The US has written to Israel, giving it 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.

The letter, sent on Sunday, amounts to the strongest known written warning from the US to its ally and comes amid a new Israeli offensive in northern Gaza that has reportedly caused a large number of civilian casualties.

It says the US has deep concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, adding that Israel denied or impeded nearly 90% of humanitarian movements between the north and south last month.

Israel is reviewing the letter, an Israeli official was reported as saying, adding the country “takes this matter seriously” and intends to “address the concerns raised” with US counterparts.

Israel has previously said it is targeting Hamas operatives in the north and not stopping the entry of humanitarian aid.

On Monday, the Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, Cogat, said 30 lorries carrying aid from the World Food Programme had entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing.

That ended a two-week period during which the UN said no food aid was delivered to the north, and supplies essential for survival were running out for the 400,000 Palestinians there.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, and the Israeli military has relied heavily on US-supplied aircraft, guided bombs, missiles and shells to fight the war against Hamas in Gaza over the past year.

The US letter to the Israeli government – whose contents have now been confirmed by the state department – was first reported by the Axios website. It is signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“We are now writing to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” it says.

It states that Israeli evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million people into the narrow, coastal al-Mawasi area where they are at “high risk of lethal contagion” due to extreme overcrowding, and that humanitarian organisations report that their survival needs cannot be met.

“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government – including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding nearly 90% of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza in September, continuing burdensome and excessive dual-use restrictions, and instituting new vetting and onerous liability and customs requirements for humanitarian staff and shipments – together with increased lawlessness and looting – are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza,” it adds.

The letter says Israel “must, starting now and within 30 days” act on a series of concrete measures to boost aid supplies, adding that failure may “have implications for US policy”.

It cites US laws which can prohibit military assistance to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian aid.

It says Israel must “surge all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza” before winter, including by enabling a minimum of 350 lorries a day to enter through all four major crossings and a new fifth crossing, as well as allowing people in al-Mawasi to move inland.

It also calls on Israel to end the “isolation of northern Gaza” by reaffirming that there will be “no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians” from north to south.

At a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, US state department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that the letter was “a private diplomatic communication that we did not intend to make public”.

“Secretary [Blinken] along with Secretary Austin thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes they need to make again to see the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up,” he said.

Mr Miller declined to speculate on what consequences there might be for Israel if it did not boost humanitarian aid access.

But he noted: “Recipients of US military assistance do not arbitrarily deny or impede provisioning of US humanitarian assistance. That’s just the law and we of course will follow the law. But our hope is that Israel will make the changes that we have outlined.”

He also said the 30-day time limit was not linked to the upcoming US presidential election on 5 November, saying it was “appropriate to give them time to work through the different issues”.

Israel has previously insisted there are no limits to the amount of aid or humanitarian assistance that can be delivered into and across Gaza, and blames UN agencies for failing to distribute supplies. It also accuses Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

Before Israel’s ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in May, President Joe Biden suspended a single consignment of 2,000 and 500lb bombs for the first time as he tried to dissuade it from an all-out assault.

But the president immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. The suspension was partially lifted in July and has not been repeated.

Earlier on Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that families in northern Gaza were “facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion” because of the Israeli offensive that began 10 days ago.

The Israeli military says it has sent tanks and troops back into the town of Jabalia and its urban refugee camp for a third time to root out Hamas fighters who have regrouped there.

It has ordered residents of Jabalia, as well as neighbouring Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, to evacuate to the al-Mawasi “humanitarian area”.

The UN says about 50,000 people have fled to Gaza City and other parts of the north. But for many it is unsafe to leave their homes or they are unable to leave because they are sick or disabled.

Khalid, a resident of Jabalia whose accounts of the past year are featured in a new BBC documentary, said in a voice note that he and his family had been living in fear for a week.

“We were told to go to the south, but we couldn’t because the Israeli army has surrounded the area, either with dirt barricades or using quadcopter drones. We can’t move, it’s too difficult.”

“At the same time, because of the intense bombing we’re living in constant terror. My daughter has become sick and she has a fever. Her entire body is shaking in fear because of the sound of the bombings and I don’t know what to do with her. I can’t even take her to the hospital,” he added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said its first responders had recovered the bodies of 42 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes in Jabalia and neighbouring areas on Tuesday.

They reportedly included 11 members of the same family, nearly all of them women and children, whose home was destroyed in an air strike overnight.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its troops had killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area over the previous day.

On Monday, Israeli human rights groups warned of what they called “alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement the Generals’ Plan”, echoing widespread Palestinian concerns.

The controversial plan calls for the forcible transfer of all civilians in the north followed by a siege of the Hamas fighters remaining there to force their surrender and the release of Israeli hostages.

The Israeli military denies it is being implemented, saying it is only “getting civilians out of harm’s way”.

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 42,340 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

North Korea has accused South Korea of flying drones into its capital, ratcheting up tensions that have been simmering for months.

The drones allegedly scattered propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to “armed conflict and even war”.

After levelling these allegations at the South on Friday, Pyongyang said it had ordered border troops to be prepared to fire. South Korea in turn said it was ready to respond, and warned that if the safety of its citizens was threatened it would signal the “end of the North Korean regime.”

Then, on Tuesday, the North blew up sections of two roads that connected it to South Korea, making good on an earlier threat. The next day, it claimed that 1.4 million young North Koreans had applied to join or return to the army.

These flare-ups are the latest in a string of exchanges between the two Koreas, which have seen tensions rise to their highest point in years since the North’s leader Kim Jong Un declared in January that the South is his regime’s number one enemy.

On 11 October, North Korea’s foreign ministry accused the South of sending drones to Pyongyang at night over the course of two weeks. It said that leaflets dispersed by the drones contained “inflammatory rumours and rubbish”.

Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, warned Seoul of “horrible consequences” if the alleged drone flights happened again. She later said there was “clear evidence” that “military gangsters” from the South were behind the alleged provocations.

North Korea has released blurry images of what it said were the drones flying in the sky, as well as pictures allegedly showing the leaflets, but there is no way of independently verifying their claims.

While South Korea initially denied flying drones into the North, its Joint Chiefs of Staff later said that it could neither confirm nor deny Pyongyang’s allegation.

There has been local speculation that the drones were flown by activists, who have been sending the same materials to the North using balloons.

Park Sang-hak, the leader of the Free North Korea Movement Coalition, denied North Korea’s claim about the drone incursion, stating, “We did not send drones to North Korea”.

On Monday, Kim met the head of the army, military chiefs, the ministers of state security and defence, and top officials, the North’s official news agency KCNA said.

There, Kim set the “direction of immediate military action” and tasked officials with the “operation of the war deterrent and the exercise of the right to self-defence”.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff public relations officer, Lee Sung-joon, said the North could mount “small-scale provocations” such as small explosions on roads connecting the Koreas.

Then came the explosions at the symbolic Gyeongui and Donghae roads.

While both roads have long been shuttered, destroying them sends a message that Kim does not want to negotiate with the South, according to analysts.

Following the explosions, the South Korean military said it had fired weapons on its side of the border as a show of force, and had heightened surveillance of the North.

Hours later, the government of Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul, designated 11 inter-Korean border areas as “danger zones” in a bid to stop people from sending anti-North propaganda leaflets across the border.

“Gyeonggi Province has determined that the act of scattering leaflets toward North Korea is an extremely dangerous act that could trigger a military conflict,” Kim Sung-joong, vice governor of Gyeonggi Province, said in a media briefing.

The scattering of such leaflets could threaten the “lives and safety of our residents”, Kim added, as “inter-Korean relations are rapidly deteriorating”.

Analysts say the drone incident suggests that North Korea is shoring up internal support by making it appear as though threats against the country are escalating.

Using terms like “separate states” in reference to the South, and dropping words like “compatriots” and “unification”, is part of this strategy, said Professor Kang Dong-wan, who teaches political science and diplomacy at Dong-a University in Busan.

“The North Korean regime relies on the politics of fear and needs an external enemy,” Prof Kang said. “Whenever tensions rise, North Korea emphasises external threats to boost loyalty to the regime.”

Analysts say the tit-for-tat between the two Koreas shows how they are locked in a “chicken game”, with both sides unwilling to blink first.

“Neither side is willing to make concessions at this point,” said Professor Kim Dong-yup from the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

As there is mutual distrust, Seoul “needs to strategically consider how to manage the crisis”, Prof Kim added.

Not at the moment, analysts say.

“I doubt that the situation would escalate to the level of war. North Korea is exploiting military confrontation to strengthen internal cohesion,” Prof Kang said.

“I question North Korea’s ability to initiate a full-scale war. The regime is well aware of the severe consequences such a conflict would bring,” Prof Kim said.

The most recent spat over alleged drone flights will most likely remain a “verbal fight”, said Prof Nam Sung-wook, who teaches North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul.

Because Seoul and Pyongyang know that they can’t bear the cost of a full-blown war, Prof Nam said, “the likelihood of actually using nuclear weapons is low”.

The two Koreas are technically still at war since they did not sign a peace treaty when the Korean War ended in 1953.

Reuniting with the South had always been a key, if increasingly unrealistic, part of the North’s ideology since the inception of the state – until Kim abandoned reunification with the South in January.

Kim has brought North Korea closer to Russia under Vladimir Putin, placing him at odds with the US and the West, which are South Korea’s key allies.

Also significant are North Korea’s long-standing ties with China, arguably its most important ally. In the wake of the drone incident, a spokesperson from China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday called on all parties “to avoid further escalation of conflicts” on the peninsula.

Tensions in the Korean peninsula are rising as the US presidential campaign enters the home stretch.

Boeing says it aims to raise up to $35bn (£26.8bn) from investors and banks as a costly strike by thousands of its workers enters its second month.

Also on Tuesday, the union representing more than 30,000 of the aviation giant’s workers held a rally in the city of Seattle.

The company is moving ahead with plans to layoff around 17,000 workers, with the first redundancy notices expected to be issued in mid-November.

Talks to end the walkout collapsed last week as the firm withdrew an offer that included a 30% pay rise over four years.

Boeing plans to raise up to $25bn in stock and debt offerings and said it has reached a deal with major banks to borrow as much much as $10bn.

“These are two prudent steps to support the company’s access to liquidity,” Boeing said in a statement.

The company’s shares rose by 2.2% after the announcements.

The moves to raise funding come less than a week after Boeing announced that it will cut its workforce by a tenth and push back deliveries of its 777X plane.

BBC News understands that the layoffs will, for now, not affect striking workers.

Major credit ratings agencies had previously warned that the strike could lead to downgrades, which would make it more expensive for the company to borrow money.

S&P Global estimates the strike is costing Boeing $1bn per month.

The walkout, at a company of strategic importance for the US economy, has become a source of concern for the Biden administration.

On Monday, acting US Labor Secretary, Julie Su, met representatives of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union (IAM) and Boeing in Seattle.

Meanwhile, top Washington state Congressional Democrats have called on Boeing and the union to “redouble… efforts to reach a mutually beneficial resolution.”

Warning: This story contains details which some people may find upsetting

Witnesses to an Israeli air strike and resulting fire at a tent camp in a Gaza hospital compound have shared with the BBC their horror and helplessness at seeing people injured and killed in the flames.

One mother called it “one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed”, while an injured girl said she heard screaming as people tore down their tent to get them out. A man said he had “broken down” as he was “unable to do anything” to help those who burned to death.

The strike hit the al-Aqsa Hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of Monday, igniting a fire that burned makeshift shelters for displaced people.

At least four people were killed and dozens injured, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The BBC has verified the location of a video that shows what appears to be a person on fire. Other footage captures people rushing to extinguish the flames amid screams and explosions sending fireballs into the night sky.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas fighters operating inside a command centre in the car park, after which a fire broke out “likely due to secondary explosions”. The military said the incident was under review.

Charity Doctors without Borders (MSF), which has staff working at al-Aqsa, told the BBC “it had no knowledge“ of a Hamas centre and said “the hospital functions as a hospital”.

The UN’s humanitarian affairs agency said in a statement that “people burned to death” and “atrocities must end”, while a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council called the footage “disturbing”.

“The images and video of what appear to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike are deeply disturbing and we have made our concerns clear to the Israeli government,” the spokesperson told the BBC’s partner CBS.

“Israel has a responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties — and what happened here is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields.”

Witnesses said the strike happened at about 01:15 local time on Monday (23:15 BST on Sunday).

It hit an area between buildings filled with makeshift shelters, next to an outdoor outpatient waiting area that had no one there at night, Anna Halford, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza who was not at the hospital during the strike, said in a phone call from Deir al-Balah.

Hiba Radi, a mother who was living in a tent behind the hospital, told a BBC freelancer in Gaza she woke up to the sound of “explosions and fires erupting around the tents”.

“There were explosions everywhere, and we were shocked at whether this was gas or weapons,” she said.

“This is one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed and lived through,” she added. “We’ve never seen destruction like this before. It’s hard, really hard.”

Atia Darwish, a photographer who recorded some of the verified videos, told the BBC it was a “big shock” and he was “unable to do anything” watching people burn.

“I was so broken down,” he said.

Um Yaser Abdel Hamid Daher, who also lives at the hospital, told the BBC “we’ve seen so many people burning that we started feeling like we might burn like them”.

The injured included her son, and his wife and children. Her granddaughter Lina, 11, who had shrapnel in her hand and leg injuries, said she had heard people screaming.

”Our neighbour’s daughter was injured in her head and her dad was killed. And our other neighbours were killed. The people next to us tore down the tent to get us out,” she said.

Her grandmother said the family “lost their tent and everything they had; they have nothing left”.

The health ministry reported on Monday that more than 40 people were injured and four killed.

MSF on Tuesday shared a higher toll, saying five people had died, their bodies burned by the time they were recovered, and 65 injured.

Forty of the injured – 22 men, eight women and 10 children – stayed at al-Aqsa. The others were transferred to different hospitals, with eight going to a specialist burns unit.

Ms Halford said her colleagues were treating burns victims ”who will almost certainly not survive”, saying “there is very little you can do for burn victims of that severity”.

“You come home with the smell of it on your clothes. It’s a viscerally affecting experience. It stays with you,” she said.

Monday’s strike was the seventh on the hospital site since March, and the third in two weeks, Ms Halford said.

When she arrived at the hospital after the most recent hit, she said she found people picking through twisted metal and burned debris to salvage any belongings.

Another mother the BBC spoke to whose children suffered burns injuries had already evacuated from north Gaza – and now has nothing.

The acting chief of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the strike occurred in an area where north Gaza residents had been told to relocate.

“There really is no safe place in Gaza for people to go,” the statement read.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under fire after buying a multi-million-dollar cliff-top home amid a national housing crisis.

Albanese made the purchase months out from an election in which the cost of living and housing are key issues.

The move has sparked backlash from across the political divide – with his opponents calling it “tone deaf” and some within his own party anonymously telling local media it left them “gobsmacked”.

Albanese defended his decision, saying he “knows what it is like to struggle” but bought the luxury property to be close to his fiancee Jodie Haydon’s family on the New South Wales Central Coast.

Property records show the four-bedroom, three-bathroom, and three-carport property in Copacabana – which has panoramic views – was sold for A$4.3m ($2.9m, £2.2m) last month, but the purchase is yet to settle.

At a press conference about housing on the day news of his new home broke, Albanese said he was aware that he was “better off” than many Australians due to his income but that he could still empathise with their struggle.

“My mum lived in the one public housing [home] that she was born in for all of her 65 years,” he told reporters.

“I know what it is like, which is why I want to help all Australians into a home.”

Albanese’s Labor party has created a A$10b investment fund for social and affordable housing. It has struggled to get other housing initiatives through parliament though, due in part to a lack of support from the Australian Greens party and some independents, who want the government to produce more ambitious policy proposals.

Research suggests Australian cities rank among the worst in the world for housing affordability, with Sydney trailing only Hong Kong, according to the 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

About two thirds of Australian households own a home, but, according to parliamentary disclosures, about 95% of sitting federal politicians own at least one residential property. About a third own three or more.

While some of his colleagues have backed Albanese, several have broken rank to criticise his decision anonymously as being out of step with the public.

“I can’t think of a greater act of self-sabotage in my life,” one Labor MP told the Sydney Morning Herald – who redacted their name “so they could speak freely”.

“If you’re a Labor MP up against a Green at the next election, good luck,” they added.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said Albanese’s purchase highlights the need for reform to lucrative tax incentives for property investors and greater renter protections.

“Labor and the Liberals have created a housing system where a property investor can buy a A$4.3m beachfront home, while millions can’t even find an affordable rental, let alone buy a house of their own,” Chandler-Mather wrote on X.

Liberal Senator Jane Hume said “everybody has a right to a personal life” but questioned “the timing” of the purchase: “This is tone deaf during a housing crisis,” she told Channel 7’s Sunrise programme.

However Opposition Leader and fellow Liberal Peter Dutton declined to criticise Albanese but noted that many Australians were struggling with their own mortgages.

On Monday, Canadian police made a sensational claim.

They alleged at a press conference that agents of the Indian government were using “organised crime groups like the Bishnoi group” to target leaders of the pro-Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in India.

This was hours after both countries expelled top diplomats as tensions escalated over last year’s assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil. Delhi dismissed the allegations as “preposterous”, accusing PM Justin Trudeau of catering to Canada’s sizeable Sikh community for political gain.

The Canadian police were referring to Lawrence Bishnoi, a 31-year-old gangster from India, now back in the spotlight domestically and internationally.

Indian police say his gang is allegedly linked to the killing of a prominent politician in Mumbai at the weekend – gunmen shot dead 66-year-old Baba Siddique near his son’s office. Three suspects are in custody. An alleged aide of Bishnoi has posted on social media that the gang is behind the murder.

Once among India’s most wanted, Bishnoi has been in prison since 2015, now held far from his native Punjab state in Gujarat.

Yet, the police believe his audacious influence endures. Bishnoi is the prime accused in the sensational murder of Sidhu Moose Wala, the popular Punjabi singer gunned down near his village in October 2022.

In 2018, Bishnoi gained notoriety for threatening Bollywood star Salman Khan, accusing him of allegedly poaching two blackbuck antelopes – a revered species for Rajasthan’s Bishnoi community to which Lawrence belongs.

When he was produced in a court in Jodhpur city, he openly told the waiting media: “Salman Khan will be killed here, in Jodhpur… Then he will come to know about our real identity.” Incidentally, Siddique, the murdered politician, was a close friend of the Bollywood star.

In March last year, a news channel aired two interviews with Bishnoi from inside a Punjab jail, prompting an outraged high court to order an investigation. How a high-security inmate managed phone interviews from prison remains a mystery.

Federal investigators estimate Bishnoi continues to control a gang with 700 members across Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, involved in extorting celebrities, smuggling drugs and weapons and carrying out targeted assassinations. His partner Goldy Brar, also a co-accused in the Moose Wala killing, runs the gang by remote control from Canada, say the police. Bishnoi faces more than 30 cases, with 19 currently being tried in court.

“He runs his gang seamlessly from prison without needing to co-ordinate everything,” says Gurmeet Chauhan, a senior officer in Punjab’s anti-gangster task force. “Unlike other gangsters confined to a region, he thinks big.”

Bishnoi was born into affluence. His family is among the wealthiest in their village in Punjab, living in a spacious bungalow surrounded by more than 100 acres of land. His father, a former policeman, eventually gave up his job to take care of the family land, while his mother is a homemaker. The couple raised two sons Lawrence and Anmol – both now prime suspects in Moose Wala’s killing.

Ramesh Bishnoi, a relative, told Jupinderjit Singh, a journalist with The Tribune newspaper and author of Who Killed Moose Wala, that Lawrence was named after British officer Henry Montgomery Lawrence, founder of the prestigious Lawrence School in the hill town of Sanawar.

Lawrence Bishnoi himself attended a convent school, riding his own bike by the eighth grade and wearing expensive shoes – luxuries unheard of for most. Known for quietly helping local children in need, he was an introverted figure with undeniable influence, Mr Singh says.

After finishing school in 2008, he moved to a college in Chandigarh, quickly immersing himself in student politics in the city. “He had money, style and guts,” a Chandigarh police officer told Mr Singh, explaining how easily Bishnoi attracted followers. He joined a student organisation, ran for student elections and lost – a defeat he took personally.

Police records say this turning point nudged him closer to a world of violence as he mingled with some former student leaders-turned-criminals. Soon, police say, Bishnoi’s name was tied to brawls, arson and gunfire incidents on campus.

Punjab, Bishnoi’s home state, is overrun with gangs that fuel drugs and weapon smuggling, extortion and the local film and music industry. A cash-driven economy, bolstered by drugs, real estate and illegal liquor sales, has fuelled this rise, creating an ecosystem that blends crime with Punjabi pop culture, many say.

Punjab’s gangsters don’t enter the underworld for wealth alone – they crave notoriety, a deep-seated desire to “be somebody”, according to Mr Singh.

This twisted pursuit of fame finds roots in feudal, patriarchal culture. Social media amplifies it, with many gangsters showcasing their lives online. They flaunt their lifestyles on social media, where crime is often seen as a path to quick money and glamour. This has lured retired sportsmen and young recruits across Punjab to the dark side.

By September, police reported dismantling more than 500 gangs and arresting more than 1,400 gangsters since mid-2021. In clashes with the police, 16 gangsters had been killed and over 80 wounded, while three officers lost their lives and 26 more were injured. According to police, Bishnoi has been convicted in four cases, though none yet for serious crimes like murder.

With his neatly trimmed beard, the hoodie pulled over watchful eyes, Bishnoi often wears the casual look of a young man. When the stakes are high, he demonstrates a shrewdness in managing his image. During one court appearance, he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of Bhagat Singh, the revered Indian revolutionary.

In a widely circulated video, reportedly recorded in prison, the bearded gangster declares, “There is a desire for revolution in our hearts. Let’s see how much strength the enemy has.” The exact meaning of his words remains ambiguous.

Bishnoi’s rise is unlike any other. “Despite being in prison, he appears to be running his gang. Who provides him logistics or media access? Such control would be impossible without powerful allies,” says Mr Singh. Separating the man from the myth remains elusive.

Marcie Paul is nervous.

A Democratic activist, Ms Paul has been knocking on hundreds of strangers’ doors, making phone calls and sending out flyers, all in an effort to woo people here to vote for Kamala Harris.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July, Ms Paul was hopeful, as she saw the vice-president go “off like a rocket” in Michigan.

The state is one of three “blue wall” states – along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that went Democrat in 2020, and if won again, would help clinch a presidential victory for Harris.

But with less than a month to go before election day, Harris’s honeymoon period in Michigan could be ending, leaving her pathway to victory less certain. A Quinnipiac poll last week indicated Donald Trump is leading in the swing state by three points.

“To keep that pace for the whole race – even though it’s seriously abbreviated – would be really unrealistic for anyone,” said Ms Paul, a resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan and co-founder of the liberal advocacy group Fems for Dems. “But I thought that we’d be a little more comfortable.”

Ms Paul is among several Democratic organisers and lawmakers in Michigan who say the presidential race here is tighter than expected, even as the Harris campaign appears to be heeding lessons from 2016. Critics say then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost the state because she took it for granted.

A reliably blue Midwestern state for decades before 2016, Michigan has since become a battleground state with 15 key Electoral College votes.

At this point in the election cycle four years ago, when it was Biden versus Trump, the Democratic candidate had a comfortable lead, and went on to win the state by 150,000 votes. Now it’s a dead heat.

There is “no obvious solution” for Harris to break ahead, said Michigan State University politics professor Matt Grossmann.

The Democrats have poured millions into advertising in the state. Harris’s entrance into the race led to more than 100,000 new volunteers in Michigan, while she has visited Michigan more than any other state besides Pennsylvania, according to her campaign.

Trump has also made at least a dozen stops in Michigan this year, but some campaign operatives have sounded the alarm that his campaign has let old-fashioned ground game tactics, like door-knocking and billboards, slide in several swing states, including Michigan.

But Harris is ramping up her campaign visits this week after at least three Michigan Democratic lawmakers warned of slipping support.

But the tightness of the race in Michigan should not come as a surprise to anyone, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes told the BBC.

“No one operating here on the ground in Michigan should have, or would have, expected this to be any easier than it has been,” she said. “We always knew it was going to be hard.”

Although the state is far from the southern border, Democratic organisers keep hearing that immigration is a top concern for Michigan voters.

“I don’t understand why,” said Ms Paul, the Fems for Dems leader. “It’s just really not relevant for us.”

But the issue has resonated with many of the voters the BBC spoke to, including Mary Beierschmitt of Novi, Michigan.

“It’s a big issue,” she said, adding that she thought Harris had not handled the situation well as vice-president, when Harris was tasked with finding solutions to tackle the source of migration.

Illegal border crossing reached a record high last year. After the Biden administration enacted asylum restrictions, they fell to their lowest in four years.

Trump has made attacks on Harris’s immigration record a central part of his campaign. His focus has not just been at the southern border, but in midwestern states as well, including Michigan’s neighbour Ohio, where the former president has falsely claimed Haitian immigrants are settling illegally in the town of Springfield and eating residents’ pets.

Voters tend to blame the party in power for their frustrations with national issues like the economy and immigration, even if the Biden administration isn’t solely responsible for the border crisis and the rising cost of living, said Jonathon Hanson, a lecturer at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

“The downside for Harris and Biden is, although they’ve done a lot of things to help the economy recover from a major downturn, it’s a more difficult story to tell politically,” he said.

Trump also may have the upper hand among some swing voters in Michigan because he is more well known than Harris after four years in office and years in the public eye, said Mr Hanson.

Tim and Janet of Novi, Michigan, say they know Trump’s personality well – and they don’t like it. But the independent voters already cast their ballots for Trump because they believe he is better at articulating his policies than Harris.

“I can’t vote for somebody just because it’s a feel-good time,” said Tim, a 75-year-old who declined to share his last name for privacy reasons. “They need to be doing things and have policy initiatives that are going to be beneficial.”

But in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Harris’s new economic policies are swaying independent voter Darrell Sumpter.

The vice-president has laid out a number of economic proposals during her campaign, including a plan to offer first-time home buyers an average of $25,000, and an expansion of the child tax credit.

“I’ve never been able to even afford a house. I’ve been waiting for years,” said Mr Sumpter, 52, who voted for Trump in 2020 and is leaning toward Harris this year.

“I don’t want the country to regress right back to the same state it was with Trump,” he added.

In 2016, former secretary of state Clinton ran a predominately national campaign in the state rather than a local one, said Mr Grossmann.

“The ads were the same here as elsewhere,” he said. “They were about Trump’s personality and saying negative things, and there was a perception that that really didn’t work.”

She lost the state by only 10,000 votes.

Now, both Harris and Trump are focusing their messages in Michigan on the state’s largest industry, car manufacturers, as they try to appeal to working-class and union voters.

In recent weeks, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have criticised the Biden administration’s support of the electric vehicle industry, saying it will cost Michigan auto workers their jobs.

Harris and vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz have hit back, arguing Trump cost the state manufacturing jobs when he was president.

But on other local issues, vagueness may actually be beneficial for Trump, political experts say.

Michigan, home to the largest Arab-American population in the US, is the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement, a protest campaign to pressure Biden and Harris to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

The movement has declined to endorse Harris, sparking worries that the reliably Democratic voting bloc will not turn out for the party this time.

Meanwhile, Trump has won over some Arab-Americans by saying less, Mr Grossmann said. The former president has been vocal about his support for Israel, but has also promised to end the war, without providing specifics on how he would do so.

“Among this community, to some extent, being vague or unclear has been an advantage,” Mr Grossmann said.

In Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit where about 60% of the population is Muslim, the city’s first Arab mayor, a Democrat, has endorsed Trump.

“President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” Mayor Amer Ghalib told media.

“We asked multiple times that [Biden and Harris] should change course, but nothing happened.”

Despite concerns about slipping support, several political experts and Democratic strategists say Harris’s campaign is doing nearly all it can to stay on top of the Michigan race.

Still, Alysa Diebolt, the chair of the Democratic Party in Macomb County, which Trump won in 2020, said more could always be done to turn out apathetic voters.

“I think Harris absolutely has work to do,” Ms Diebolt said. “You need to sprint through the finish line in Michigan.”

Sharon Baseman, the vice chair of Fems for Dems, said she hopes these concerns motivate people not to become complacent.

“We’re all scared,” she said.

Mr Hanson noted that polls in Michigan and across the country likely will be off by several points on Election Day. But, he said, it’s hard to know in which direction.

“This is a razor-thin margin,” he said, “so it could really go either way.”

• What young Democrats want from Harris
• Six swing states that could decide election
• What could be the ‘October Surprise’?

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

The UN’s humanitarian office has called for an investigation into an Israeli air strike that killed 23 people in northern Lebanon on Monday.

Spokesman Jeremy Laurence said the strike, on the Christian-majority village of Aitou, raised “real concerns” with respect to international humanitarian law.

Laurence said that 12 women and two children were understood to be among the dead from the bombing, which destroyed a residential building that had been recently rented out to a family displaced from the south.

Rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble in Aitou on Tuesday – far from the focus of the conflict to date in the south of Lebanon, Beqaa Valley and parts of Beirut.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is yet to comment on the strike.

Elie Alwan, the owner of the house in Aitou, told reporters that it had been rented to a family of around 10 people, who were later joined by around 10 more.

Alwan said there had been no problems with the tenants until a car came to the house on Monday – the driver apparently delivering cash – when the air strike hit.

Israeli air strikes on members of Hezbollah in the areas where the group usually operates have pushed its members to other parts of the country, creating fears across Lebanon that Israeli targets could be anywhere.

An Aitou resident, Sarkis Alwan, told the AFP news agency that the village “maybe… won’t welcome” displaced people anymore. “And villagers who have taken in displaced people, I think they will ask them to leave,” he said.

Israel has demonstrated a willingness during its recent escalation to strike residential buildings without warning as it attempts to degrade Hezbollah, which has been sporadically firing rockets into Israel for a year since the day after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

On Thursday night, an Israeli strike hit a residential building in central Beirut killing 22 people, according to figures from the Lebanese health ministry.

Unconfirmed reports said that the strike, which came with no warning and wounded 117, targeted Wafiq Safa, a senior member of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that is a powerful force in Lebanon.

The reports said that the strike failed to kill him and Hezbollah has not commented on his status.

Israel says it is necessary to take on Hezbollah in order for people in the north of the country to be able to return to their homes.

A drone attack launched by Hezbollah on a military base in northern Israel killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday and severely wounded seven more – the deadliest strike by the group since Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.

Also on Tuesday, the UN refugee agency said that more than a quarter of Lebanon was now covered by Israeli military evacuation orders.

“People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” the agency’s Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told a press briefing.

The evacuation orders, coupled with Israel’s ground invasion and bombing campaign, have driven a massive exodus of Lebanese people from the affected areas.

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to the Lebanese government. They have fled villages and major cities in the south, and moved north to Beirut, Tripoli and other cities.

Many have ended up in unsafe and unsanitary conditions in shelters in and around the capital, where schools and shops have been closed to house people.

The sheer volume of displaced people has overwhelmed welfare services, the mayor’s office told the BBC, leaving thousands of displaced people on the streets.

Using plans made for the previous invasion, in 2006, the municipality had prepared for just 10% of the actual number of people, mayor Abdallah Darwich told the BBC last week.

“We did not imagine it could be this huge,” he said. “Every day our calculations have become larger and larger.”

The Israeli strikes on Beirut, focused on the southern suburb of Dahieh, had become a daily and nightly occurrence over the past three weeks, but the capital has not been hit for nearly five days.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington had raised “concerns” with the Israeli government over the “scope and nature” of its bombing of Beirut in recent weeks.

“Israel does have a right to defend itself against those terrorists who pose a threat to the state of Israel, but we’ve had real concerns about the nature of the campaign that we saw roll out across Beirut over the past few weeks,” he said.

“We’ve seen [the number of strikes] come down over the past few days,” he added.

Following the Hezbollah drone strike on Sunday, Netanyahu threatened on Monday night that he would continue striking the group in Lebanon “without mercy”, including Beirut.

On Tuesday evening, Netanyahu said in a phone call with President Emmanuel Macron that he was opposed to “a unilateral ceasefire, which would not change the security situation in Lebanon and would return the country to its previous state”.

Earlier in the day, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, issued his own threat to Israel, saying the group had “a new calculation” to inflict pain on its enemy.

At the same time, Qassem, speaking in a televised address, called for a ceasefire, saying that it was the only solution to the current conflict. “If the Israelis do not want that, we will continue,” he added.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people over the last year, according to figures from the Lebanese government, which does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Israel has said around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed.

Ninety-two people are still unaccounted for in North Carolina, weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated the western part of the state, Governor Roy Cooper said on Tuesday.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Cooper warned that number could change as more reports of missing people are resolved.

“I want to caution that this is not a definitive count, because the task force is continuing its work,” he said.

Ninety-five people are known to have died in North Carolina as a result of the storm, while more than 220 have been killed in total, including in Florida, where the storm made landfall.

During the news conference, Cooper also made reference to the “persistent and dangerous flow of misinformation” circulating about the hurricane, which he said was continuing to complicate relief efforts.

He said such misinformation “breeds confusion and demoralises storm survivors and response workers alike”.

“If you’re participating in spreading this stuff, stop it,” Cooper warned. “Whatever your aim is, the people you are really hurting are those in western North Carolina who need help.”

His remarks come as federal workers have had to confront rising distrust from some local residents as a result of the spread of a number of false conspiracy theories relating to Helene.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has said it has had to make changes to its operations in the state, briefly pulling out of one county because of threats fuelled by misinformation.

Last Saturday, police in Rutherford County arrested a man who allegedly spoke publicly about harming relief workers and was found with a rifle and a handgun.

The false conspiracy theories – many of them politically motivated – about land confiscation, aid payments and deliberate weather manipulation have rapidly spread online.

Reports indicate that several extremist groups are active in the region, attempting to capitalise on the disaster and the rumours.

Hurricane Helene destroyed several towns in western North Carolina, where more than six months’ worth of rain landed as the storm rolled through.

Rescue efforts were complicated by the mountainous and rugged terrain of western North Carolina, where homes and bridges were washed away and the popular tourist city of Asheville was cut off.

The US has hit Lufthansa with a record $4m (3m) penalty after the airline barred Jewish passengers from a 2022 flight because some allegedly refused to follow rules requiring face masks.

The Department of Transportation said Lufthansa discriminated against the passengers, treating them “as if they were all a single group”, though many were not travelling together and did not know one another.

It said the penalty was the largest it had ever issued against an airline for civil rights violations.

Lufthansa said in the consent order that it was agreeing to the payment to avoid litigation but denied discrimination, blaming the incident on “an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications”.

“Lufthansa is dedicated to being an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity, and acceptance,” the company said in a statement, adding that it had cooperated with the investigation and remained focused on training for its staff.

The episode involved passengers who were travelling from New York to Budapest, with a connection in Frankfurt, in May 2022.

Many of the passengers were male, wearing “distinctive garb typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men” and had used the same handful of travel agencies to book their tickets, according to the DOT.

During the first flight, the captain alerted Lufthansa security that some passengers had failed to follow crew instructions requiring masks, and barring gathering in aisles and other places on board.

The alert led to holds on tickets of more than 100 passengers, all of them Jewish, which led to them being blocked from their connecting flight.

The DOT said Lufthansa recognised that the action also would hurt people who had complied with the instructions but “concluded it was not practical to address each passenger individually”.

The majority were rebooked on other flights the same day.

“No one should face discrimination when they travel, and today’s action sends a clear message to the airline industry that we are prepared to investigate and take action whenever passengers’ civil rights are violated,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.

The DOT said passengers interviewed for the investigation said they had not witnessed misbehaviour and Lufthansa later failed to identify any one passenger who had not followed the rules.

But in the consent order, Lufthansa said its staff was unable to single out passengers because “the infractions were so numerous, the misconduct continued for substantial portions of the flight and at different intervals and the passengers changed seats during the flight”.

The DOT said it was requiring Lufthansa to pay $2m and would give the airline credit for $2m it has already paid to passengers as part of a legal settlement.

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”.

Tensions between Israel and the UN over its peacekeeping operations in southern Lebanon have escalated in recent days – although the confrontations have their roots in years of mistrust and recriminations.

In the latest standoff, the head of UN peacekeeping operations rejected a call on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the forces known as Unifil to pull out of “combat areas”.

The UN force was established in 1978 after the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, and had its role bolstered in 2006 to monitor and keep the peace there after that year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

I’ve filmed with UN peacekeepers patrolling the 120 km (75-mile) “Blue Line” – the UN-recognised boundary that separates Israel and Lebanon – and have seen the dangerous work of demining 5 million square metres of land in southern Lebanon, where Unifil has destroyed more than 51,000 mines and unexploded bombs left over after previous wars.

But Israel accuses Unifil of falling woefully short in one of its other key responsibilities. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, the UN was meant to create an area in southern Lebanon free of armed forces other than those of the Lebanese army.

“The UN is a failed organization and UNIFIL is a useless force that failed to enforce Resolution 1701, failed to prevent Hezbollah from establishing itself in southern Lebanon,” said Israeli cabinet minister Eli Cohen in a recent social media post.

Israel accuses Unifil of having turned a blind eye to Hezbollah’s extensive regrouping and rearming, as the Iranian-backed Shia organisation grew into a formidable fighting force – even bigger than the official Lebanese army. Hezbollah is now proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.

According to the pro-Israel pressure group, UN Watch, Unifil “did nothing” as “Hezbollah was digging tunnels to invade Israel, kidnap & attack Israeli civilians… and embedding missiles in civilian homes.”

UN Watch and the Israeli Government’s Media office have published several posts in recent days alleging that Hezbollah had been able to operate freely and within clear sight of UN bases and posts along or near the Blue Line.

Tunnels, heavy weaponry and equipment in preparation for attack on Israel have all been discovered after Israeli troops crossed the border into Lebanon.

That, said a belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu, in a video message addressed directly to the UN secretary general this week is why Israel is demanding that Unifil forces withdraw from conflict areas in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli prime minister urged Antonio Guterres not to allow Hezbollah to use UN peacekeepers as “human shields” and said the secretary general’s refusal to evacuate the Unifil soldiers makes them “hostages of Hezbollah… endangering them and the lives of our [Israeli] soldiers”.

Israel was widely criticised after five Unifil peacekeepers were injured following the ground invasion on 1 October.

In several incidents Israeli fire has hit clearly marked and unmistakable Unifil bases, and in one case Israeli tanks forced their way into a Unifil compound where they initially refused demands to leave.

Israel has offered explanations for those incidents but, again, says the way to avoid a repetition is for Unifil troops to withdraw from the area.

That has been met with a firm “No”.

A Unifil spokesperson accused the Israeli military of “deliberately” firing on its positions and 40 of the nations that contribute troops to Unifil said last week that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.

The UN Security Council, meeting in New York, also “urged all parties to respect the safety and security of Unifil personnel and UN premises,” said Switzerland’s UN Ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl. She added: “They reiterated their support to Unifil, underscoring its role in supporting regional stability.”

There are UN bodies also trying to hold Israel to account in Gaza, where for the last week Israeli troops have been involved in an enhanced offensive to drive remaining Hamas fighters from northern areas, including the Jabalia refugee camp.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say that they have issued clear orders for thousands of civilians to leave the conflict zone for so-called “safe areas”.

But with as many as 400,000 people trapped in the north, few areas in Gaza can be considered “safe” and, according to many reports, more than 300 people have been killed in Israel’s latest offensive.

That led the United Nations Human Rights Office to issue a strongly worded statement saying that the IDF was “trapping tens of thousands of Palestinians, including civilians, in their homes and shelters with no access to food or other life-sustaining necessities.”

The statement also accused Israel of cutting off the area completely from the rest of Gaza and said that Israeli troops have fired on civilians trying to flee the area which could amount to a “war crime.”

Israel says it is sending more food and medical supplies into northern Gaza and that Hamas is actively encouraging, even preventing, civilians from leaving Jabalia.

For many in the current Israeli administration, the bottom line is that – for many years – the United Nations and its organisations have been inherently and structurally anti-Israel

Israel is now taking unprecedented legal action against UNRWA – the UN body established more than 70 years ago to support Palestine refugees across the Middle East, including Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel has long-accused Unrwa – the UN body established more than 70 years ago to support Palestine refugees across the Middle East, including Gaza and the West Bank – of actively acting against its interests.

It says Unrwa personnel were directly involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks, when thousands of gunmen broke through the border fence from Gaza and killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took another 251 back to Gaza as hostages.

The number of Unrwa personnel accused of participating in the attacks was 12, out of a 13,000-strong workforce.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the Security Council that Unrwa had allowed Hamas to infiltrate its ranks and that “this infiltration is so ingrained, so institutional, that the organization is simply beyond repair.”

To that end, a committee in Israel’s parliament has now approved legislation that would ban Unrwa from operating in Israeli territory and end all contact between the Israeli government and the agency.

Unrwa’s head responded, saying that if the legislation is adopted, the body’s humanitarian operations in Gaza and the West Bank may “disintegrate.”

Philippe Lazzarini said that senior Israeli officials were “bent on destroying Unrwa” which is the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza. It runs schools, primary healthcare centres and social services for the vast majority of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million people.

But criticisms from the UN and its member nations will not deter Israel from achieving its military objectives in Gaza and Lebanon, nor in the occupied West Bank as long, crucially, as it enjoys the backing of the United States.

Remarkably, Israel has gone as far as barring the UN Secretary General from entering the country. Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, saying that Antonio Guterres was now persona non-grata after not “unequivocally” condemning Iran’s missile attack on Israel. The move prompted Mr Guterres to insist that he “strongly condemn[ed]” the attack, although the “ban” has not been lifted.

While Israel might owe its very existence to the UN – the body that voted it into being in 1947 – its relationship with the organisation has never been so bad.

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.

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.”

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.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is in constant pain and moves slowly.

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

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

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

• How sailors say they were tricked into smuggling cocaine by a British man
• Kidnapped and trafficked twice – a sex worker’s life in Sierra Leone
• How a Malawi WhatsApp group helped save women trafficked to Oman
• ‘Terrible things happened’ – inside TB Joshua’s church of horrors

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 14-year-old girl from Kenya has achieved global fame for her efforts to save the planet, meeting the likes of King Charles and teaming up with Grammy award-winner Meji Alabi and ex-football star David Beckham in the campaign against climate change.

Ellyanne Wanjiku Chlystun was just four years old when she was motivated to act on the issue with her inspiration coming from Kenya’s most-famous tree planter and Nobel laureate, Prof Wangari Maathai.

“I was doing a project in kindergarten about people who had made a difference in the world, such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Florence Nightingale.

“However, it was Wangari Maathai, this amazing Kenyan woman, who had planted millions of trees in her community to spread awareness about what tree planting can do, and how it can develop a country or continent, who inspired me,” Ellyanne tells the BBC.

Prof Maathai championed the view that women, especially in rural areas, could improve the environment by planting trees to provide a fuel source and to slow deforestation and desertification.

She became the first black African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, and was also referred to as the first “green” Nobel laureate.

Prof Maathai founded The Green Belt Movement in 1977. It planted an estimated 45 million trees in Kenya by the time she died in 2011.

Determined to follow in her footsteps, Ellyanne went home to tell her mother, Dorothy, about what she had learned.

However, her mother – who was very familiar with the story of Prof Maathai, including her role as a political activist who challenged the regime of then-President Daniel arap Moi – tried to discourage her.

Recalling the conversation, Ellyanne says: “I said I want to be just like her [Prof Maathai]. But because mum knows of her and how she got beaten and hurt and put in jail, she said: ‘No, it’s better to become a lawyer or doctor and go to Harvard’.”

However, the young child was persistent until her mother agreed that she could emulate her hero.

“I remember at the time eating either an orange or lemon and I took the seed… and put it in the soil and then it started growing and sprouting,” adds Ellyanne.

“I fell in love with what I was doing, so I planted more.”

This motivated her to learn about the science behind trees.

“Dr Jane Njuguna, from the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, taught me about Species Site Matching, which is finding the right tree to plant in the right area at the right time with the right tools and the right soil,” she says.

With the help of her family, Ellyanne launched a not-for-profit organisation, Children With Nature, in 2017.

“Through Children With Nature, I wanted to teach kids. Some of them don’t know how they can make a difference in the area they live in,” Ellyanne says.

She says that she had personally planted about 250,000 trees by 2020, but had built a “community” of tree-lovers – not just in Kenya but also abroad – and together they had crossed the 1.3 million mark.

“I have planted trees all over the world in countries I have visited, including Uganda, Poland, the UK, Crater Lake in the USA, Zanzibar, Morocco and Zambia,” Ellyanne says, adding: “I have planted the most trees here in Kenya.”

However, she has fallen behind on tree-planting in the last three years as she has became involved in other campaigns to tackle climate change.

“I usually get sponsorship and collaborate with various partnerships to fund the travel. Brands can pay for the tickets and hotel. As a child I can’t pay for my tickets yet, although I’m getting there,” Ellyanne adds.

On how she juggles her time between going to school and being a globe-trotting campaigner, the 14-year-old replies: “School has been very easy for me as I have excellent grades. I’m very proud of myself and so is my mum.”

She attended the climate summit in Dubai in 2023, where she met the British monarch, and gave a speech that drew a link between climate change and the water-borne disease malaria.

“As weather patterns change, malaria cases are rising. Where I live in Kenya, malaria is appearing in new places where it has never been seen before,” Ellyanne told the delegates.

She returned to the theme in a video released by UK-based charity Malaria No More.

Directed by Alabi and featuring Beckham, she is the presenter of the video, which dramatically illustrates the effects of climate change.

“An angry sun, erratic skies, cyclones, floods of a cosmic size, thirsty land, falling trees – the perfect storm to spread disease,” Ellyanne says in the film.

Along with children from other parts of the world, she also features in SaveOurWildlife, a documentary film produced by Sky News and Sky Kids FYI that looks at the impact of climate change on animals.

It has been nominated for a prize in the children’s category at the Wildscreen Panda Awards ceremony, billed as the Oscars of the wildlife film and TV industry, currently under way in the UK city of Bristol.

In the film, Ellyanne reports on her favourite animal – elephants – and says that drought caused by changing weather patterns now poses a greater threat to their survival than poaching.

Despite the fact that she has branched out into filming, she tells the BBC that she remains passionate about tree-planting, and intends to take it up again.

“My greatest dream is to plant trees in Africa’s Green Belt,” Ellyanne says, referring to the initiative to halt the advancing Sahara Desert by planting trees from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east.

And she wants to be a “catalyst” for the planting of one-trillion trees around the world by the time she turns 18 – a goal that she regards achievable.

“I was brought up to believe that everything is possible, especially for me as a young person.

“Look what GenZ has done in Kenya, out of resilience, they managed to get a whole finance bill cancelled and the entire cabinet fired,” she adds, giving a glimpse of the political streak of her hero, Prof Maathai.

But she says has no intention of forging a political career like Prof Maathai, saying: “I want to graduate from primary school and then get into high school and then get into college. I want to specialise in economics, that’s for sure.”

• Ethiopia’s 20-billion tree goal – a sapling success?
• The tree-planting mayor of Sierra Leone’s capital
• Kenyans get tree-planting holiday
• The Senegal man on a mission to plant five million trees

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.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

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.”

Boeing says it aims to raise up to $35bn (£26.8bn) from investors and banks as a costly strike by thousands of its workers enters its second month.

Also on Tuesday, the union representing more than 30,000 of the aviation giant’s workers held a rally in the city of Seattle.

The company is moving ahead with plans to layoff around 17,000 workers, with the first redundancy notices expected to be issued in mid-November.

Talks to end the walkout collapsed last week as the firm withdrew an offer that included a 30% pay rise over four years.

Boeing plans to raise up to $25bn in stock and debt offerings and said it has reached a deal with major banks to borrow as much much as $10bn.

“These are two prudent steps to support the company’s access to liquidity,” Boeing said in a statement.

The company’s shares rose by 2.2% after the announcements.

The moves to raise funding come less than a week after Boeing announced that it will cut its workforce by a tenth and push back deliveries of its 777X plane.

BBC News understands that the layoffs will, for now, not affect striking workers.

Major credit ratings agencies had previously warned that the strike could lead to downgrades, which would make it more expensive for the company to borrow money.

S&P Global estimates the strike is costing Boeing $1bn per month.

The walkout, at a company of strategic importance for the US economy, has become a source of concern for the Biden administration.

On Monday, acting US Labor Secretary, Julie Su, met representatives of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union (IAM) and Boeing in Seattle.

Meanwhile, top Washington state Congressional Democrats have called on Boeing and the union to “redouble… efforts to reach a mutually beneficial resolution.”

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.

The star of a controversial new film about Donald Trump has said the former president “should be grateful” that it provides a “complex, three-dimensional take” on his life.

US actor Sebastian Stan portrays Trump in The Apprentice, which focuses on Trump’s younger years as a real estate tycoon in New York.

The former president has threatened to take legal action against producers, describing the film as “fake and classless” and saying he hoped it would “bomb” at the box office.

The film struggled to find a distributor in the US and its director has described the process of making and releasing it as “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done”.

The Apprentice is set in the 1970s and 80s, when Trump was beginning to make his name as a businessman in New York.

It focuses on his relationship with lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn (played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong), who instilled certain values in Trump such as never admitting defeat.

Speaking to the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba, Ali Abbasi said making and releasing the film was “by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done” and acknowledged the difficulties of finding a distributor following the film’s premiere in May.

“When we were at [film festival] Cannes and we got a standing ovation and everyone was so happy and flattering, I was thinking there was going to be a bidding war, do I want to go with Warner or Netflix, who do I want to pick?”

But in contrast to the director’s expectations, Abbasi said he then found “it was extremely difficult for us to get a distributor” – likely due in part to Trump’s threat to sue.

The Apprentice was eventually released in the US last week, but it has struggled at the box office there so far.

It received its British premiere at the London Film Festival on Tuesday evening ahead of its UK release on Friday.

More from the London Film Festival:

Abassi confirmed he was keen to make sure the movie was released before the US election on 5 November, where Trump will face Kamala Harris, so it can be part of the conversation.

“The choices are either to release this potentially in a Trump presidency, or the aftermath of the election whichever way it [goes], or to do it now,” Abbasi said.

“And I think intellectually and as an artist it’s much more exciting [to release it now].

“I don’t think anyone has ever done a movie about a person who is running for office as they’re doing it, and have this interaction, it’s quite unique, honestly, and why would I pass on this opportunity?”

He added: “Does that mean we want to affect or change the outcome of the US election? I mean, I wish I had those powers!”

However, Strong suggested the movie could potentially have an impact on some voters.

“In some small way, I think it could move the needle on how people feel [about] or perceive him, but the film is not a political act, it’s a story,” he said.

The film has received mixed reviews and there has been debate about whether it could become part of the Oscars race.

The election’s outcome could be a key factor in whether or not the movie is nominated, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson noted.

“If Trump wins the election, I don’t think [awards voters] will want to have anything to do with this movie,” Lawson said on the Little Gold Men podcast.

“There would have to be a Harris win for people to be like, ‘OK, we defeated the evil again, we can now go back and reconsider his younger life from a safer remove.'”

If the movie does make it into the Oscars race, it could see Strong in direct competition with his former Succession co-star Kieran Culkin in the supporting actor category.

Marvel star Stan avoids portraying Trump as a caricature villain in the film, or in the exaggerated, comedic way Trump is often presented by impressionists.

Instead, The Apprentice acts as a more serious character study of how Trump’s personality was formed by Cohn.

The fact that Trump is played without the usual voice, gestures and characteristics actors often use makes his gradual evolution over the course of two hours much more effective.

“Some may want The Apprentice to go further,” said Katie Walsh of the LA Times in her review. “It does humanise Trump.

“But it also presents a plainly obvious depiction of how a man can turn into a monster with the right personality, background and guidance.”

By the end of the film, Cohn’s influence on Trump can be seen clearly. For younger audience members who have only come to know Trump in the last decade, the film may prove enlightening.

Stan reflected: “They [Trump and Cohn] are very complex individuals, and that’s what it’s like in life, no-one is morally completely on the right side or perfect in any way, everyone has flaws, and there are some redeeming qualities as well to them.”

Strong told BBC News: “The movie is about how Trump was made, in a way, how he became who he is today, his moral, philosophical, political framework, and a lot of that originates in Roy Cohn, so in that sense, it’s an origin story.

“We live in this hyper-polarised world where we see things in terms of heroes and villains, but the world isn’t really like that.

“And neither of us were interested in simply vilifying or demonising these people. Your job as an actor is to leave your judgement at the door.”

Stan concluded: “I think [Trump] should be grateful, to be honest. We have pretty much handed him, I think, a very complex, three-dimensional take on his life, and I can’t recall anybody else doing that.”

That isn’t to say the portrayal of Trump is sympathetic, however. Quite the opposite. Stan’s Trump treats people increasingly badly and in one particularly controversial scene, he is seen raping his then-wife Ivana.

This allegation has a complicated background – Ivana Trump did accuse Trump of rape in a court deposition in 1990 when they were divorcing, but she later distanced herself from the claim.

In 2015, Ivana described one sexual encounter in which she said “the love and tenderness” Trump usually displayed was absent, leaving her feeling “violated”. She continued: “I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

She later dedicated her 2017 memoir to Trump, describing him as “the kids’ father and my dear friend”. She died in 2022.

Trump denied sexual assault – his lawyer saying the rape “never happened”, and Trump’s team threatened to sue producers.

Earlier this week, Trump said in a statement: “My former wife, Ivana, was a kind and wonderful person, and I had a great relationship with her until the day she died.”

He added: “So sad that human scum, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful [movie], are allowed to say and do whatever they want in order to hurt a political movement, which is far bigger than any of us.”

Trump’s threat to sue deterred some buyers at Cannes, but Briarcliff Entertainment eventually picked up the film for distribution in the US and Canada.

Asked about the sexual assault scene, Abbasi said: “My approach is this is of importance because it’s a rupture, a hugely important character point, the relationship between Donald and Ivana, and really it’s the tragedy that’s important, not the controversy.”

Asked about researching Ivana Trump, Bakalova said: “It’s been good to see a woman ahead of her time, she wanted to be hand-in-hand in the business with him. Yes, taking care of the kids as well… but she’d been a businesswoman, and I think she’s been influential.”

Supporters of former Bolivian president Evo Morales have clashed with police after a prosecutor said she would order his arrest.

Morales, who governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, is under investigation for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking, which he denies.

The accusations against the 64-year-old have resurfaced ahead of presidential elections next year, in which he plans to run.

The prosecutor announced she would issue an arrest warrant after Morales failed to attend a hearing in the case last week.

Tension has been high in Bolivia for months, with supporters of Morales clashing with those of the current president, Luis Arce.

Both men belong to the governing Mas party and are battling over who will be the party’s candidate in the presidential election scheduled for August 2025.

Three weeks ago, the two rival groups of supporters came to blows in the city of El Alto.

The investigation into Morales has further heightened the already volatile atmosphere.

On Monday, Morales’s followers erected blockades on two major roads, which police tried to lift. At least 12 people were arrested and one police officer was injured.

Morales supporters have said they will keep the blockade up “indefinitely” and could extend it to affect major roads across the country should he be arrested.

The allegations against Morales are not new.

In 2020, the ministry of justice filed a criminal complaint against the ex-president, accusing him of rape and human trafficking.

In the complaint, prosecutors argued that sexual encounters Morales allegedly had in 2015 with a girl who was reportedly under age at the time constituted statutory rape.

They said he had taken the girl on trips abroad, which they said amounted to human trafficking.

Morales argued the accusations were part of a right-wing vendetta against him by the interim president who replaced him in office after his resignation in 2019 following allegations of vote-rigging.

Morales, who was living in exile at the time, was also accused of sedition and terrorism and an arrest warrant for him was issued.

However, the arrest warrant was annulled after his lawyers argued successfully that due process had not been followed.

Morales returned to Bolivia a day after Luis Arce from Morales’s Mas party was sworn in as president in November 2020.

But the two erstwhile allies have since fallen out and their relations have become even more acrimonious since both announced their intentions to run as the Mas party’s candidate in the 2025 presidential election.

Both politicians have groups of loyal supporters willing to take to the streets – and in some cases engage in street brawls – to show their backing for their candidate.

Followers of Morales have threatened to paralyse the country should he be arrested.

Sandra Gutiérrez, the prosecutor in the case against Morales, said on Thursday that a warrant for his arrest would be issued after he failed to appear at a hearing.

On Monday, the chief of police said he had not yet been issued with orders to detain the former president.

But the police chief stressed that, once he received the order to arrest Morales, he would carry it out.

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.

The US has hit Lufthansa with a record $4m (3m) penalty after the airline barred Jewish passengers from a 2022 flight because some allegedly refused to follow rules requiring face masks.

The Department of Transportation said Lufthansa discriminated against the passengers, treating them “as if they were all a single group”, though many were not travelling together and did not know one another.

It said the penalty was the largest it had ever issued against an airline for civil rights violations.

Lufthansa said in the consent order that it was agreeing to the payment to avoid litigation but denied discrimination, blaming the incident on “an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications”.

“Lufthansa is dedicated to being an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity, and acceptance,” the company said in a statement, adding that it had cooperated with the investigation and remained focused on training for its staff.

The episode involved passengers who were travelling from New York to Budapest, with a connection in Frankfurt, in May 2022.

Many of the passengers were male, wearing “distinctive garb typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men” and had used the same handful of travel agencies to book their tickets, according to the DOT.

During the first flight, the captain alerted Lufthansa security that some passengers had failed to follow crew instructions requiring masks, and barring gathering in aisles and other places on board.

The alert led to holds on tickets of more than 100 passengers, all of them Jewish, which led to them being blocked from their connecting flight.

The DOT said Lufthansa recognised that the action also would hurt people who had complied with the instructions but “concluded it was not practical to address each passenger individually”.

The majority were rebooked on other flights the same day.

“No one should face discrimination when they travel, and today’s action sends a clear message to the airline industry that we are prepared to investigate and take action whenever passengers’ civil rights are violated,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.

The DOT said passengers interviewed for the investigation said they had not witnessed misbehaviour and Lufthansa later failed to identify any one passenger who had not followed the rules.

But in the consent order, Lufthansa said its staff was unable to single out passengers because “the infractions were so numerous, the misconduct continued for substantial portions of the flight and at different intervals and the passengers changed seats during the flight”.

The DOT said it was requiring Lufthansa to pay $2m and would give the airline credit for $2m it has already paid to passengers as part of a legal settlement.

The US has written to Israel, giving it 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.

The letter, sent on Sunday, amounts to the strongest known written warning from the US to its ally and comes amid a new Israeli offensive in northern Gaza that has reportedly caused a large number of civilian casualties.

It says the US has deep concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, adding that Israel denied or impeded nearly 90% of humanitarian movements between the north and south last month.

Israel is reviewing the letter, an Israeli official was reported as saying, adding the country “takes this matter seriously” and intends to “address the concerns raised” with US counterparts.

Israel has previously said it is targeting Hamas operatives in the north and not stopping the entry of humanitarian aid.

On Monday, the Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, Cogat, said 30 lorries carrying aid from the World Food Programme had entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing.

That ended a two-week period during which the UN said no food aid was delivered to the north, and supplies essential for survival were running out for the 400,000 Palestinians there.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, and the Israeli military has relied heavily on US-supplied aircraft, guided bombs, missiles and shells to fight the war against Hamas in Gaza over the past year.

The US letter to the Israeli government – whose contents have now been confirmed by the state department – was first reported by the Axios website. It is signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“We are now writing to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” it says.

It states that Israeli evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million people into the narrow, coastal al-Mawasi area where they are at “high risk of lethal contagion” due to extreme overcrowding, and that humanitarian organisations report that their survival needs cannot be met.

“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government – including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding nearly 90% of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza in September, continuing burdensome and excessive dual-use restrictions, and instituting new vetting and onerous liability and customs requirements for humanitarian staff and shipments – together with increased lawlessness and looting – are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza,” it adds.

The letter says Israel “must, starting now and within 30 days” act on a series of concrete measures to boost aid supplies, adding that failure may “have implications for US policy”.

It cites US laws which can prohibit military assistance to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian aid.

It says Israel must “surge all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza” before winter, including by enabling a minimum of 350 lorries a day to enter through all four major crossings and a new fifth crossing, as well as allowing people in al-Mawasi to move inland.

It also calls on Israel to end the “isolation of northern Gaza” by reaffirming that there will be “no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians” from north to south.

At a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, US state department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that the letter was “a private diplomatic communication that we did not intend to make public”.

“Secretary [Blinken] along with Secretary Austin thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes they need to make again to see the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up,” he said.

Mr Miller declined to speculate on what consequences there might be for Israel if it did not boost humanitarian aid access.

But he noted: “Recipients of US military assistance do not arbitrarily deny or impede provisioning of US humanitarian assistance. That’s just the law and we of course will follow the law. But our hope is that Israel will make the changes that we have outlined.”

He also said the 30-day time limit was not linked to the upcoming US presidential election on 5 November, saying it was “appropriate to give them time to work through the different issues”.

Israel has previously insisted there are no limits to the amount of aid or humanitarian assistance that can be delivered into and across Gaza, and blames UN agencies for failing to distribute supplies. It also accuses Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

Before Israel’s ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in May, President Joe Biden suspended a single consignment of 2,000 and 500lb bombs for the first time as he tried to dissuade it from an all-out assault.

But the president immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. The suspension was partially lifted in July and has not been repeated.

Earlier on Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that families in northern Gaza were “facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion” because of the Israeli offensive that began 10 days ago.

The Israeli military says it has sent tanks and troops back into the town of Jabalia and its urban refugee camp for a third time to root out Hamas fighters who have regrouped there.

It has ordered residents of Jabalia, as well as neighbouring Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, to evacuate to the al-Mawasi “humanitarian area”.

The UN says about 50,000 people have fled to Gaza City and other parts of the north. But for many it is unsafe to leave their homes or they are unable to leave because they are sick or disabled.

Khalid, a resident of Jabalia whose accounts of the past year are featured in a new BBC documentary, said in a voice note that he and his family had been living in fear for a week.

“We were told to go to the south, but we couldn’t because the Israeli army has surrounded the area, either with dirt barricades or using quadcopter drones. We can’t move, it’s too difficult.”

“At the same time, because of the intense bombing we’re living in constant terror. My daughter has become sick and she has a fever. Her entire body is shaking in fear because of the sound of the bombings and I don’t know what to do with her. I can’t even take her to the hospital,” he added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said its first responders had recovered the bodies of 42 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes in Jabalia and neighbouring areas on Tuesday.

They reportedly included 11 members of the same family, nearly all of them women and children, whose home was destroyed in an air strike overnight.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its troops had killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area over the previous day.

On Monday, Israeli human rights groups warned of what they called “alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement the Generals’ Plan”, echoing widespread Palestinian concerns.

The controversial plan calls for the forcible transfer of all civilians in the north followed by a siege of the Hamas fighters remaining there to force their surrender and the release of Israeli hostages.

The Israeli military denies it is being implemented, saying it is only “getting civilians out of harm’s way”.

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 42,340 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

On Monday, Canadian police made a sensational claim.

They alleged at a press conference that agents of the Indian government were using “organised crime groups like the Bishnoi group” to target leaders of the pro-Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in India.

This was hours after both countries expelled top diplomats as tensions escalated over last year’s assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil. Delhi dismissed the allegations as “preposterous”, accusing PM Justin Trudeau of catering to Canada’s sizeable Sikh community for political gain.

The Canadian police were referring to Lawrence Bishnoi, a 31-year-old gangster from India, now back in the spotlight domestically and internationally.

Indian police say his gang is allegedly linked to the killing of a prominent politician in Mumbai at the weekend – gunmen shot dead 66-year-old Baba Siddique near his son’s office. Three suspects are in custody. An alleged aide of Bishnoi has posted on social media that the gang is behind the murder.

Once among India’s most wanted, Bishnoi has been in prison since 2015, now held far from his native Punjab state in Gujarat.

Yet, the police believe his audacious influence endures. Bishnoi is the prime accused in the sensational murder of Sidhu Moose Wala, the popular Punjabi singer gunned down near his village in October 2022.

In 2018, Bishnoi gained notoriety for threatening Bollywood star Salman Khan, accusing him of allegedly poaching two blackbuck antelopes – a revered species for Rajasthan’s Bishnoi community to which Lawrence belongs.

When he was produced in a court in Jodhpur city, he openly told the waiting media: “Salman Khan will be killed here, in Jodhpur… Then he will come to know about our real identity.” Incidentally, Siddique, the murdered politician, was a close friend of the Bollywood star.

In March last year, a news channel aired two interviews with Bishnoi from inside a Punjab jail, prompting an outraged high court to order an investigation. How a high-security inmate managed phone interviews from prison remains a mystery.

Federal investigators estimate Bishnoi continues to control a gang with 700 members across Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, involved in extorting celebrities, smuggling drugs and weapons and carrying out targeted assassinations. His partner Goldy Brar, also a co-accused in the Moose Wala killing, runs the gang by remote control from Canada, say the police. Bishnoi faces more than 30 cases, with 19 currently being tried in court.

“He runs his gang seamlessly from prison without needing to co-ordinate everything,” says Gurmeet Chauhan, a senior officer in Punjab’s anti-gangster task force. “Unlike other gangsters confined to a region, he thinks big.”

Bishnoi was born into affluence. His family is among the wealthiest in their village in Punjab, living in a spacious bungalow surrounded by more than 100 acres of land. His father, a former policeman, eventually gave up his job to take care of the family land, while his mother is a homemaker. The couple raised two sons Lawrence and Anmol – both now prime suspects in Moose Wala’s killing.

Ramesh Bishnoi, a relative, told Jupinderjit Singh, a journalist with The Tribune newspaper and author of Who Killed Moose Wala, that Lawrence was named after British officer Henry Montgomery Lawrence, founder of the prestigious Lawrence School in the hill town of Sanawar.

Lawrence Bishnoi himself attended a convent school, riding his own bike by the eighth grade and wearing expensive shoes – luxuries unheard of for most. Known for quietly helping local children in need, he was an introverted figure with undeniable influence, Mr Singh says.

After finishing school in 2008, he moved to a college in Chandigarh, quickly immersing himself in student politics in the city. “He had money, style and guts,” a Chandigarh police officer told Mr Singh, explaining how easily Bishnoi attracted followers. He joined a student organisation, ran for student elections and lost – a defeat he took personally.

Police records say this turning point nudged him closer to a world of violence as he mingled with some former student leaders-turned-criminals. Soon, police say, Bishnoi’s name was tied to brawls, arson and gunfire incidents on campus.

Punjab, Bishnoi’s home state, is overrun with gangs that fuel drugs and weapon smuggling, extortion and the local film and music industry. A cash-driven economy, bolstered by drugs, real estate and illegal liquor sales, has fuelled this rise, creating an ecosystem that blends crime with Punjabi pop culture, many say.

Punjab’s gangsters don’t enter the underworld for wealth alone – they crave notoriety, a deep-seated desire to “be somebody”, according to Mr Singh.

This twisted pursuit of fame finds roots in feudal, patriarchal culture. Social media amplifies it, with many gangsters showcasing their lives online. They flaunt their lifestyles on social media, where crime is often seen as a path to quick money and glamour. This has lured retired sportsmen and young recruits across Punjab to the dark side.

By September, police reported dismantling more than 500 gangs and arresting more than 1,400 gangsters since mid-2021. In clashes with the police, 16 gangsters had been killed and over 80 wounded, while three officers lost their lives and 26 more were injured. According to police, Bishnoi has been convicted in four cases, though none yet for serious crimes like murder.

With his neatly trimmed beard, the hoodie pulled over watchful eyes, Bishnoi often wears the casual look of a young man. When the stakes are high, he demonstrates a shrewdness in managing his image. During one court appearance, he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of Bhagat Singh, the revered Indian revolutionary.

In a widely circulated video, reportedly recorded in prison, the bearded gangster declares, “There is a desire for revolution in our hearts. Let’s see how much strength the enemy has.” The exact meaning of his words remains ambiguous.

Bishnoi’s rise is unlike any other. “Despite being in prison, he appears to be running his gang. Who provides him logistics or media access? Such control would be impossible without powerful allies,” says Mr Singh. Separating the man from the myth remains elusive.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under fire after buying a multi-million-dollar cliff-top home amid a national housing crisis.

Albanese made the purchase months out from an election in which the cost of living and housing are key issues.

The move has sparked backlash from across the political divide – with his opponents calling it “tone deaf” and some within his own party anonymously telling local media it left them “gobsmacked”.

Albanese defended his decision, saying he “knows what it is like to struggle” but bought the luxury property to be close to his fiancee Jodie Haydon’s family on the New South Wales Central Coast.

Property records show the four-bedroom, three-bathroom, and three-carport property in Copacabana – which has panoramic views – was sold for A$4.3m ($2.9m, £2.2m) last month, but the purchase is yet to settle.

At a press conference about housing on the day news of his new home broke, Albanese said he was aware that he was “better off” than many Australians due to his income but that he could still empathise with their struggle.

“My mum lived in the one public housing [home] that she was born in for all of her 65 years,” he told reporters.

“I know what it is like, which is why I want to help all Australians into a home.”

Albanese’s Labor party has created a A$10b investment fund for social and affordable housing. It has struggled to get other housing initiatives through parliament though, due in part to a lack of support from the Australian Greens party and some independents, who want the government to produce more ambitious policy proposals.

Research suggests Australian cities rank among the worst in the world for housing affordability, with Sydney trailing only Hong Kong, according to the 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

About two thirds of Australian households own a home, but, according to parliamentary disclosures, about 95% of sitting federal politicians own at least one residential property. About a third own three or more.

While some of his colleagues have backed Albanese, several have broken rank to criticise his decision anonymously as being out of step with the public.

“I can’t think of a greater act of self-sabotage in my life,” one Labor MP told the Sydney Morning Herald – who redacted their name “so they could speak freely”.

“If you’re a Labor MP up against a Green at the next election, good luck,” they added.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said Albanese’s purchase highlights the need for reform to lucrative tax incentives for property investors and greater renter protections.

“Labor and the Liberals have created a housing system where a property investor can buy a A$4.3m beachfront home, while millions can’t even find an affordable rental, let alone buy a house of their own,” Chandler-Mather wrote on X.

Liberal Senator Jane Hume said “everybody has a right to a personal life” but questioned “the timing” of the purchase: “This is tone deaf during a housing crisis,” she told Channel 7’s Sunrise programme.

However Opposition Leader and fellow Liberal Peter Dutton declined to criticise Albanese but noted that many Australians were struggling with their own mortgages.

Marcie Paul is nervous.

A Democratic activist, Ms Paul has been knocking on hundreds of strangers’ doors, making phone calls and sending out flyers, all in an effort to woo people here to vote for Kamala Harris.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July, Ms Paul was hopeful, as she saw the vice-president go “off like a rocket” in Michigan.

The state is one of three “blue wall” states – along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that went Democrat in 2020, and if won again, would help clinch a presidential victory for Harris.

But with less than a month to go before election day, Harris’s honeymoon period in Michigan could be ending, leaving her pathway to victory less certain. A Quinnipiac poll last week indicated Donald Trump is leading in the swing state by three points.

“To keep that pace for the whole race – even though it’s seriously abbreviated – would be really unrealistic for anyone,” said Ms Paul, a resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan and co-founder of the liberal advocacy group Fems for Dems. “But I thought that we’d be a little more comfortable.”

Ms Paul is among several Democratic organisers and lawmakers in Michigan who say the presidential race here is tighter than expected, even as the Harris campaign appears to be heeding lessons from 2016. Critics say then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost the state because she took it for granted.

A reliably blue Midwestern state for decades before 2016, Michigan has since become a battleground state with 15 key Electoral College votes.

At this point in the election cycle four years ago, when it was Biden versus Trump, the Democratic candidate had a comfortable lead, and went on to win the state by 150,000 votes. Now it’s a dead heat.

There is “no obvious solution” for Harris to break ahead, said Michigan State University politics professor Matt Grossmann.

The Democrats have poured millions into advertising in the state. Harris’s entrance into the race led to more than 100,000 new volunteers in Michigan, while she has visited Michigan more than any other state besides Pennsylvania, according to her campaign.

Trump has also made at least a dozen stops in Michigan this year, but some campaign operatives have sounded the alarm that his campaign has let old-fashioned ground game tactics, like door-knocking and billboards, slide in several swing states, including Michigan.

But Harris is ramping up her campaign visits this week after at least three Michigan Democratic lawmakers warned of slipping support.

But the tightness of the race in Michigan should not come as a surprise to anyone, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes told the BBC.

“No one operating here on the ground in Michigan should have, or would have, expected this to be any easier than it has been,” she said. “We always knew it was going to be hard.”

Although the state is far from the southern border, Democratic organisers keep hearing that immigration is a top concern for Michigan voters.

“I don’t understand why,” said Ms Paul, the Fems for Dems leader. “It’s just really not relevant for us.”

But the issue has resonated with many of the voters the BBC spoke to, including Mary Beierschmitt of Novi, Michigan.

“It’s a big issue,” she said, adding that she thought Harris had not handled the situation well as vice-president, when Harris was tasked with finding solutions to tackle the source of migration.

Illegal border crossing reached a record high last year. After the Biden administration enacted asylum restrictions, they fell to their lowest in four years.

Trump has made attacks on Harris’s immigration record a central part of his campaign. His focus has not just been at the southern border, but in midwestern states as well, including Michigan’s neighbour Ohio, where the former president has falsely claimed Haitian immigrants are settling illegally in the town of Springfield and eating residents’ pets.

Voters tend to blame the party in power for their frustrations with national issues like the economy and immigration, even if the Biden administration isn’t solely responsible for the border crisis and the rising cost of living, said Jonathon Hanson, a lecturer at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

“The downside for Harris and Biden is, although they’ve done a lot of things to help the economy recover from a major downturn, it’s a more difficult story to tell politically,” he said.

Trump also may have the upper hand among some swing voters in Michigan because he is more well known than Harris after four years in office and years in the public eye, said Mr Hanson.

Tim and Janet of Novi, Michigan, say they know Trump’s personality well – and they don’t like it. But the independent voters already cast their ballots for Trump because they believe he is better at articulating his policies than Harris.

“I can’t vote for somebody just because it’s a feel-good time,” said Tim, a 75-year-old who declined to share his last name for privacy reasons. “They need to be doing things and have policy initiatives that are going to be beneficial.”

But in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Harris’s new economic policies are swaying independent voter Darrell Sumpter.

The vice-president has laid out a number of economic proposals during her campaign, including a plan to offer first-time home buyers an average of $25,000, and an expansion of the child tax credit.

“I’ve never been able to even afford a house. I’ve been waiting for years,” said Mr Sumpter, 52, who voted for Trump in 2020 and is leaning toward Harris this year.

“I don’t want the country to regress right back to the same state it was with Trump,” he added.

In 2016, former secretary of state Clinton ran a predominately national campaign in the state rather than a local one, said Mr Grossmann.

“The ads were the same here as elsewhere,” he said. “They were about Trump’s personality and saying negative things, and there was a perception that that really didn’t work.”

She lost the state by only 10,000 votes.

Now, both Harris and Trump are focusing their messages in Michigan on the state’s largest industry, car manufacturers, as they try to appeal to working-class and union voters.

In recent weeks, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have criticised the Biden administration’s support of the electric vehicle industry, saying it will cost Michigan auto workers their jobs.

Harris and vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz have hit back, arguing Trump cost the state manufacturing jobs when he was president.

But on other local issues, vagueness may actually be beneficial for Trump, political experts say.

Michigan, home to the largest Arab-American population in the US, is the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement, a protest campaign to pressure Biden and Harris to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

The movement has declined to endorse Harris, sparking worries that the reliably Democratic voting bloc will not turn out for the party this time.

Meanwhile, Trump has won over some Arab-Americans by saying less, Mr Grossmann said. The former president has been vocal about his support for Israel, but has also promised to end the war, without providing specifics on how he would do so.

“Among this community, to some extent, being vague or unclear has been an advantage,” Mr Grossmann said.

In Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit where about 60% of the population is Muslim, the city’s first Arab mayor, a Democrat, has endorsed Trump.

“President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” Mayor Amer Ghalib told media.

“We asked multiple times that [Biden and Harris] should change course, but nothing happened.”

Despite concerns about slipping support, several political experts and Democratic strategists say Harris’s campaign is doing nearly all it can to stay on top of the Michigan race.

Still, Alysa Diebolt, the chair of the Democratic Party in Macomb County, which Trump won in 2020, said more could always be done to turn out apathetic voters.

“I think Harris absolutely has work to do,” Ms Diebolt said. “You need to sprint through the finish line in Michigan.”

Sharon Baseman, the vice chair of Fems for Dems, said she hopes these concerns motivate people not to become complacent.

“We’re all scared,” she said.

Mr Hanson noted that polls in Michigan and across the country likely will be off by several points on Election Day. But, he said, it’s hard to know in which direction.

“This is a razor-thin margin,” he said, “so it could really go either way.”

• What young Democrats want from Harris
• Six swing states that could decide election
• What could be the ‘October Surprise’?

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

North Korea has accused South Korea of flying drones into its capital, ratcheting up tensions that have been simmering for months.

The drones allegedly scattered propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to “armed conflict and even war”.

After levelling these allegations at the South on Friday, Pyongyang said it had ordered border troops to be prepared to fire. South Korea in turn said it was ready to respond, and warned that if the safety of its citizens was threatened it would signal the “end of the North Korean regime.”

Then, on Tuesday, the North blew up sections of two roads that connected it to South Korea, making good on an earlier threat. The next day, it claimed that 1.4 million young North Koreans had applied to join or return to the army.

These flare-ups are the latest in a string of exchanges between the two Koreas, which have seen tensions rise to their highest point in years since the North’s leader Kim Jong Un declared in January that the South is his regime’s number one enemy.

On 11 October, North Korea’s foreign ministry accused the South of sending drones to Pyongyang at night over the course of two weeks. It said that leaflets dispersed by the drones contained “inflammatory rumours and rubbish”.

Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, warned Seoul of “horrible consequences” if the alleged drone flights happened again. She later said there was “clear evidence” that “military gangsters” from the South were behind the alleged provocations.

North Korea has released blurry images of what it said were the drones flying in the sky, as well as pictures allegedly showing the leaflets, but there is no way of independently verifying their claims.

While South Korea initially denied flying drones into the North, its Joint Chiefs of Staff later said that it could neither confirm nor deny Pyongyang’s allegation.

There has been local speculation that the drones were flown by activists, who have been sending the same materials to the North using balloons.

Park Sang-hak, the leader of the Free North Korea Movement Coalition, denied North Korea’s claim about the drone incursion, stating, “We did not send drones to North Korea”.

On Monday, Kim met the head of the army, military chiefs, the ministers of state security and defence, and top officials, the North’s official news agency KCNA said.

There, Kim set the “direction of immediate military action” and tasked officials with the “operation of the war deterrent and the exercise of the right to self-defence”.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff public relations officer, Lee Sung-joon, said the North could mount “small-scale provocations” such as small explosions on roads connecting the Koreas.

Then came the explosions at the symbolic Gyeongui and Donghae roads.

While both roads have long been shuttered, destroying them sends a message that Kim does not want to negotiate with the South, according to analysts.

Following the explosions, the South Korean military said it had fired weapons on its side of the border as a show of force, and had heightened surveillance of the North.

Hours later, the government of Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul, designated 11 inter-Korean border areas as “danger zones” in a bid to stop people from sending anti-North propaganda leaflets across the border.

“Gyeonggi Province has determined that the act of scattering leaflets toward North Korea is an extremely dangerous act that could trigger a military conflict,” Kim Sung-joong, vice governor of Gyeonggi Province, said in a media briefing.

The scattering of such leaflets could threaten the “lives and safety of our residents”, Kim added, as “inter-Korean relations are rapidly deteriorating”.

Analysts say the drone incident suggests that North Korea is shoring up internal support by making it appear as though threats against the country are escalating.

Using terms like “separate states” in reference to the South, and dropping words like “compatriots” and “unification”, is part of this strategy, said Professor Kang Dong-wan, who teaches political science and diplomacy at Dong-a University in Busan.

“The North Korean regime relies on the politics of fear and needs an external enemy,” Prof Kang said. “Whenever tensions rise, North Korea emphasises external threats to boost loyalty to the regime.”

Analysts say the tit-for-tat between the two Koreas shows how they are locked in a “chicken game”, with both sides unwilling to blink first.

“Neither side is willing to make concessions at this point,” said Professor Kim Dong-yup from the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

As there is mutual distrust, Seoul “needs to strategically consider how to manage the crisis”, Prof Kim added.

Not at the moment, analysts say.

“I doubt that the situation would escalate to the level of war. North Korea is exploiting military confrontation to strengthen internal cohesion,” Prof Kang said.

“I question North Korea’s ability to initiate a full-scale war. The regime is well aware of the severe consequences such a conflict would bring,” Prof Kim said.

The most recent spat over alleged drone flights will most likely remain a “verbal fight”, said Prof Nam Sung-wook, who teaches North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul.

Because Seoul and Pyongyang know that they can’t bear the cost of a full-blown war, Prof Nam said, “the likelihood of actually using nuclear weapons is low”.

The two Koreas are technically still at war since they did not sign a peace treaty when the Korean War ended in 1953.

Reuniting with the South had always been a key, if increasingly unrealistic, part of the North’s ideology since the inception of the state – until Kim abandoned reunification with the South in January.

Kim has brought North Korea closer to Russia under Vladimir Putin, placing him at odds with the US and the West, which are South Korea’s key allies.

Also significant are North Korea’s long-standing ties with China, arguably its most important ally. In the wake of the drone incident, a spokesperson from China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday called on all parties “to avoid further escalation of conflicts” on the peninsula.

Tensions in the Korean peninsula are rising as the US presidential campaign enters the home stretch.

Warning: This story contains details which some people may find upsetting

Witnesses to an Israeli air strike and resulting fire at a tent camp in a Gaza hospital compound have shared with the BBC their horror and helplessness at seeing people injured and killed in the flames.

One mother called it “one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed”, while an injured girl said she heard screaming as people tore down their tent to get them out. A man said he had “broken down” as he was “unable to do anything” to help those who burned to death.

The strike hit the al-Aqsa Hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of Monday, igniting a fire that burned makeshift shelters for displaced people.

At least four people were killed and dozens injured, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The BBC has verified the location of a video that shows what appears to be a person on fire. Other footage captures people rushing to extinguish the flames amid screams and explosions sending fireballs into the night sky.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas fighters operating inside a command centre in the car park, after which a fire broke out “likely due to secondary explosions”. The military said the incident was under review.

Charity Doctors without Borders (MSF), which has staff working at al-Aqsa, told the BBC “it had no knowledge“ of a Hamas centre and said “the hospital functions as a hospital”.

The UN’s humanitarian affairs agency said in a statement that “people burned to death” and “atrocities must end”, while a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council called the footage “disturbing”.

“The images and video of what appear to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike are deeply disturbing and we have made our concerns clear to the Israeli government,” the spokesperson told the BBC’s partner CBS.

“Israel has a responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties — and what happened here is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields.”

Witnesses said the strike happened at about 01:15 local time on Monday (23:15 BST on Sunday).

It hit an area between buildings filled with makeshift shelters, next to an outdoor outpatient waiting area that had no one there at night, Anna Halford, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza who was not at the hospital during the strike, said in a phone call from Deir al-Balah.

Hiba Radi, a mother who was living in a tent behind the hospital, told a BBC freelancer in Gaza she woke up to the sound of “explosions and fires erupting around the tents”.

“There were explosions everywhere, and we were shocked at whether this was gas or weapons,” she said.

“This is one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed and lived through,” she added. “We’ve never seen destruction like this before. It’s hard, really hard.”

Atia Darwish, a photographer who recorded some of the verified videos, told the BBC it was a “big shock” and he was “unable to do anything” watching people burn.

“I was so broken down,” he said.

Um Yaser Abdel Hamid Daher, who also lives at the hospital, told the BBC “we’ve seen so many people burning that we started feeling like we might burn like them”.

The injured included her son, and his wife and children. Her granddaughter Lina, 11, who had shrapnel in her hand and leg injuries, said she had heard people screaming.

”Our neighbour’s daughter was injured in her head and her dad was killed. And our other neighbours were killed. The people next to us tore down the tent to get us out,” she said.

Her grandmother said the family “lost their tent and everything they had; they have nothing left”.

The health ministry reported on Monday that more than 40 people were injured and four killed.

MSF on Tuesday shared a higher toll, saying five people had died, their bodies burned by the time they were recovered, and 65 injured.

Forty of the injured – 22 men, eight women and 10 children – stayed at al-Aqsa. The others were transferred to different hospitals, with eight going to a specialist burns unit.

Ms Halford said her colleagues were treating burns victims ”who will almost certainly not survive”, saying “there is very little you can do for burn victims of that severity”.

“You come home with the smell of it on your clothes. It’s a viscerally affecting experience. It stays with you,” she said.

Monday’s strike was the seventh on the hospital site since March, and the third in two weeks, Ms Halford said.

When she arrived at the hospital after the most recent hit, she said she found people picking through twisted metal and burned debris to salvage any belongings.

Another mother the BBC spoke to whose children suffered burns injuries had already evacuated from north Gaza – and now has nothing.

The acting chief of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the strike occurred in an area where north Gaza residents had been told to relocate.

“There really is no safe place in Gaza for people to go,” the statement read.

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

Hanni, 20, alleged that 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.”

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

For more than 20 years, Robert Roberson has been awaiting an execution for a crime he says never happened.

He was sentenced in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, after doctors and an autopsy report concluded she died of injuries from abuse. But Roberson, his lawyers and others say she did not die from “shaken baby syndrome”, as prosecutors had claimed, but complications related to pneumonia.

Prosecutors, however, insist Roberson’s new evidence does not disprove their case that the child died from injuries inflicted by her father.

A diverse group is calling for clemency as Roberson’s execution date of 17 October approaches. It includes 86 Texas lawmakers from both major parties, dozens of medical and scientific experts, autism advocates, lawyers, and even the lead detective in the case who helped secure Roberson’s conviction. There’s also bestselling author John Grisham.

“In Robert’s case there was no crime and yet we’re about to kill somebody for it in Texas,” Grisham told reporters in September.

An appeals court in 2023 agreed there was insufficient evidence to overturn the conviction. The Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

Roberson’s last-ditch efforts to appeal against his conviction have failed. The Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles has until 15 October to recommend clemency, which would be up to Governor Greg Abbot to grant.

“We have to do all we can to pump the brakes before this stains Texas justice for generations,” said Democratic state representative Joe Moody.

Roberson’s case is the latest in a string of high-profile death row cases that have received significant public attention in recent weeks.

Maya Foa, director of Reprieve US, an anti-death penalty organisation, told the BBC that there is currently an “execution spree” in the country.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments for overturning the murder conviction of Richard Glossip, found guilty of orchestrating the killing of his boss. He had been scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma nine different times.

The court will decide if his conviction should be overturned based on the allegation that prosecutors withheld information about a key witness against him, who had also lied on the stand.

The court had already put his execution on hold.

But last month, the Supreme Court declined to halt the execution of Marcellus Williams, a black man convicted of murdering a journalist in 1998.

Prosecutors had since doubted his guilt, and the victim’s family had opposed his execution. He was put to death on 24 September.

Four other men were executed the same week as Williams – making it the highest execution rate since 2003, an “unusual” number, according to Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit research organisation that is critical of how the death penalty is applied in America.

“The unusual number of executions was not the result of any single event or co-ordinated effort,” she said.

“They simply reflected the agendas of elected state officials, who are increasingly disconnected from the interests and priorities of their constituents regarding the death penalty.”

Polls indicate support for it has declined over the past 30 years, with one recent Gallup poll suggesting 53% of Americans are in favour of capital punishment.

If Roberson is executed on Thursday, his death will be the 19th execution in 2024.

The likelihood of being executed varies widely by state. Twenty-three states do not have the death penalty, while an additional 15 have not executed anyone for at least five years. Last year five states – Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri and Alabama – accounted for all 24 executions.

If Roberson’s death sentence is carried out, he would be the first person in the US to be executed for a “shaken baby syndrome” case.

Medical experts once used the syndrome to describe brain injuries and deaths of children who were violently shaken or assaulted. But it has come under scrutiny in recent years because of how it has been used in court cases.

In 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed the name of shaken baby syndrome to “abusive head trauma”. Regardless of its name, it is the leading cause of fatal brain injury in children under two.

It is usually diagnosed after finding evidence of retinal haemorrhage, brain swelling and bleeding in the brain.

While the diagnosis is broadly accepted by the medical community, a recent report highlighted the need to thoroughly examine other causes before concluding injuries were due to abuse.

“The question to be answered is, ‘Is there a medical cause to explain all the findings or did this child suffer from inflicted injury?” the world’s leading paediatric organisations wrote in a consensus statement published in Pediatric Radiology.

According to Roberson’s account, Nikki fell out of bed before she died. He says he

comforted her and went back to sleep – but when he awoke, she wasn’t breathing and her lips were blue. Roberson says he took her to hospital, where doctors said she had signs of brain death. She died the next day.

Court documents show medical staff immediately suspected abuse, because of bruises on her head, brain swelling and bleeding behind her eyes. An autopsy, conducted after Roberson was arrested, determined she died of blunt-force head trauma and her death was ruled a homicide.

Roberson’s lawyers argue that new evidence shows she had pneumonia at the time of her death that developed into sepsis.

Roberson had taken her to the hospital and to see doctors repeatedly in the days leading up to her death. His lawyers noted she was prescribed medications that are no longer given to children because they can cause serious complications. They argue the medications, plus her fall, could have accounted for the bruising, swelling and bleeding doctors found in her brain and behind her eyes.

Roberson was also diagnosed with autism after being convicted, which his lawyers say explains the lack of emotion that police witnessed when his daughter died, and biased them against him.

Brian Wharton, the lead detective in Roberson’s case who testified against him at trial, is one of the people now seeking clemency for the man.

“I will forever be haunted by the role I played in helping the state put this innocent man on death row,” he wrote in a letter of support. “Robert’s case will forever be a burden on my heart and soul.”