India and Canada have expelled their top diplomats amid escalating tensions over the assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil, marking a new low in a historically cordial relationship. While past disagreements have strained ties, none have reached this level of open confrontation.

In 1974, India shocked the world by detonating a nuclear device, drawing outrage from Canada, which accused India of extracting plutonium from a Canadian reactor, a gift intended solely for peaceful use.

Relations between the two nations cooled considerably – Canada suspended support to India’s atomic energy programme.

Yet neither expelled their top diplomats like they did on Monday as the row intensified over last year’s assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canada-based Sikh leader labelled a terrorist by India.

The tit-for-tat expulsions followed PM Justin Trudeau’s claim that Canadian police were investigating allegations of Indian agents’ – and the Indian government’s – direct involvement in the June 2023 killing.

Canadian police further accused Indian agents of involvement in “homicides, extortion and violent acts” targeting pro-Khalistan supporters advocating a separate Sikh homeland in India. Delhi rejected the allegations as “preposterous”.

There are some 770,000 Sikhs living in Canada, home to the largest Sikh diaspora outside the Indian state of Punjab. Sikh separatism – rooted in a bloody insurgency in India during the 1980s and early ’90s – continues to strain relations between the two countries. Canada has faced sharp criticism from Delhi for failing to oppose the pro-Khalistan movement within its borders. Canada, says India, is aware of local Khalistani groups and has been monitoring them for years.

“This relationship has been on a downward trajectory for several years, but it’s now hit rock bottom,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told the BBC.

“Publicly laying out extremely serious and detailed allegations, withdrawing ambassadors and top diplomats, releasing diplomatic statements with blistering language. This is uncharted territory, even for this troubled relationship.”

Other analysts agree that this moment signals a historic shift.

“This represents a significant slide in Canada-India relations under the Trudeau government,” added Ryan Touhey, author of Conflicting Visions, Canada and India in the Cold War World.

A history professor at St Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Mr Touhey notes that a key success of former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government was fostering a “prolonged period of rapprochement” between Canada and India, moving past grievances related to Khalistan and nuclear proliferation.

“Instead, a focus was placed on the importance of trade and education ties and people-to-people links given the significant Indian diaspora in Canada. It is also worth noting that the Khalistan issue had seemed to have disappeared since the beginning of the millennium. Now it has suddenly erupted all over again.”

Still, Harper was not faced with allegations from Canadian security services of a potential link between agents of India’s government and the killing of a Canadian citizen.

On Monday, Canadian police said they had approached at least a dozen people over the past few months, specifically members of the pro-Khalistan movement, because they believed they faced credible and imminent threats.

They alleged subsequent investigations uncovered “a significant amount of information about the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated” by India agents, and consequential threats to Canadians.

“No country, particularly not a democracy that upholds the rule of law, can accept this fundamental violation of its sovereignty,” Trudeau said.

Canada’s allegations have come at a time when Trudeau appears to be battling anti-incumbency at home with elections barely a year away. A new poll by Ipsos reveals only 28% overall think Trudeau deserves re-election and only 26% would vote for the Liberals. India’s foreign ministry, in bruising remarks on Monday, ascribed Canada’s allegations to the “political agenda of the Trudeau government that is centred around vote bank politics”.

In 2016, Trudeau told reporters that he had more Sikhs – four – in his cabinet than Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s in India. Sikhs exert considerable influence in Canadian politics, occupying 15 seats in the House of Commons – over 4% – while representing only about 2% of the population. Many of these seats are in key battlegrounds during national elections. In 2020, Trudeau had expressed his concern over protests by farmers in India, drawing sharp criticism by Delhi.

“I think broadly speaking this crisis will give a feeling that this is a prime minister who is seeming to go from one debacle to another. More specifically, within the Indo-Canadian community it may well hurt more than ever,” says Mr Touhey.

He explains that the Indian diaspora in Canada, once predominantly Punjabi and Sikh, has become more diverse, now including a significant number of Hindus and immigrants from southern India and the western state of Gujarat.

“They are proud of India’s economic transformation since the 1990s and will not be sympathetic to Sikh separatism. Historically, the Liberals have been quite politically successful with the Sikh vote, especially in British Columbia.”

However, Mr Touhey doesn’t feel that the crisis with India has to do with vote bank politics.

Instead, he believes this is more about the Canadian government “repeatedly missing signals from Delhi regarding Indian concerns over pro-Khalistani elements in Canada”.

“My strong sense is that after decades of pleading with Canadian governments to take Indian concerns over pro-Khalistani elements in Canada, they feel that they’re back to square one – except this time you have a much more different government in Delhi that is willing to act forcefully, right or wrong, to rein in perceived domestic threats,” says Mr Touhey.

Mr Kugelman echoes a similar sentiment.

“There’s a lot at play that explains the rapid deterioration in bilateral ties. This includes a fundamental disconnect: what India views, or projects, as a dangerous threat is seen by Canada as mere activism and dissent protected by free speech. And neither is willing to make concessions,” he says.

All may not be lost. The two countries have a long relationship. Canada hosts one of the largest Indian-origin communities, with 1.3 million residents, or about 4% of its population. India is a priority market for Canada, ranking as its 10th largest trading partner in 2022. India has also been Canada’s top source of international students since 2018.

“On the one hand, the relationship is far more broad-based than ever thanks to the size of the diaspora, the diversity of that diaspora and the increase in bilateral trade, increased student exchanges – albeit this last point has become a problematic issue for the Trudeau government as well,” says Mr Touhey.

“So, I think those people-to-people links will be okay. At the high bilateral level, I don’t think there is much the current Canadian government can do as it pretty much enters the final year with an election to be held at the latest by the autumn of 2025.”

For the moment, though, things look pretty bad, experts say.

“Delhi now levels the same allegations against Canada that it has regularly levelled against Pakistan. It accuses Ottawa of sheltering and sponsoring anti-India terrorists. But of late, the language making these allegations against Canada has been stronger than it has been against Pakistan. And that’s saying something,” says Mr Kugelman.

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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, aged 83 – 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.

You can get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk or using the form below.

A member of the chart-topping K-pop group NewJeans has tearfully testified to South Korean lawmakers as part of an enquiry into workplace harassment.

Hanni, who is 20 years old, alleged that the entertainment agency Hybe had deliberately undermined her band, and accused senior managers of deliberately ignoring her.

Following multiple incidents, she said, “I came to the realisation that this wasn’t just a feeling. I was honestly convinced that the company hated us.”

After hearing her testimony, the CEO of NewJeans’ record label, Ador – a subsidiary of Hybe – said she would “listen more closely” to her artists, adding: “I wonder if there was more I could have done.”

Hanni, who is Vietnamese-Australian, was testifying to the Labour Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly at a hearing about workplace harassment.

She was called to give evidence last month, after NewJeans went public with allegations about their treatment following the dismissal of their mentor Min Hee-Jin.

Min, who co-founded Ador in 2021, has been a key figure in the band’s success but she was removed from her post in August, following accusations that she had planned to split from Hybe, taking NewJeans with her.

Min repeatedly denied those. Then, in September, NewJeans took the unusual step of going public with their dissatisfaction at the situation.

Posting on a burner YouTube account, they demanded Min’s reinstatement and made claims of workplace harassment.

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

The singer said that when she reported the incident, her concerns had been brushed off.

During her testimony, Hanni went into further detail about the exchange.

“We have a floor in our building where we do hair and make-up. And at that time, I was waiting in the hallway because my hair and make-up was done first.”

As she waited, three singers from another band and their manager walked past., Hanni continued.

“I said hello to all of them, and then they came back about five or 10 minutes later.

“On her way out, [the manager] made eye contact with me, turned to the rest of the group and said, ‘Ignore her like you didn’t see her’.

“I don’t understand why she would say something like that in the work environment,” she added.

Speaking at the National Assemblyin Seoul, Hanni said this was not an isolated incident, and claimed that senior members of Hybe management had also given her the cold shoulder.

“Since my debut [in NewJeans], we ran into a person in a high-up position many times, but they never greeted me when I greeted them,” she said.

“I understood from living in Korea that I have to be polite to older people and that’s part of the culture – but I think it’s just disrespectful as a human being to not greet us, regardless of our professional status.”

She continued: “There was a certain vibe [of disrespect] that I felt within the company.”

Hanni further alleged that she had seen employees bad-mouthing NewJeans on Blind – an app for internal communications similar to Teams or Slack.

She also said Hybe’s PR department had contacted a journalist, asking him to downplay NewJeans’ achievements in an article about their record sales.

Hybe has previously denied those accusations, saying they had been attempting to correct a factual error.

However, Hanni said the incident reinforced her feeling “that the company hated us”.

Kim Joo-young, who is the current CEO of Ador, was also called to testify at the hearing.

She said she believed Hanni’s story of being shunned by another band’s manager, but had been “unable to find supporting evidence”.

CCTV footage of the incident had expired before she had the chance to request it, she told the committee.

“I believe I did everything I could, but seeing that Hanni felt this way and that the situation escalated to this point, I wonder if there was more I could have done,” she added.

Kim also said she would co-operate with an investigation into the incident by South Korea’s Ministry of Labour.

The story has gripped South Korean media and fans of K-Pop – where NewJeans have emerged as one of the genre’s brightest new bands.

With slick pop songs like Super Shy, OMG and Supernatural, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, and were nominated for best group at this year’s MTV Awards.

Formed by Ador in 2022, its five members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – range in age from 16 to 20.

Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, they have continued to release and perform music.

That’s partly because they are committed to a seven-year contract, which runs out in 2029.

The K-pop news site Koreaboo estimated that the members would have to pay about 300 billion South Korean Won (about £170 million) to terminate the contract early.

Hanni concluded Tuesday’s session by expressing her frustration at how the internal dispute had overshadowed her band’s career.

“A lot of people have been worried about us,” she said, wiping away tears.

“Some fans apologised for making us go through this, but I’m grateful to Korea for allowing me to do what I love.

“The ones who should be apologising are avoiding responsibility, and that frustrates me.”

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.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Analysing footage from the Gaza strikes
• Watch: ‘I say bye to my kids, in case we don’t wake up’ – two Gazans film a year under attack by Israel
• Analysis: Drone attack on Israel puts spotlight on Iron Dome’s limitations
• Gaza Strip in maps: How a year of war has drastically changed life in the territory

The Pentagon said an advance team and components needed for the battery arrived in Israel on Monday – with further personnel and parts to follow in the coming days. The battery will be operational in the “near future”, a statement said.

Israeli journalist Avi Scharf, who routinely monitors flight tracking data, said two C-17 US military transporters flew from Alabama to the Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base overnight, likely carrying Thaad equipment.

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 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”.

Prague is to ban night-time pub crawls organised by travel agencies, in a bid to deter rowdy tourists from visiting and attracting more “refined” visitors instead.

The Czech capital’s authorities say organised pub crawls – often aimed at foreign stag and hen dos – will be banned between 22:00 and 06:00 local time (21:00-05:00 BST).

Deputy mayor Jiri Pospisil said he wanted the city to become a place where “refinement and respect for shared public space are a priority”.

Prague is not alone in its bid to deter rowdy tourists – many from the UK. Last year, Amsterdam launched a campaign to discourage young British men from travelling to the Dutch capital to use drugs and drink heavily.

Prague City Council said councillors had approved an amendment limiting “organised movements of tourists from pub to pub, disrupting the night peace especially in the centre”.

The change was made on noise, safety and cleanliness grounds. Crowds of drunk tourists also negatively affect the reputation of the city, councillors claimed.

Officials in the central Prague One district, most of which is a Unesco World Heritage Site and where many bars are located, welcomed the move.

Prague One mayor Terezie Radomerska said it was a “welcome change” which would “reduce the negative effects caused by excessive noise in the streets”.

Police will be charged with enforcing the ban.

Councillors said disorderly behaviour had led to “an excessive deployment” of cleaning and police services, stretching the city’s resources.

Prague resident Stepan Kuchta told the Times newspaper his health had been “ruined by chronic noise”.

But Prague Pub Crawl, which organises the drunken excursions, panned the city’s decision as “merely a populist move to cover up the city management’s inability to address real issues, such as the lack of municipal police officers to enforce night-time peace”.

The city of 1.3 million welcomed around 7.4 million tourists last year, according to the Czech Statistical Office.

Historically, many tourists have been enticed by the Czech capital’s beautiful historic features and cheap beers – which in some restaurants and pubs can be cheaper than bottled water.

Vaclav Starek of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants welcomed the city council’s decision. Mr Starek told the AFP news agency that he didn’t think business would be affected.

“I don’t think this will hurt our sales. Nobody will be banned from going to a pub but these nightly organised pub crawls … are nothing we would need.”

A Canadian boba tea company has apologised after Marvel actor Simu Liu accused them of cultural appropriation on an episode of the Dragons’ Den reality TV series.

On an episode of CBC’s Dragons’ Den, the Canadian equivalent of the US show Shark Tank, 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.

The murder of a politician in a bustling area in India’s Mumbai city has sent shockwaves across the country.

Baba Ziauddin Siddique, 66, was shot on Saturday night near his car while he was leaving his son’s office. He died later in hospital.

The killing of Siddique, an influential politician who was part of the coalition governing Maharashtra state – of which Mumbai is the capital – has set off a political blame-game.

The motive for the murder is not clear yet, but for many it has brought back memories of the 1990s, when politicians and film stars were frequently targeted by Mumbai’s underworld.

Police have arrested three people so far and say investigations are continuing. Local media reports say the arrested men are part of a notorious gang whose leader is currently in jail.

Born in the eastern state of Bihar, Siddique migrated to Mumbai at the age of five with his father, a watchmaker.

He started his political career in the 1980s as a student leader with the Congress party, soon leading its youth wing in Mumbai. He then entered local council politics before being elected to the state’s legislature three times in a row and becoming a minister in 2004 for about four years.

In February, he left the Congress to join the Nationalist Congress Party which, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena, currently governs state.

Apart from his political activities, Siddique also made headlines for his glitzy iftar parties held during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which were attended by top Bollywood stars.

It was at his iftar party in 2013 that superstars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan ended their much-discussed rift with a hug – that propelled “the annual Siddique affair into a must-watch event on the city’s social calendar”, Midday newspaper wrote in 2016.

The politician was shot outside his son’s office as he was about to enter his car in the busy Bandra area.

Police said three shooters fired six-seven rounds, hitting Siddique’s abdomen and chest, and fled the scene. A bystander was also injured as a stray bullet hit his leg.

Investigators said they had recovered two pistols and 28 live rounds of ammunition from the arrested men.

Siddique had three police guards – local media reported his security was upgraded days ago – but the suspects reportedly distracted them by setting off a “smoke firecracker”.

Police have been granted custody of the arrested men for a week. They say they are on the lookout for their accomplices.

“We have set up 15 teams and investigation is on to identify who provided logistical support to the shooters,” senior police official Datta Nalawade said.

While the police have not confirmed it, several reports citing sources have linked the arrested men with the notorious Bishnoi gang. The gang’s leader Lawrence Bishnoi is an accused in several cases and is currently in a high-security prison in Gujarat state.

Within hours of the shooting, a man claiming to be a member of the gang posted on Facebook that they were behind Siddique’s killing. Police have not yet confirmed the authenticity of the post.

Though Bishnoi has been in jail since 2015, he frequently makes news. Many social media accounts claiming to belong to him or his associates have often posted his selfies from jail. He even gave interviews to a TV channel in 2022, prompting an investigation.

Many of the reports on Bishnoi are based on police sources and it’s not clear how he conducts the gang’s operations while in prison.

The gang’s name popped up in connection with the murder of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala in 2022.

In April, police arrested two gang members for allegedly firing shots outside the apartment of actor Salman Khan in Mumbai.

On Monday, the Canadian police also said it believed the Bishnoi group had connections to Indian government agents who were using the gang to target Sikh separatists on their soil. India has not officially responded to the police claims.

Siddique’s killing is the first major assassination of a politician in Mumbai since the 1990s when high-profile killings of politicians, businessmen and Bollywood celebrities by criminal gangs of the Mumbai underworld were not uncommon.

Local media reports said he had received a death threat two weeks ago, which led to his security being upgraded.

His killing within days of that has put the state government on the backfoot, with Maharashtra set to hold assembly elections soon.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the murder “a complete failure of law and order in Maharashtra”, and Delhi’s former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the incident had scared not only the people of Maharashtra “but the entire country”.

Chief Minister of Maharashtra Eknath Shinde has defended his government.

“[The culprits] will not be spared no matter who they are, be it the Bishnoi gang or any underworld gang… Those who are receiving threats, their safety is the state government’s responsibility and it will fulfil its responsibility,” he said.

A former police officer in the US state of Kentucky is to go on trial for a third time over the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman shot dead in her own home in 2020 during a botched raid.

Brett Hankison, 47, was part of a group of officers in the city of Louisville who broke into Taylor’s apartment on 13 March that year. Some 32 shots were fired at Taylor and her boyfriend, who survived the encounter.

Taylor’s death sparked racial injustice rallies across the US.

Mr Hankison has twice before avoided a conviction for allegedly violating Taylor’s civil rights. Jury selection in his new trial will start on Tuesday.

While Taylor, a 26-year-old nursing student, and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, slept at her apartment in the early morning hours, officers wearing plain clothes executed a “no-knock” search warrant.

Authorities believed Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was using her home to hide narcotics.

Walker fired a single shot when officers knocked down the door because he said they did not announce themselves as police, and he thought they were intruders.

Another officer fired the shot that killed Taylor, but prosecutors said his use of deadly force was justified because Mr Walker had opened fire first, hitting a colleague of Mr Hankison.

During the altercation, Mr Hankison fired 10 rounds through Taylor’s window and sliding glass door. The bullets did not hit anyone, but entered the neighbouring property.

A subsequent police report contained errors, including listing Taylor’s injuries as “none” and saying no force was used to enter, when a battering ram had been used.

Taylor’s name was widely circulated during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality.

• An account of the night of Breonna Taylor’s death
• Jury deadlocked in second Hankison trial

Mr Hankison was sacked from Louisville Metro Police Department in June 2020.

He has not been convicted of any crimes. His previous federal case last year ended in a mistrial when the jury told the judge it could not reach a unanimous verdict.

The nine-day case revolved around whether the use of force by Mr Hankison had violated the rights of Taylor, Mr Walker and Taylor’s neighbours.

Mr Hankison admitted to the court that he could not see a target but believed a shootout was taking place, and acted to save his and his fellow officers’ lives.

He was previously tried by a Kentucky state jury in March 2022, and acquitted on three counts of felony wanton endangerment.

Other officers involved in the botched raid have faced charges as well.

Taylor’s family and Mr Walker have both received payouts from the city over the incident. A series of police reforms were also introduced in Louisville.

It’s when dark falls over Bucha that the witches come out, because that’s when the Russian attack drones start swarming.

The Witches of Bucha, as they call themselves, are a volunteer air defence unit made up almost entirely of women, now helping to protect Ukraine’s skies as more and more men are sent to the frontlines.

There are more drones to shoot down, too, often launched from Russia in waves to overwhelm the main defences ahead of a missile strike.

The night-time shifts allow the women to combine their work defending their country with day jobs as teachers, doctors – there’s even a manicurist.

Many say it’s a way of overcoming the powerlessness they felt when Russian forces occupied Bucha region at the start of the full-scale invasion.

The horror stories of those weeks – including of killing, torture and abduction – only began to emerge after Ukrainian forces freed the area at the end of March 2022.

“I’m 51, I weigh 100kg, I can’t run. I thought they’d send me packing, but they took me on!” Valentyna recalls, a veterinarian who signed up with the drone-busters this summer and now goes by the callsign Valkyrie.

She talks about friends deployed to the front, and others who’ve died in the fighting, as part of what brought her to this role.

“I can do this work. The kit’s heavy, but we women can do it.”

Valentyna gets to demonstrate that a few hours later as an air alert is activated across the region.

Her unit scramble from their base in the woods, and we follow their pick-up truck through the darkness as it bumps towards the middle of a field. The team of four jump out to begin mounting their weapons.

The machine-guns are from another era: two Maxims made in 1939, ammunition boxes stamped with red stars from Soviet days.

Serhiy, the only man on the team, has to pour in bottled water by hand as a coolant.

This is all that’s available: Ukraine’s best kit is at the frontline, and it is constantly asking its allies for more.

But the ancient weapons are impeccably maintained and the Witches say they’ve downed three drones since the summer.

“My role is to listen for them,” Valentyna explains. “It’s nervous work. But we have to stay focussed, to [listen out] for the slightest sound.”

Her friend Inna is also in her early 50s and out on one of her first deployments.

“It’s scary, yes. But so’s giving birth, and I still did that three times,” she laughs, telling me her own callsign is Cherry: “Because of my car, not the tomatoes.”

A maths teacher, she occasionally has to rush back from the woods to take a class.

“I keep my clothes in the car. My heels. I put on some lipstick, teach the lesson. Then it’s back in the car, quick change round the corner and I’m off.”

“The guys have gone, but we’re here. What can’t Ukrainian women do? We can do everything.”

Somewhere on the horizon is a beam of light from another group, scouring the skies for danger over their own patrol zone.

There’s no public data on the total number of volunteer units – or how many women are involved. But as Russia sends drones packed with explosives almost every night, they help form an extra shield around big towns and cities.

From the Witches’ position in a field, Yulia tracks two drones on her tablet. They’re over the neighbouring region, so there’s no imminent danger for Bucha, but the machine guns will stay in place until the alert ends.

The volunteers’ commander is a big bear of a man, just back from Pokrovsk in the eastern Donbas region where the fighting is fiercest.

“There are fireworks, non-stop,” is how Andriy Verlaty describes it there, with a smile.

He used to have around 200 men operating mobile air defence units in the Bucha region and patrolling during the nightly curfew, many of them unfit for full military service.

Then Ukraine overhauled its mobilisation law, in urgent need of more soldiers, and many of the colonel’s crew suddenly found themselves eligible for the frontline.

“About 90% of my men ended up in the army and another 10% hid, scattering like rats. We were left with barely anyone,” Col Verlaty says bluntly. “Just men with no legs, or half a skull missing.”

He had a choice: to fill the roles with men below mobilisation age, or recruit women.

“At first it was like a joke: ‘Let’s take women!’ There wasn’t much trust in them, in the armed forces. But that has really changed,” he says.

The Witches spend their weekends undergoing a broader military training. On the day we visit, it’s their first lesson on storming a building. They practice in the ruins of a farm outhouse, poking rifles round empty doorways before edging warily past.

Some manage to look more convincing than others, but the women’s commitment and focus is clear – because their reasons for doing this are deep and personal.

“I remember the occupation. I remember the horror. I remember the screams of my own child,” Valentyna tells me, through small sighs. “I remember the dead bodies, when we were fleeing.”

Her family escaped Bucha past burned out tanks, dead soldiers and civilians. At one Russian checkpoint she says a soldier made them wind down the car window, then put a gun to her son’s head.

She is filled with quiet fury.

That’s also why Valentyna refuses to stop believing in Ukraine’s victory, despite the gloom that has settled over much of her country after almost 1,000 days of full-scale war.

“Life has changed, all our plans have been torn apart. But I’m here to help speed up the end of this war. As our girls here say, it won’t end without us.”

Crunching over broken glass and rubble in army boots, rifle in hand, office manager Anya is another volunteer Witch. Now 52, she finds the military training empowering.

“Under occupation, I felt the utter pointlessness of my existence. I could neither help anyone else, nor defend myself. I wanted to learn how to use weapons, so I could be some use.”

There’s a lot of backchat with the trainers: the women are enjoying themselves. But later that night, at their base in the woods, one of them opens up even more and shares a chilling story.

When Bucha was taken over, Russian forces began going house to house. They raped and they murdered. Then one day, a rumour spread that the occupiers were coming to kill the children.

“For the decision I took that day, I will never forgive the Russians,” this woman confides.

I won’t share the details of what she told me – the extreme decision she took – only that the soldiers never came and she never had to act on it. But this woman has been haunted by that moment ever since, and by guilt.

The first time she felt relief was when she began learning to defend herself, her family and her country.

“Coming here really helped,” she tells me quietly. “Because I won’t ever sit like a victim again and be so very afraid.”

The Israeli military has been hitting search-and-rescue teams, medical centres and hospitals across Lebanon since it escalated its offensive against Hezbollah last month.

The attacks have killed and injured dozens of medics and emergency workers and have left swathes of the south cut off from emergency services and healthcare.

One organisation has been hit more than any other. The Islamic Health Society (IHS), funded by Hezbollah, operates emergency services, hospitals and medical centres across the country.

As of Friday, more than 85 of its staff had been killed, and more than 150 wounded, according to Bilal Assaf, head of media relations at the IHS Civil Defence.

Just after midnight on 7 October, Israel struck the Baraachit Emergency Centre in the southern Bint Jbeil region, killing at least 10 firefighters, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

In the hours before the attack, the firefighters in Baraachit – part of the IHS Civil Defence emergency services – were grappling with a grim dilemma.

There were still civilians in the area – including some who refused to leave – but Israeli forces were no longer allowing the team to conduct missions.

“Every time they went out, they would hit near their vehicle,” says Mr Assaf.

The firefighters decided to split up; some would head north to Nabatiyeh, and others would stay and reassess whether to relocate in the morning.

“Unfortunately, they didn’t live to see the next morning,” Mr Assaf says.

In the early hours of Monday, an Israeli air strike destroyed the building where they were staying.

The Lebanese health ministry denounced the strike as a “massacre”.

In a statement, it said: “The Israeli enemy has added to its rich record a new war crime against firefighters and rescue workers in south Lebanon, displaying unmatched violence and lack of humanity, targeting people engaged in purely humanitarian search and rescue missions.”

A few hours after the attack, the Lebanese Red Cross went to the site and found eight bodies.

There were more under the rubble, but it could not remove them because search and rescue teams could not make it to the site, according to Mr Assaf.

Days after the attack, he tells me, the remains of several firefighters are still under the debris.

As Lebanon struggles with a mass displacement crisis caused by Israeli strikes across large parts of the country, IHS medics and volunteers are offering support to the people affected – alongside the government and other organisations.

In one of many schools in Beirut which have become shelters, hundreds of people who have fled Israeli bombing on the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut try to make themselves at home.

Clothes hang out to dry from the windows of the classrooms overlooking the playground; faces – some bored, some curious – take the occasional glance at the scene unfolding below and disappear back to their bedrooms.

Down in the schoolyard, children play around, some with bicycles, others with footballs.

A few young men gather around our camera, complaining about water shortages. Some of the adults take drags on their shishas, a popular pastime suited for a long and uncertain wait.

Overhead, the constant hum of an Israeli drone – a new normal all over Beirut.

Ali Freidi, who runs the health centres of the IHS, tells me they have deployed doctors, nurses, therapists and psychiatrists to help the growing mass of displaced people.

He acknowledges the immense pressure the IHS’s services were under, both in dealing with the growing needs of the displaced, as well as Israel’s strikes on their colleagues in the emergency services.

“We are part of the fabric of society,” he says. “Everyone knows someone who was martyred.”

Batoul Hammoud, 25, is a school teacher and a volunteer with the IHS Civil Defence.

She says she and her fellow volunteers have been going around the school – and another one across the street – to try to figure out how they can help.

“The most pressing need is medicine. Many people left their homes without taking their medicine.”

The IHS offers routine daily services, such as monitoring the blood pressure of the many elderly among the displaced, she says.

“As a teacher, I can also offer some psychological support for the kids, organise some activities, or just talk to them and calm them down.”

The IHS emerged in the early 1980s; amidst a civil war, an Israeli occupation of the south, and a breakdown of the state across Lebanon.

It was later licensed by the government, and currently operates in co-ordination with the Ministry of Health.

It also has agreements with municipalities to run medical centres and emergency services.

As the health service comes under intense fire across the country, it has taken more hits than any other health organisation.

On 3 October, Israel struck a centre belonging to the IHS in the heart of Beirut, killing nine people and wounding 14.

Most of those killed were civil defence workers and paramedics, who were just back from a search-and-rescue mission in the southern suburbs, where there had been heavy Israeli bombardment.

The next day, seven medics were killed in an Israeli air strike on two IHS ambulances near the entrance to Marjaiyoun hospital, in the south of the country. The hospital went out of service on that day.

Also that day Israeli forces struck the IHS-run Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil, wounding several doctors and hospital staff. The hospital suspended operations following the attack.

The director of the hospital, Dr Mohamad Sleiman, told me the hospital was functioning well until the last day, despite the war raging around it.

“We had medicine and equipment. The government plan was working well. We had no shortages the day of the accident. We just need safety,” he said.

The Israeli military has issued several statements accusing Hezbollah of using medical vehicles to transport fighters and weapons.

It described its attack on the Baarachit Emergency Centre as a “precise, intelligence-based strike on several Hezbollah terrorist operatives who were using a fire station as a military post during combat”.

It also accused Hezbollah of “systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure”.

It said the strike on the HIS centre in central Beirut targeted “terror assets”.

And on Sunday, an Israeli military spokesman claimed that it had “discovered lately that Hezbollah elements are using ambulances to transport saboteurs and weapons”, and threatened it would take “the necessary measures against any vehicle transporting gunmen”, regardless of what type of vehicle it is.

Following the attack on the medical centre in Beirut, the EU’s foreign policy chief said: “Not only civilians are victims of attacks, including in densely populated areas, but they are deprived of emergency care. I condemn this violation [of International Humanitarian Law].”

Mr Assaf, the spokesman for the IHS Civil Defence, says the IHS plays no military role and accuses Israel of striking emergency services in areas where they want to force civilians out.

“Up until two weeks ago there were still some people in Bint Jbeil,” he says.

“Our presence reassured them to a certain extent. Our guys were taking care of them, even bringing them food.”

“Let’s assume for the sake of argument they’ve seen something with us [weapons], why are they hitting other emergency services?

On Friday, the UN said that over 100 medics and emergency workers had been killed in Lebanon since the start of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel one year ago.

The World Health Organization said that since September 17, there had been 18 attacks on health facilities in Lebanon, killing 72 health workers.

The Lebanese health ministry has said that among the teams hit are the Islamic Risala Scout Association affiliated to the Amal party, an ally of Hezbollah, as well as the Lebanese Red Cross, and Lebanon’s official Civil Defence service, which is run by the interior ministry.

With the escalating attacks on emergency services, as well as the buildings housing the displaced, and crowded neighbourhoods in Beirut, many now see parallels between Israel’s onslaught in Lebanon and its year-long military campaign in Gaza.

Last week, a UN commission of inquiry said Israel was perpetrating “a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”.

It accused Israel of “committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”. Israel rejected the commission’s findings.

While the carnage in Lebanon is still far from what Palestinians in Gaza have endured, many here fear it is only the beginning.

Among the IHS staff and volunteers, there is a mix of pain and defiance as they struggle to do their jobs under fire.

“At night when we gather to eat, we look at each other, wondering who among us won’t be here tomorrow,” Mr Assaf says.

I ask if he thinks they might have to suspend their operations in case the Israelis keep hitting them.

“They will definitely keep hitting us. We will definitely never stop.”

Mr Freidi, who runs the IHS medical centres, insists they “won’t leave the people”.

“These are our people who were forced to leave their land. We will serve them till our last breath.”

Ms Hammoud, the teacher and IHS volunteer, echoes these sentiments.

“It’s very hard, the targeting of these people who are helping others. These people should not be targeted.”

“What God decrees will happen,” she says with a smile.

“If God grants us martyrdom, then praise be to God. We will die as martyrs of the Civil Defence of the Islamic Health Society.”

Israel will listen to the US but make final decisions based on its national interest, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, as speculation over its response to a major Iranian missile attack continues.

The brief overnight statement was issued in response to a Washington Post story which said Benjamin Netanyahu had told the US he was willing to target military sites in Iran – rather than nuclear or oil facilities.

Citing two officials, the Post said Netanyahu made the comments during a phone call with US President Joe Biden last Wednesday, when they discussed Israel’s intended retaliation.

Iran launched almost 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel on 1 October. Most of the projectiles were intercepted, Israel’s military said.

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At the time, Netanyahu said Iran had made a “big mistake” and would “pay for it”.

The overnight Israeli statement, sent alongside a link to the Washington Post article, said: “We listen to the American government’s thoughts, but will make our final decisions based on Israel’s national security needs.”

According to an anonymous official quoted in the Post, Israel’s retaliatory strike would be designed to avoid the appearance of “political interference” in the upcoming US presidential election, which is less than a month away.

Analysts have said a hit on Iranian oil facilities could push up oil prices, and therefore affect the polls, which currently suggest a close race between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

The price of crude oil shot up 5% at the beginning of the month, immediately after President Biden spoke about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil infrastructure.

The US has appeared to be trying to limit Israel’s response to Iran.

Biden has said the US does not support any potential strike on Iranian nuclear sites – a course of action touted by some in Israel, including former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett.

And on 4 October, Biden went further, signalling the US would also oppose an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities.

“If I were in their shoes, I would be thinking about other alternatives than striking Iranian oil fields,” he said during a news conference.

Israel has not officially said how it intends to respond to Iran’s October missile attack – the second in six months – but Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said last week its reaction would be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”.

“They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results,” Gallant said.

Iran has, in turn, said it will not let any attack by Israel go unanswered.

Meanwhile, the US has said it will help bolster Israel’s air defences, by deploying a high-altitude anti-missile system.

The Pentagon said that the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) deployment underscored the US’s “ironclad” commitment “to the defence of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran”.

Iran said its October missile barrage was a response to Israel’s assassinations of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer in Beirut, and of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in recent weeks, carrying out deadly air strikes predominantly in southern and eastern Lebanon, and also in the capital, Beirut.

Before that, Israel and Hezbollah had been trading cross-border fire on a near daily basis since last October, when Hezbollah began firing into Israel which it said was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.

It had said it would stop firing if there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

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 led 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 Yoav Gallant said “significant efforts” were being put into solutions that would prevent future drone attacks.

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

But the Iron Dome works because Hezbollah’s rockets are crude – and it’s possible to calculate where its 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 UAVs (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 drones 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 the Iron Dome, systems such as David’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.

She says these technologies should be “available in the very near future”.

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”.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Analysing footage from the Gaza strikes
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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.

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.

“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.”

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 former East German secret police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for murdering a Polish man attempting to flee to West Berlin 50 years ago.

The man, named as Martin Manfred N in court papers, is now 80. He shot Czeslaw Kukuczka in the back at Friedrichstrasse station in 1974, after he had entered the Polish embassy claiming to be carrying a bomb and demanding to be allowed to leave to democratic West Germany.

Details of the killing remained unknown for decades after the Stasi secret police shredded files relating to the case before communist East Germany reunified with the West in 1990.

Berlin prosecutors filed charges against him in 2023 after persistent investigations by historians and Polish authorities.

On 29 March 1974, 38-year-old Kukuczka, a firefighter, entered the Polish embassy on East Berlin’s Unter den Linden boulevard with a briefcase.

The father of three said – falsely – that he was carrying a bomb. He demanded to be allowed to leave for West Berlin.

Stasi officers gave him an exit visa and some West German money and escorted him to Friedrichstrasse station, which was still served by trains from the western side of the city.

Kukuczka passed several border checks inside the station. However, before he could make it to the western part of the station, a man approached him from behind and shot him in the back.

A group of schoolchildren from Hesse in West Germany were among witnesses to the killing. One gave evidence at the trial that she had seen a man shoot Kukuczka before “people in uniform” sealed off the passage.

Details of the case were uncovered by historians, who tracked down related files in the Stasi archives. Documents linking Naumann to the killing, which had been shredded, were reconstituted using a purpose-built machine.

Kukuczka’s family was never officially told of his fate. His ashes were sent to his wife some weeks after he had been murdered.

The case was brought to trial after Poland issued a European arrest warrant for Naumann in 2021.

The trial has been seen as holding special historical significance in Germany, similarly to trials of surviving Holocaust perpetrators.

Martin Manfred N always insisted on his innocence. His lawyer has said there was no proof he carried out the killing.

East Germany was created from the parts of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It was a communist dictatorship, while West Germany – created from the American, British and French occupation zones – was a capitalist, democratic state.

In 1990, both countries reunified to form modern Germany.

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.”

A court in Moscow has sentenced a French researcher to three years in a penal colony for breaking Russia’s controversial law on registering as a “foreign agent”.

Laurent Vinatier, who worked for a Switzerland-based conflict mediation NGO, was arrested in June while gathering what prosecutors say was information on Russia’s military.

Speaking in the courtroom in Russian, Vinatier apologised, saying he was unaware he should have registered. The 48-year-old, who had earlier admitted his guilt, recited a verse by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

France described the court ruling as “extremely harsh”, calling for the researcher’s immediate release. Vinatier’s defence team said he would appeal.

On Monday, Judge Natalia Cheprasova at Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky district court said: “The court ruled to find Vinatier guilty and sentence him to three years in a general regime penal colony.”

State prosecutors had demanded a jail term of three years and three months. They had argued that the information collected by Vinatier may have been used against Russia.

Speaking during the hearing, Vinatier apologised for his actions and said he loved Russia. Wearing a blue open-necked shirt and jeans, he did not display any emotion as the verdict against him was read out.

He concluded his comments by reciting a poem by Pushkin – If Life Deceives You -which speaks of having the patience to know that better days are ahead, the AFP news agency reported.

A plea by Vinatier’s defence team for him to be fined instead of facing a jail term was dismissed by the presiding judge.

After the court verdict, Vinatier’s lawyer Pavel Mamonov told reporters: “We consider the sentence harsh and will definitely appeal.”

Reacting to the sentencing, the French foreign ministry said in a statement: “The legislation on ‘foreign agents’ contributes to a systematic violation of fundamental freedoms in Russia, such as freedom of association, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression.”

Vinatier worked for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue non-government organisation when he was arrested. The NGO states its main activity is “to prevent and resolve armed conflicts around the world through mediation and discreet diplomacy”.

Russia requires anyone who gets foreign support or is under influence from abroad to declare themselves as a foreign agent.

The Kremlin has used the 2012 law to squash any opposition inside the country to President Vladimir Putin, and also as a pretext to detain people, including foreigners.

Russia has in the past used foreign national detained in the country as bargaining chips to secure the release of its nationals arrested abroad.

In August, Russia freed US reported Evan Gershkovich, ex-US Marine Paul Whelan and over a dozen others in exchange for several Russian spies detained across the West.

French politician Marine Le Pen has hit back against charges of illegal party funding by European Parliament deputies from her far-right National Rally (RN) party.

Le Pen and more than 20 other senior party figures are accused of hiring assistants who worked on party affairs rather than for the European Parliament which paid them.

She told a court in Paris on Monday that parliamentary assistants paid for by the Brussels assembly were naturally involved in politics – because that was what drew them to the job in the first place.

So, she claimed, it was a false distinction to claim that they should be working solely for the parliament.

“Assistants work for their deputies, enlarging their ideas,” Le Pen said.

“Just look at the number of deputies who started out as parliamentary assistants. It’s because they’re interested in politics.

“I have absolutely no feeling that I have committed the slightest irregularity, the slightest offence.”

Along with 24 other named individuals plus the party itself as a legal entity, Le Pen is accused of syphoning EU parliamentary funds to pay the salaries of party workers.

According to the prosecution case, she presided over a system for several years in which RN staff members from Paris were “taken on” as EU parliamentary assistants in Brussels.

It is being argued in court that these RN officials – who included Le Pen’s bodyguard and a graphic designer in the publicity department – rarely set foot in the EU parliament and had no role there.

• Marine Le Pen on trial for alleged EU funds misuse
• In depth: Le Pen and rise of National Front

On Monday, the court heard the case of Le Pen’s long-time personal assistant Catherine Griset.

Accredited in Brussels as a parliamentary aide, she was recorded as attending the assembly building for only 12 hours between August 2014 and October 2015.

But answering questions for the first time since the trial opened two weeks ago, Le Pen said it was naïve to suppose that parliamentary assistants were not taking part all the time in political work.

And she said failure to appreciate this was a sign of how the European Parliament was divorced from the reality of political life.

“The European Parliament is a bit like The Blob,” she said, referring to the 1958 film about a massive amoeba that threatens to destroy the world. “It swallows up deputies.

“In the parliament you can sleep, you can eat, you can get your hair done. Everything is contrived to keep you living in the box. Sometimes you have to say ‘Cuckoo! We’re supposed to be doing politics here!'”

A lawyer by profession, Le Pen says she will attend as much as possible of the trial – which will last till late November – despite the tense political moment in which France currently finds itself.

Her party holds a rare chance to influence events because of the permanent threat it now poses to the new government of Michel Barnier.

With the prime minister commanding the support of little more than a third of National Assembly deputies, Le Pen can bring him down at any point by backing a censure motion tabled by the left.

“We know we have the power to press the button. You know it. They know it. Everybody knows it,” she said in an interview with Le Point magazine. “The government’s sell-by date is written on the box.”

But Le Pen’s political ambitions risk being seriously hampered by the outcome of the party funding trial.

If she is found guilty, the possible penalties include not just prison and a large fine – but also ineligibility from standing for public office for five years.

This would in theory rule out a run for the presidency in 2027 – her fourth and potentially most promising attempt.

Most likely, appeals against such a sentence could string the process out until after 2027 – and if she won the presidency she would then be immune from judicial pursuit until she left office.

Some commentators say a guilty verdict would do little in any case to harm her chances, because it would let her continue to pose as a victim of the establishment.

But others say campaigning under the shadow of a conviction would alienate many moderate voters who might otherwise choose her for the first time.

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.

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.

John Moore, Industry Editor for the TechTarget website told the BBC that AI data centres need large amounts of electricity to both power them and and keep equipment cool.

“These data centres are equipped with specialised hardware… that require lots of power, that generate lots of heat”.

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.

“Google’s partnership with Kairos Power signals another major step in tech’s embrace of nuclear energy,” said Somnath Kansabanik from research firm Rystad Energy.

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.

• One woman’s battle to push Africa’s space race

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 Duchess of Edinburgh has described distressing scenes of sexual exploitation, after meeting refugees from Sudan’s civil war who had fled to neighbouring Chad.

“People are having to exchange food and water for sex, for rape. That is violence that is being enacted through conflict. It is being used as a bargaining tool,” said Sophie, after a visit to this conflict-hit region of Africa.

She spoke to women who had travelled into Chad to escape the conflict across the border in Sudan.

“These women have no option but to leave. And, even then, they’re lucky if some of them can get away, because… if they leave their houses they get killed,” said Sophie, who was moved to tears by the harrowing testimonies.

This was the first royal visit to Chad and the three-day trip, carried out at the request of the UK’s Foreign Office, was not officially announced until it was over on Monday.

The purpose of the visit, says Buckingham Palace, was to draw attention to the deteriorating humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Sudan, which was now producing challenges for neighbouring Chad.

More than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes by the conflict in Sudan, says the Palace, with women and children a high proportion of those now arriving as refugees in Chad.

“This is a human catastrophe that is vast and Chad is having to pick up the pieces when it can ill afford to do so,” said Sophie.

At a medical centre in Adre, near the border with Sudan, Sophie told the Press Association about the “devastating” experiences that had been described to her and how it had upset her.

“What they do to the children is… I can’t even use the words,” she said.

Sophie had spoken to a woman who had fled from a town in the west Darfur region of Sudan, with the population facing threats and violence.

Her son and brothers had been rounded up and taken away and Sophie said the woman had seen bodies piled up in the street “like a wall”.

The duchess, 59, had travelled to this part of Chad with Unicef representatives and visited a refugee camp where almost a quarter of a million people had gathered, with many more still arriving from Sudan.

She spoke to the mother of a small child who had travelled for 10 days to reach safety and did not know what had happened to her husband in the fighting.

“Whilst the world and its attention is being focused very much on other conflicts around the world, the humanitarian crisis being faced by the people of Sudan, which is landing on Chad’s shores, cannot be ignored,” said the Duchess of Edinburgh.

This is the latest visit by Sophie to highlight the issue of violence against women at times of armed conflict.

Earlier this year she became the first royal to visit Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

Her trips have often been to the type of destinations not usually on royal tours, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq and Sierra Leone.

• Inside a hospital on the front line of Sudan’s hunger crisis
• Sudan army vows to fight on despite peace efforts
• Famine hits Sudan as peace talks fall short yet again
• A photographer’s 11-day trek to flee war-torn Sudan
• Fear and prayers in Sudan city under siege
• What is Sudan like?

India and Canada have expelled their top diplomats amid escalating tensions over the assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil, marking a new low in a historically cordial relationship. While past disagreements have strained ties, none have reached this level of open confrontation.

In 1974, India shocked the world by detonating a nuclear device, drawing outrage from Canada, which accused India of extracting plutonium from a Canadian reactor, a gift intended solely for peaceful use.

Relations between the two nations cooled considerably – Canada suspended support to India’s atomic energy programme.

Yet neither expelled their top diplomats like they did on Monday as the row intensified over last year’s assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canada-based Sikh leader labelled a terrorist by India.

The tit-for-tat expulsions followed PM Justin Trudeau’s claim that Canadian police were investigating allegations of Indian agents’ – and the Indian government’s – direct involvement in the June 2023 killing.

Canadian police further accused Indian agents of involvement in “homicides, extortion and violent acts” targeting pro-Khalistan supporters advocating a separate Sikh homeland in India. Delhi rejected the allegations as “preposterous”.

There are some 770,000 Sikhs living in Canada, home to the largest Sikh diaspora outside the Indian state of Punjab. Sikh separatism – rooted in a bloody insurgency in India during the 1980s and early ’90s – continues to strain relations between the two countries. Canada has faced sharp criticism from Delhi for failing to oppose the pro-Khalistan movement within its borders. Canada, says India, is aware of local Khalistani groups and has been monitoring them for years.

“This relationship has been on a downward trajectory for several years, but it’s now hit rock bottom,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told the BBC.

“Publicly laying out extremely serious and detailed allegations, withdrawing ambassadors and top diplomats, releasing diplomatic statements with blistering language. This is uncharted territory, even for this troubled relationship.”

Other analysts agree that this moment signals a historic shift.

“This represents a significant slide in Canada-India relations under the Trudeau government,” added Ryan Touhey, author of Conflicting Visions, Canada and India in the Cold War World.

A history professor at St Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Mr Touhey notes that a key success of former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government was fostering a “prolonged period of rapprochement” between Canada and India, moving past grievances related to Khalistan and nuclear proliferation.

“Instead, a focus was placed on the importance of trade and education ties and people-to-people links given the significant Indian diaspora in Canada. It is also worth noting that the Khalistan issue had seemed to have disappeared since the beginning of the millennium. Now it has suddenly erupted all over again.”

Still, Harper was not faced with allegations from Canadian security services of a potential link between agents of India’s government and the killing of a Canadian citizen.

On Monday, Canadian police said they had approached at least a dozen people over the past few months, specifically members of the pro-Khalistan movement, because they believed they faced credible and imminent threats.

They alleged subsequent investigations uncovered “a significant amount of information about the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated” by India agents, and consequential threats to Canadians.

“No country, particularly not a democracy that upholds the rule of law, can accept this fundamental violation of its sovereignty,” Trudeau said.

Canada’s allegations have come at a time when Trudeau appears to be battling anti-incumbency at home with elections barely a year away. A new poll by Ipsos reveals only 28% overall think Trudeau deserves re-election and only 26% would vote for the Liberals. India’s foreign ministry, in bruising remarks on Monday, ascribed Canada’s allegations to the “political agenda of the Trudeau government that is centred around vote bank politics”.

In 2016, Trudeau told reporters that he had more Sikhs – four – in his cabinet than Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s in India. Sikhs exert considerable influence in Canadian politics, occupying 15 seats in the House of Commons – over 4% – while representing only about 2% of the population. Many of these seats are in key battlegrounds during national elections. In 2020, Trudeau had expressed his concern over protests by farmers in India, drawing sharp criticism by Delhi.

“I think broadly speaking this crisis will give a feeling that this is a prime minister who is seeming to go from one debacle to another. More specifically, within the Indo-Canadian community it may well hurt more than ever,” says Mr Touhey.

He explains that the Indian diaspora in Canada, once predominantly Punjabi and Sikh, has become more diverse, now including a significant number of Hindus and immigrants from southern India and the western state of Gujarat.

“They are proud of India’s economic transformation since the 1990s and will not be sympathetic to Sikh separatism. Historically, the Liberals have been quite politically successful with the Sikh vote, especially in British Columbia.”

However, Mr Touhey doesn’t feel that the crisis with India has to do with vote bank politics.

Instead, he believes this is more about the Canadian government “repeatedly missing signals from Delhi regarding Indian concerns over pro-Khalistani elements in Canada”.

“My strong sense is that after decades of pleading with Canadian governments to take Indian concerns over pro-Khalistani elements in Canada, they feel that they’re back to square one – except this time you have a much more different government in Delhi that is willing to act forcefully, right or wrong, to rein in perceived domestic threats,” says Mr Touhey.

Mr Kugelman echoes a similar sentiment.

“There’s a lot at play that explains the rapid deterioration in bilateral ties. This includes a fundamental disconnect: what India views, or projects, as a dangerous threat is seen by Canada as mere activism and dissent protected by free speech. And neither is willing to make concessions,” he says.

All may not be lost. The two countries have a long relationship. Canada hosts one of the largest Indian-origin communities, with 1.3 million residents, or about 4% of its population. India is a priority market for Canada, ranking as its 10th largest trading partner in 2022. India has also been Canada’s top source of international students since 2018.

“On the one hand, the relationship is far more broad-based than ever thanks to the size of the diaspora, the diversity of that diaspora and the increase in bilateral trade, increased student exchanges – albeit this last point has become a problematic issue for the Trudeau government as well,” says Mr Touhey.

“So, I think those people-to-people links will be okay. At the high bilateral level, I don’t think there is much the current Canadian government can do as it pretty much enters the final year with an election to be held at the latest by the autumn of 2025.”

For the moment, though, things look pretty bad, experts say.

“Delhi now levels the same allegations against Canada that it has regularly levelled against Pakistan. It accuses Ottawa of sheltering and sponsoring anti-India terrorists. But of late, the language making these allegations against Canada has been stronger than it has been against Pakistan. And that’s saying something,” says Mr Kugelman.

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A member of the chart-topping K-pop group NewJeans has tearfully testified to South Korean lawmakers as part of an enquiry into workplace harassment.

Hanni, who is 20 years old, alleged that the entertainment agency Hybe had deliberately undermined her band, and accused senior managers of deliberately ignoring her.

Following multiple incidents, she said, “I came to the realisation that this wasn’t just a feeling. I was honestly convinced that the company hated us.”

After hearing her testimony, the CEO of NewJeans’ record label, Ador – a subsidiary of Hybe – said she would “listen more closely” to her artists, adding: “I wonder if there was more I could have done.”

Hanni, who is Vietnamese-Australian, was testifying to the Labour Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly at a hearing about workplace harassment.

She was called to give evidence last month, after NewJeans went public with allegations about their treatment following the dismissal of their mentor Min Hee-Jin.

Min, who co-founded Ador in 2021, has been a key figure in the band’s success but she was removed from her post in August, following accusations that she had planned to split from Hybe, taking NewJeans with her.

Min repeatedly denied those. Then, in September, NewJeans took the unusual step of going public with their dissatisfaction at the situation.

Posting on a burner YouTube account, they demanded Min’s reinstatement and made claims of workplace harassment.

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

The singer said that when she reported the incident, her concerns had been brushed off.

During her testimony, Hanni went into further detail about the exchange.

“We have a floor in our building where we do hair and make-up. And at that time, I was waiting in the hallway because my hair and make-up was done first.”

As she waited, three singers from another band and their manager walked past., Hanni continued.

“I said hello to all of them, and then they came back about five or 10 minutes later.

“On her way out, [the manager] made eye contact with me, turned to the rest of the group and said, ‘Ignore her like you didn’t see her’.

“I don’t understand why she would say something like that in the work environment,” she added.

Speaking at the National Assemblyin Seoul, Hanni said this was not an isolated incident, and claimed that senior members of Hybe management had also given her the cold shoulder.

“Since my debut [in NewJeans], we ran into a person in a high-up position many times, but they never greeted me when I greeted them,” she said.

“I understood from living in Korea that I have to be polite to older people and that’s part of the culture – but I think it’s just disrespectful as a human being to not greet us, regardless of our professional status.”

She continued: “There was a certain vibe [of disrespect] that I felt within the company.”

Hanni further alleged that she had seen employees bad-mouthing NewJeans on Blind – an app for internal communications similar to Teams or Slack.

She also said Hybe’s PR department had contacted a journalist, asking him to downplay NewJeans’ achievements in an article about their record sales.

Hybe has previously denied those accusations, saying they had been attempting to correct a factual error.

However, Hanni said the incident reinforced her feeling “that the company hated us”.

Kim Joo-young, who is the current CEO of Ador, was also called to testify at the hearing.

She said she believed Hanni’s story of being shunned by another band’s manager, but had been “unable to find supporting evidence”.

CCTV footage of the incident had expired before she had the chance to request it, she told the committee.

“I believe I did everything I could, but seeing that Hanni felt this way and that the situation escalated to this point, I wonder if there was more I could have done,” she added.

Kim also said she would co-operate with an investigation into the incident by South Korea’s Ministry of Labour.

The story has gripped South Korean media and fans of K-Pop – where NewJeans have emerged as one of the genre’s brightest new bands.

With slick pop songs like Super Shy, OMG and Supernatural, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, and were nominated for best group at this year’s MTV Awards.

Formed by Ador in 2022, its five members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – range in age from 16 to 20.

Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, they have continued to release and perform music.

That’s partly because they are committed to a seven-year contract, which runs out in 2029.

The K-pop news site Koreaboo estimated that the members would have to pay about 300 billion South Korean Won (about £170 million) to terminate the contract early.

Hanni concluded Tuesday’s session by expressing her frustration at how the internal dispute had overshadowed her band’s career.

“A lot of people have been worried about us,” she said, wiping away tears.

“Some fans apologised for making us go through this, but I’m grateful to Korea for allowing me to do what I love.

“The ones who should be apologising are avoiding responsibility, and that frustrates me.”

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, aged 83 – 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.

You can get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk or using the form below.

The murder of a politician in a bustling area in India’s Mumbai city has sent shockwaves across the country.

Baba Ziauddin Siddique, 66, was shot on Saturday night near his car while he was leaving his son’s office. He died later in hospital.

The killing of Siddique, an influential politician who was part of the coalition governing Maharashtra state – of which Mumbai is the capital – has set off a political blame-game.

The motive for the murder is not clear yet, but for many it has brought back memories of the 1990s, when politicians and film stars were frequently targeted by Mumbai’s underworld.

Police have arrested three people so far and say investigations are continuing. Local media reports say the arrested men are part of a notorious gang whose leader is currently in jail.

Born in the eastern state of Bihar, Siddique migrated to Mumbai at the age of five with his father, a watchmaker.

He started his political career in the 1980s as a student leader with the Congress party, soon leading its youth wing in Mumbai. He then entered local council politics before being elected to the state’s legislature three times in a row and becoming a minister in 2004 for about four years.

In February, he left the Congress to join the Nationalist Congress Party which, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena, currently governs state.

Apart from his political activities, Siddique also made headlines for his glitzy iftar parties held during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which were attended by top Bollywood stars.

It was at his iftar party in 2013 that superstars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan ended their much-discussed rift with a hug – that propelled “the annual Siddique affair into a must-watch event on the city’s social calendar”, Midday newspaper wrote in 2016.

The politician was shot outside his son’s office as he was about to enter his car in the busy Bandra area.

Police said three shooters fired six-seven rounds, hitting Siddique’s abdomen and chest, and fled the scene. A bystander was also injured as a stray bullet hit his leg.

Investigators said they had recovered two pistols and 28 live rounds of ammunition from the arrested men.

Siddique had three police guards – local media reported his security was upgraded days ago – but the suspects reportedly distracted them by setting off a “smoke firecracker”.

Police have been granted custody of the arrested men for a week. They say they are on the lookout for their accomplices.

“We have set up 15 teams and investigation is on to identify who provided logistical support to the shooters,” senior police official Datta Nalawade said.

While the police have not confirmed it, several reports citing sources have linked the arrested men with the notorious Bishnoi gang. The gang’s leader Lawrence Bishnoi is an accused in several cases and is currently in a high-security prison in Gujarat state.

Within hours of the shooting, a man claiming to be a member of the gang posted on Facebook that they were behind Siddique’s killing. Police have not yet confirmed the authenticity of the post.

Though Bishnoi has been in jail since 2015, he frequently makes news. Many social media accounts claiming to belong to him or his associates have often posted his selfies from jail. He even gave interviews to a TV channel in 2022, prompting an investigation.

Many of the reports on Bishnoi are based on police sources and it’s not clear how he conducts the gang’s operations while in prison.

The gang’s name popped up in connection with the murder of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala in 2022.

In April, police arrested two gang members for allegedly firing shots outside the apartment of actor Salman Khan in Mumbai.

On Monday, the Canadian police also said it believed the Bishnoi group had connections to Indian government agents who were using the gang to target Sikh separatists on their soil. India has not officially responded to the police claims.

Siddique’s killing is the first major assassination of a politician in Mumbai since the 1990s when high-profile killings of politicians, businessmen and Bollywood celebrities by criminal gangs of the Mumbai underworld were not uncommon.

Local media reports said he had received a death threat two weeks ago, which led to his security being upgraded.

His killing within days of that has put the state government on the backfoot, with Maharashtra set to hold assembly elections soon.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the murder “a complete failure of law and order in Maharashtra”, and Delhi’s former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the incident had scared not only the people of Maharashtra “but the entire country”.

Chief Minister of Maharashtra Eknath Shinde has defended his government.

“[The culprits] will not be spared no matter who they are, be it the Bishnoi gang or any underworld gang… Those who are receiving threats, their safety is the state government’s responsibility and it will fulfil its responsibility,” he said.

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.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Analysing footage from the Gaza strikes
• Watch: ‘I say bye to my kids, in case we don’t wake up’ – two Gazans film a year under attack by Israel
• Analysis: Drone attack on Israel puts spotlight on Iron Dome’s limitations
• Gaza Strip in maps: How a year of war has drastically changed life in the territory

The Pentagon said an advance team and components needed for the battery arrived in Israel on Monday – with further personnel and parts to follow in the coming days. The battery will be operational in the “near future”, a statement said.

Israeli journalist Avi Scharf, who routinely monitors flight tracking data, said two C-17 US military transporters flew from Alabama to the Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base overnight, likely carrying Thaad equipment.

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 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”.

Israel will listen to the US but make final decisions based on its national interest, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, as speculation over its response to a major Iranian missile attack continues.

The brief overnight statement was issued in response to a Washington Post story which said Benjamin Netanyahu had told the US he was willing to target military sites in Iran – rather than nuclear or oil facilities.

Citing two officials, the Post said Netanyahu made the comments during a phone call with US President Joe Biden last Wednesday, when they discussed Israel’s intended retaliation.

Iran launched almost 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel on 1 October. Most of the projectiles were intercepted, Israel’s military said.

• US deploys Thaad anti-missile system to Israel
• Biden and Netanyahu speak as Israel mulls Iran response
• Biden opposes any Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites

At the time, Netanyahu said Iran had made a “big mistake” and would “pay for it”.

The overnight Israeli statement, sent alongside a link to the Washington Post article, said: “We listen to the American government’s thoughts, but will make our final decisions based on Israel’s national security needs.”

According to an anonymous official quoted in the Post, Israel’s retaliatory strike would be designed to avoid the appearance of “political interference” in the upcoming US presidential election, which is less than a month away.

Analysts have said a hit on Iranian oil facilities could push up oil prices, and therefore affect the polls, which currently suggest a close race between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

The price of crude oil shot up 5% at the beginning of the month, immediately after President Biden spoke about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil infrastructure.

The US has appeared to be trying to limit Israel’s response to Iran.

Biden has said the US does not support any potential strike on Iranian nuclear sites – a course of action touted by some in Israel, including former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett.

And on 4 October, Biden went further, signalling the US would also oppose an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities.

“If I were in their shoes, I would be thinking about other alternatives than striking Iranian oil fields,” he said during a news conference.

Israel has not officially said how it intends to respond to Iran’s October missile attack – the second in six months – but Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said last week its reaction would be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”.

“They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results,” Gallant said.

Iran has, in turn, said it will not let any attack by Israel go unanswered.

Meanwhile, the US has said it will help bolster Israel’s air defences, by deploying a high-altitude anti-missile system.

The Pentagon said that the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) deployment underscored the US’s “ironclad” commitment “to the defence of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran”.

Iran said its October missile barrage was a response to Israel’s assassinations of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer in Beirut, and of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in recent weeks, carrying out deadly air strikes predominantly in southern and eastern Lebanon, and also in the capital, Beirut.

Before that, Israel and Hezbollah had been trading cross-border fire on a near daily basis since last October, when Hezbollah began firing into Israel which it said was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.

It had said it would stop firing if there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

Prague is to ban night-time pub crawls organised by travel agencies, in a bid to deter rowdy tourists from visiting and attracting more “refined” visitors instead.

The Czech capital’s authorities say organised pub crawls – often aimed at foreign stag and hen dos – will be banned between 22:00 and 06:00 local time (21:00-05:00 BST).

Deputy mayor Jiri Pospisil said he wanted the city to become a place where “refinement and respect for shared public space are a priority”.

Prague is not alone in its bid to deter rowdy tourists – many from the UK. Last year, Amsterdam launched a campaign to discourage young British men from travelling to the Dutch capital to use drugs and drink heavily.

Prague City Council said councillors had approved an amendment limiting “organised movements of tourists from pub to pub, disrupting the night peace especially in the centre”.

The change was made on noise, safety and cleanliness grounds. Crowds of drunk tourists also negatively affect the reputation of the city, councillors claimed.

Officials in the central Prague One district, most of which is a Unesco World Heritage Site and where many bars are located, welcomed the move.

Prague One mayor Terezie Radomerska said it was a “welcome change” which would “reduce the negative effects caused by excessive noise in the streets”.

Police will be charged with enforcing the ban.

Councillors said disorderly behaviour had led to “an excessive deployment” of cleaning and police services, stretching the city’s resources.

Prague resident Stepan Kuchta told the Times newspaper his health had been “ruined by chronic noise”.

But Prague Pub Crawl, which organises the drunken excursions, panned the city’s decision as “merely a populist move to cover up the city management’s inability to address real issues, such as the lack of municipal police officers to enforce night-time peace”.

The city of 1.3 million welcomed around 7.4 million tourists last year, according to the Czech Statistical Office.

Historically, many tourists have been enticed by the Czech capital’s beautiful historic features and cheap beers – which in some restaurants and pubs can be cheaper than bottled water.

Vaclav Starek of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants welcomed the city council’s decision. Mr Starek told the AFP news agency that he didn’t think business would be affected.

“I don’t think this will hurt our sales. Nobody will be banned from going to a pub but these nightly organised pub crawls … are nothing we would need.”

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.

But the numbers have been relatively stable since early September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on 10 September, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

You can see how little the race has changed nationally in the last few weeks in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election and neither candidate has a decisive lead in any of them, according to the polling averages.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does help highlight some differences between the states – but it’s important to note that there are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to go on and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

In Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has had a small lead for a few weeks now. It’s a similar story in Nevada but with Harris the candidate who is slightly ahead at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris has been leading since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but in recent days the polls have tightened significantly.

All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day that Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in the seven swing states.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was behind by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he dropped out, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other in swing states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

A Canadian boba tea company has apologised after Marvel actor Simu Liu accused them of cultural appropriation on an episode of the Dragons’ Den reality TV series.

On an episode of CBC’s Dragons’ Den, the Canadian equivalent of the US show Shark Tank, 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.

A former police officer in the US state of Kentucky is to go on trial for a third time over the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman shot dead in her own home in 2020 during a botched raid.

Brett Hankison, 47, was part of a group of officers in the city of Louisville who broke into Taylor’s apartment on 13 March that year. Some 32 shots were fired at Taylor and her boyfriend, who survived the encounter.

Taylor’s death sparked racial injustice rallies across the US.

Mr Hankison has twice before avoided a conviction for allegedly violating Taylor’s civil rights. Jury selection in his new trial will start on Tuesday.

While Taylor, a 26-year-old nursing student, and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, slept at her apartment in the early morning hours, officers wearing plain clothes executed a “no-knock” search warrant.

Authorities believed Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was using her home to hide narcotics.

Walker fired a single shot when officers knocked down the door because he said they did not announce themselves as police, and he thought they were intruders.

Another officer fired the shot that killed Taylor, but prosecutors said his use of deadly force was justified because Mr Walker had opened fire first, hitting a colleague of Mr Hankison.

During the altercation, Mr Hankison fired 10 rounds through Taylor’s window and sliding glass door. The bullets did not hit anyone, but entered the neighbouring property.

A subsequent police report contained errors, including listing Taylor’s injuries as “none” and saying no force was used to enter, when a battering ram had been used.

Taylor’s name was widely circulated during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality.

• An account of the night of Breonna Taylor’s death
• Jury deadlocked in second Hankison trial

Mr Hankison was sacked from Louisville Metro Police Department in June 2020.

He has not been convicted of any crimes. His previous federal case last year ended in a mistrial when the jury told the judge it could not reach a unanimous verdict.

The nine-day case revolved around whether the use of force by Mr Hankison had violated the rights of Taylor, Mr Walker and Taylor’s neighbours.

Mr Hankison admitted to the court that he could not see a target but believed a shootout was taking place, and acted to save his and his fellow officers’ lives.

He was previously tried by a Kentucky state jury in March 2022, and acquitted on three counts of felony wanton endangerment.

Other officers involved in the botched raid have faced charges as well.

Taylor’s family and Mr Walker have both received payouts from the city over the incident. A series of police reforms were also introduced in Louisville.