by pumping out patriotic content extolling the virtues of China and the CCP while denouncing their enemies.

While they often act in the name of revolutionary leftist fervour, their behaviour is actually more similar to the far right found in other countries who lead xenophobic and reactionary movements, Professor Schneider tells the BBC.

As “populists who are trying to make China great again”, they “harbour hopes of returning society to some imagined former glory, and see all manner of elites and foreign powers as roadblocks to this goal”.

Sometimes authorities appear to listen to concerns.

In July, they quietly dropped a controversial amendment to a national security law after a public outcry. They acknowledged that a proposed ban on “hurting Chinese people’s feelings” could “infringe upon the legitimate rights and normal life of the public”.

Chinese social media platforms have tried to rein in online nationalists by periodically suspending their accounts.

Well-known nationalist influencers Sima Nan and Guyanmuchan have been censored without warning. So was the blogger who tried to sue Mo Yan, whose lawsuit was also rejected by the courts.

One vlogger, who shot to notoriety this year after he posted a video accusing a shopping mall of putting up decorations that resembled the Japanese flag, was similarly shut down. A scathing state media commentary denounced his video as “a malicious report that rides on the online traffic of patriotism”.

Still, authorities appear to have a loose grip on online nationalists.

While dissenters are swiftly shut down or in some cases arrested in the name of social stability, nationalist bloggers are allowed a freer rein, despite their sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. State media has even boosted these voices by republishing their content.

The BBC has asked the Chinese government for a response on why nationalist content does not appear to be censored on social media as much as other content deemed sensitive.

That could be down to the fact the state views online nationalism as a useful safety valve to “dissipate dissent in a way that does not undermine its authority”, particularly during its current economic troubles, where “society really needs an outlet to express frustration”, says Dr Luqiu.

By encouraging nationalists and then occasionally reining them in, the government “harnesses nationalism to its advantage, only intervening when it risks spilling over” into an uncontrollable situation.

It may seem risky, but Beijing has successfully crushed serious challenges to its authority in recent years, such as the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in 2019 and the White Paper protests in 2022 against harsh zero-Covid policies.

The government is thus confident it can manage the dangers, and it means nationalism is likely to stay despite the backlash, analysts say.

“Nationalism is a mixed blessing for China’s leaders, and at the moment we are witnessing the costs of that,” says Professor Schneider.

“But will the leadership rethink or even abandon its nationalism in favour of something less toxic? I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“This is the most dangerous of all front lines,” says Oleksandr, the head of a medical unit for the Ukrainian army’s 25th Brigade.

We are in the treatment room of a cramped makeshift field unit – the first point of treatment for injured soldiers.

“The Russian Federation is pushing very hard. We have not been able to stabilise the front. Each time the front line moves, we also move.”

We are close to Pokrovsk, a small mining city about 60km (37 miles) to the north-west of the regional capital, Donetsk.

The medics tell us they recently treated 50 soldiers in one day – numbers rarely seen before during the course of this war. The casualties are brought in for treatment at this secret location after dusk, when there is less of a chance of being attacked by armed Russian drones.

The Ukrainian troops have been injured in the ferocious battle to defend Pokrovsk. Just months ago, this was considered a relatively safe place – home to about 60,000 people, its streets lined with restaurants, cafes and markets. Soldiers would often come from the front line to the city for a break.

Now, it feels like a ghost town. More than three-quarters of its population have left.

Since Russia captured the city of Avdiivka in February, the speed of its advance in the Donestk region has been swift. At the start of October, it captured the key city of Vuhledar.

The Ukrainian government agrees with the soldiers we meet on the ground, that fighting around Pokrovsk is the most intense.

“The Pokrovsk direction leads the number of enemy attacks,” Kyiv stated last week – claiming that, in total, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had repelled about 150 “enemy” attacks on most days in the past two weeks.

In the field unit, six miles from the front, army medic Tania holds the arm of Serhii, a soldier with a bloodied bandage covering most of his face, and guides him into an examination room.

“His condition is serious,” says Tania.

Serhii has shrapnel injuries to one of his eyes, his skull and brain. The doctors quickly clean up his wounds and inject antibiotics.

Five more soldiers arrive soon after – they are uncertain how they received their injuries. The barrage of fire can be so fierce and sudden, their wounds could have been caused by mortars or explosives dropped from drones.

“It’s dangerous here. It is difficult, mentally and physically. We are all tired, but we are coping,” says Yuriy, the commander of all the brigade’s medical units.

All the soldiers we see were injured at different times of the morning, but they have only arrived after nightfall, when it is safer.

Such delays can increase the risk of death and disability, we are told.

Another soldier, Taras, has tied a tourniquet around his arm to stop the bleeding from a shrapnel wound, but now – more than 10 hours later – his arm looks swollen and pale and he can’t feel it. A doctor tells us it might have to be amputated.

In the past 24 hours, two soldiers have been brought in dead.

What we see at the field unit points to the ferocity of the battle for Pokrovsk – an important transport hub. The rail link that passes through was used regularly to evacuate civilians from front-line towns to safer parts of Ukraine, and to move supplies for the military.

Ukraine knows what is at stake here.

The threat of Russian drones is ever present – one hovers just outside the medical unit while we are there. It makes evacuations from the front line extremely hard. The building’s windows are boarded up so the drones can’t look inside, but the minute anyone steps out of the door, they are at risk of being hit.

The drones are also a threat to the remaining citizens of Pokrovsk.

“We constantly hear them buzzing – they stop and look inside the windows,” says Viktoriia Vasylevska, 50, one of the remaining, war-weary residents. But even she has now agreed to be evacuated from her home, on the particularly dangerous eastern edge of the city.

She is surprised by how fast the front line has moved west towards Pokrovsk.

“It all happened so quickly. Who knows what will happen here next. I’m losing my nerve. I have panic attacks. I’m afraid of the nights.”

Viktoriia says she has barely any money and will have to start her life from scratch somewhere else, but it is too scary to stay here now.

“I want the war to end. There should be negotiations. There is nothing left in the lands taken by Russia anyway. Everything is destroyed and all the people have fled,” she says.

We find eroded morale among most of the people we speak to – the toll of more than two and a half years of a grinding war.

Most of Pokrovsk is now without power and water.

At a school, there is a queue of people carrying empty canisters waiting to use a communal tap. They tell us that a few days ago, four taps were working, but now they are down to just one.

Driving through the streets, pockets of destruction are visible, but the city hasn’t yet been bombed out like others that have been fiercely fought over.

We meet Larysa, 69, buying sacks of potatoes at one of a handful of food stalls still open at the otherwise shuttered-down central market.

“I’m terrified. I can’t live without sedatives,” she says. On her small pension, she doesn’t think she would be able to afford rent somewhere else. “The government might take me somewhere and shelter me for a while. But what after that?”

Another shopper, 77-year-old Raisa chimes in. “You can’t go anywhere without money. So we just sit in our home and hope that this will end.”

Larysa thinks it’s time to negotiate with Russia – a sentiment that might have been unthinkable for most in Ukraine some time ago. But at least here, near the front line, we found many voicing it.

“So many of our boys are dying, so many are wounded. They’re sacrificing their lives, and this is going on and on,” she says.

From a mattress on the floor of an evacuation van, 80-year-old Nadiia has no sympathy for the advancing Russian forces. “Damn this war! I’m going to die,” she wails. “Why does [President] Putin want more land? Doesn’t he have enough? He has killed so many people.”

Nadiia can’t walk. She used to drag herself around her house, relying on the help of neighbours. Just a handful of them have stayed back, but under the constant threat of bombardment, she has decided to leave even though she doesn’t know where she will go.

But there are those who are not yet leaving town.

Among them are locals working to repair war-damaged infrastructure.

“I live on one of the streets closest to the front line. Everything is burnt out around my house. My neighbours died after their home was shelled,” Vitaliy tells us, as he and his co-workers try to fix electrical lines.

“But I don’t think it’s right to abandon our men. We have to fight until we have victory and Russia is punished for its crimes.”

His resolve is not shared by 20-year-old Roman, who we meet while he is working to fix a shell-damaged home.

“I don’t think the territory we’re fighting for is worth human lives. Lots of our soldiers have died. Young men who could have had a future, wives and children. But they had to go to the front line.”

At dawn one morning, we drive towards the battlefield outside the city. Fields of dried sunflowers line the sides of the roads. There is barely any cover, and so we drive at breakneck speed in order to protect ourselves against Russian drone attacks.

We hear loud explosions as we near the front line.

At a Ukrainian artillery position, Vadym fires a Soviet-era artillery gun. It emits a deafening sound and blows dust and dried leaves off the ground. He runs to shelter in an underground bunker, keeping safe from Russian retaliation and waiting for the coordinates of the next Ukrainian strike.

“They [Russia] have more manpower and weapons. And they send their men onto the battlefield like they’re canon fodder,” he says.

But he knows that if Pokrovsk falls, it could open a gateway to the Dnipro region – just 32km (20 miles) from Pokrovsk – and their job will become even more difficult.

“Yes, we are tired – and many of our men have died and been wounded – but we have to fight, otherwise the result will be catastrophic.”

A man who had £165,000 stolen from his Revolut business account by fraudsters has told BBC Panorama he believes the company’s security measures failed to prevent the theft.

He says criminals managed to bypass the ID verification process to gain access to his account.

So far, Revolut has refused to refund this money.

The BBC has found that Revolut was named in more reports of fraud in the last financial year than any of the major High Street banks.

The e-money firm – which has not yet been granted full status as a bank – says it takes fraud incredibly seriously and that it has “robust controls” to meet its legal and regulatory obligations.

Revolut is among a number of new digital-only financial institutions that offer all their services online or through an app – there are no branches to go to.

The firm has grown rapidly and amassed more than 45 million customers worldwide, of which nine million are in the UK. It almost tripled its revenue to £1.8bn in 2023. Its accounts are quick to open and offer competitive foreign exchange rates in an easy-to-use app.

These were the features that attracted Jack – who runs an international business and needs to hold multiple different currencies – to Revolut.

Jack, who asked us not to use his surname, told us he was also reassured by the security features Revolut promote in their advertising.

In February, Jack was in a co-working space when he received a phone call from a scammer pretending to be from Revolut. He was told he was being called because his account might have been compromised through being on shared Wi-Fi.

Jack was tricked into handing over enough information to allow the scammers to put his Revolut account onto their device. This meant they could see all his previous transactions, including a purchase at the online retailer Etsy that morning.

While Jack was still on the phone to the scammers, a text message from Revolut arrived, asking him to confirm the exact same amount he had spent – £21.98 – by typing in a six-digit security code.

He said, “Yes, that was me,” and read out the code to the scammers.

What Jack didn’t realise was that they had set up their own account – also called Etsy – and by sharing the code Revolut had sent him, he was authorising a new payment to their fake account instead.

Two similar texts followed to authorise payments of small amounts to two further fake accounts, called “Revolut fees” and “Revolut fees care”. Jack also approved these – which meant he had been tricked into setting up three new payees.

This opened the floodgates and thousands of pounds began to fly out.

As soon as Jack realised he was being scammed, he contacted Revolut – but there was no dedicated helpline, just a chat function deep within the app.

“I messaged them saying, ‘I’ve been scammed, please freeze my account,’” he told the BBC.

It took 23 minutes to reach the right department that could freeze the account, during which time another £67,000 had been taken.

Jack is now out of pocket by £165,000. He thinks Revolut’s systems failed him in several ways.

He believes criminals managed to bypass facial-recognition software to gain access to his account on their device. If an account is set up on a new device, Revolut asks for a selfie, which Jack says he did not provide.

Jack says he asked Revolut to show him the image used to authorised the new device. They eventually told him that it wasn’t stored in their system, so there was no way of proving what the fraudsters had done, or what photo was used.

Panorama investigated this apparent vulnerability and found that it appeared to have been fixed.

Jack also believes the fact that 137 individual payments were being made to three new payees in the space of an hour, should have raised concerns with Revolut.

Most banks and financial institutions monitor customers’ accounts for unusual activity.

“If somebody is suddenly processing a vast amount of transactions and a ton of payments to a new account, it is something that is a red flag – and banks should typically start to investigate some of that behaviour,” says Nina Kerkez, a fraud specialist at data analytics company LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

“[They should] call their customer, send them a text message, engage in some way to ensure those transactions are legitimate.”

Last year, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber-crime Action Fraud, received almost 10,000 reports of fraud in which Revolut was named, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Panorama.

That is 2,000 more than Barclays, one of the biggest banks in the UK, and double that of Monzo, a competitor of similar size to Revolut.

Panorama spoke to eight former employees to try to understand Revolut’s work culture, and two issues came up again and again – Revolut’s insatiable appetite for growth, and a high-pressure environment.

“Protecting Revolut from being used for financial crime always played second fiddle to the desire to launch new products and to get existing customers to use products more,” an insider, who wished to remain anonymous, told us.

Fraud is a problem for all banks and scams continue to net hundreds of millions even while the technology to defeat them improves.

In order to protect customers, financial companies do extra checks but sometimes these security steps can get in the way of a smooth customer experience.

Revolut says it has a “high performance culture” with an “expectation to deliver good customer outcomes” and that all new product launches involve comprehensive risk assessment and governance approval processes.

It also says it has “invested heavily” in its financial crime prevention team, which now makes up more than a third of its total global workforce.

Britain’s Newest Bank: How Safe Is Your Money?

Reporter Catrin Nye investigates the stories of Revolut customers who say scammers took tens of thousands of pounds from their accounts, and that Revolut failed to protect them.

Watch on BBC iPlayer or on BBC One on Monday 14 October at 20:00 (20:30 in Wales and Northern Ireland)

Revolut says it cannot comment on Jack’s case as it is being looked at by the Financial Ombudsman Service.

In 2023 the ombudsman received about 3,500 complaints about Revolut, more than any other bank or e-money firm.

“[This] shows that actually Revolut aren’t doing enough to act in this area,” says Rob Lilley-Jones, from consumer group Which?

He says that Which? does not recommend banking large sums of money with the firm.

“They have a track record of not reimbursing people who fall victim to fraud or find themselves in this incredibly difficult situation, [and] of money being taken from accounts even after scam activity has been reported.”

Revolut says that each potential fraud case is carefully investigated so it can evaluate the full circumstances and make the most informed decision.

Earlier this month new rules came in to make all banks and electronic money institutions reimburse victims of fraud.

The majority of scam victims will now be reimbursed their money automatically up to the value of £85,000, with refunds split 50-50 between sending and receiving firms.

• Banks must refund fraud up to £85,000 in five days
• Banks to put four-day hold on suspicious payments

This could prove costly for Revolut.

“We hear from customers consistently that they’re told to set up Revolut accounts when they are becoming the victim of a scam,” says Will Ayles from Refundee, a company specialising in fraud recovery.

“It might be safe to draw the conclusion from that, that fraud victims are told to set up Revolut accounts because fraudsters find it easier to move money through Revolut than any other bank.”

When someone is tricked into transferring money to a fraudster it is known as an authorised push payment (APP) fraud. It’s the most common type of financial scam in the UK.

Last year, figures from the Payment Systems Regulator show that for every million pounds paid into Revolut accounts, £756 was from APP fraud.

That is more than 10 times the amount for Barclays and four times more than Monzo.

Revolut says it takes fraud incredibly seriously, and has approaches to tackle it, including delaying payments, “to allow customers to stop, think and complete additional checks”.

It also says it has recently announced “a new biometric identification feature” and “an advanced AI-scam detection feature that protects customers against card scams”.

In July this year, the UK banking regulator granted Revolut a provisional banking licence, and it is now on its way to becoming a fully-fledged bank.

This means that if Revolut were to go bust, customers’ deposits would be guaranteed up to £85,000 per person.

Until then, it will continue to operate as an electronic money institution or e-money firm.

However, becoming a bank means it will be able to extend credit to customers via credit cards, overdrafts and mortgages.

“This means the stakes are higher for their customers if they’re targeted by a scammer,” says Rob Lilley-Jones.

“I think there might be a political element to Revolut’s licensing, because it’s becoming of a size to challenge High Street banks,” says Frances Coppola, a financial journalist and expert on banking risks and regulations.

“I think no government would want to have something of that size playing fast and loose with the rules.” However, she adds: “I suppose you could question, given there are so many complaints, whether Revolut should have a licence.”

The Treasury says the decision on whether to grant Revolut a banking license lies with the independent regulators. The regulators declined to comment to Panorama.

Revolut says that it abides by the same regulatory standards as any High Street bank, and it is sorry to hear of any instance where customers have been targeted by criminals.

It says it cut fraud by 20% last year but acknowledges “there is always more to do”.

• Customers can complain about any regulated firm to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which can settle disputes and order firms to pay compensation
• Mandatory Reimbursement Requirement regulations were brought in on 7 October 2024
• They will cover the vast majority of UK money transfers up to £85,000, with the exception of international transfers or those involving cryptocurrencies
• The new measures protect individuals, microenterprises – with fewer than 10 employees – and charities with an annual income of less than £1m
• BBC Action Line has more resources

Pokémon maker Game Freak has confirmed it was the victim of a data leak after information appeared online over the weekend.

The company, which has developed the Nintendo-exclusive video game series since 1996, said its servers were hacked in August this year.

A statement said 2,606 items containing the names and email addresses of current, former and contract employees were accessed.

The company did not comment on other information shared online claiming to show details of unreleased and upcoming projects.

Game Freak said it would individually contact those affected where possible, and strengthen security measures to prevent similar hacks in future.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused to all involved,” it said.

Game Freak works closely alongside Nintendo and the Pokémon Company on the franchise, said to be one of the most valuable media properties in the world.

It is currently developing the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which is due for release next year.

Last month, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company lodged legal action in Japan against the makers of Palword.

The game, from developer Pocketpair, quickly earned the nickname “Pokémon with guns” due to the resemblance of its characters to Nintendo’s creatures.

They’ve accused the company of patent infringement – although the exact details of the claim have not been revealed.

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

One by one, the satellites – each of them encrusted with a hodge-podge of solar panels and other gizmos – detached from their mothership.

They had blasted off from Earth just an hour earlier, on 16 August. The 116 satellites onboard the launch vehicle were mostly designed and built by Western nations and businesses – but one of them was different.

It was the first such spacecraft ever developed by the African country of Senegal.

A small CubeSat called GaindeSAT-1A, it will provide earth observation and telecommunications services. Senegal’s president called it a big step towards “technological sovereignty”.

The cost of launching a satellite has fallen significantly in recent years, says Kwaku Sumah, founder and managing director at Spacehubs Africa, a space consultancy.

“That reduction in cost has opened the market up,” he adds. “These smaller nations… now have the opportunity to get involved.”

To date, a total of 17 African countries have put more than 60 satellites into orbit and, along with Senegal, both Djibouti and Zimbabwe have also watched their first satellites become operational during the past 12 months. Dozens more African satellites are expected to go into orbit in the coming years.

And yet, the continent currently has no space launch facilities of its own.

Plus, powerful countries elsewhere in the world are arguably using nascent African space programmes as a means of building relationships and asserting their geopolitical dominance more broadly.

Can more African nations chart their own way into orbit – and beyond?

“It’s important for African countries to have their own satellites,” says Mr Sumah. He argues that it means better control over the technology and easier access to satellite data.

This information could help Africans monitor crops, detect threats posed by extreme weather such as floods, or improve telecommunications in remote areas, he adds.

But boldly going to space is still seen as “something for the elite” in Africa, says Jessie Ndaba, co-founder and managing director at Astrofica Technologies, a space tech firm in South Africa that designs satellites. Business at her firm remains “very slow” overall, she adds.

Given the massive threat posed to the continent by climate change, space tech should be used to monitor food and resources, she suggests. An African space race to reach the moon or Mars, in contrast, wouldn’t be helpful: “We’ve got to look at the challenges that we have in Africa and find ways of solving those.”

For Sarah Kimani, of the Kenyan Meteorological Department, satellites have proved invaluable in helping her and her colleagues track dangerous weather conditions. She recalls using earth observation data provided by Eumetsat, a European satellite agency, to monitor a major dust storm in March. “We were able to tell the direction of this dust storm,” she says.

Later this year, she and her colleagues will begin receiving data from the latest generation of Eumetsat spacecraft, which will provide wildfire and lightning monitoring tools among other benefits. “It will help us improve our early warning systems,” adds Ms Kimani, noting that the collaboration with Eumetsat has been “very efficient and effective”.

Climate change brings meteorological threats that can emerge rapidly – from major storms to extreme drought. “The intensity of these hazards… is changing,” says Ms Kimani, noting that satellite data that could be updated as frequently as every five minutes, or less, would help meteorologists track such phenomena.

She also argues that Kenya – which put its first operational earth observation satellite into orbit last year – would benefit from having more of its own meteorological spacecraft in the future. As would other African countries in general. “Only Africa understands her own needs,” says Ms Kimani.

Currently, many African nations with young space programmes are dependent on foreign technology and experts, says Temidayo Oniosun, managing director of Space in Africa, a market research and consulting company.

Some countries have sent students and engineers abroad to pick up space tech know-how. “The problem is, when these guys come back, there is no laboratory, no facility for them,” says Mr Oniosun.

Senegal’s new satellite was built by Senegalese technicians. While not wanting to detract from their significant achievement, it is worth noting that development of the satellite was made possible through a partnership with a French university, and that the spacecraft was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California.

Europe, China and the US have all involved themselves in numerous African space programmes. This has helped boost African technology into orbit, for sure, but it has also served as a “critical diplomatic tool”, says Mr Oniosun. It makes him “a little worried”, he admits.

Observers have suggested that African space programmes are not just about getting African nations into space – they are also, to some extent, arenas where some of the world’s most powerful countries compete with one another.

Mr Sumah is positive about the situation. “We can… play these different powers against each other to get the best deals,” he says.

Officials in both the US and China have considered the “strategic” implications of involving themselves in African space endeavours, says Julie Klinger, at the University of Delaware.

“That does bring with it an intensifying need for updating global treaties and strategies around maintaining a peaceful and manageable space environment,” she adds.

But there are opportunities, too. Dr Klinger notes that space launches from equatorial regions – which may not require as much fuel – could mean that African space ports have an important role to play in the coming decades.

The Luigi Broglio Space Center, an old Italian-built space port including a sea platform off the coast of Kenya, could be brought back into service one day, for example. The last launches there took place in the 1980s.

Ultimately, we can expect to see rising activity in space from African nations. “We’ve got close to 80 satellites that are currently in development,” says Mr Oniosun, “I think the future of the industry is very bright.”

The first black central bank governor of South Africa, who later went on to become finance minister, has died at the age of 65.

Tito Mboweni had suffered a “short illness”, the presidency confirmed on Saturday evening, without specifying further.

“We have lost a leader and compatriot who has served our nation as an activist, economic policy innovator and champion of labour rights,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

Mbwoeni’s family said they were “devastated” and that he had died in a hospital in Johannesburg “surrounded by his loved ones”.

A former anti-apartheid activist, Mboweni spent almost a decade in exile in Lesotho where he attended university.

That was followed by a Masters degree from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

“I suppose you can call me an exile kid, and international kid born in South Africa,” he was quoted as saying in later years.

“But my home is in South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, the United Kingdom, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Swaziland, the USA, Switzerland, and everywhere I stayed in my youth. I hate narrow nationalism – I cannot stand it. I hate xenophobia.”

He returned to South Africa in 1990, then served as the first labour minister under President Nelson Mandela, playing a key role in shaping post-apartheid labour laws.

These laid the foundation for collective bargaining agreements and labour courts to protect workers’ rights.

He gained a reputation for being principled and ready to debate issues openly, says News 24.

Mboweni’s penchant for wearing battered old clothes and shoes only added to his earnest public profile.

In his 10 years as governor of the reserve bank, Mboweni earned plaudits for his performance, at one point being named central bank governor of the year by the financial magazine Euromoney – who wrote that “his biggest success has been in bringing inflation under control”.

This was followed by a stint in the private sector, including as an international adviser to the global investment bank Goldman Sachs.

More recently, as finance minister in President Ramaphosa’s government between 2018 and 2021, Mboweni was credited with stabilising the economy.

He took that post despite suggesting months earlier that he was too long in the tooth and it was perhaps time for new blood.

“Against the wisdom of my team, please don’t tell them this. It’s between us, I am not available for minister of finance. You cannot recycle the same people all over again. It is time for young people. We are available for advisory roles. Not cabinet. We have done that,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In his later years, he charmed South Africans with his laidback lifestyle and humorous cooking posts, sharing recipes and engaging with followers on social media.

One follower remarked after learning of Mboweni’s death, “He’s left shoes too big to fill”.

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People from around the UK have been taking pictures of the “comet of the century”, which was spotted streaking across the sky on Saturday night.

Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was last month seen from Earth for the first time since the Neanderthals were alive, some 80,000 years ago.

On Saturday, a number of British stargazers said they had spotted the object, after the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) predicted it might be visible to the naked eye.

Most images show the comet as a bright streak of light, similar to a torch, on the horizon.

Other pictures show a trail in the sky similar to what you might see coming out of an aeroplane.

Below is a selection of the best shots so far.

The Nasa Earth Observatory had predicted the comet could come within about 70 million km (44 million miles) of Earth on Saturday.

The RAS added the comet would be visible in the northern hemisphere from Saturday night until 30 October – and the object was later pictured in skies above the USA on Saturday.

The comet was photographed in Spain, Italy, Uruguay, and Indonesia from late September to early October, when it was visible in the southern hemisphere.

RAS said the object has been called the “comet of the century” because of its impressive brightness and visibility.

The organisation’s Dr Robert Massey advised enthusiasts to go out “immediately after sunset” with a pair of binoculars, head for higher ground and look west towards the horizon.

He suggested bringing a hot drink and avoiding areas where views of the sky are obstructed.

Dr Massey said a DSLR camera could capture shots of the comet, but said holding a mobile phone camera up against the eyepiece of a small telescope could also snap the space event.

On Thursday, the UK’s skies were once again treated to a display from the Northern Lights.

The vial opened by Dawn Sturgess before her death had “enough poison to kill thousands” of people, an inquiry was told heard.

Former spy Sergei Skripal also told the hearing he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind a plan to poison him with the nerve agent Novichok.

An inquiry is being held into the death of Ms Sturgess, 44, who was killed by poison which was left in a discarded perfume bottle in Amesbury, Wiltshire, in 2018.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were seriously injured when members of a Russian military intelligence squad are believed to have smeared the nerve agent on his door handle.

“I never thought the Russian regime would try to murder me in Great Britain,” he told the inquiry in a written statement.

• Counsel to the inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, described Sturgess as an “innocent victim, in the crossfire of an illegal and outrageous assassination attempt”

• He added that the nerve agent, that was found in a perfume bottle used by Sturgess, held enough to kill thousands

• The family of Dawn Sturgess has called for Putin to give evidence at the inquiry and look the “family in the eyes”

• Michael Mansfield KC spoke for the Sturgess family. He says Wiltshire Police decided Sturgess and partner Charlie Rowley were suffering from drug overdoses, which had an effect on their medical treatment

• Charlie Rowley continues to suffer from long term injuries such as problems with his vision, balance and memory, says Adam Straw KC, representing the Sturgess family

Russia has denied involvement in the death and said the inquiry is a “circus”.

The Skripals will not give evidence in person to the public inquiry, due to concerns for their safety.

In an interview in May 2018, two months after he, his daughter Yulia and then-police officer Nick Bailey, were poisoned in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in March that year, a police officer put it to him that he believed President Putin was responsible.

A police interview transcript shows Skripal saying: “It’s my private opinion.”

In the last week, Mr Skripal provided a further witness statement to the inquiry, in which he said “it is not honourable to kill people who have been exchanged and the attack on Yulia and me was an absolute shock”, the inquiry was told.

He added in the statement read by Mr O’Connor: “I had received a presidential pardon and was a free man with no convictions under Russian law.

“They could have killed me easily if they wanted to when I was in prison.”

Mr Skripal also said that, after leaving Russia, he lived “quite a normal life”, but he thought returning to Russia would be “dangerous”.

He said President Putin “must have at least given permission for the attack”.

Mr Skripal said: “I believe Putin makes all important decisions himself. I therefore think he must have at least given permission for the attack on Yulia and me.

“Any GRU (Russian Federation) commander taking a decision like this without Putin’s permission would have been severely punished.”

Mr O’Connor also said that Jonathan Allen, a senior Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office official, provided the inquiry with a statement in which he said it is the Government’s view that Putin “authorised the operation”.

The Salisbury poisonings resulted in the UK Government expelling 23 individuals who were described as ‘spies posing as diplomats’.

At the time this effectively dismantled Russia’s spy network in the UK, which officials say it has since worked to rebuild.

Other Western nations followed suit, so that in total more than 100 spies were sent back to Russia, the inquiry was told.

The inquiry will look into whether the UK authorities took appropriate precautions in early 2018 to protect Mr Skripal from being attacked.

Mr O’Connor said the fact that Mr Skripal was a former senior GRU officer living in the UK “arguably placed him at some risk”.

He added that Mr Skripal recognised this himself in a police interview in 2018, in which he said: “I am a very important man of special services.

“Still now I know a lot of Russian secrets, top secrets, they are really dangerous for Russian special services.”

The inquiry will also examine whether the poisoning of Ms Sturgess could have been prevented.

The inquiry will sit for a number of weeks, moving between Salisbury and London. A final report is expected in 2025.

BBC Sounds: Salisbury Poisonings

Listen to Dan O’Brien’s full interview with Baroness May and keep up to date with the latest from the inquiry with our podcast.

Listen to the episode on BBC Sounds.

The Pentagon has confirmed it is sending a high-altitude anti-missile system operated by US troops to Israel.

Officials say the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) battery will bolster Israeli air defences after Iran’s missile attack on the country earlier this month.

President Joe Biden has said it is meant “to defend Israel”, which is still expected to retaliate against an Iranian strike involving more than 180 ballistic missiles fired at Israel on 1 October.

The move has become the focus of attention as it involves putting American boots on the ground in Israel.

There are already a small number of US forces in the country – but this new deployment of about 100 troops is significant as it signals further US entanglement in the expanding regional war.

It is also being scoured for clues as to what it means about the effectiveness of Israel’s missile defences as the crisis grows.

Israel has yet to launch its retaliation for Iran’s attack, which will be “lethal, precise and above all, surprising” according to Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Tehran said it fired on Israel because it assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Beirut.

It’s still unclear whether the Thaad deployment is part of US contingency planning to bridge gaps identified in Israel’s aerial defences, or whether it points to growing concerns in Washington of a more forceful Israeli strike on Iran.

President Biden has opposed any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as on its oil or energy infrastructure, amid fears that it would trigger a spiralling conflict and affect the global economy.

Whatever the background to the decision, it signals a further need by Israel for US defence assistance amid the expanding Middle East war.

Ballistic missiles like the Fattah-1used by Iran earlier this month are fired upwards into the Earth’s atmosphere, where they change trajectory and descend towards their target. One of their military advantages is their immense speed compared with cruise missiles or drones.

The Thaad system is highly effective against ballistic missiles, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the biggest US arms maker.

Raytheon, another American weapons firm, builds its advanced radar.

The system counts six truck-mounted launchers, with eight interceptors on each launcher. It costs about $1bn (£766m) a battery and requires a crew of about 100 to operate it.

Thaad is much sought after including by Ukraine to counter Russian missile attacks.

Saudi Arabia has orders in for it, and reportedly wanted more as part of an American weapons bonanza in return for officially recognising Israel: a so-called “normalisation” deal which was largely derailed after the 7 October attack by Hamas.

Iran’s 1 October strikes on Israel killed one man in Jericho in the occupied West Bank, who was hit by part of a missile that was apparently shot down.

Israel has a much vaunted aerial defence system, developed with the US, including Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 exo-atmospheric missiles.

These fly at hypersonic speed and can shoot down ballistic missiles in space. The system’s Israeli designers said Arrow “performed as expected” with “wonderful” results against the Iranian strike.

The US supported the defensive operation, firing interceptors from two naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, alongside support from some European and Arab countries.

Washington presented the Iranian strike as “defeated and ineffective”.

But damage on the ground told a less emphatic picture. Satellite images showed damage at the Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base, which houses F-35 fighter planes, including craters on a runway and taxiway.

Decker Eveleth from the Washington-based Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) said the images showed 32 impact points, including multiple hits in the area of F-35 hangers.

“Some F-35s got really lucky,” Mr Eveleth posted on X.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that it was still unclear whether damage was caused directly by missiles or interception shrapnel.

There were other direct impacts, including in Tel Aviv. One missile reportedly blew a 30ft (nine metre) deep crater in a densely populated area close to the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

Politically, the Thaad announcement is couched in terms of the Biden administration’s “ironclad” support for Israel’s defence.

The US has sent more than 50,000 tonnes worth of weapons to Israel in the last year, according to Israeli figures.

But it also highlights some of the policy contortions carried out by Washington: first trying to pressure Israel and its adversaries not to escalate the war, instead urging diplomacy.

When that has failed the White House has then firmly backed its Israeli ally’s decisions while moving to shield it diplomatically and militarily.

The Iranian missile strikes followed Israel’s assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh (a negotiator in the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks), Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Israeli air strikes in densely populated parts of Beirut and its ground invasion of Lebanon.

Israel said it has been striking against Hezbollah’s leadership and destroying its vast missile stores due to 11 months of cross-border rocket fire into Israel.

It argues only military pressure and degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities will ensure 60,000 Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel.

The Pentagon describes the Thaad deployment as part of “the broader adjustments the US military has made in recent months” to support Israel and defend American personnel from attacks by Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

It says a Thaad was deployed in southern Israel for an exercise in 2019, the last and only time it was known to be there.

A US military deployment to Israel outside of drills is extremely rare, given Israel’s own capabilities.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi warned on Sunday that the US was putting the lives of its troops “at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel”.

The Godfather has never been a godfather.

At least, he is pretty sure that is the case.

One of the biggest film stars of all time, Al Pacino is sitting in a suite in a Beverly Hills hotel, looking surprised at the idea that this is an honour which has passed him by.

“I’m not convinced, but I don’t hang with people who’d ask me that, I guess,” he muses.

“I don’t remember anybody asking me that.”

If you are Al Pacino’s godchild and he has forgotten, as his character Michael Corleone famously said in The Godfather, “it’s not personal.”

Pacino has spent a lot of time recently looking back over his life, because at the age of 84, the star of films including Dog Day Afternoon, Heat and The Irishman has written his autobiography, titled Sonny Boy, after what his mother called him.

He explains that “part of the reason” he wanted to commit his life to paper was becoming a father for a fourth time last year – to a boy, who is now 16 months old, called Roman.

The book is a way of guaranteeing that the baby will have the opportunity to learn about his father’s story.

“I want to be around for this child. And I hope I am,” he shares.

“I hope I stay healthy, and he knows who his dad is, of course.”

Pacino, who has never married, is no longer with Roman’s mother, the film producer Noor Alfallah, but they are co-parenting. However, from what he says, most of his day-to-day involvement is limited to online contact.

“He does text me from time to time,” is what Pacino says about Roman.

“Everything he does is real. Everything he does is interesting to me. So, we talk. I play the harmonica with him on the other video thing, and we have made this kind of contact. So, it’s fun.”

Al Pacino, once again winning hearts and minds with an on-screen performance.

Friends have been contacting Al Pacino asking him why he’s written a memoir, and he admits to “sort of regretting it”.

Over the years he had turned down several offers but decided that now “enough has happened in my life it could possibly be interesting enough for someone to read”.

What he found particularly enjoyable was looking back over his childhood, growing up in New York’s South Bronx.

And it is clear that he has no problem revisiting his biggest films.

It is more than 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather made Pacino famous. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, has its 50th anniversary this December. Both films won Best Picture at the Oscars. (There was also The Godfather Part III in 1990, which Pacino says had “problems”).

The truth is that Pacino was almost not part of them.

At the time, things were rather different. He was literally almost made an offer he could not refuse.

Sitting back with a beaming smile, Pacino tells with relish the story of exactly how close he came to being sacked during the first two weeks of filming: “When your director talks to you and says, ‘You know, I had a lot of faith in you. What’s happening? You’re not delivering.’

“And you hear the chirping all around. You start to feel, I don’t think I’m wanted here.”

The studio was putting pressure on Coppola to replace Pacino, whose performance they felt was flat.

Everything would change with the filming of one of The Godfather’s most famous scenes, where his character Michael Corleone uses a gun hidden in a restaurant toilet to kill a mob boss and a crooked cop, a sequence which allowed Pacino to unleash the power in a performance which is now regarded as an all-time great.

He believes that Coppola moved the scene up the filming schedule to “Get to the meat, because that’s what the studio wanted to see”.

“He now claims he didn’t,” Pacino laughs.

Either way, it changed his life.

He then shares a fascinating theory about who would have replaced him if he had been sacked.

He pauses: “Bob De Niro comes to mind.”

This would certainly have changed film history – Robert De Niro entering the Godfather series a film early and playing Michael rather than the young Vito.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” chuckles Pacino. “Well, you know, I’m not irreplaceable.”

However, it is 1983’s Scarface which seems to hold a special place in his heart.

“It’s got something. It was powerful,” he beams when the ultra-violent, cocaine-fuelled gangster film is brought up, describing its rise from box office under-achiever and Razzie nominee to cult classic, as “a happy story”.

“It was the hip-hop community that embraced it and were able to see the story in there,” he says, pointing out that the film broke VHS sales records.

When I put the theory to him that perhaps this is the film for which he would like to have won his Oscar, rather than his triumph a decade later for playing a blind veteran in Scent of a Woman, he replies with a “Yes, that’s interesting”, doubling down with a “Yeah. I would like to even have got nominated”, before back-tracking slightly with a “Not that I’m turning my back on Scent of a Woman”.

But the implication is clear.

What also shines through throughout the interview is just how much Pacino still loves the big screen.

Despite box office ticket sales having fallen 40% in a decade, he cannot imagine a Los Angeles without cinemas.

“It can’t happen.”

He pauses before repeating “It can’t happen” and then reeling off a list of directors (one in his 60s and two in their 80s) who he believes will keep cinema safe: “That’s what Scorsese is doing. That’s what Tarantino is doing. Francis Coppola is doing it.”

The latter is a particularly bold choice to mention, when Coppola’s current self-financed film Megalopolis is being regarded as one of the biggest box office flops of all time.

Pacino would do well to remember the classic Godfather quote: “A friend should always underestimate your virtues.”

There is, however, something deeply reassuring when he sums up why he believes everything will be all right for cinema by saying: “Maybe it’s my age talking. Things go on and then they change, because that’s who we are.”

He is also very laid back when it comes to AI being used to replicate his likeness after his death: “My children will take over when I’m gone, and they will take care of it. I trust them.”

He will not be leaving any stipulations about what he can and cannot appear in, shrugging as he says: “I don’t care about that.”

Our allotted 45 minutes have turned into almost 1 hour and 20 minutes as it is clear how much he enjoys storytelling.

Highlights included his long tale of how he believes he may have died during the pandemic, after collapsing in his house.

(“People now think I don’t believe in the afterlife because I said I saw nothing. No white tunnels. Maybe there’s no afterlife for me, but maybe someone else is going somewhere, because they did what I didn’t do.”)

He is also happy to talk in depth about finding out in 2011 that his bank accounts were empty.

(“I was out of money. It was gone and my accountant was in prison. I was spending $400 000 a month and didn’t know it was happening. You’ve got to be dumb.”)

And when it comes to the question of what he is watching at the moment, Pacino has just blitzed the second season of Netflix’s Monster, dealing with the Menendez Brothers. That morning he handwrote Javier Bardem a letter to congratulate him on his performance.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver are two other younger actors he really admires, while he sums up his own career with the borrowed quote: “The standouts usually have me with a gun. They say give Pacino a gun. You’ve got a hit.”

Oh, and he reveals that Jamie Foxx is the best chess player in Hollywood. Pacino used to play a lot, and laughs when I ask if he has ever taken on Robert De Niro. “I don’t even know if he knows the rules,” he says.

One very unexpected piece of information emerges when he places his mobile on the table. His phone case is a montage of pictures of Shrek. He explains that a few years ago his youngest daughter Olivia put it on, and he’s kept it there to please her.

But despite carrying Shrek around, one thing he does not want to do is provide voices for animated films: “I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”

I put it to him that is he really saying that one of the great method actors cannot do cartoon voices? Not even, say, a panda?

“OK, I think I can,” he relents, before chortling and adding: “I seriously don’t want to.”

Finally, as well as never having been a godfather, there is another glaring omission for Pacino’s list of awards – the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

As soon as the topic is brought up, he interrupts: “Oh, I don’t have a star.”

This is something he has known for a while and turns and asks his assistant Mike: “Is there a mechanism for all of this? To be a star?”

“You’ve been a busy man?” shouts back Mike as a way of explanation.

And does he want one?

“Oh yeah. Sure.”

At 84, Pacino is still a man with Hollywood dreams.

India and Canada have expelled their top envoys along with other diplomats as the row intensifies over last year’s assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.

Trudeau said his government responded after police began pursuing credible allegations that Indian agents were directly involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Canadian police accused Indian agents of involvement in “homicides, extortion and violent acts” and targeting supporters of the pro-Khalistan movement, which seeks a separate homeland for Sikhs in India.

Delhi rejected the allegations as “preposterous”, accusing Trudeau of pandering to Canada’s large Sikh community for political gain.

Speaking on live television on Monday afternoon, Trudeau said India had made a “fundamental error” in supporting “criminal” acts in Canada and his government had to act on the latest findings.

“The evidence brought to light by the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police service] cannot be ignored,” the prime minister said.

“It leads to one conclusion, it is necessary to disrupt the criminal activities that continue to pose a threat to public safety in Canada. That is why we acted.” 

India has vehemently denied all allegations and maintained that Canada has provided no evidence to support its claims.

Relations between Delhi and Ottawa have been strained since Trudeau said Canada had credible evidence linking Indian agents to Nijjar’s murder.

The row led to a deterioration in ties, with India asking Canada to withdraw dozens of its diplomatic staff and suspending visa services.

On Monday, a furious statement from India’s foreign ministry said Canada’s allegations were influenced by Sikh separatist campaigners.

Later in the day, it announced six Canadian diplomats, including acting High Commissioner Stewart Ross Wheeler, had been asked to leave India by 19 October.

Mr Wheeler was also summoned by India’s external affairs ministry to explain Canada’s move.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Wheeler said Canada had given India the evidence it had demanded, it now needed to investigate the allegations.

“It is in the interests of both our countries and the peoples of our countries to get to the bottom of this,” he said.

Delhi has defended its High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, referring to his “distinguished career spanning 36 years”.

“The aspersions cast on him by the government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt,” it said.

The Indian foreign ministry also said it was “withdrawing” its top envoy and other diplomats.

“We have no faith in the current Canadian government’s commitment to ensure their security. Therefore, the government of India has decided to withdraw the High Commissioner and other targeted diplomats and officials.”

Earlier on Monday, Canadian police said they had taken the unusual step of publicly disclosing information about ongoing investigation “due to significant threat to public safety in our country”.

RCMP commissioner Mike Duheme told reporters at a news conference on Monday that there had been “over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life” which he said “specifically” focussed on members of the pro-Khalistan movement.

He added that the threats were sufficiently serious to warrant the RCMP’s public intervention.

“We reached a point where we felt it was imperative to confront the government of India.”

Officials said a dozen Indian agents were involved in the alleged criminal activities, but did not confirm if they were directly linked to the June 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Nijjar .

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot and killed by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia.

He had been a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement, which demands a separate Sikh homeland, and publicly campaigned for it.

India has in the past described him as a terrorist who led a militant separatist group – accusations his supporters called unfounded.

Canadian police called his killing a “targeted attack”.

In September 2023, Trudeau had told Canada’s parliament that allegations of Indian involvement in the killing were based on Canadian intelligence.

He called the act a violation of Canada’s sovereignty.

Frosty ties between the two countries seemed to have thawed slightly after India resumed processing visas in October 2023.

But last week, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly called the country’s relations with India “tense” and “very difficult”.

She also said there remained a threat of more killings like Nijjar’s on Canadian soil.

Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside India, a religious minority that lives mostly in the state of Punjab.

A Canadian boba tea company has apologised after Marvel actor Simu Liu accused them of cultural appropriation on an episode of a Shark Tank-style reality TV series.

On an episode of CBC’s Dragon’s Den, the owners of a Quebec bubble tea brand called Bobba pitched their drink to potential investors, including Liu, arguing that they were “disturbing” the popular bubble tea market by using only three simple ingredients to “transform” the beverage into a “convenient and healthier” experience.

Liu pushed back against the entrepreneurs, accusing them of appropriating the Taiwanese drink, known as boba or bubble tea, which has became popular around the world.

“I’m concerned about this idea of disrupting or disturbing bubble tea”, Liu said as a guest on the star show.

“There’s an issue of taking something that’s very distinctly Asian in its identity and ‘making it better,’ which I have an issue with,” he added.

The Canadian-Chinese actor also pressed the business owners, Sebastien Fiset and Jess Frenette, about whether they had members of staff who understood the cultural significance of the “very Asian drink”, which is made with tapioca balls.

Mr Fiset responded that their “best partner” was in Taiwan – “they make all the recipes, all the boba”.

The episode quickly blew up on social media, where users attacked the Bobba owners.

The owners responded by issuing an apology on social media on Monday, saying they were sorry for the harm they caused “with our words and actions on the show”.

“Simu Liu raised very valid points regarding cultural appropriation and we welcome this learning opportunity,” the business owners said.

They added that they would be re-evaluating their branding, packaging and marketing strategies to “ensure that they reflect a respectful and accurate representation of our Taiwanese partnership and bubble tea’s cultural roots”.

Earlier Liu took to social media as well to try to de-escalate the conflict, arguing that the pair came on the show “in good faith”.

He said he ultimately decided not to contribute to the $1m (£765,000) investment Mr Fiset and Ms Frenette were seeking for an 18% stake in their company because of the issues he pointed out with their product.

“That doesn’t mean that I believe that they deserve harassment,” Liu said in the social media video.

Another judge on the show, Manjit Minhas, had agreed to invest in Bobba, arguing that “there can be new takes on things… Not everything has to be traditional,” when first hearing Liu’s criticism of the Canadian duo’s pitch on the show.

But following the social media storm the show created, she changed her mind, saying on Sunday: “After more reflection, due diligence and listening to many of your opinions, I will not be investing in Bobba Tea.”

In a video posted to her Instagram account, she added that she’d had to turn off comments on her social media platforms due to abuse received since the show.

“It is never OK to send hate and threatening messages to the entrepreneurs,” she said.

With just weeks to go until the US presidential election, Kamala Harris is ramping up efforts to court black and Latino voters. Despite holding a clear lead among both groups, some Democrats have warned she needs to do more to energise these voters to turn out for her in November.

That’s in part due to recent polling which suggests Harris’s Republican rival Donald Trump is having success in winning over black and Latino voters, a continuation of gains he made in 2016 and 2020.

One New York Times and Siena poll indicated Harris had 78% support among black voters, compared to around 90% support for Democrats in recent elections, with men accounting for most of this drop-off.

This could prove crucial in a race that looks set to be decided by razor-thin margins. And even if this polling is off, in key battleground states modest gains among black or Latino voters could ultimately sway result.

In Arizona, for example, nearly one in four voters on 5 November is expected to be Latino, along with almost 20% in nearby Nevada. In another key state, Georgia, black voters constitute about 30% of the total. These are a significant amount of votes in seriously important states.

So what could be driving Trump’s apparent gains with these voters?

The economy, particularly inflation and the cost of living, is the primary issue for a majority of voters.

This is the case for many black and Latino voters, with the New York Times suggesting a sizable majority of both groups are dissatisfied with the current state of the American economy.

Among them is Quenton Jordan, a 30-year-old Virginia resident who once voted for Barack Obama, but has voted for Trump since he first entered the national political stage in 2016.

“Inflation has pretty much made it impossible, or extremely challenging, for people to provide basic necessities for their families,” Mr Jordan said.

“It’s tangible things like that, that make people say [they] don’t like the pressure I’m getting from the cost of goods. It’s making it harder for me,” he added.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

Across the country in notoriously “purple” Nevada, which has a large Latino population, Las Vegas resident Lydia Dominguez said that many Latinos “remember the economy under Trump”, adding that economic concerns means there’s “no longer a stigmatism” about supporting the former president.

“They can’t afford to live. That’s a really big part of it,” she told the BBC. “It’s no longer taboo to support him.”

Even some voters who are leaning towards Harris acknowledge that “pocketbook” issues have helped swing voters towards the right in their communities.

“There’s many people in my community who are switching. Lots of people will vote for Trump, on economics alone,” said Diego Arancivia, a former Republican voter in Nevada who is now voting for Harris.

“They’d never want to get a beer with him, but they think he has the tools to lift them up economically.”

Echoing the broader US electorate, both black and Latino voters have expressed concern about immigration and the handling of the US-Mexico border by the Biden administration.

Strong border controls and a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants form a central part of the Trump campaign’s platform.

The campaign has also found a receptive audience among some black and Latino voters who say they perceive the border as having been chaotic and dangerous under the Biden administration and, by extension, under Harris.

Rolando Rodriguez, a Trump supporter and one-time Democrat from Texas, said the everyday realities of the record migrant crossings during recent years are weighing heavily on the minds of some voters, even if those numbers have fallen this year.

“I live so close to the border, and I have never before witnessed a disaster like the one we’ve seen under Kamala and Biden,” he said.

Similarly, Mr Jordan – the black voter in Virginia – said that he believes asylum seekers and other foreign nationals are “taking resources that the black community has been asking for for decades”.

This was something Trump addressed directly on Monday, referring to an “invasion” of undocumented migrants having a “huge negative impact” on black and Latino communities.

Political science Professor Quadricos Driskel said black male voters in particular have turned away from what some see as a Democratic “embrace” of social agendas contrary to their own views.

“There’s this perception that there has been this assault on masculinity and what that means,” he said. “I think that’s what some black male voters are railing against.”

“It’s not necessarily the party itself,” he added. “It’s more the voters within the party and the verbiage around human sexuality and gender.”

Mr Driskell’s assessment was echoed by 49-year-old black South Carolina voter Clarence Pauling.

A barbershop owner and former police officer, Mr Pauling said the Republican Party’s views align more with his own religious values on gender and sexuality.

“You can’t go create your own agenda,” he said of the Democrats. “[If] you’re going to lead a whole country, you’re supposed to lead them the right way.”

On Monday, as Trump courted black and Latino voters at a town hall event in Pennsylvania, Harris ramped up her own efforts by releasing a list of policy proposals her campaign dubbed an “opportunity agenda for black men”.

She will also meet with black entrepreneurs this week in cities in key swing states, and speak with popular black media figures including radio host Charlamagne Tha God at an event in Detroit.

Trump, meanwhile, referenced the recent polling directly. “Our poll numbers have gone through the roof with black and Hispanic [voters], have gone through the roof,” he said. “And I like that.”

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

VOICES: ‘I’m uneasy’ – first-time voters weigh in

POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

At least 21 people have been killed and eight others injured in a rare Israeli air strike in northern Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry says.

The strike hit a residential building in Aitou, a predominantly Christian village far from the areas where the Israeli military has carried out thousands of strikes targeting the armed Shia Islamist group Hezbollah.

Residents said a family recently displaced by the war had been living there.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reports. But it came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “continue to strike Hezbollah without mercy everywhere in Lebanon – including Beirut”.

“Everything is according to operational considerations. We have proven this recently and we will continue to prove it in the coming days as well,” he added.

He was speaking during a visit to a military base in northern Israel where a drone launched by the Iran-backed group killed four Israeli soldiers and wounded dozens on Sunday night.

The military said it was investigating how the drone evaded its sophisticated air defence systems and hit the Golani Brigade training facility near the town of Binyamina.

It was one of Hezbollah’s deadliest attacks on Israel in over a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah said it was a response to deadly Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which the country’s health ministry says has killed almost 1,700 people over the past month.

Most of the Israeli air strikes over the past week have struck in the majority Shia south and the Bekaa Valley in the east – areas where Hezbollah is strong.

Aitou, a Maronite Christian community located in the mountains near the north-western coastal city of Tripoli, was not a place which would have expected to be attacked.

“Oh mother Mary,” gasped one man as he walked through the devastation wrought on the village.

In the smoke and dust, bodies could be seen on the ground.

Residents said there was no warning, just a single, massive blast.

However, they also said several families displaced by the war in the south had recently moved to Aitou, and that the house which was hit had been rented out to new people just two weeks ago.

A Lebanese security source told AFP news agency that the building was “targeted shortly after a man had arrived in a car”.

The Lebanese health ministry said it was carrying out DNA tests to determine the identities of the remains recovered by first responders at the scene.

Also on Monday, the Israeli military said a strike in the southern Nabatieh area had killed the commander of the anti-tank unit of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.

Hezbollah has not commented on the report.

The military also said it had struck Hezbollah launchers used to fire a number of rockets into central and northern Israel on Monday.

Most of the rockets were intercepted or fell in open areas, according to the military.

One woman was lightly injured by a barrage of 15 rockets that were fired towards the northern town of Karmiel.

Israeli police also said debris from an interception fell in the Holon area, south of Tel Aviv, without causing any injuries or damage.

Google has signed a deal to use small nuclear reactors to generate the vast amounts of energy needed to power its artificial intelligence (AI) data centres.

The company says the agreement with Kairos Power will see it start using the first reactor this decade and bring more online by 2035.

The companies did not give any details about how much the deal is worth or where the plants will be built.

Technology firms are increasingly turning to nuclear sources of energy to supply the electricity used by the huge data centres that drive AI.

“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies,” said Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google.

“This agreement helps accelerate a new technology to meet energy needs cleanly and reliably, and unlock the full potential of AI for everyone.”

The deal with Google “is important to accelerate the commercialisation of advanced nuclear energy by demonstrating the technical and market viability of a solution critical to decarbonising power grids,” said Kairos executive Jeff Olson.

The plans still have to be approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as local agencies before they are allowed to proceed.

Last year, US regulators gave California-based Kairos Power the first permit in 50 years to build a new type of nuclear reactor.

In July, the company started construction of a demonstration reactor in Tennessee.

The startup specialises in the development of smaller reactors that use molten fluoride salt as a coolant instead of water, which is used by traditional nuclear plants.

Nuclear power, which is virtually carbon free and provides electricity 24 hours a day, has become increasingly attractive to the tech industry as it attempts to cut emissions even as it uses more energy.

Global energy consumption by data centres is expected to more than double by the end of the decade, according to Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs.

At a United Nations Climate Change Conference last year, the US joined a group of countries that want to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050 as part of efforts to move away from fossil fuels.

However, critics say nuclear power is not risk-free and produces long-lasting radioactive waste.

Last month, Microsoft reached a deal to restart operations at the Three Mile Island energy plant, the site of America’s worst nuclear accident in 1979.

In March, Amazon said it would buy a nuclear-powered data centre in the state of Pennsylvania.

Slow, small and relatively cheap to make, drones have become a deadly headache for Israelis in this year-long war.

Hezbollah’s attack on an army base near Binyamina in northern Israel on Sunday, which killed four men and injured dozens more, was the most damaging drone strike on the country to date.

It’s lead to fresh questions about how well equipped Israel’s hugely expensive air defence system is to stop them.

Visiting the damaged army base on Monday morning, Israeli Defence Minister Yoan Gallan said “significant efforts” were being put into solutions that would prevent future drone attacks.

Some parts of the air defence system work well. Here in northern Israel we hear booms at regular intervals as Iron Dome intercept rockets that Hezbollah fires from southern Lebanon. Israel says it hits more than 90% of its targets.

But Iron Dome works because Hezbollah’s rockets are crude – and it’s possible to calculate where it’s rockets will go at take-off and then intercept them.

Stopping drones is more complicated. And has in this war become a recurring problem.

In July a drone fired by Yemen’s Houthis reached Tel Aviv. Earlier in October the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a drone launched from Iraq killed two soldiers in the Golan Heights. Just last week another drone hit a nursing home in central Israel.

“Most, if not all, of the drones are manufactured by the Iranians and then supplied to the armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen,” Dr Yehoshua Kalisky, senior researcher of the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the BBC.

Drones have a small radar signature and can fly at low altitudes which makes early detection difficult. They can even occasionally be confused for birds.

“They’re also difficult to intercept with aircraft because the UAV’s (drones) fly slowly,” Dr Kalisky explained. “They’re going about 200km/h (124mph) compared to 900km/h (559mph) of a jet plane.”

Israeli media reports suggest that on Sunday two Hezbollah drones, most likely Ziyad 107s, crossed from Lebanese air space above the Mediterranean. One was shot down and the other disappeared – presumed crashed – so no warning siren was triggered. It then went on to hit the canteen of an army base.

But Sarit Zehani from the Alma Research Institute – which specialises in security on the northern border – does not think it was luck that the drones got through.

“It was planned,” she said. “They’ve been trying to do this for a long time”.

Ms Zehani lives 9km from the Lebanese border in western Galilee and saw Sunday’s events unfold from her balcony. She said there was rocket fire and alerts all across the border area as the drones were launched, “overwhelming” the air defence system and helping the drone to get through.

The Alma Research Institute has counted 559 incidents of drones crossing the northern border for surveillance or attack missions since the war began a year ago. Excluding Sunday’s attack on Binyamina, it says there have been 11 casualties from drone attacks.

In addition to Iron Dome, systems such as Adam’s Sling, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are designed to destroy ballistic missiles. And they will soon be bolstered by the arrival of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) battery from the United States which will be operated by nearly 100 US military personnel.

More permanent solutions to take down drones are currently being developed.

“High powered lasers are being worked on and the other technology is using microwave cannons to burn the drone electronics,” Dr Kalisky said. “These technologies will hopefully be available in the very near future.”

The government says it is allowing some “eligible” Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside the British military to resettle in the UK, after they were previously rejected.

Under the previous government, about 2,000 Afghans who served with specialist units – known at the “Triples” – were denied permission to relocate to the UK after the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Armed forces minister Luke Pollard told the House of Commons a review had now found some applications were wrongly turned down.

Pollard said there was no evidence of “malicious intent” in the initial decision-making process, instead blaming poor record-keeping for any errors.

The so-called “Triples” were elite units of Afghan soldiers set up, funded and run by the UK.

On Monday, Pollard said the government has so far overturned 25% of the rejections.

He said a review had found new evidence that some of the Afghan soldiers had been directly paid by the UK government, meaning they were eligible for resettlement – and this evidence had been “overlooked” during the initial resettlement applications.

These errors were caused by a “failure to access and share the right digital records, and challenges with information flows across departmental lines”, he said.

He criticised the previous government for a “critical failure” in locating the correct paperwork.

The defence minister said the government had reviewed many of the cases as a matter of urgency because many of the Afghan troops “remain at risk” under Taliban rule.

Some of the Triples are reported to have been targeted and killed by the Taliban.

The review into the rejected applications was announced by the previous Conservative government in February, after former armed forces minister James Heappey said the decision-making process behind some rejections had not been “robust”.

Pollard said the review’s findings did not mean that all Triples would be eligible for relocation, adding officials were still re-assessing some of the applications.

Shadow veterans minister Andrew Bowie welcomed the continuation of the review.

He said the Conservatives wanted the correct decisions made on the “very important and highly sensitive applications as speedily and fairly as possible”.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing new allegations of rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault after a series of fresh lawsuits were filed on Monday.

At least six lawsuits were filed in New York federal court by two women and four men. They include allegations that span from 1995 to 2021.

The unnamed accusers allege some of the assaults happened at Mr Combs’ parties, which were attended by major celebrities and music artists.

Lawyers for Mr Combs denied the allegations, saying in a statement to the BBC that he “has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman”.

One of the accusers said he was 16 when he attended one of the parties in the Hamptons in 1998. In the lawsuit, he describes being thrilled to get an invitation to Mr Combs’ party, which became a premier A-list annual event for celebrities.

The accuser said he saw countless celebrities and music artists as he walked around, and ran into Mr Combs while he was on the way to the bathroom. He said he started talking to Mr Combs about breaking into the music industry when they went to somewhere more private.

The accuser alleges that during their conversation, Mr Combs abruptly ordered him to undress.

The lawsuit includes a photo of the pair together at the party with the teen’s face blurred out.

According to the lawsuit, Mr Combs said it was “a rite of passage” and “the route to becoming a star”. The rapper told the teen he could make anyone a star and the teen had the right “look”, the lawsuit states.

Another lawsuit filed on Monday includes allegations by a woman who claims Mr Combs raped her in a hotel room in 2004 when she was a 19-year-old college student.

According to the lawsuit, she met the music mogul at a photoshoot, where he then invited her and a friend to attend a private party at his hotel. Once they arrived, the lawsuit alleges that Mr Combs “fondled, molested, and ultimately raped her” despite her repeatedly asking him to stop.

Texas-based lawyer Tony Buzbee, who is representing the accusers, said he is representing more than 100 people who plan to sue the rapper on allegations of sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

Mr Buzbee said that some of the alleged victims include children. He said the lawsuits are being brought under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, which allows victims to file older claims.

“We will let the allegations in the filed complaints speak for themselves, and will work to see that justice is done,” Mr Buzbee said in a statement after filing the lawsuits Monday.

“We expect to be filing many more cases over the next several weeks naming Mr Combs and others as defendants as we continue to gather evidence and prepare the filings.”

The lawsuits are the latest of more than a dozen that have been filed against Mr Combs recently, accusing the music mogul of assaults, rape and sexual extortion.

He has denied all civil and criminal claims against him.

Mr Combs is facing federal criminal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. A judge last week tentatively scheduled his trial to begin on 5 May 2025.

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York since his 16 September arrest. His lawyers have argued for his release until the trial, citing the jail’s “horrific” conditions.

A New York federal judge denied their request for bail, arguing that Mr Combs was a “serious flight risk”.