The United States has sanctioned two Chinese companies it says are involved in the production of aerial drones used by Russia in its war in Ukraine.

In a statement, the US Treasury said it was also targeting a Russian company and its owner, Artem Yamshchikov, who it said serve as an intermediary between the firms and a Russian state-owned weapons company.

The move means their property and interests within US control have been seized.

It came as Volodymyr Zelensky outlined his “victory plan” in a speech to the EU Council – in which he said Ukraine had intelligence that “China is still actively helping Russia drag out this war”.

The US Treasury said it had sanctioned Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co – which makes engines that power Russia’s Garpiya long-range drones – and Redlepus Vector Industry Shenzhen Co for its involvement in shipment.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had “been used to destroy critical infrastructure and has resulted in mass casualties”.

Thousands of the so-called suicide drones have been produced since last year, according to the Reuters news agency.

“Russia increasingly relies on the expertise of foreign professionals and the import of sophisticated technologies to sustain its weapons program,” US Treasury official Bradley Smith said.

Speaking to the EU Council on Thursday, the Ukrainian president also accused North Korea and Iran of aiding Russia’s war effort.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to match your countries’ ammunition production by next year,” he told European leaders.

“Please don’t ease the pressure of sanctions on Russia – it truly helps.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Zelensky outlined the five-point victory plan he revealed to the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday.

He said that Ukrainian forces could hold the front line within his country while continuing to attack Russian territory – if allies provide the weapons Ukraine has requested.

Zelensky also said another point in his plan – an invitation to join Nato – would bolster Ukraine’s negotiating position, but suggested this would not mean immediate membership of the military alliance.

“Russia has used the geopolitical uncertainty caused by Ukraine not being in Nato,” he told the EU Council, adding that “an immediate invitation to Ukraine to join Nato would be decisive”.

He added: “Of course, membership would follow later.”

But the Ukrainian leader said that applying military pressure to Russia was needed to achieve an equitable peace – including being permitted to use long-range missiles on Russian soil.

“We propose placing on Ukrainian land a deterrence package that would either force Russia to participate in real peace negotiations or allow for the destruction of their military targets,” Zelensky said.

Describing this as a “peace through strength approach”, he added: “Putin should respect our strength, not have the free world tremble at his threats.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU could “draw lessons” from a contested Italian policy of processing migrants offshore in Albania, as leaders of the 27 member states hold an EU summit focusing on migration.

Ahead of the Brussels summit, she wrote to EU leaders to say the EU’s executive would present a new proposal for legislation to increase deportations of migrants..

Italy has begun sending some migrants to a processing centre in Albania earlier this week.

Sixteen men were transferred to the Albanian port of Shengjin on Wednesday, but hours after their arrival it emerged that two were minors and two more were medically vulnerable and would therefore be returned to Italy.

Other EU countries have begun considering ways to process migrants in third countries.

On Wednesday, the Dutch government said it was weighing up a plan to send rejected asylum seekers to Uganda.

By framing this week’s summit around the issue of migration, von der Leyen – who is starting a second five-year term as European Commission chief – appears to be responding to pressure on migration from across Europe.

In her letter to member states, von der Leyen said the return rate of irregular migrants from EU countries is currently only about 20% – meaning the vast majority of people who are ordered to leave an EU member state do not.

Member states should all recognise the decisions taken by other EU countries to ensure that “migrants who have a return decision against them in one country cannot exploit cracks in the system to avoid return elsewhere”, von der Leyen wrote.

Under the Italy-Albania scheme, some of the migrants rescued in the Mediterranean will be sent to Albania where their asylum claims will be examined.

The two processing centres, which cost about €650m (£547m), were due to open last spring but were plagued by long delays, have been paid for by the Italian government and will be operated under Italian law.

They will house migrants while Italy examines their asylum requests. Pregnant women, children and vulnerable people will be excluded from the plan.

Political opponents of right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as well as several NGOs have criticised Italy’s deal with Albania.

Riccardo Magi, an MP with the left-wing +Europa party, said the Albania scheme was “cruel, useless and expensive”, while NGO Doctors Without Borders said it was “likely to result in further harm and violation of human rights”.

Civil rights activists gathered near the Italian-built centre in Shengjin carrying a large banner reading: “The European dream ends here.”

However, addressing MPs on Tuesday, Meloni argued that the plan was “a new, courageous, unprecedented path” which “perfectly reflected the European spirit”.

The implementation and the results of the Albania agreement will be watched closely by many EU member states, several of whom have attempted to respond to a surge in support for far-right parties by hardening their rhetoric and their approach to migration.

In the last few weeks alone, Germany reintroduced land border checks, the French government said it would look into tightening immigration legislation and Poland announced a plan to temporarily suspend the right to asylum for people crossing the border.

Polish PM Donald Tusk said the controversial move was meant to stop Belarus from “destabilising” Poland by allowing large numbers of migrants into the country.

In France and Germany, it was grisly murders which prompted calls for tougher action on immigration. A Syrian failed asylum seeker stabbed three people to death in Solingen, while a young student was murdered by a Moroccan national near Paris. In both cases, the killings were carried out by men who had been given expulsion orders that had not been enforced.

Last month, 15 member states signed a proposal by Austria and the Netherlands to improve the “efficiency” of the deportations system.

The US Secret Service has “deep flaws” that need to be resolved urgently or more assassination attempts like the one at Donald Trump’s rally will happen again, a damning report says.

An independent panel tasked with investigating the 13 July shooting released its findings on Thursday, and said the organisation had become “bureaucratic, complacent and static”.

It called for an overhaul of its leadership in the 52-page report, and said a “number of specific failures and breakdowns” enabled the attack against the Republican presidential candidate.

The Secret Service has already acknowledged failures on its part, and its director resigned weeks after the shooting.

In a statement on Thursday, its acting director Ronald Rowe said the agency would carefully examine the new report.

“We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organisational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president,” he said.

In the report, which was drafted by state and national law enforcement officials, the panel praised the agents who risk their lives to protect many of the country’s highest-ranking officials but noted several leadership and cultural failures.

These included a “troubling lack of critical thinking” among staff and a reluctance to “speak up”.

The agency’s issues, the report said, were “systemic or cultural” and it called for “fundamental reform” including removing some of its top leadership “as soon as possible”.

“Without that reform… another Butler can and will happen again,” the panel wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the organisation.

President Joe Biden ordered a bipartisan review of the protective agency after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, by firing from a nearby rooftop.

The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots at the rally, killing one man and leaving Trump with a bloody ear. The Secret Service shot and killed Crooks.

On Thursday, the panel called for “a mandate that all outdoor events are observed by overhead technology.”

Another gunman was spotted near the former president outside of the Trump International Golf Course in Palm Beach, Florida in September.

Police arrested him after noticing the tip of a rifle poking through shrubbery a few hundred yards away from Trump who was inside the golf course.

Children as young as 10 will soon be able to be jailed once again in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility.

Australian states and territories have been under pressure to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, in line with other developed countries and UN advice.

Last year the NT became the first jurisdiction to lift it to 12, but the new Country Liberal Party government elected in August has said a reversal is necessary to reduce youth crime rates.

It has argued that returning the age to 10 will ultimately protect children – despite doctors, human rights organisations and Indigenous groups disputing that logic.

They say the research indicates the laws will not reduce crime and will disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The NT already jails children at a rate 11 times higher than any other jurisdiction in the country, and almost all of them are Aboriginal.

The territory’s new government says it has a mandate after an overwhelming election victory following a campaign that promised being tough on crime.

It argues being able to criminalise children younger will help divert them away from future crime.

Many places across Australia have declared they are in the grips of a youth crime crisis, and a string of violent incidents this year have prompted a series of youth curfews in the NT city of Alice Springs.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said her government had been given a mandate by voters to act and that the change would allow courts to “intervene” in the lives of young offenders and put them through programmes designed to address the root causes of their crimes.

“We took to the election a very clear plan around lowering the age of criminal responsibility so that we can capture these young people early, work out what’s going on, and turn their life around,” she said on Monday.

The NT government will also tighten bail rules.

“We make no apologies for delivering on our election commitment to make the territory safe.”

However, research both globally and in Australia has shown that incarcerating children makes them more likely to reoffend and often has dire impacts on their health, education, and employment.

Earlier this year a report by the Australian Human Rights Commission – an independent federal agency – found policy was being driven “by populist ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric” and that governments should instead reinvest the money spent on jailing children into support services.

As the NT parliament debated the bill on Wednesday, around 100 people gathered outside to protest, some carrying placards. One read, “10-year-olds still have baby teeth”. Another said, “What if it was your child?”.

The NT’s Children’s Commissioner Shahleena Musk, a Larrakia woman from Darwin, told the BBC that there was “structural racism at force in the Northern Territory youth justice system”.

She said Aboriginal children are less likely to be cautioned, more likely to be charged and pursued through the courts, and more likely to be remanded in custody than non-Aboriginal offenders.

“I accept that people are fearful in our communities, and crime has been quite prominent in the media and social media,” she said.

“But if we rely on the evidence and start to work to address the root causes of crime, we’re going to have less of these kids reoffending… We shouldn’t be seeing these kids going into a youth justice system which is harmful, ineffective, and only compounds the very issues we’re trying to change.”

Advocates also fear the laws could arrest momentum for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility in other states and territories.

Only the Australian Capital Territory has raised the age of criminal responsibility above 10, but Victoria has passed legislation to do so, which will come into effect next year. The Tasmanian government has said it will raise the age to 14 by 2029.

Kenyan Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has failed to appear in the Senate to testify at his impeachment trial, with his lawyer saying that he has been taken ill.

The deputy president, who was present in the house in the morning, had been due to appear from 14:30 local time (11:30 GMT) to defend himself before a vote was expected on Thursday evening about whether to remove him from office.

“The sad reality is that the deputy president of the Republic of Kenya has been taken sick, very sick, and is… in hospital,” said his lawyer Paul Muite.

The upper house has since rejected a proposal to adjourn the proceedings by two days – and the trial is continuing without the deputy president.

Before the vote, Mr Muite said Gachagua, popularly known as “Riggy G”, had been admitted to The Karen Hospital suffering from intense chest pains and he had not been able to talk to him.

Speaking to local Citizen TV earlier, Senator Daniel Maanzo said the deputy president “just looked tired” but had lunch at his office with other senators who had said he was fine, with everyone expecting him to appear for his defence.

Mr Muite had asked for an extension until Tuesday, but Senate Speaker Amason Kingi said the impeachment trial could not be legally extended beyond Saturday – a proposal turned down by the majority of senators.

Gachagua’s lawyer then said he would not be giving a closing statement and left the hearing.

“Arising from that decision of this honourable Senate, we as the legal team representing the deputy president are not able to continue appearing without instructions,” Mr Muite explained.

“So we humbly and with a lot of respect take your leave, Mr Speaker, and the leave of this honourable house.”

• Who is Rigathi Gachagua?
• Behind the fallout between Kenya’s president and his deputy

Two-thirds of the 67 senators are required to oust Gachagua, who faces 11 charges, including corruption, inciting ethnic divisions and undermining government.

As the trial began on Wednesday, the deputy president pleaded not guilty to each of the charges as they were read out in the house. He has described the impeachment as a “political witch hunt”.

An overwhelming majority of MPs in the National Assembly last week voted to approve his impeachment, setting the stage for the Senate trial.

He has fallen out with President William Ruto, just two years after they were elected on a joint ticket.

The row came to a head in June when Gachagua, in an act seen as undermining the president, blamed the head of the intelligence agency for not properly briefing Ruto and the government over the magnitude of mass protests against unpopular tax hikes.

In a huge blow to his authority, Ruto had just been forced to withdraw the taxes. He sacked his cabinet and brought in members of the opposition to his government.

Ruto has not commented on the impeachment of his deputy.

Mwengi Mutuse, the lawmaker who had moved the motion, appeared in the Senate as a witness on Wednesday, accusing Gachagua of violating the constitution while taking the house through the various grounds of his motion.

He framed the accusations against the deputy president as “extraordinary” wrongdoing that would merit impeachment.

He gave the example of Gachagua’s remarks that the government was like a shareholding company, suggesting that only those who voted for the government would benefit in terms of development and services.

He also accused the deputy president of acquiring massive wealth through corrupt dealings, among other accusations.

The lawmaker was then put to task during cross-examination and at times appeared to have a hard time defending his evidence.

A clip of President Ruto speaking at a rally was played in the Senate where he referred to residents of Murang’a, in central Kenya, as “major shareholders” of the government.

Gachagua’s lawyers asked Mutuse how the deputy president could be faulted for “assisting” the president.

The lawmaker was also pressed to justify the basis of the valuation of the wealth the deputy president is alleged to have acquired.

Gachagua is accused of acquiring assets worth 5.2bn Kenyan shillings ($40m; £31m) in the two years since he became deputy president – allegedly acquired through corrupt means.

He has said that most of the properties in question were from his late brother’s estate.

At the start of the trial, one of Gachagua’s lawyers, Elisha Ongoya, said all of the allegations against the deputy president were “either false, ridiculous or embarrassing”.

On Thursday, Andrew Mulwa, a former chief executive of the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency who was the second witness, faced tough questions over his allegations that he was intimidated by a call from the deputy president to return documents for a cancelled tender for mosquito nets that the president has been accused of interfering with.

“This was the first time I received a call from a sitting Deputy President and requesting for documents that were under investigations. Mr Speaker, in my 15 years of public service, I had never been asked to do that,” he said.

Gachagua has denied the allegation as “ridiculous and baseless”, and his legal team have pointed out this came when the process had already been completed, and argued that no money was lost

The third and final witness, Abdi Mohamud, the deputy chief executive of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, gave evidence over allegations of a conflict of interest relating to the matter as well as allegations that the deputy president had received gifts in the form of cows from the public.

The trial was supposed to continue with the deputy president defending himself for the rest of the day.

At the conclusion of the process, senators will debate the motion and then take a vote.

The deputy president is a wealthy businessman from the vote-rich central Mount Kenya region.

In just five years, he rose from being a first-time MP to become the number two in Kenya’s leadership, after Ruto picked him as his running mate in the August 2022 election.

His impeachment trial has dominated the discussions of many Kenyans and the media in recent weeks.

Many observers expect his impeachment to go through if the opposition members support the ruling coalition as they did in the National Assembly.

Gachagua is expected to challenge the decision if it passes.

Kenyan media have already been reporting about his possible replacements, with four people mentioned:

• Murang’a County Governor Irungu Kang’ata
• Kirinyaga County Governor Anne Waiguru
• Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki
• Foreign Affairs Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth
• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality

A Bangladeshi court has ordered an arrest warrant for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was ousted by mass protests.

Hasina is wanted by Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) for her alleged involvements in “crimes against humanity” that took place during the demonstrations, in which hundreds were killed.

Hasina, who was in charge of Bangladesh for more than 20 years, was seen as an autocrat whose government ruthlessly clamped down on dissent.

Arrest warrants have also been issued for 45 others, including former government ministers who also fled the country.

“The court has… ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and to produce her in court on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, told reporters on Thursday.

“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings and crimes against humanity in July to August,” he added.

Bangladesh’s interim health ministry said in August that more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence this summer after student-led protests against government job quotas turned into mass demonstrations, making it the bloodiest period in the country’s history since its 1971 independence.

Hasina, 77, has not been seen in public since fleeing Bangladesh. Her last official whereabouts is a military airbase near India’s capital Delhi.

She was initially expected to stay in India for a short time, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum elsewhere have been unsuccessful so far.

Her continued presence in India poses a challenge for Delhi in working with the new interim government in Dhaka. Many in Bangladesh are angered by the fact she has been given shelter by India.

The new interim government in Bangladesh has revoked her diplomatic passport and the two countries have a bilateral extradition treaty which would permit her return to face criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offence is of a “political character”.

Hasina’s government created the ICT in 2010 to investigate atrocities during the war with Pakistan, which gave Bangladesh its independence in 1971.

The United Nations and rights groups criticised its procedural shortcomings and it became widely seen as a means for Hasina to eliminate political opponents.

The tribunal, reconstituted by the interim government, began its proceedings on Thursday. Critics say it lacks judges with experience of international law.

Several cases accusing Hasina of orchestrating the “mass murder” of protesters are being investigated by the court.

Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed has said his mother is ready to face trial. “My mother has done nothing wrong,” he told Reuters news agency last month.

The stars of a newly-released film about Donald Trump, actors Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan, have told the BBC they are concerned about violence being incited by the US presidential candidate’s criticism of the film.

The ex-president tried to block the recent release of The Apprentice – which came less than a month before the US presidential election.

Trump called people involved in making the film “HUMAN SCUM” in a post on social media on Sunday.

Stan said he believed the comments were “inspiring violence”, while Strong said he was starting to feel the situation was “slightly dangerous” after Trump’s post.

Trump also claimed the film was “fake” and a “hatchet job” released right before the 5 November vote “to try and hurt” his campaign.

The film’s leads defended the film’s historical accuracy in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Strong, when asked during the interview whether he felt fear or concern about being in the film, replied: “It wasn’t really until yesterday that I felt a sense of this feels slightly precarious and slightly dangerous and being in the crosshairs of the moment.”

He said Trump targeting the film’s writer Gabe Sherman – calling him a “lowlife” and questioning his credentials – had sparked an influx of hate.

“Yesterday [Sherman] was barraged with threats, death threats, anti-semitic hate,” Strong said.

Strong noted Trump’s use of the words “human scum”, which the actor said “is a term used by Hitler and Stalin” and other dictators.

Stan, meanwhile, said the comments were “divisive. It’s inspiring violence, a threat.”

“Many people now, thanks to him, feel they have this permission to behave like animals, and all we’ve certainly tried to do is inspire some conversation…towards a person that calls himself the leader of the free world and is going to run for president.”

• Sebastian Stan says Trump ‘should be grateful’ for controversial film

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

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

Both actors noted the film’s extensive research was “based in historical record”.

“It is a film, but I think it’s a responsible film,” Strong said. “I think we all aimed for veracity. We weren’t trying to vilify Trump, which I think a lot of people think that’s the only reason we would make this film.”

The actor added he believed “art is meant to speak truth to power”.

The film’s writer, Sherman, earlier this week at the London premiere had said he was “happy that he’s (Trump) is paying attention to the film. It means it’s touching a nerve.”

A South Korean court has acquitted Seoul’s former police chief of negligence over the Halloween crowd crush that killed 159 people in 2022.

Kim Kwang-ho was the highest-ranked police official to be charged over the tragedy in the Itaewon nightlife district.

During Thursday’s verdict, the court said that prosecution evidence was insufficient to show that Kim neglected his duties before the incident and during the preliminary response.

A lower-ranked police official, Lee Im-jae, was sentenced last month to three years in prison for failing to prevent the crush that shocked the world.

The verdict has been met with strong protests from the victims’ families.

Kim was indicted only last January, more than a year after the tragedy. The families said he should have been charged earlier. He was dismissed from his post in June after receiving disciplinary action over the crush, according to Yonhap.

Two of Kim’s co-accused who worked as situation management officers on the day of the crush, Ryu Mi-jin and Jeong Dae-gyeong, were also found not guilty.

The victims’ families said they strongly condemned the verdict and called on prosecutors to file an appeal.

“The court missed an opportunity to reflect on the gravity of the responsibility of public officials to protect the lives and safety of the public, and to remind state leaders and members of society of this,” the families said.

“The prosecution’s weak investigation and the court’s passive interpretation of the law have delayed the punishment of those responsible for the tragedy and violated the rights of victims once again,” they said.

A special police panel earlier investigated the case and in January, it released its report that largely spared senior government officials from blame.

The report instead held local municipal and emergency service officials responsible for weak planning and a poor emergency response.

Most of the victims who died on the night of 29 October 2022 were young people celebrating Halloween in Itaewon, known for its buzzing bars and restaurants lining narrow streets. The crush happened in one of those cramped alleys.

Some accounts say more than 100,000 were in the area that evening. The incident shook South Korea and ignited accusations that authorities did not do enough to prevent the tragedy.

Donald Trump has described the US Capitol riot of 6 January 2021 as a “day of love” during a campaign event just weeks before the presidential election.

The former president claimed the thousands who travelled to Washington DC that day did so because “they thought the election was a rigged election”.

On 6 January, a mob breached the US Capitol building in an effort to deny the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, forcing lawmakers to flee. Several deaths, including that of a police officer, have been attributed to the events that day.

Trump has spent years making false claims that the vote was rigged. The event continues to divide America.

During his “town hall” event in Miami, Florida, Trump was challenged to win back the vote of a man who said he had been disturbed by what happened after the Republican lost the 2020 vote.

“Nothing done wrong at all,” Trump said in a lengthy response.

“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down — this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”

He recalled addressing a group of “hundreds of thousands” during a speech elsewhere in Washington DC.

“They didn’t come because of me,” he went on. “They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came.”

Trump has been accused of criminal efforts to overturn his defeat, which were recently described in detail in a filing from the federal prosecutor investigating him.

Among the claims made by Special Counsel Jack Smith were that Trump planned to declare victory in the 2020 vote no matter the outcome, and that he laid the groundwork for challenging the vote ahead of election day.

Mr Smith also detailed how Trump fell out with Mike Pence, his vice-president who refused to join his boss in attempting to deny Biden his election win as Trump supporters gathered in Washington on 6 January 2021.

During the Univision broadcast, the voter questioned why he should support Trump when even his former vice-president, Mike Pence, was not backing him this year.

Alluding to Pence’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demands on 6 January, he said: “The vice-president – I disagree with him on what he did. I totally disagreed with him on what he did.”

• Harris v Trump: Who is leading in the polls?
• What did the new filing say in Trump 2020 election interference case?
• ‘People are scared’: US election workers brace for threats in 2024

The special counsel’s legal filing against Trump that was released earlier this month stated that the then-president “made clear that he expected his supporters to take action”. Trump is also accused of seeking to “exploit the violence and chaos”.

Trump will not be tried ahead of the 2024 vote. He denies wrongdoing, and says he is immune from prosecution over the events of 2021.

He points to a recent US Supreme Court ruling that said he could not be prosecuted for official acts undertaken when he was president.

During Wednesday’s event with Univision, Trump also stood by false claims that immigrants from Haiti had turned to eating pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio – claiming he “was just saying what was reported”.

Both campaigns have been making intensive media appearances ahead of the 5 November vote, which pits Trump against the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Harris made a combative first appearance on Fox News – a network that hosts some of her most vocal critics.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• ON THE GROUND: Harris faces headwinds in Michigan
• VOICES: ‘I’m uneasy’ – first-time voters weigh in
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

The US says it has carried out “precision strikes” against five weapons storage locations in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthi movement.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were part of the operation that targeted hardened underground facilities housing missiles and other munitions that the Iran-backed group had used to attack civilian and military ships.

The strikes demonstrated the ability of the US to hit facilities that adversaries sought “to keep out of reach”, he added.

Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV said the strikes targeted six areas in and around the capital, Sanaa, and two near the northern city of Saada. It did not report any casualties.

US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, also said there were no initial indications of civilian casualties from the strikes.

Several of those areas mentioned by Al-Masirah host military bases where analysts have said satellite imagery showed the Houthis were creating or enlarging underground facilities, including the Television area in the north of Sanaa and al-Hafa to the south-east.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi political official, wrote on X that the attacks would “only increase our determination to continue our military operations in support of Gaza”.

The Houthis have repeatedly targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023. They have sunk two vessels, seized a third of targeted ships and killed crew members.

They say they are acting in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They have claimed – often falsely – that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

They have not been deterred by the deployment of Western warships to protect merchant vessels or by US and British air strikes on territory they control in north-western Yemen.

The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have forced major shipping companies to avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, impacting international trade.

Austin said in a statement: “At the direction of President Biden, I authorised these targeted strikes to further degrade the Houthis’ capability to continue their destabilising behaviour and to protect and defend US forces and personnel in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”

He added that the US would “continue to make it clear” to the Houthis that there would be “consequences for their illegal and reckless attacks”.

In September, the Pentagon said the Houthis had launched “a complex attack” on US Navy ships in the region, though all of the weapons launched were shot down.

As well as the attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the Houthis have fired several missiles and drones at Israel directly.

In July, a drone launched from Yemen struck Tel Aviv, killing one person. In September, the group fired several missiles at Israel, including one that targeted Israel’s main airport.

Both times Israel responded by attacking sites in Houthi-controlled Yemen, including fuel tanks and other infrastructure at the Red Sea port of Hudaydah.

The Houthis are part of a network of armed groups in the Middle East backed by Iran that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Since Israel began a renewed military offensive in northern Gaza 12 days ago, humanitarian groups say that virtually no aid has entered the area. Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

This has prompted accusations that the Israeli military is blocking food aid deliveries in a bid to starve out Hamas fighters.

The lack of food has prompted a top UN official to warn that “supplies for survival are running out” in north Gaza, with civilians on the ground telling the BBC that the situation is unsustainable.

Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, said on Monday that Israel blocked all food aid entering northern Gaza from 2-15 October.

She said a “trickle” of aid had been allowed to enter the territory on Monday, but warned that a lack of fuel deliveries would force bakeries to close within days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that his government is deliberately preventing food from reaching northern Gaza.

But the US has warned its ally to urgently boost humanitarian access or risk having some military assistance cut off, and now says it is monitoring Israel’s actions in northern Gaza to ensure it’s not pursuing “a policy of starvation”.

On Thursday, a UN-backed assessment warned that “the risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip”, adding: “Given the recent surge in hostilities, there are growing concerns that this worst-case scenario may materialize.”

The Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, Cogat, said a total of 5,840 tons of food crossed into Gaza in the first 12 days of October, compared to a total of 75,898 tons in September.

The UN said no aid at all had entered Gaza for the two weeks before last Sunday, when the US warned its ally in a letter to urgently boost humanitarian access or risk having some military assistance cut off.

In its own statistics, the UN said the number of lorries entering Gaza was the lowest since the beginning of the war a year ago.

Briefing the UN security council on Wednesday, Ms Msuya said Israel had facilitated just one of 54 attempts to deliver aid through the Rashid checkpoint in the first two weeks of October.

She added that another four efforts were impeded, but eventually occurred. Ms Msuya said that while distribution of existing stocks in northern Gaza continued, supplies were “quickly dwindling”.

Meanwhile the World Food Programme (WFP) told the Financial Times on Tuesday that it will run out of food aid to distribute in just a week-and-a-half if Israel does not immediately facilitate fresh deliveries to northern Gaza.

WFP’s director for the Palestinian Territories, Antoine Renard, also told the outlet that his teams on the ground had just a week of flour supplies left.

Cogat said 50 trucks carrying aid entered the north of the strip on Wednesday.

Georgios Petropoulos – head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza – told the BBC that when aid does enter Gaza through Israeli checkpoints, aid groups often lack the capacity to distribute it effectively on the other side. He pointed out that while 50 truckloads of aid were allowed to enter Gaza on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) allowed just 30 of those to be collected.

The IDF launched a renewed offensive against Hamas in the north 12 days ago. It says it is seeking to prevent the group’s fighters from regrouping in the area.

Military officials issued an evacuation order affecting an estimated 400,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip, telling them to move to the south. But many refused to leave, exhausted by constant displacement and fearful of heading to a place where they had no access to supplies.

Israeli forces have surrounded and bombarded the Jabalia area, a refugee camp that has become a densely-populated urban area to the north of Gaza City.

Israel insists that there is no policy of starvation in northern Gaza, but some have speculated that the fall in humanitarian supplies indicates the implementation of what Israeli media has dubbed “the Generals’ plan”.

Retired Maj Gen Giora Eiland recently told the BBC that civilians should be evacuated from northern Gaza, with the remaining Hamas fighters left with a choice to “surrender or starve”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in an interview with Le Figaro that the “allegation that we are pursuing a deliberate policy of starving the population is completely baseless”.

He had previously told the UN that Israel was facilitating the entry of food amounting to “more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in Gaza”.

People in northern Gaza have told the BBC that supplies of food and water have plummeted in recent days.

Awad Hassan Ashour from Jabalia said residents of his area were getting very little food and water was also scarce

“Every two or three days they bring us one meal, either lunch or breakfast,” he said.

Yousef Qarmout, a displaced person in Jabalia, told the BBC that food and water shortages were making “untenable” for those living in the area.

What little food remained on sale was prohibitively expensive, he said.

“Life is becoming ever more untenable in northern Gaza, there is no food at all,” he said.

“We also suffer from high prices – take for example a can of beans. It costs 20 shekels [£4; $5.30], which is too much for me because I don’t work, nor do my children work. We all do not have any source of income.”

Sayab al-Zad said it was almost impossible to obtain meat or fresh vegetables, noting that only a few people could afford such produce. Instead, his family largely subsisted on bread, he said.

“To get bread for us is a very big challenge, you can lose your life for getting bread,” he said.

Mr Petropoulos said organised criminal gangs operating in Gaza were exacerbating the problem, with many aid drivers reporting being robbed while transporting food and shelter items.

“I see that the shelters of families are being winterised with plastic sheeting. You can see them starting to be put on top of these boxes of plastic that people live in,” he told the BBC. 

“The problem is that we were supposed to give that to the people who need it for free. But they’ve been looted and sold to them and now instead of getting a plastic sheet free so that at least you have a waterproof roof for the rain you’re in further debt.

“The damage we’re seeing done through looted equipment and supplies being sold back to people already in desperate poverty is just immense.”

Israel has long accused Hamas accused of hijacking and stealing aid deliveries – something the group has denied.

Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation in Gaza during an interview with the BBC’s Newshour programme on Monday.

“We’ve seen the effects of their starvation campaign, with high mortality rates – people are dying, not just from hunger, but from dehydration and disease, which often follows,” he said.

“Israel has told us what it’s doing, it’s done it, and we’ve seen the effects.”

Thursday’s report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said about 1.84 million people were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, with 664,000 of them facing “emergency” levels of hunger and almost 133,000 facing “catastrophic” levels.

The last figure is three-quarters lower than at the time of the last report in June – a fall the IPC attributed to a temporary surge in humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies between May and August.

However, the IPC said it expected the number of people facing “catastrophic” hunger to nearly triple in the coming months because there had been a sharp decline in aid deliveries and food availability since September.

In response to the report, UN Secretary General António Guterres said on X: “Famine looms. This is intolerable. Crossing points must open immediately, bureaucratic impediments must be removed, and law and order restored so UN agencies can deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”

Concerns over the situation have been growing in Washington, and prompted the warning from top officials giving Israel 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.

The US letter to the Israeli government was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The pair said they were 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”.

But the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, scorned the US warning.

“The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people.”

The first aid in two weeks has gone into northern Gaza following a letter from the US that gave Israel 30 days to boost humanitarian access, or risk having some military assistance cut off.

The letter is the Biden administration’s most detailed public criticism yet of the way Israel has blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. It was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and was supposed to be private, until it was leaked to Israeli journalists.

It is a blueprint for an entirely different approach by Israel to the aid operation in Gaza – expediting it, rather than imposing restrictions. The letter is a line-by-line examination of Israel’s obstruction of aid deliveries – and the way its forcible relocation of civilians has exposed 1.7 million Palestinians to serious risk of disease.

It even challenges Israel’s long-standing attack on UNRWA, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees.

The US is “very concerned” about proposed new laws that would “remove certain privileges and immunities”. An Israeli government minister wants to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem to use the land for a Jewish settlement.

The US says it acknowledges Israeli concerns about UNRWA, but that restrictions on it would “devastate” the humanitarian effort in Gaza and the education and welfare of tens of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

The letter cannot have made easy reading for its two recipients, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, and Ron Dermer, its minister of strategic affairs, who is one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisers.

That is not just because the letter details the “US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza”. It also contains a reminder, that is also a threat, that US laws restrict arms transfers to countries that block the distribution of American aid.

Gallant set the tone of Israel’s approach to humanitarian aid flows to Gaza two days after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. He announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. No fuel or food would be allowed in, he said. “Everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Pressure, not least by the Americans, forced Israel to moderate Gallant’s plan, but the aid coming in has never been consistent or adequate. In recent months, though, restrictions have been tightened, which seems to have prompted the letter. It is a sign of the exasperation and anger inside the Biden administration that Israel has not kept its promises to keep aid flowing into Gaza.

The European Union’s chief diplomat and leading human rights groups have already accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. In May, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant of starvation of civilians as part of his application for the court to issue arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Both men rejected the allegation.

When Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York on 27 September, he dismissed accusations that Israel was starving Gazans as “an absurdity”. He presented a version of Israel’s role in the Gaza aid operation that is diametrically opposed to the one described in Blinken and Austin’s letter.

For Netanyahu, the accusations were another sign of antisemitism at the UN and its institutions.

Israel, he said, was beset by “lies and slanders”.

“Good is portrayed as evil, and evil is portrayed as good.”

“We help bring in 700,000 tonnes of food into Gaza. That’s more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in Gaza.”

The hard facts in the US letter are a stark contrast to his emotive rhetoric. Some of them focus on restrictions Israel imposed in September, while Netanyahu made his claims in New York.

• “The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year” – in other words, since before Hamas’s 7 October attacks last year
• The US is particularly concerned by “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”

The Americans also criticise the way Israel slows the delivery of aid by imposing onerous rules, and make a number of specific demands:

• They want the removal of the restrictions on the use of closed lorries and containers, and to increase the number of vetted drivers to 400. UN agencies say that a shortage of drivers and lorries has made getting aid into Gaza much harder
• Israel must tighten and speed up security and customs checks. Aid organisations say cumbersome rules are used to slow deliveries down
• The Americans want aid to be funnelled through the port of Ashdod in an “expedited” route to the Gaza Strip. Ashdod is a modern Israeli container port a short drive north of Gaza. After Israel refused to let it be used, the US spent an estimated $230m (£174m) on a floating pier for aid deliveries into Gaza that broke up in bad weather before it could make a difference
• Israel should also remove restrictions on deliveries from Jordan

Israel argues that Hamas steals aid and sells it at inflated prices. The Americans do not directly engage with that, except in a single sentence that acknowledges there has been “increased lawlessness and looting”. Front and centre in the letter is Israel’s squeeze on Gaza.

Their criticism extends way beyond the mechanics of getting aid into Gaza. It demands an end to the isolation of northern Gaza, where ultra-nationalists in Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians with Jewish settlers.

Concern about northern Gaza has increased since Israel started its current offensive there.

The army’s actions have resembled parts of a plan put forward by a group of retired officers, led by Giora Eiland, a major-general who used to be Israel’s national security adviser. Eiland says he wanted a deal to get the hostages back and end the war early on. But as that didn’t happen, he believes more radical action is necessary.

Israel has already separated northern Gaza from the south with a corridor along Wadi Gaza that bisects the territory. Eiland told me that his plan was to open evacuation routes for a week to 10 days so that as many of the 400,000 or so civilians left in the north leave. Then the territory would be sealed, all aid supplies cut, and everyone left inside would be considered a legitimate military target.

A version of the plan appeared to be in place at Jabalia camp in the north, after it was sealed off by Israeli troops, tanks and drones.

The Blinken-Austin letter insists that there can be “no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza”. Aid agencies should have “continuous access to northern Gaza” and should be able to enter it direct from Israel rather than taking the hazardous and often deadly route from the south. Orders to evacuate must be cancelled “when there is no operational need”.

Israel has forced 1.7 million civilians, many of whom fled northern Gaza, into a narrow strip of land along the coast between al-Mawasi and the town of Deir al-Balah, where the letter says “extreme overcrowding exposed the civilians to a high risk of contracting serious diseases”.

The Americans want the pressure to be eased, for civilians to be allowed to move inland before the winter. BBC Verify has established that Israel has also bombed what it says are Hamas targets in an area it calls a humanitarian zone.

The letter had immediate results. For the first time since the beginning of October, Israel has allowed in convoys of lorries carrying aid, though not yet on the scale requested by the US. Whether the letter can end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, particularly in the absence of ceasefire, is another matter.

Israel has been given 30 days to remedy matters. The US presidential election happens within that time frame. Before polling day, the US would not restrict weapons shipments to Israel, especially given the fact that the Israelis are on the brink, potentially, of a much wider war with Iran.

If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins, the Biden administration will be able to keep up the pressure on Israel until the inauguration in January.

It is likely to be a different story if former President Donald Trump gets his second term. Based on Trump’s previous four years in office, Netanyahu is likely to feel he has much more freedom to do what he wants as he runs down the clock on Joe Biden’s time in the White House.

Biden has been widely criticised, in his own Democratic Party and further afield, for not using the leverage that should come with America’s position as Israel’s most vital ally. Without US military and diplomatic support Israel would struggle to fight its wars. The letter looks like a serious attempt to impose pressure. In the last year of war, Netanyahu has often ignored US wishes.

A turning point came at the UN General Assembly in late September, when the US, UK and other allies of Israel believed they had talked Israel into accepting a 21-day truce in Lebanon to make time for diplomacy.

Instead, Netanyahu’s speech doubled down, rejecting a truce and escalating the regional war. From his hotel in New York, he ordered the assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Some senior Western officials complain that the Biden administration has been “played” by Netanyahu.

The letter is a belated attempt to redress the balance. Biden has been convinced he can best influence Israel by offering unconditional support. He advised Israel after 7 October not to be blinded by rage, as he said America was after the al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

But his wishes have often been ignored by Netanyahu. Whether or not Israel listens to America’s demands on Gaza, as Biden enters his last lap as president, it is clear that his attempt to stop the spread of the Gaza war across the Middle East has failed.

And as for the letter, it will be too little, too late for all those civilians in Gaza who have suffered, and for those who have died, as the result of months of restrictions in humanitarian aid imposed by Israel.

The UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon has criticised Israel after air strikes on municipal buildings in the southern city of Nabatieh killed the mayor and 15 other people.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called the killing of mayor Ahmad Kahil “alarming” and said any violations of international humanitarian law were “completely unacceptable”.

At least five of those killed in Wednesday’s strike were municipal staff co-ordinating aid for civilians remaining in the area, Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told the BBC.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati condemned the attack, saying it had “intentionally” targeted a council meeting.

The attack was the most significant against a Lebanese state building since the latest escalation in fighting, which began about two weeks ago, and has raised concerns about the safety of the country’s state infrastructure.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said its forces had launched raids targeting dozens of Hezbollah targets in the area and destroyed a tunnel used by the Iran-backed group.

“We know that Hezbollah many times takes advantage of civilian facilities,” Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said at a meeting of the UN in New York City on Wednesday.

Turk, the governor, said that while the majority of Nabatieh residents had already left the area following heavy Israeli air strikes, the mayor and other municipal employees had stayed behind to help those who remained.

“This is just like strikes all over Lebanon,” she said.

“They [Israel] have hit civilians, Red Cross, civil defence. Now they have targeted a government building. It is unacceptable. It is a massacre.”

Previous strikes on Nabatieh over the past few days have destroyed historic buildings, including an Ottoman-era market dating to 1910.

Israel also launched at least one air strike against Beirut on Wednesday.

The strike, which hit the southern suburb of Dahieh, was the first on the Lebanese capital in five days. It came after a reported intervention by the US in which it urged restraint over the bombing of the capital.

Residents of Dahieh had begun to return to the area over the past few days, taking advantage of the apparent pause in bombing to check on their homes and retrieve clothes and other possessions.

Several told the BBC on Wednesday that the area resembled a ghost town, with rubble and debris from buildings littering the streets.

The strike on Dahieh came just hours after a US state department spokesman Matthew Miller publicly expressed concern over the “scope and nature” of Israel’s bombing of Beirut.

Mr Miller said the state department’s concerns had been “made clear to the government of Israel”.

An Israeli military spokesman said that prior to striking Beirut, “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area”.

Israel has faced criticism this week over its warnings, which Amnesty International has called “inadequate” and “misleading”.

The human rights charity said the warnings did “not absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law”.

Israel has expanded its air campaign in recent days, launching an unexpected strike in the far north of the country on Monday.

The strike, which destroyed a large residential home that had been rented by a displaced family in the Christian village of Aitou, killed 23 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Twelve of the dead were women and two children, the ministry said.

The UN human rights office called for an investigation into the Aitou strike, saying it raised “real concerns” with respect to international humanitarian law.

The hand was covered in dust, streaked with blood on the fingers and wrist, all that could be seen of the person who was killed.

Like many other victims of the Israeli air strikes they lie buried under the rubble – this time in Gaza City, in the north.

A teenage boy was pulled from the first floor of a collapsed building. As his feet and legs emerged it looked as if he might be alive.

But then the whole body was lifted free, and flopped lifelessly in the arms of the rescuers.

They leaned across and passed the boy through a window below, and into the waiting arms of another group of men.

In the narrow streets men dug with their hands. But there were no sounds coming from the rubble now. Whoever lay there was beyond help.

Ramez Abu Nasr was digging for hours. His mother, father and brothers were entombed by the falling masonry.

Ramez managed to save his youngest brother. The boy told him that he had heard his parents nearby, reciting the Shehada, the Muslim prayer of faith.

Soon after they were silent.

“I took out my younger brother at the last moment. I don’t know how we can go back to our home… without my mother, or father, or brothers,” says Ramez.

The family fled here from Jabalia when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began their renewed offensive against Hamas in the north twelve days ago.

The IDF issued an evacuation order affecting an estimated 400,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip, telling them to move to the south.

But many thousands stayed behind, exhausted by constant displacement, fearful of heading to a place where they had no access to supplies.

Inside a house that is still standing, a young man kneels in front of his dead sister. She looks to be in her thirties. “Oh God, my sister, my sister,” he calls out.

Civil Defence volunteers are gathering bodies from inside buildings. They find a badly wounded man and race to the ambulance.

They are trying to save a life, but also are afraid of being bombed themselves.

Ahmed al Kahlout from the local Civil Defence looked around him at the carnage. Behind him, a colleague tries to give CPR to a woman. It is hopeless.

“This is the al-Sayyed family house,” Ahmed says. “There are bodies, torn parts in this area… It is a horrible crime.”

Several ambulances are lined up in the streets. Most of those inside them are dead. Bodies are piled up. All ages.

Blood seeps from the forehead of a small child. A woman, wrapped in a brightly coloured blanket is loaded beside her. Next to the ambulance a dead man, middle aged, is lying on a hospital trolley.

Many of the casualties are taken to Jabalia’s Kamal Adwan hospital. It’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiyyah, told me by phone that his hospital faced a dire humanitarian crisis and accused Israel of imposing collective punishment.

“We urge the world to intervene and impose their humanity over the Israeli army, to open humanitarian corridors that allow the entrance of medical tools, delegations, fuel, and food so that we can provide humanitarian services for the children, newborn babies, and patients who are in need,” he said.

The United States has accused Israel of refusing or impeding up to 90% of aid to northern Gaza in the last month – and threatened to cut arms shipments unless there is change.

Israel says it is taking American concerns seriously and is “addressing the issue”.

International journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, are not given independent access to Gaza by Israel.

The IDF says it only targets “terror cells” and released a video of what it said was Hamas firing from within a clinic in Jabalia. The army also said they’d found weapons and boobytraps in a medical facility.

In the video an officer, his face blurred, points to booby traps and weapons and speaks to the camera: “Everything here is a cynical exploitation of the civilian population, inside a clinic, inside a civilian compound. We will pursue these terrorists and find them in every corner.”

In Jabalia, a heavily pregnant woman is sitting in the dust outside a house. The Civil Defence workers arrive and help her onto a stretcher. Her father is there and tells her, “You are going to be ok. You are going to give birth, my heart.”

Then a shell explodes nearby. The small group rushes to the ambulance and escapes.

Every day they plead for peace in Jabalia. For food, and medicine, for schools to open.

They plead, but know their voices cannot make it stop.

Hotel staff made two calls to emergency services in the moments before singer Liam Payne fell to his death from a balcony in Argentina.

A caller appearing to be the chief receptionist said they had a guest who had taken “too many drugs and alcohol”, and was “trashing the entire room”, before the line cut out.

In a second call, the same caller warned the guest’s life “may be in danger” as the room had a balcony, and asked the 911 operator to send someone “urgently”.

Medics and local authorities were sent to the the CasaSur Palermo hotel, Buenos Aires, where the former One Direction star had been staying.

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Payne fell from the balcony after officers arrived.

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello.

911 what’s your emergency?

Hello, good afternoon, look I’m calling you from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, which is located in Costa Rica [St] 6032.

6032? Is that between Cramer [St] and…

Yes, that’s correct it’s between Arévalo [St] and Dorrego [St]. So, we have a guest who is high on drugs and who is trashing the room. Erm, so we need someone to come.

Understood, so you’re telling me [he] is being aggressive? Sir, can you please repeat the name of the hotel? Sir?

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello, good day, I just called but got cut off. I’m calling from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, Costa Rica [St] 6032.

What’s happening at that location, sir?

Well, we’ve got a guest who has had too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room and we need you to send someone, please.

He is under the effect of alcohol and drugs, is he, sir?

Yes, correct.

You said Costa Rica St at which location?

Costa Rica 6032.

That’s between Arévalo and Cramer?

Yes.

You said it’s a hotel? What’s it called?

CasaSur Palermo, and we need you to send someone urgently because, well, I don’t know whether his life may be in danger, the guest’s life. He is in a room with a balcony and well, we’re a little afraid that he…

Since when has he been there or is this a long-stay hotel?

He’s been here for two or three days.

Understood, you wouldn’t know any other details because you can’t get in, right?

No.

We’ll notify the SAME (medical emergency) staff as well, yes?

Yes, what I’m asking is for someone to come urgently because, well…

We’ve notified SAME. Any other details you can provide. Who are you, are you in charge?

I am the chief receptionist.

In charge at the location?

Yes, yes.

We’ve now reported this. What’s your name, sir?

Esteban.

We’ve reported it.

Ok.

Thanks for calling, you can free up the line now.

Are you sending the police as well or not?

The police and the local – wait give me a second – the local authorities and the SAME.

No, no, just the SAME. Just the SAME.

Understood, don’t worry, we’ve reported it.

Yes, perfect, many thanks.

You told me that [the guest] is under the influence of drugs and alcohol and the SAME doesn’t go in alone.

The SAME doesn’t go in alone? Ok, ok.

No, it’s [been] reported [to the police] regardless. If the police arrives you explain [what’s going on] and if they need the SAME, they call them.

Good, ok. Perfect.

We’ve made the report, have a good day, sir.

Good, thanks, same to you.

Liam Payne first registered on the pop radar as a fresh-faced 14-year-old, trying out for The X Factor in 2008.

“I should really be concentrating on my [school] work but I just think about singing too much,” he said before his first audition, his Wolverhampton accent and thick fringe front and centre.

“It’s a dream and I’d love to do it.”

His rendition of Fly Me To the Moon impressed the judges, as did his boyish charm – he showed a cheeky streak when he flashed a mid-song wink at Girls Aloud star Cheryl.

But Simon Cowell wasn’t quite convinced he was ready, so told him to do his GCSEs and come back in two years.

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When Liam did just that, auditioning with another classic song, Cry Me A River, in 2010, the missing pieces were all now in place.

As he started singing, Cowell’s eyes lit up as he registered Liam’s newfound maturity and charisma.

Whatever the X factor is, Liam had it.

The judges still faced a tough decision that year – so during a discussion about whom to save, they decided they could keep five boys by putting them together in a group.

Liam, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles were informed they were now a boy band – and One Direction were born.

They didn’t actually win The X Factor that year, coming third behind Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson in a final watched by 17 million people.

But Cowell knew a good thing when he saw it. He signed them to his label and, after waiting nine months to release their debut single, they soon outpaced their rivals.

That single was What Makes You Beautiful, an instant pop classic that went straight to number one – the first of four UK chart-toppers over the next four years.

Liam was cast as the sensible one, and told the Guardian in 2019 about one of the group’s early hotel stays.

“We’ve got plates being thrown out the window, mattresses being ridden down the stairs, and I’m getting calls from the manager saying: ‘You need to sort it out’.”

Sudden fame was a lot to take in, and he told Scott Mills on BBC Radio 1 in 2020 that he was “really quite uptight about a lot of everything that was going on” at that time.

“It was hard to have fun sometimes in that circumstance when there was so much pressure loaded on to it.”

But after about a year, he learned to relax. “And the more fun we had, the more successful it got.”

One Direction inspired full-on pop mania – stadiums full of screaming teenage fans, thousands camping outside their hotels, 70 million records sold.

“I was very confused about fame when it all happened,” he told the BBC in 2019, “and learning to be a person outside of your job was difficult. But now I feel like I get it. I’m a lucky boy.”

As time went on, Liam discovered a talent for songwriting as well as singing, with writing credits on half of the band’s final two albums, on songs like History, Steal My Girl and Story Of My Life.

Tensions in the band bubbled up, though, as the pressure returned.

In 2022, Liam told Logan Paul’s podcast that things had almost come to blows. “There was one moment where there was an argument backstage, and one member in particular threw me up a wall,” he said, without naming the bandmate in question.

It became clear that the end for One Direction was nigh. “It was so touch and go at every single show,” he said. “I was slowly losing the plot.”

Liam turned to alcohol, and continued drinking after the band went on “hiatus” in 2016.

“It was very erratic behaviour on my part – I was partying too hard,” he told the BBC.

In the post-1D world, Liam launched a solo career, with his 2017 debut single Strip That Down, featuring US rapper Quavo, peaking at number three and being nominated for two Brit Awards.

His collaboration with Rita Ora on the song For You – from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack – reached number eight and earned another Brit nomination.

And eight years after he flirted with Cheryl as a 14-year-old in the X Factor audition room, the pair began a relationship. They had a son, Bear, in 2017, but split up in 2018.

He got engaged to model Maya Henry in 2020, but they later called it off. Earlier this month, she said on social media that the singer had recently been repeatedly sending her unwanted messages.

Following their relationship, he had been together with US influencer Kate Cassidy since 2022.

He suffered health troubles in recent years, being in hospital twice in 2023, reportedly with kidney problems.

In a video posted to his YouTube account the same year, he said he had spent time in rehab and discussed his efforts to stop drinking: “I kind of became somebody who I didn’t really recognize anymore. And I’m sure you guys didn’t either.”

His solo career struggled to maintain momentum.

A comeback single Teardrops, released this March, missed the charts, and there were reports that a second solo album and a documentary about his life had been put on hold.

That life story included more than he could have imagined in those original teenage dreams.

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.

In the past 24 hours I’ve written more than 100 WhatsApp messages.

None of them were very exciting. I made plans with my family, discussed work projects with colleagues, and exchanged news and gossip with some friends.

Perhaps I need to up my game, but even my most boring messages were encrypted by default, and used WhatsApp’s powerful computer servers, housed in various data centres around the world.

It’s not a cheap operation, and yet neither I nor any of the people I was chatting with yesterday, have ever parted with any cash to use it. The platform has nearly three billion users worldwide.

So how does WhatsApp – or zapzap, as it’s nicknamed in Brazil – make its money?

Admittedly, it helps that WhatsApp has a massive parent company behind it – Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram as well.

Individual, personal WhatsApp accounts like mine are free because WhatsApp makes money from corporate customers wanting to communicate with users like me.

Since last year firms have been able to set up channels for free on WhatsApp, so they can send out messages to be read by all who choose to subscribe.

But what they pay a premium for is access to interactions with individual customers via the app, both conversational and transactional.

The UK is comparatively in its infancy here, but in the Indian city of Bangalore for example, you can now buy a bus ticket, and choose your seat, all via WhatsApp.

“Our vision, if we get all of this right, is a business and a customer should be able to get things done right in a chat thread,” says Nikila Srinivasan, vice president of business messaging at Meta.

“That means, if you want to book a ticket, if you want to initiate a return, if you want to make a payment, you should be able to do that without ever leaving your chat thread. And then just go right back to all of the other conversations in your life.”

Businesses can also now choose to pay for a link that launches a new WhatsApp chat straight from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Ms Srinivasan tells me this is alone is now worth “several billions of dollars” to the tech giant.

Other messaging apps have gone down different routes.

Signal, a platform renowned for its message security protocols which have become industry-standard, is a non-profit organisation. It says it has never taken money from investors (unlike the Telegram app, which relies on them).

Instead, it runs on donations – which include a $50m (£38m) injection of cash from Brian Acton, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, in 2018.

“Our goal is to move as close as possible to becoming fully supported by small donors, relying on a large number of modest contributions from people who care about Signal,” wrote its president Meredith Whittaker in a blog post last year.

Discord, a messaging app largely used by young gamers, has a freemium model – it is free to sign-up, but additional features, including access to games, come with a pricetag. It also offers a paid membership called Nitro, with benefits including high-quality video streaming and custom emojis, for a $9.99 monthly subscription.

Snap, the firm behind Snapchat, combines a number of these models. It carries ads, has 11 million paying subscribers (as of August 2024) and also sells augmented reality glasses called Snapchat Spectacles.

And it has another trick up its sleeve – according to the website Forbes, between 2016-2023 the firm made nearly $300m from interest alone. But Snap’s main source of revenue is from advertising, which brings in more than $4bn a year.

The UK-based firm Element charges governments and large organisations to use its secure messaging system. Its customers use its tech but run it themselves, on their own private servers. The 10-year old firm is in “double digit million revenue” and “close to profitability”, its co-founder Matthew Hodgson tells me.

He believes the most popular business model for messaging apps remains that perennial digital favourite – advertising.

“Basically [many messaging platforms] sell adverts by monitoring what people do, who they talk to, and then targeting them with the best adverts,” he says.

The idea is that even if there is encryption and anonymity in place, the apps don’t need to see the actual content of the messages being shared to work out a lot about their users, and they can then use that data to sell ads.

“It’s the old story – if you the user, aren’t paying, then the chances are that you are the product,” adds Mr Hodgson.

With a night of bottomless drinks, a three-course dinner and an auction packed with royal memorabilia, the University of Queensland Monarchist League’s annual ball is a sell-out.

Billed as a celebration of the Crown, a rendition of God Save The King followed by Australia’s national anthem kicks off the event. When dinner is done, the bidding starts.

First up, a limited-edition Royal Doulton plate with a hand-decorated portrait of the King to mark his 60th birthday. Also on the ticket – an oil painting of King George V and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon signed by monarchist and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

For the 200 students and their guests, the fact that King Charles is travelling over 16,000 km (10,000 miles) across 10 different time zones, to tour the country from 18 to 26 October – all while going through cancer treatment – is a testament to his love of Australia. And for that they are grateful.

“He’s such a big part of our history and our traditions, it’s wonderful we get to celebrate it,” says student Eliza Kingston.

“He’s just as much the King of Australia as he is the King of England,” Jeremy Bazley adds enthusiastically.

But amid a cost-of-living crisis, many Australians have failed to take notice of the trip at all – while some campaigners have tried to frame it as the royal family’s “farewell tour”, in a bid to reinvigorate the decades-old republican debate.

It’s a question that the government has, for now at least, put on ice – while King Charles earlier this week reiterated longstanding palace policy that the matter should be left for the “public to decide”.

Last year’s unsuccessful vote on the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has stalled momentum for another referendum – which is the only way to change Australia’s constitution. The bruising campaign divided the nation at times, while leaving many of its first inhabitants feeling silenced.

It’s a backdrop that will no doubt impact the tone of this royal tour, which includes events in Sydney and Canberra, and is the first in over a decade.

This will be King Charles’s 17th visit to Australia. His first was in 1966, when he came as a teenage prince to spend two terms at Timbertop – a campus of a boarding school in the mountains of Victoria. His time there was, he said, “by far the best” experience of his education.

He’s since returned 15 times for official tours, including a trip with Princess Diana to one of the country’s most famous landmarks, Uluru. Most recently, he opened the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

So, what sort of welcome will he receive since becoming King? The data suggests the nation is split.

A snapshot survey after his coronation, conducted by Roy Morgan Research, indicated 60% of Australians wanted the country to remain a constitutional monarchy.

But last year, a poll by YouGov suggested that number had dwindled to 35%, and that 32% of people appeared to favour becoming a republic as soon as possible.

A further 12% felt that should only happen when the King died, and 21% just didn’t know.

And while just over a third of those questioned thought the monarchy was good for the country, about 20% thought it was bad – while 38% were indifferent.

At the Royal Hotel Darlington pub, opposite the University of Sydney, students who have finished classes and are headed for a pint had no idea that a visit from the King was imminent.

“To be honest, not that many people would know about it or think too much about it,” says 19-year-old Charlotte Greatrex. “We all get very swept up in uni or whatever’s going on in our own lives that it doesn’t seem to influence us that much.”

Her friend Gus Van Aanholt agrees: “I feel older generations, like my parents and my grandparents, would have much more of a stronger connection to the monarchy.”

Polling has often pointed to a generational gap – indicating increased support for the monarchy among older Australians.

Ahead of the King’s visit the Australian Republic Movement (ARM) wants to capitalise on what it sees as a growing indifference to the monarchy. It recently released a tongue-in-cheek media campaign depicting King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Prince of Wales as ageing rock stars delivering their final show, while encouraging people to “wave goodbye to royal reign”.

Although a 1999 referendum on becoming a republic was resoundingly defeated, the ARM would like to see the question put to the people again.

“We’ve been independent for a long time now but that last little step of independence for us is splitting away from the monarchy,” says co-chair Nathan Hansford.

“Regardless of whatever connotations you want to put towards the British royal family in the past, it’s really a story about us moving forward as a nation.”

When the King and Queen fly into Sydney on Friday, they will be greeted by one of Australia’s most prominent republicans, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

He has long made it clear that his country’s future should be one without a monarchy. He even appointed an assistant minister for the republic.

But in recent months, a cabinet reshuffle and the removal of the republican portfolio revealed that plans to hold a vote on the issue had been shelved.

Like much of the world, Australians are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of everyday essentials, and the government knows it’s not going to win a referendum when there isn’t the appetite for what many would see as an expensive distraction.

In short, Albanese has assessed that a republican vote is not a priority for the general public right now.

For their part, many Indigenous Australians feel last year’s referendum result was a clear indication the country still has a lot of work to do to grapple with the ongoing impacts of its colonial past, before it can debate its future.

“I think if we do end up going to another referendum, we have to make sure that we deal with First Nations issues… we still have people experiencing intergenerational trauma, so understanding the history of what has happened in this country is really key,” says Allira Davis, a Cobble Cobble woman and co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue.

She’s proud, though, of how much more diverse the nation has become, since King Charles first touched down as a 17-year-old.

“We’re not white Australia anymore, we’re a brown Australia.

“We have multicultural, diverse backgrounds coming from all nations, and it’d be very interesting to see a brown head of state, or a black head of state but before we do that, we need to include our First Nations and recognise that.”

Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans, a Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC, in the latest report suggesting that Pyongyang is forming a close military alliance with the Kremlin.

So far the BBC has yet to see any sign of such a large unit being formed in Russia’s Far East, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of North Korean involvement.

“This is not only British intelligence, it is also American intelligence. They report it all the time, they don’t provide any evidence,” he said.

There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.

The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.

A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.

Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.

“It wasn’t even that easy to include hundreds of Russian prisoners at first – and all those guys spoke Russian,” one analyst – who is in Russia so didn’t want to be named – told the BBC.

Even if they did number 3,000, it would not be big in a battlefield sense, but the US is as concerned as Ukraine.

“It would mark a significant increase in their relationship,” said US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, who saw it as “a new level of desperation by Russia” amid battlefield losses.

It was back in June that Vladimir Putin toasted a “peaceful and defensive” pact with Kim Jong Un.

And there is mounting evidence that North Korea is supplying Russia with ammunition, as recently demonstrated by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine’s Poltava region.

In fact, reports of mines and shells supplied by Pyongyang date back to December 2023 in Telegram chats involving Russia’s military communities.

Russian soldiers, stationed in Ukraine, have often complained about the standard of ammunition and that dozens of soldiers have been wounded.

Kyiv suspects that a unit of North Korean soldiers is preparing in the Ulan-Ude region close to the Mongolian border ahead of deployment to Russia’s Kursk province, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion back in August.

“They could guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which would free Russian units for fighting elsewhere,” said Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express.

“I would rule out the possibility that these units will immediately appear on the front line.”

Ryabakh is not alone in this thought.

North Korea may have some 1.28 million active soldiers but its army has no recent experience of combat operations, unlike Russia’s military.

Pyongyang has pursued the old Soviet model in its armed forces but it is unclear how its main force of motorised infantry units might fit into the war in Ukraine.

Then there is the obvious language barrier and an unfamiliarity with Russian systems that would complicate any fighting roles.

That does not preclude North Korea’s military taking part in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, but they are most recognised by experts for their engineering and construction abilities, not for fighting.

What they do both have are shared incentives.

Pyongyang needs money and technology, Moscow needs soldiers and ammunition.

“Pyongyang would be paid well and maybe get access to Russian military technology, which otherwise Moscow would have been reluctant to transfer to North Korea,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

“It would also give their soldiers real combat experience, but there is also the risk of exposing North Koreans to life in the West, which is a considerably more prosperous place.”

For Putin, there is an urgent need to make up for significant losses during more than two and half years of war.

Valeriy Akimenko from the UK’s Conflict Studies Research Centre believes deploying North Koreans would help the Russian leader deal with the previous round of mandatory mobilisation not going well.

“So he thinks, as the Russian ranks are thinned out by Ukraine, what a brilliant idea – why not let North Koreans do some of the fighting?”

President Zelensky is clearly concerned about how this hostile alliance could evolve.

There have not been Western boots on the ground in Ukraine for fear of escalation.

However, if reports of hundreds of North Koreans preparing for deployment are borne out, the idea of foreign boots on the ground in this war would appear to be less of a concern for Vladimir Putin.

For years, the enchanting blue houses in the heart of an Indian city have drawn visitors from around the world. But the famed structures are slowly losing their charm – and colour, writer Arshia finds.

The neighbourhood of Brahmapuri in Jodhpur stands at the foot of a famous fort that’s perched atop a hill.

Built in 1459 by the Rajput king Rao Jodha – after whom the city is named – the walled, fortified settlement came up in the Mehrangarh Fort’s shadow, and was eventually recognised as the old or original city of Jodhpur, with azure-coloured homes.

Esther Christine Schmidt, assistant professor at Jindal School of Art and Architecture, says that the iconic blue colour likely wasn’t adopted before the 17th Century.

But since then, the area’s blue-coloured homes have become a distinct marker of Jodhpur’s identity.

In fact, Jodhpur, in Rajasthan state, is called the ‘Blue City’ because Brahmapuri remains its heart, despite expansions over the last 70 years, explains Sunayana Rathore, the curator of the Mehrangarh Museum.

Brahmapuri – which roughly translates to “the town of Brahmins” in Sanskrit – was built as a colony of upper-caste families who adopted the colour blue as a symbol of their sociocultural piety in the Hindu caste system.

They set themselves apart, much like the Jews of Chefchaouen – or the blue city of Morocco – who settled in the older part of town known as Medina, in the 15th Century, while fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. They are believed to have coloured their homes, mosques and even public offices in a rinse of blue, considered a divine hue in Judaism, signifying the holy skies.

Eventually, the colour proved to be beneficial in more ways than one. The blue paint mixed with limestone plaster – also used in the homes of Brahmapuri – cooled the interiors of the structures, besides bringing in tourists drawn by the neighbourhood’s striking appearance.

But unlike in Chefchaouen, the blue colour in Jodhpur has begun to fade. There are several reasons for this.

Historically, blue was a viable option for the residents of Brahmapuri because of the easy availability of natural indigo in the region – the town of Bayana in eastern Rajasthan was then one of the major indigo-producing centres in the country. But over the years, indigo fell out of favour because growing the crop damaged the soil excessively.

Moreover, temperatures have risen so much now that the blue paint is not enough to keep the homes cool. An increase in disposable incomes has also led to a gradual shift to modern amenities like air conditioners that help people cope with the searing heat.

“Temperatures have risen gradually over the years,” says Udit Bhatia, assistant professor of civil engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, who works on resilience infrastructure and the impacts of climatic extremes on built and natural systems.

A trend analysis done by IIT Gandhinagar showed that the average temperature of Jodhpur rose from 37.5C in the 1950s to 38.5C by 2016.

Apart from keeping houses cool, Mr Bhatia says the paint also had pest-repelling qualities as natural indigo was mixed with bright blue copper sulphate, a popular antifouling agent commonly used in paints from the 20th Century.

While Mr Bhatia doesn’t think that urbanisation is evil, he points out that it can lead to the rather unscientific abandonment of traditions that were designed to serve systems and ecologies.

“Yesterday, if someone was walking down an alley in Jodhpur with blue homes on either side, and today they are walking down the same alley where the homes are now painted in a darker colour, even the lightest breeze will make them feel hotter than what they felt earlier,” he says.

It’s called the heat island effect, where the effect of rising temperatures is worsened when the heat and sunlight are amplified and reflected back into the environment by the concrete, cement and glass used to build structures. With darker paints, the impact is magnified further.

Moreover, with cities increasingly opening up to newer cultures and people, indigenous methods of building – like using lime plaster in hotter climes – are being replaced with newer techniques like using cement or concrete, which do not absorb the blue pigment well.

Aditya Dave, a 29-year-old civil engineer from Brahmapuri, says that his 300-year-old family home has held on to blue for the most part, though, occasionally, they repaint the outer walls in other colours now.

That’s mainly because the scarcity of indigo has driven up costs in recent years. Repainting houses blue would cost around 5,000 rupees ($60; £45) up until a decade ago, while today, it would be more than 30,000 rupees.

“Today, there are also open drains lining homes which dirties the blue paint and damages the walls,” says Mr Dave.

That’s why when he built his own house in Brahmapuri five years ago, he chose a tile facade which doesn’t need to be refurbished frequently.

“It’s simply more cost-effective that way,” he says.

But this transformation leaves visitors feeling cheated, says Deepak Soni, a garments seller who works with local authorities to preserve the existing blue homes of Brahmapuri, and restore the ones that have abandoned the hue.

“We should feel embarrassed that when someone comes looking for the homes that formed the identity of our city, they don’t find them. So many foreigners compare Jodhpur to Chefchaouen. If Chefchaouen has managed to keep their homes blue for centuries, why can’t we?” he asks.

In 2018, Mr Soni, originally a resident of Brahmapuri who now lives beyond the walled part of Jodhpur, negotiated with local authorities and communities to save the unique heritage of their hometown. Since 2019, he has also raised funds locally from Brahmapuri residents to have the outer walls of 500 homes painted blue each year.

Over the years, he has convinced nearly 3,000 homeowners in Brahmapuri to revert to blue for the outer walls and the roofs of their homes, “so that at least when someone takes a picture in Brahmapuri, the background appears blue”, he says.

Mr Soni estimates that about half of the roughly 33,000 homes in Brahmapuri are currently blue.

He is working with local officials and lawmakers on a plan to apply lime plaster, so more homes can be painted in the colour.

It’s the least he can do for the city he calls home, he says.

“Why will people from outside Jodhpur care about our city if we don’t care about its heritage, and do something to save it?”

Walking through the ruins of what used to be his home, 29-year-old Ahmad Musa al-Qumbar always feared the Jerusalem city authorities would come after him. The married Palestinian father-of-four built the modest single-storey building seven years ago, on land he owns and where his family have lived for generations.

But Ahmad never actually had a legal permit to build.

He lives in the Jabal Mukaber district of East Jerusalem. Within sight of the Old City and its many historic religious monuments, it is one of the most densely populated and fiercely contested parts of the region. It was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, and later annexed, but is widely regarded internationally as Palestinian territory.

Control of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the decades-old conflict. Palestinians officially claim East Jerusalem as their capital, while Israel considers the whole of the city as its capital.

“Who” is allowed to build “where” in the city is a big part of that battle.

The rate at which Palestinian homes are being demolished in occupied East Jerusalem has almost doubled since the start of the conflict in Gaza, say human rights groups and monitoring organisations. The demolitions are ordered by the Israeli-run municipal authority which says that many buildings, like Ahmad’s, are illegally built without permission.

One NGO, Ir Amim, says that “under the cover of war”, Israel is “forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes and the city”.

“I had to demolish my house after I was hit with penalties by the police and the Israeli courts,” Ahmad tells me as he stands in the rubble of what used to be his kitchen.

“I couldn’t pay the fines and risk losing things like healthcare and my child insurance. Of course, we appealed to the court, but they refused.”

Like many in the same situation, Ahmad reluctantly hired heavy machinery to knock down the house himself. He said that the Jerusalem City authorities would have charged him the equivalent of $100,000 (£75,600) if they’d carried out the order.

It made the job perhaps even more painful – tearing down his family’s labours and his children’s future with his own hands.

Almost all attempts by Palestinian families in East Jerusalem to apply for planning permission are rejected by the Israeli authorities. That means growing families say they have no choice but to build illegally and face the potential consequences – huge fines and demolition orders.

Some say the law and the courts are being deliberately used to suppress Palestinian growth and ambitions.

“These Palestinian communities ask for permission, and between 95% to 99% of the requests are denied,” says Shay Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.

“It has been happening for years,” continues Parnes.

“Sometimes they use security reasons to justify it, but it’s always under the same framework of expelling Palestinians… because the law is different for different communities who live side by side in the same city.”

On the predominantly Jewish Western side of the city, what used to be a skyline of relatively low, white-stone buildings has changed dramatically in recent years. Construction is booming. Cranes operate virtually 24/7 with new high-rise buildings, both residential and commercial, growing tall as that side of Jerusalem expands.

There’s been frenetic construction, too, in some areas of East Jerusalem where land has been claimed by Israel to make way for Jewish settlements. In Har Homa, an estimated 25,000 people now live in brand new homes on land formally expropriated by Israel in 1991.

Just across the road are the Palestinian villages of Umm Tuba and Sur Baher, where many public facilities are notably inferior to those in Har Homa.

In stark contrast to the building work on the other side of the highway, several homes have been forcibly demolished here in recent years in what Amnesty International describes as “a flagrant violation of international law and part of a systematic pattern by the Israeli authorities to forcibly displace Palestinians”.

It’s a similar picture in the settlement of Gilo, expanding rapidly in what is internationally regarded as occupied East Jerusalem, while, it’s argued, neighbouring Palestinian suburbs are denied the ability to grow at anything like the same rate.

The international community considers Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this. Israel also denies that demolitions are part of deliberate policy of discrimination that has gathered pace under the cover of the distraction of the Gaza war.

In a statement, the Jerusalem Municipality said the accusations were “absolutely false” and that it had local support for “comprehensive building and construction plans across nearly all areas of East Jerusalem”.

The plans “aim to provide options for neighbourhood expansion, address the widespread issue of illegal construction, and designate areas for the construction of municipal service structures,” it added.

But it isn’t hard to find examples where Israeli demolition orders against Palestinian homes are being enforced across East Jerusalem.

In the suburb of Silwan, just below the Old City, we found another Palestinian home in ruins. Lutfiyah al-Wahidi says the annexe had been built for her son’s family more than a decade ago but eventually the authorities came calling.

“Even if we build just one brick, the authorities come and demolish it. How did our house harm them? It’s on land that I doubt the authorities will ever be interested in.”

The grandmother says she has paid thousands of dollars in court fines over the years in a vain attempt to keep the property.

“My son has a family of six with only one provider. What harm are they doing, yet they still want to demolish it,” she says, her wider family now dispersed to other parts of the city.

In a comprehensive policy brief, Ir Amim found that since the outbreak of the Gaza war on 7 October 2023, “there has been a major acceleration in the promotion and fast-tracking of new settlement plans in East Jerusalem and a dramatic spike in the rate of demolitions of Palestinian homes”.

“The Israeli government is clearly exploiting the war to create more facts on the ground,” it continues.

There are estimated to be at least 20,000 outstanding demolition orders in East Jerusalem – orders which have no expiry limit.

Many commentators have also observed that since 7 October, far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and in the Jerusalem Municipality have become more confident in publicly expressing their intent to see more Jewish homes built on occupied or contested land.

While Palestinians, like Ahmad’s and Lutfiyah’s families, become noticeably more afraid of losing their homes, they insist they will stay and eventually rebuild their lives here in East Jerusalem.

Bahrain’s national football team says it will not play a World Cup qualifying fixture in Indonesia, to “protect the safety” of the team.

The Gulf nation’s players were subjected to online death threats from Indonesian fans following a controversial 2-2 draw between both countries’ teams last week, according to the Bahrain Football Association (BFA).

The return fixture is scheduled to take place in Jakarta in March next year, but the BFA has asked Fifa to move the match to a venue outside Indonesia.

Neither the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) nor Fifa have publicly commented on Bahrain’s request.

Controversy erupted last Thursday after Bahrain scored a 99th minute equaliser against Indonesia – a full three minutes after their players had expected the game to end.

The goal sparked wild protests from Indonesia’s players and staff, one of whom had to be separated from officials and was sent off.

Indonesia’s football association alleged that the referee, Oman’s Ahmed Al Kaf, deliberately allowed the match to go on until Bahrain managed to score.

Just before the end of the standard 90 minutes, referees will typically indicate how much time they will add onto the match in order to make up for stoppages during the game.

In this case, Al Kaf indicated an extra six minutes. Bahrain scored after nine.

While controversial, the laws of the game state that indicated additional time is only a minimum, and referees are entitled to increase the amount if necessary.

“We are very disappointed with the refereeing,” said PSSI executive member Arya Sinulingga.

“It seemed like they extended the added time just to allow Bahrain to score an equaliser.”

Following the match, the PSSI says it submitted an official complaint to both Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The subsequent days saw a torrent of online abuse from Indonesian football fans, who flooded the AFC’s social media pages with criticism and created fake accounts impersonating Ahmed Al Kaf.

Many fans alleged that the Omani referee had intentionally favoured a fellow Gulf nation by allowing the match to continue. After the game, Indonesia’s manager called Al Kaf “biased” towards Bahrain.

The abuse prompted a strong response from the BFA, which had to disable comments on its social media posts and said its website was repeatedly targeted by hackers in Indonesia.

“[The BFA] expresses its extreme surprise at the multiple death threats received by the team members on their social media accounts – a move that reflects the Indonesian public’s disregard for human lives,” it said in a statement posted on Instagram.

“It does not belong to the principles, values and Islamic norms, nor does it reflect the progress and advancement of countries.”

As a result, the BFA said it had requested the return fixture in Jakarta to be moved outside Indonesia because it “refuses to expose the lives of the team members to any potential danger”.

If the BFA’s request is denied and Bahrain refuse to play the fixture, then Indonesia would be awarded an automatic 3-0 win.

Crowd trouble is a major issue in Indonesian football, where authorities have often struggled to contain violence between supporter groups.

Two years ago, Indonesia saw one of the world’s worst ever stadium disasters when 125 people were killed in a crush that was triggered by a fan pitch invasion in the city of Malang.

Bahrain and Indonesia have history when it comes to controversial encounters.

In 2012, the Gulf nation beat Indonesia 10-0 in a World Cup qualifier, which raised suspicions because Bahrain had needed to make up a nine-goal deficit on rivals Qatar in the group standings to have a chance of advancing to the next round.

The bizarre scoreline prompted a Fifa investigation into potential match-fixing, but both sides were eventually cleared.

Bahrain, who are currently ranked 76th in the world, face China in their next World Cup qualifying match next month.

Indonesia, ranked 129th, play Japan next in November.

Members of a Malaysian religious group accused of human trafficking and child sexual abuse continued committing crimes even after a large-scale police crackdown, according to authorities.

The Islamic Global Ikhwan Group (GISB) made international headlines in September after police rescued 402 minors suspected of being abused across 20 care homes.

Authorities arrested 171 suspects at the time, including teachers and caretakers – but hundreds more have been arrested since, as further details emerge of the group’s alleged crimes.

Among those are allegations that, until 1 October, five GISB members trafficked people for the purpose of exploitation by forced labour through threats.

Two of the accused were managers of a GISB-owned resort in the southern state of Johor. They were charged on Sunday with four counts of human trafficking involving three women and a man aged between 30 and 57. The third, a worker at the same resort, was charged with two counts of sexually abusing a 16-year-old.

At least two other suspects in the incident, which took place between August 2023 and 1 October 2024, are still at large.

Hundreds of other victims, aged between one and 17, are said to have endured various forms of abuse at care homes linked to GISB, with some allegedly sodomised by their guardians and forced to perform sexual acts on other children, according to police.

In a press conference on Monday, lawyers representing GISB denied allegations of illegal business activities and organised crime, asking for a “fair investigation” as police investigations continue.

However, its CEO, Nasiruddin Mohd Ali, had earlier admitted there were “one or two cases of sodomy” at the care homes.

“Indeed, there were one or two cases of sodomy, but why lump them (the cases) all together?” Nasiruddin said in a video posted to the company’s Facebook page.

GISB has hundreds of businesses across 20 countries, operating across sectors including hospitality, food and education. It has also been linked to Al-Arqam, a religious sect that was banned by the Malaysian government in 1994 due to concerns about deviant Islamic teachings.

Khaulah Ashaari, the daughter of Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Muhammad, is a member of GISB, and has denied that the group still follows her late father’s teachings.

The lower house of Malaysia’s parliament on Tuesday held a special motion discussing issues relating to GISB, where government ministers flagged a number of findings made since the children were rescued from the care homes last month.

The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, told the hearing that some children from as young as two years old were separated from their families and instructed to work under the pretence of “practical training”.

He also said they were occasionally forced to perform hundreds of squats as punishment for “disciplinary breaches”.

“If they did any wrongdoings, for something as simple as not queuing up properly, they would be punished with not 100 but 500 ketuk ketampi (squats),” Saifuddin said, according to a report by local outlet The Star.

“According to assessments by psychologists – either through the police’s D11 unit or the Welfare Department – these children missed their parents,” he added. “Some don’t even know them.”

To date, the police operation against GISB has resulted in 415 arrests and the rescue of 625 children, according to Saifuddin.

The Malaysian authorities have also expanded their investigations into GISB internationally, seeking the assistance of Interpol.

Visit BBC Action Line for details of organisations that can provide advice, information and support for people affected by sexual abuse.

Italy has made it illegal for couples to go abroad to have a baby through surrogacy.

The move extends a ban on the practice inside the country to also include those who seek it out in places where it is legal, like the US or Canada. Those who break the law could face up to two years in prison and fines of up to €1m (£835,710).

The law, proposed by the Italy’s far-right governing party, is seen by critics to target LGBT couples – who are not allowed to adopt or use IVF in the country.

Surrogacy is when a woman carries a pregnancy for another couple or individual, usually due to fertility issues or because they are men in a same-sex relationship.

The law passed by 84 votes to 58 in Italy’s senate on Wednesday.

In a protest ahead of the vote, the law’s opponents said it made it harder for people to become parents – despite the country’s declining birth rate.

“If someone has a baby they should be given a medal”, LGBT activist Franco Grillini told the Reuters news agency at the demonstration.

“Here instead you are sent to jail… if you don’t have children in the traditional way.

“This is a monstrous law. No country in the world has such a thing.”

The move is part of the socially conservative agenda of Giorgia Meloni – Italy’s first female prime minister and leader of the Brothers of Italy party.

She has described herself as a Christian mother and believes children should only be raised by a man and a woman.

Meloni has previously spoken out against surrogacy involving LGBT couples, and anti-LGBT rhetoric was a key feature of her election campaign.

In a speech in 2022, she said “yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby”.

In 2023, her government instructed Milan’s city council to stop registering the children of same-sex parents.

Meloni has described surrogacy as “a symbol of an abominable society that confuses desire with rights and replaces God with money”.

Her deputy, Matteo Salvini, has also called the practice an “aberration” that treats women like an “ATM”.

The MP that drafted Wednesday’s ban previously denied that it was designed to harm LGBT people: “Most people who use surrogacy are heterosexual.”

It would “protect women and their dignity”, said Carolina Varchi.

Experts told the BBC that 90% of the couples who use surrogacy in Italy are straight, and many of them hide the fact that they have gone abroad to have a baby.

But same-sex families returning to Italy with a child cannot hide in the same way.

LGBT couples previously told the BBC of their fears surrounding the law.

• Italy, Spain, France and Germany are among the European countries which outlaw all forms of surrogacy.
• In the UK, it is illegal to pay for surrogacy beyond the surrogate’s reasonable expenses. The surrogate will be registered on the birth certificate until parenthood is transferred via a parental order.
• In Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Czech Republic, it’s not possible to get a court to enforce a surrogacy agreement. This is the same in the UK, where a court will decide what is in the best interest of the child if there is a disagreement.
• Greece accepts foreign couples and provides legal protection to the intended parents – the surrogate has no legal rights over the child – however Greece insists there should be a woman in the relationship (thus excluding gay couples or single men).
• The US and Canada allow surrogacy for same-sex couples, and recognise them as the legal parents from birth.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented MPs with a long-awaited “victory plan” that aims to strengthen his country’s position enough to end the war with Russia.

Zelensky told parliament in Kyiv the plan could finish the war – which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – next year.

Key elements include a formal invitation to join Nato, the lifting by allies of bans on long-range strikes with Western-supplied weapons deep into Russia, a refusal to trade Ukraine’s territories and sovereignty, and the continuation of the incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region.

The Kremlin dismissed the plan with a spokesman saying Kyiv needed to “sober up”.

Addressing MPs on Wednesday, Zelensky also criticised China, Iran and North Korea for their backing of Russia, and described them as a “coalition of criminals”.

He also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “gone mad”, describing him as bent on waging wars.

Zelenksky said he would present the victory plan at an EU summit on Thursday.

“We are at war with Russia on the battlefield, in international relations, in the economy, in the information sphere, and in people’s hearts,” he told parliament.

The plan outlined by Zelensky consists of five key points:

• Inviting Ukraine to join the Nato military alliance
• The strengthening of Ukrainian defence against Russian forces, including getting permission from allies to use their long-range weapons on Russian territory, and the continuation of Ukraine’s military operations on Russian territory to avoid creation of the “buffer zones” in Ukraine
• Containment of Russia via a non-nuclear strategic deterrent package deployed on Ukrainian soil
• Joint protection by the US and the EU of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential
• For the post-war period only: replacing some US troops stationed across Europe with Ukrainian soldiers

Three “addendums” remain secret and will only be shared with Ukraine’s partners, Zelensky said.

In the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, residents who spoke to the BBC were mostly supportive of the plan.

“We should not give up territory,” Anatoly said, adding that he hoped Ukraine would still have a chance to join Nato and would also get more support from its allies.

Nadia said everything depended on what security guarantees Ukraine would be able to get.

Another woman, Maria, stressed that “people want to end the war as soon as possible”.

Zelensky’s plan was presented to US President Joe Biden, as well as presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, back in September.

Key allies such as Britain, France, Italy and Germany have also reportedly been shown the plan.

On Wednesday evening, Zelensky spoke to Biden to brief him about his “victory plan”.

He also thanked America for a new $425m (£327m) defence assistance package for Ukraine, which included air defence systems and long-range weapons.

The White House said the package comprised “a range of additional capabilities”, including air defence and artillery systems, as well as ammunition and hundreds of armoured vehicles.

It said of Zelensky’s “victory plan” that “the two leaders tasked their teams to engage in further consultations on next steps”.

Last month, US officials were quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that the Biden administration was concerned that the plan lacked a comprehensive strategy, and was little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range missiles.

Analysts both in Ukraine and the West have also suggested that the White House is keen to show that it wants to avoid further escalation with Russia in the run-up to the US presidential election.

But Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, reiterated his leader’s playing down of concerns about what a Trump win would mean for the war.

He told BBC Newshour that “no matter who becomes the next American president, he or she will have to follow American interests and it is in the best American interest to support Ukraine”.

Zelensky’s conditions for peace are increasingly at odds with the situation which surrounds him.

In front of MPs, he acknowledged the growing fatigue in his country. His own tiredness was etched across his face as he said that “victory has become for some an uncomfortable word and it’s not easy to achieve”.

National morale has gradually been crumbling under the weight of a mounting death toll, a controversial mobilisation law and never-ending Russian assaults on Ukrainian territory.

It’s increasingly thought any peace deal would have to involve Ukraine conceding territory in exchange for security guarantees.

However, there was no hint of a compromise to bring the end of the war closer. Instead, Zelensky doubled down on wanting to force Russia to negotiate and to not cede Ukraine’s territory, through the strengthening of his own military.

Merezhko stressed that Zelensky’s speech did not hint at any territorial concessions, which he described as “out of the question”.

He also claimed his extensive plan could be implemented with the agreement of his allies, and not Russia.

In public, Zelensky evidently still sees this war as existential, and warned of Russian President Vladimir Putin continuing to strengthen his position.

He also seemed to frame his vision as an investment opportunity for Western allies in terms of natural resources and economic potential.

The Ukrainian president wants his exhausted troops to keep fighting.

But with his army so reliant on Western aid, his “victory plan” will need the approval of the next US president.

Reacting to Zelensky’s plan, Nato’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte described it as a “strong signal” from Kyiv.

“That doesn’t mean that I here can say I support the whole plan – that would be a bit difficult because there are many issues that we have to understand better.”

Mr Rutte added: “I am absolutely confident that in the future, Ukraine will join us [Nato].”

Immediately after Zelensky finished speaking, the Kremlin rubbished his “ephemeral peace plan,” saying Kyiv needed to “sober up”.

The only way the war would end was Ukraine to “realise the futility of the policy it is pursuing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

A South Korean court has acquitted Seoul’s former police chief of negligence over the Halloween crowd crush that killed 159 people in 2022.

Kim Kwang-ho was the highest-ranked police official to be charged over the tragedy in the Itaewon nightlife district.

During Thursday’s verdict, the court said that prosecution evidence was insufficient to show that Kim neglected his duties before the incident and during the preliminary response.

A lower-ranked police official, Lee Im-jae, was sentenced last month to three years in prison for failing to prevent the crush that shocked the world.

The verdict has been met with strong protests from the victims’ families.

Kim was indicted only last January, more than a year after the tragedy. The families said he should have been charged earlier. He was dismissed from his post in June after receiving disciplinary action over the crush, according to Yonhap.

Two of Kim’s co-accused who worked as situation management officers on the day of the crush, Ryu Mi-jin and Jeong Dae-gyeong, were also found not guilty.

The victims’ families said they strongly condemned the verdict and called on prosecutors to file an appeal.

“The court missed an opportunity to reflect on the gravity of the responsibility of public officials to protect the lives and safety of the public, and to remind state leaders and members of society of this,” the families said.

“The prosecution’s weak investigation and the court’s passive interpretation of the law have delayed the punishment of those responsible for the tragedy and violated the rights of victims once again,” they said.

A special police panel earlier investigated the case and in January, it released its report that largely spared senior government officials from blame.

The report instead held local municipal and emergency service officials responsible for weak planning and a poor emergency response.

Most of the victims who died on the night of 29 October 2022 were young people celebrating Halloween in Itaewon, known for its buzzing bars and restaurants lining narrow streets. The crush happened in one of those cramped alleys.

Some accounts say more than 100,000 were in the area that evening. The incident shook South Korea and ignited accusations that authorities did not do enough to prevent the tragedy.

Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans, a Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC, in the latest report suggesting that Pyongyang is forming a close military alliance with the Kremlin.

So far the BBC has yet to see any sign of such a large unit being formed in Russia’s Far East, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of North Korean involvement.

“This is not only British intelligence, it is also American intelligence. They report it all the time, they don’t provide any evidence,” he said.

There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.

The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.

A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.

Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.

“It wasn’t even that easy to include hundreds of Russian prisoners at first – and all those guys spoke Russian,” one analyst – who is in Russia so didn’t want to be named – told the BBC.

Even if they did number 3,000, it would not be big in a battlefield sense, but the US is as concerned as Ukraine.

“It would mark a significant increase in their relationship,” said US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, who saw it as “a new level of desperation by Russia” amid battlefield losses.

It was back in June that Vladimir Putin toasted a “peaceful and defensive” pact with Kim Jong Un.

And there is mounting evidence that North Korea is supplying Russia with ammunition, as recently demonstrated by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine’s Poltava region.

In fact, reports of mines and shells supplied by Pyongyang date back to December 2023 in Telegram chats involving Russia’s military communities.

Russian soldiers, stationed in Ukraine, have often complained about the standard of ammunition and that dozens of soldiers have been wounded.

Kyiv suspects that a unit of North Korean soldiers is preparing in the Ulan-Ude region close to the Mongolian border ahead of deployment to Russia’s Kursk province, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion back in August.

“They could guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which would free Russian units for fighting elsewhere,” said Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express.

“I would rule out the possibility that these units will immediately appear on the front line.”

Ryabakh is not alone in this thought.

North Korea may have some 1.28 million active soldiers but its army has no recent experience of combat operations, unlike Russia’s military.

Pyongyang has pursued the old Soviet model in its armed forces but it is unclear how its main force of motorised infantry units might fit into the war in Ukraine.

Then there is the obvious language barrier and an unfamiliarity with Russian systems that would complicate any fighting roles.

That does not preclude North Korea’s military taking part in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, but they are most recognised by experts for their engineering and construction abilities, not for fighting.

What they do both have are shared incentives.

Pyongyang needs money and technology, Moscow needs soldiers and ammunition.

“Pyongyang would be paid well and maybe get access to Russian military technology, which otherwise Moscow would have been reluctant to transfer to North Korea,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

“It would also give their soldiers real combat experience, but there is also the risk of exposing North Koreans to life in the West, which is a considerably more prosperous place.”

For Putin, there is an urgent need to make up for significant losses during more than two and half years of war.

Valeriy Akimenko from the UK’s Conflict Studies Research Centre believes deploying North Koreans would help the Russian leader deal with the previous round of mandatory mobilisation not going well.

“So he thinks, as the Russian ranks are thinned out by Ukraine, what a brilliant idea – why not let North Koreans do some of the fighting?”

President Zelensky is clearly concerned about how this hostile alliance could evolve.

There have not been Western boots on the ground in Ukraine for fear of escalation.

However, if reports of hundreds of North Koreans preparing for deployment are borne out, the idea of foreign boots on the ground in this war would appear to be less of a concern for Vladimir Putin.

South Korean football player Hwang Ui-jo has apologised for secretly filming sexual encounters with his partners.

Prosecutors say the 31-year-old striker filmed sexual encounters with two of his partners without their consent on four occasions between June and September 2022.

In his first court appearance in Seoul on Wednesday, Hwang said he was “deeply sorry” for causing “disappointment”.

The former striker had just last month left England’s Nottingham Forest for Turkey’s Alanyaspor.

The videos came to light after Hwang’s sister-in-law shared them on social media last June, in an attempt to blackmail him.

She was sentenced to three years in prison in September for the blackmail after Hwang sued her.

However, the charges against him proceeded as prosecutors said he filmed the videos illegally.

Prosecutors refused to provide details on the women in the videos to prevent further harm.

“I will not do anything wrong in the future and will do my best as a footballer,” Hwang told the court in Seoul.

“I sincerely apologise to the victims who have been affected by my actions, and I am deeply sorry for the disappointment I have caused to all those who have cared and supported me,” he added.

Hotel staff made two calls to emergency services in the moments before singer Liam Payne fell to his death from a balcony in Argentina.

A caller appearing to be the chief receptionist said they had a guest who had taken “too many drugs and alcohol”, and was “trashing the entire room”, before the line cut out.

In a second call, the same caller warned the guest’s life “may be in danger” as the room had a balcony, and asked the 911 operator to send someone “urgently”.

Medics and local authorities were sent to the the CasaSur Palermo hotel, Buenos Aires, where the former One Direction star had been staying.

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• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell

Payne fell from the balcony after officers arrived.

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello.

911 what’s your emergency?

Hello, good afternoon, look I’m calling you from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, which is located in Costa Rica [St] 6032.

6032? Is that between Cramer [St] and…

Yes, that’s correct it’s between Arévalo [St] and Dorrego [St]. So, we have a guest who is high on drugs and who is trashing the room. Erm, so we need someone to come.

Understood, so you’re telling me [he] is being aggressive? Sir, can you please repeat the name of the hotel? Sir?

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello, good day, I just called but got cut off. I’m calling from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, Costa Rica [St] 6032.

What’s happening at that location, sir?

Well, we’ve got a guest who has had too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room and we need you to send someone, please.

He is under the effect of alcohol and drugs, is he, sir?

Yes, correct.

You said Costa Rica St at which location?

Costa Rica 6032.

That’s between Arévalo and Cramer?

Yes.

You said it’s a hotel? What’s it called?

CasaSur Palermo, and we need you to send someone urgently because, well, I don’t know whether his life may be in danger, the guest’s life. He is in a room with a balcony and well, we’re a little afraid that he…

Since when has he been there or is this a long-stay hotel?

He’s been here for two or three days.

Understood, you wouldn’t know any other details because you can’t get in, right?

No.

We’ll notify the SAME (medical emergency) staff as well, yes?

Yes, what I’m asking is for someone to come urgently because, well…

We’ve notified SAME. Any other details you can provide. Who are you, are you in charge?

I am the chief receptionist.

In charge at the location?

Yes, yes.

We’ve now reported this. What’s your name, sir?

Esteban.

We’ve reported it.

Ok.

Thanks for calling, you can free up the line now.

Are you sending the police as well or not?

The police and the local – wait give me a second – the local authorities and the SAME.

No, no, just the SAME. Just the SAME.

Understood, don’t worry, we’ve reported it.

Yes, perfect, many thanks.

You told me that [the guest] is under the influence of drugs and alcohol and the SAME doesn’t go in alone.

The SAME doesn’t go in alone? Ok, ok.

No, it’s [been] reported [to the police] regardless. If the police arrives you explain [what’s going on] and if they need the SAME, they call them.

Good, ok. Perfect.

We’ve made the report, have a good day, sir.

Good, thanks, same to you.

Democratic US presidential nominee Kamala Harris has conducted a combative first interview with Fox News.

She clashed repeatedly with her host on topics such as transgender prisoners, illegal immigration and President Joe Biden’s mental fitness.

Harris’s foray on to a network that hosts some of her most vocal critics comes amid a flurry of media appearances with less than three weeks to go to polling day.

Her rival Donald Trump, a frequent interviewee on Fox, appeared on the network on Wednesday himself – in a town hall-style event with an all-female audience.

Polls suggest that, taken as a whole, women voters are sceptical of the former president, who took questions on familiar issues such as the economy and immigration but stumbled when asked about fertility treatment.

During her own 25-minute sit-down, Harris and Fox host Bret Baier often interrupted each other, with Harris at one point saying: “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising and I’d like to finish.”

Here are four takeaways.

The vice-president’s Fox interview began on the subject of immigration, with Baier playing her an emotional clip showing the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl killed by a migrant who had illegally crossed the border into the US and was released from detention.

Asked whether she should apologise to the families of Americans who were killed by illegal migrants, Harris responded: “I’m so sorry for her loss.”

“Those are tragic cases,” she added. “There’s no question about that.”

Baier also asked about her 2019 stance that border crossings should be decriminalised. This is one of several issues where the vice-president has been accused of flip-flopping.

Harris said: “I do not believe in decriminalising border crossings and I have not done that as vice-president, and I would not do that as president.”

She went on to blame Trump for persuading Republicans in Congress to vote down a border deal earlier this year, saying: “He preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

• US election polls: Who is ahead – Harris or Trump?
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Harris was asked about taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for prisoners, a policy she has in the past said she supports.

Asked if she would as president advocate for taxpayer dollars to be used to that end, she responded: “I will follow the law.”

When pressed for more details, she said such surgeries had been available to prisoners while Trump was in office. However, no transgender surgeries took place in the federal prison system while Trump was president.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons told BBC Verify that two federal inmates have had gender reassignment operations – the first in 2022 and the second in 2023.

When Harris was running as a Democratic candidate for president in 2019, she checked a box in a questionnaire from a civil rights group saying that as president, she would use her authority to ensure that transgender-identifying detainees in prison and immigration facilities would have access to “treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care”.

The Harris campaign has said this “is not what she is proposing or running on” in the 2024 election.

Fox played a clip from an interview Harris gave last week saying that there’s “not a thing” she would change about the actions of the current Biden-Harris administration, in which she serves as vice-president.

She went further than she has gone before in trying to place some distance between herself and her boss.

“Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said on Wednesday, without elaborating.

Baier pressed Harris on her belief that American voters do not want to “go back” to Trump, and whether people that continue to support the former president are “stupid” or “misinformed”.

“I would never say that about the American people,” Harris responded.

Baier also pressed her on why one of her campaign promises is to “turn the page” when she has been vice-president for more than three years.

Harris turned to criticising Trump.

Harris deflected questions from Baier concerning Biden’s mental state.

Asked when she first noticed that Biden’s mental faculties “appeared diminished”, Harris said: “Joe Biden, I have watched in from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment… and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people.”

When pressed further on the issue, Harris responded: “Joe Biden is not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• ON THE GROUND: Harris faces headwinds in Michigan
• VOICES: ‘I’m uneasy’ – first-time voters weigh in

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.

Liam Payne, the former One Direction star, has died aged 31 in Argentina after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, police say.

In a statement, police said they discovered Payne’s body after an emergency crew responded to an call in the upscale neighbourhood of Palermo on Wednesday.

On Thursday, police inspected the area where Payne fell, and found items including alcohol and a phone. Medication was found in his room.

Payne had risen to global fame as part of the much-loved boyband created on the X Factor TV show in 2010, along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.

According to police in Buenos Aires, officers at the scene were initially responding to reports “of an aggressive man who may have been under the effects of drugs and alcohol”.

When they arrived at the hotel, officials were told a loud sound had been heard in an interior courtyard. Soon after, they discovered the body there. A police investigation was then launched.

Emergency medical services director Alberto Crescenti told local media that Payne had suffered “serious injuries” and that an autopsy will be carried out.

Mr Crescenti declined to answer questions about the circumstances of Payne’s fall from the balcony.

The star’s body has been transferred to a morgue in the city.

Police in Buenos Aires confirmed on Thursday that an inspection of the scene where Payne fell has been carried out on the hotel’s ground floor.

They said that a bottle of whiskey, a lighter, and a mobile phone were found.

In the hotel room where Payne was staying, staff found “total disorder” including “various items broken.”

They said this included several packets of medication, including Clonazepam, as well as over-the-counter medications.

A notebook and passport were also found at the scene.

Evidence and finger prints have been collected and the room’s balcony has also been inspected to establish access to it.

Payne posted on Snapchat just hours before the incident, saying: “It’s a lovely day here in Argentina” but the video was from earlier in the week where he had spent time with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy.

• Live: Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony in Buenos Aires
• ‘Just a boy’ – tributes paid to Liam Payne, dead at 31
• Watch: Fans react to his death in Argentina
• Liam Payne shared final Snapchats on last few days in Argentina
• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell
• Boy band star who had the X factor
• The former One Direction star’s life in pictures
• City ‘heartbroken’ after Liam Payne dies

The UK Foreign Office confirmed it was in touch with authorities in Argentina “regarding reports of the death of a British man”. No further details were given.

Once news of his death broke, fans began gathering outside the Buenos Aires hotel where the death took place, prompting police to cordon off the entrance. Some lit candles in his memory.

“I was in my living room and my sister told me Liam died,” a young fan named Violeta Antier told Reuters news agency. “We couldn’t believe it. We came here directly to confirm it was true.”

Ms Antier said she saw Payne at the Niall Horan concert just two weeks ago.

Another woman cried as she explained why she had come to the hotel, telling Reuters in Spanish: “This is the only way I have to say goodbye to him”.

One Direction had global success with hits such as What Makes You Beautiful and Story of My Life, while Payne also enjoyed some solo success after the band announced in 2015 that they were going on hiatus the following year.

In August this year, Payne was announced as a judge on a new Netflix talent show alongside former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland and The Pussycat Dolls star Nicole Scherzinger.

Payne, who was born in Wolverhampton in the UK, first tried for stardom when he auditioned for ITV talent show The X Factor in 2008 – but judge Simon Cowell told him to “come back in two years”.

He did, impressing the judges more in 2010, and was put together with four other solo hopefuls at the boot camp stage and One Direction were born.

The group had four UK number one albums and four number one singles as well as topping charts around the world, before Zayn Malik left in 2015, prompting the band’s hiatus.

In 2017, Payne’s debut solo single Strip That Down, which peaked at number three on the Official UK Chart, and his collaboration with Rita Ora on the song For You – from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack – also reached the top 10.

He began a relationship with Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy in 2016 and they had a son, Bear, the following year. The couple split in 2018.

The BBC has seen a cease and desist letter against the singer earlier this week from another of Payne’s former partners, Maya Henry.

It “pertains to alleged egregious conduct”.

She had posted on social media accusing him of repeatedly contacting her. Payne did not respond to the accusations.

Children as young as 10 will soon be able to be jailed once again in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility.

Australian states and territories have been under pressure to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, in line with other developed countries and UN advice.

Last year the NT became the first jurisdiction to lift it to 12, but the new Country Liberal Party government elected in August has said a reversal is necessary to reduce youth crime rates.

It has argued that returning the age to 10 will ultimately protect children – despite doctors, human rights organisations and Indigenous groups disputing that logic.

They say the research indicates the laws will not reduce crime and will disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The NT already jails children at a rate 11 times higher than any other jurisdiction in the country, and almost all of them are Aboriginal.

The territory’s new government says it has a mandate after an overwhelming election victory following a campaign that promised being tough on crime.

It argues being able to criminalise children younger will help divert them away from future crime.

Many places across Australia have declared they are in the grips of a youth crime crisis, and a string of violent incidents this year have prompted a series of youth curfews in the NT city of Alice Springs.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said her government had been given a mandate by voters to act and that the change would allow courts to “intervene” in the lives of young offenders and put them through programmes designed to address the root causes of their crimes.

“We took to the election a very clear plan around lowering the age of criminal responsibility so that we can capture these young people early, work out what’s going on, and turn their life around,” she said on Monday.

The NT government will also tighten bail rules.

“We make no apologies for delivering on our election commitment to make the territory safe.”

However, research both globally and in Australia has shown that incarcerating children makes them more likely to reoffend and often has dire impacts on their health, education, and employment.

Earlier this year a report by the Australian Human Rights Commission – an independent federal agency – found policy was being driven “by populist ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric” and that governments should instead reinvest the money spent on jailing children into support services.

As the NT parliament debated the bill on Wednesday, around 100 people gathered outside to protest, some carrying placards. One read, “10-year-olds still have baby teeth”. Another said, “What if it was your child?”.

The NT’s Children’s Commissioner Shahleena Musk, a Larrakia woman from Darwin, told the BBC that there was “structural racism at force in the Northern Territory youth justice system”.

She said Aboriginal children are less likely to be cautioned, more likely to be charged and pursued through the courts, and more likely to be remanded in custody than non-Aboriginal offenders.

“I accept that people are fearful in our communities, and crime has been quite prominent in the media and social media,” she said.

“But if we rely on the evidence and start to work to address the root causes of crime, we’re going to have less of these kids reoffending… We shouldn’t be seeing these kids going into a youth justice system which is harmful, ineffective, and only compounds the very issues we’re trying to change.”

Advocates also fear the laws could arrest momentum for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility in other states and territories.

Only the Australian Capital Territory has raised the age of criminal responsibility above 10, but Victoria has passed legislation to do so, which will come into effect next year. The Tasmanian government has said it will raise the age to 14 by 2029.

In the past 24 hours I’ve written more than 100 WhatsApp messages.

None of them were very exciting. I made plans with my family, discussed work projects with colleagues, and exchanged news and gossip with some friends.

Perhaps I need to up my game, but even my most boring messages were encrypted by default, and used WhatsApp’s powerful computer servers, housed in various data centres around the world.

It’s not a cheap operation, and yet neither I nor any of the people I was chatting with yesterday, have ever parted with any cash to use it. The platform has nearly three billion users worldwide.

So how does WhatsApp – or zapzap, as it’s nicknamed in Brazil – make its money?

Admittedly, it helps that WhatsApp has a massive parent company behind it – Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram as well.

Individual, personal WhatsApp accounts like mine are free because WhatsApp makes money from corporate customers wanting to communicate with users like me.

Since last year firms have been able to set up channels for free on WhatsApp, so they can send out messages to be read by all who choose to subscribe.

But what they pay a premium for is access to interactions with individual customers via the app, both conversational and transactional.

The UK is comparatively in its infancy here, but in the Indian city of Bangalore for example, you can now buy a bus ticket, and choose your seat, all via WhatsApp.

“Our vision, if we get all of this right, is a business and a customer should be able to get things done right in a chat thread,” says Nikila Srinivasan, vice president of business messaging at Meta.

“That means, if you want to book a ticket, if you want to initiate a return, if you want to make a payment, you should be able to do that without ever leaving your chat thread. And then just go right back to all of the other conversations in your life.”

Businesses can also now choose to pay for a link that launches a new WhatsApp chat straight from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Ms Srinivasan tells me this is alone is now worth “several billions of dollars” to the tech giant.

Other messaging apps have gone down different routes.

Signal, a platform renowned for its message security protocols which have become industry-standard, is a non-profit organisation. It says it has never taken money from investors (unlike the Telegram app, which relies on them).

Instead, it runs on donations – which include a $50m (£38m) injection of cash from Brian Acton, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, in 2018.

“Our goal is to move as close as possible to becoming fully supported by small donors, relying on a large number of modest contributions from people who care about Signal,” wrote its president Meredith Whittaker in a blog post last year.

Discord, a messaging app largely used by young gamers, has a freemium model – it is free to sign-up, but additional features, including access to games, come with a pricetag. It also offers a paid membership called Nitro, with benefits including high-quality video streaming and custom emojis, for a $9.99 monthly subscription.

Snap, the firm behind Snapchat, combines a number of these models. It carries ads, has 11 million paying subscribers (as of August 2024) and also sells augmented reality glasses called Snapchat Spectacles.

And it has another trick up its sleeve – according to the website Forbes, between 2016-2023 the firm made nearly $300m from interest alone. But Snap’s main source of revenue is from advertising, which brings in more than $4bn a year.

The UK-based firm Element charges governments and large organisations to use its secure messaging system. Its customers use its tech but run it themselves, on their own private servers. The 10-year old firm is in “double digit million revenue” and “close to profitability”, its co-founder Matthew Hodgson tells me.

He believes the most popular business model for messaging apps remains that perennial digital favourite – advertising.

“Basically [many messaging platforms] sell adverts by monitoring what people do, who they talk to, and then targeting them with the best adverts,” he says.

The idea is that even if there is encryption and anonymity in place, the apps don’t need to see the actual content of the messages being shared to work out a lot about their users, and they can then use that data to sell ads.

“It’s the old story – if you the user, aren’t paying, then the chances are that you are the product,” adds Mr Hodgson.

The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire.

Lucy Connolly, whose husband serves on West Northamptonshire Council, posted the expletive-ridden message on X on the day three girls were killed in Southport.

The 41-year-old childminder called for “mass deportation now” and added: “If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Judge Melbourne Inman KC told Birmingham Crown Court the sentence for these offences was intended to “punish and deter”.

The hearing was told Connolly, of Parkfield Avenue in Northampton, sent a WhatsApp message on 5 August joking that the tweet to her 10,000 followers had “bitten me on the arse, lol”.

Connolly previously admitted intending to stir up racial hatred.

Opening the case, prosecutor Naeem Valli said Connolly also sent a message saying she intended to work her notice period as a childminder “on the sly” – despite being de-registered.

Mr Valli added: “She then goes on to say that if she were to get arrested she would ‘play the mental health card’.”

The court heard Connolly, who had no previous convictions, also sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack, which read: “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.”

Another X post sent by Connolly – commenting on a video posted by the far right activist Tommy Robinson – read “Somalian I guess” and was accompanied by a vomiting emoji.

Connolly appeared before the court via a video link to HMP Peterborough while her husband, councillor Raymond Connolly, watched the proceedings from the public gallery.

Liam Muir, defending, said Connolly had lost a child in horrific circumstances and was distinguished from other offenders using social media in that she had sent the tweet at the heart of the case before any violence against asylum seekers had started.

Mr Muir told the court: “The horrendous way in which she lost her son, being turned away from the health service, can only have a drastic detrimental effect on someone.

“Whatever her intention was in posting the offending tweet, it was short-lived and she didn’t expect the violence that followed, and she quickly tried to quell it.”

Passing sentence, Judge Inman told the court that Connolly’s tweet – which was read 310,000 times – was “intended to incite serious violence”.

“When you published those words you were well aware how volatile the situation was,” he said.

“That volatility led to serious disorder where mindless violence was used.”

Connolly wore a blue short sleeve top and appeared emotionless for most of hearing, pushing her hair back at times.

The judge, considering the mitigation, noted Connolly’s previous good character and that she did not repeat her statement.

Connolly was ordered to serve 40% of her 31-month sentence in prison before being released on licence.

Det Ch Supt Rich Tompkins, head of crime and justice at Northamptonshire Police, said he hoped the sentencing demonstrated “that the police take reports of this nature seriously”.

“We will do everything we can to help our communities feel safe and protected from fear of violence,” he added.

“If you have been a victim of a hate crime, please contact us so we can investigate it. No one should be targeted for who they are.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused India of making a “massive mistake” that Canada could not ignore if Delhi was behind the death of a Sikh separatist leader last year on Canadian soil.

Trudeau made the comments two days after Canadian officials accused India of being involved in homicides, extortions and other violent acts targeting Indian dissidents on Canadian soil.

After Canada levelled the accusations on Monday, both countries expelled top envoys and diplomats, ramping up already strained tensions.

India has rejected the allegations as “preposterous”, and accused Trudeau of pandering to Canada’s large Sikh community for political gain.

On Wednesday, India hit back angrily again and called Trudeau’s behaviour “cavalier”.

“Canada has presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement.

“The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”

In his remarks before a public inquiry looking into foreign interference in Canadian politics, Trudeau had criticised India’s response to the investigation into Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing in June 2023.

According to Trudeau, he was briefed on the murder later that summer and received intelligence that made it “incredibly clear” that India was involved in the killing.

He said Canada had to take any alleged violation of its sovereignty and the international rule of law seriously.

Mr Nijjar was shot and killed in Surrey, British Columbia. He had been a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement, which demands a separate Sikh homeland, and publicly campaigned for it.

At the time, however, Canada’s intelligence did not amount to hard evidence or proof, Trudeau told the inquiry.

Police have since charged four Indian nationals over the Mr Nijjar’s death.

Trudeau said he had hoped to handle the matter “in a responsible way” that didn’t “blow up” the bilateral relationship with a significant trade partner, but that Indian officials rebuffed Canada’s requests for assistance into the probe.

“It was clear that the Indian government’s approach was to criticise us and the integrity of our democracy,” he said.

Shortly after he made the allegations public, saying in that September that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder.

The prime minister also added on Wednesday more detail to further allegations released this week by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The police force took the rare step of publicly disclosing information about multiple ongoing investigations “due to significant threat to public safety” in Canada.

RCMP said on Monday there had been “over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life” which “specifically” focused on members of the pro-Khalistan movement.

Subsequent investigations had led to police uncovering alleged criminal activity orchestrated by government of India agents, according to the RCMP.

Trudeau said the force made the announcement with “a goal of disrupting the chain of activities that was resulting in drive-by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder” in the South Asian community across Canada.

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

The RCMP and national security advisers travelled to Singapore last weekend to meet Indian officials – a meeting the RCMP said was not fruitful.

Following Monday’s allegations from Canadian officials, the UK and US urged India to co-operate with Canada’s legal process.

On Wednesday, the British Foreign Office said in a statement that it is in contact with Ottawa “about the serious developments outlined in the independent investigations in Canada”.

The UK has full confidence in Canada’s judicial system,” the statement added.

“The Government of India’s co-operation with Canada’s legal process is the right next step.”

The US, another close Canadian ally, said that India was not co-operating with Canadian authorities as the White House had hoped it would.

“We have made clear that the allegations are extremely serious and they need to be taken seriously and we want to see the government of India co-operate with Canada in its investigation,” said spokesperson Matthew Miller at a US State Department briefing on Tuesday.

“Obviously, they have not chosen that path.”

Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, has said that Ottawa is in close contact with the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – on the matter.

The stars of a newly-released film about Donald Trump, actors Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan, have told the BBC they are concerned about violence being incited by the US presidential candidate’s criticism of the film.

The ex-president tried to block the recent release of The Apprentice – which came less than a month before the US presidential election.

Trump called people involved in making the film “HUMAN SCUM” in a post on social media on Sunday.

Stan said he believed the comments were “inspiring violence”, while Strong said he was starting to feel the situation was “slightly dangerous” after Trump’s post.

Trump also claimed the film was “fake” and a “hatchet job” released right before the 5 November vote “to try and hurt” his campaign.

The film’s leads defended the film’s historical accuracy in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Strong, when asked during the interview whether he felt fear or concern about being in the film, replied: “It wasn’t really until yesterday that I felt a sense of this feels slightly precarious and slightly dangerous and being in the crosshairs of the moment.”

He said Trump targeting the film’s writer Gabe Sherman – calling him a “lowlife” and questioning his credentials – had sparked an influx of hate.

“Yesterday [Sherman] was barraged with threats, death threats, anti-semitic hate,” Strong said.

Strong noted Trump’s use of the words “human scum”, which the actor said “is a term used by Hitler and Stalin” and other dictators.

Stan, meanwhile, said the comments were “divisive. It’s inspiring violence, a threat.”

“Many people now, thanks to him, feel they have this permission to behave like animals, and all we’ve certainly tried to do is inspire some conversation…towards a person that calls himself the leader of the free world and is going to run for president.”

• Sebastian Stan says Trump ‘should be grateful’ for controversial film

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

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

Both actors noted the film’s extensive research was “based in historical record”.

“It is a film, but I think it’s a responsible film,” Strong said. “I think we all aimed for veracity. We weren’t trying to vilify Trump, which I think a lot of people think that’s the only reason we would make this film.”

The actor added he believed “art is meant to speak truth to power”.

The film’s writer, Sherman, earlier this week at the London premiere had said he was “happy that he’s (Trump) is paying attention to the film. It means it’s touching a nerve.”

A Bangladeshi court has ordered an arrest warrant for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was ousted by mass protests.

Hasina is wanted by Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) for her alleged involvements in “crimes against humanity” that took place during the demonstrations, in which hundreds were killed.

Hasina, who was in charge of Bangladesh for more than 20 years, was seen as an autocrat whose government ruthlessly clamped down on dissent.

Arrest warrants have also been issued for 45 others, including former government ministers who also fled the country.

“The court has… ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and to produce her in court on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, told reporters on Thursday.

“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings and crimes against humanity in July to August,” he added.

Bangladesh’s interim health ministry said in August that more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence this summer after student-led protests against government job quotas turned into mass demonstrations, making it the bloodiest period in the country’s history since its 1971 independence.

Hasina, 77, has not been seen in public since fleeing Bangladesh. Her last official whereabouts is a military airbase near India’s capital Delhi.

She was initially expected to stay in India for a short time, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum elsewhere have been unsuccessful so far.

Her continued presence in India poses a challenge for Delhi in working with the new interim government in Dhaka. Many in Bangladesh are angered by the fact she has been given shelter by India.

The new interim government in Bangladesh has revoked her diplomatic passport and the two countries have a bilateral extradition treaty which would permit her return to face criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offence is of a “political character”.

Hasina’s government created the ICT in 2010 to investigate atrocities during the war with Pakistan, which gave Bangladesh its independence in 1971.

The United Nations and rights groups criticised its procedural shortcomings and it became widely seen as a means for Hasina to eliminate political opponents.

The tribunal, reconstituted by the interim government, began its proceedings on Thursday. Critics say it lacks judges with experience of international law.

Several cases accusing Hasina of orchestrating the “mass murder” of protesters are being investigated by the court.

Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed has said his mother is ready to face trial. “My mother has done nothing wrong,” he told Reuters news agency last month.