Israel has carried out air strikes targeting branches of a financial association linked with Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, as well as the south and east of the country.

There were chaotic scenes in parts of Beirut late on Sunday, as people tried to get to areas that they thought would be safer and multiple explosions were heard.

The Israeli military said it targeted money held by Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association (AQAH). It offers financial services to civilians in areas where Hezbollah has strong support, but Israel and the US accuse it of being a cover for the Iran-backed group to fund its activities.

There was no immediate comment from AQAH or Hezbollah.

The attacks appeared to mark an expansion of Israel’s war against Hezbollah, going beyond military infrastructure used by the group.

They took place hours before US President Joe Biden’s special envoy to the Middle East arrived in Beirut to explore the possibility of a negotiated end to the war.

Israel began an intense air campaign and ground invasion against Hezbollah after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by rocket attacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel.

More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,800 in the past five weeks, according to the country’s health ministry. Israeli authorities say 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli air strikes targeting branches of AQAH happened about 20 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders, at around 21:30 local time (18:30 GMT) on Sunday.

According to the Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA), there were 11 attacks on Dahieh, in southern Beirut.

Videos posted on social media showed one AQAH branch on fire in the Laylaki area, only 500m (1,800ft) away from the runway of Lebanon’s only functioning commercial airport, and another just to the north in Burj al-Barajneh. A third video showed a multi-storey building where there was an AQAH branch collapsing in the Chiyah area.

The NNA also said that strikes hit branches in Nabatieh, Tyre and Shehabieh in southern Lebanon, as well as those in the eastern Bekaa Valley towns of Baalbek, Hermel and Rayak – areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

“Our store and our livelihood are gone,” business owner Ahmed told Reuters news agency outside a severely damaged AQAH branch in Zahrani. “This neighbourhood is all civilian, with nothing here.”

It was not clear whether the strikes targeting AQAH caused any casualties. But the NNA reported on Monday that six women and children were killed in an air strike on a home in Baalbek, and that two bodies were recovered from a destroyed building in the southern town of Srifa.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck “dozens of facilities and sites” across Lebanon that were used by Hezbollah to “finance its terrorist activities”.

It alleged that Hezbollah stored billions of dollars at branches of AQAH, and that it used the money to purchase weapons and pay members of its military wing.

“The purpose of these strikes is to target the ability of Hezbollah to function both during the war but also afterwards, to rebuild and to rearm the organisation on the day after, and [to target] the grip Hezbollah has on large parts of the Lebanese society,” an Israeli intelligence official told reporters.

Hezbollah – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and others – is more than just a Shia Islamist armed group. It is also a political party with representation in parliament, and a social movement, engrained in Lebanese society, with significant support.

AQAH is a key part of Hezbollah’s social services network. Before the Israeli strikes, it had more than 30 branches, often located on the ground floor of residential buildings.

Many people came to depend on AQAH after Lebanon sank into a deep economic crisis five years ago, causing the local currency to lose 90% of its value and commercial banks to restrict foreign currency withdrawals. The association allowed people to take out small, interest-free loans in dollars backed by gold or a guarantor, and to open savings accounts.

Hezbollah’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech in 2021 that AQAH had provided $3.7bn (£2.8bn) in loans to 1.8 million people in Lebanon since it was founded in the early 1980s, and that around 300,000 people had loans with it at that time.

Nasrallah also claimed that AQAH had been strengthened by the US sanctions imposed since 2007, when American officials said the association was being used by Hezbollah as a cover to manage its financial activities and to gain access to the international financial system.

A Hezbollah press officer told the BBC on Monday afternoon that neither the group nor AQAH had issued any statements regarding the air strikes.

Earlier, a statement attributed to AQAH was circulated on social media which said people’s deposits with the association were “safe”.

The Israeli military also announced on Monday that its troops were continuing to carry out operations in southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and weaponry.

Hezbollah fighters meanwhile continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, with the military reporting that 60 projectiles had crossed the border by Monday afternoon.

About 200 projectiles were detected on Sunday, when the military said its warplanes had conducted “an intelligence-based strike on a command centre of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters and an underground weapons workshop in Beirut”.

Also on Sunday, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) accused Israeli forces of deliberately demolishing an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN peacekeeping position in the southern town of Marwahin. It followed similar incidents in recent weeks.

In a separate development, the Lebanese army said three of its soldiers were killed after a military vehicle was hit by an Israeli air strike in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s army has historically stayed out of cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah – but a number of its troops have been killed in Israeli attacks since fighting escalated last month.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the two incidents.

Lidia Thorpe is no stranger to controversy and it’s not the first time she’s voiced her views on the British monarchy.

The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman has been a senator for Victoria since 2020, the first Aboriginal senator from that state.

Prior to that, she had a history of Indigenous activism – she also worked as the chairperson of Naidoc (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) for the state of Victoria, an organisation that works to recognise and teach Australians about First Nations cultures and their histories.

In 2022, while being sworn in to parliament after a re-election, she called the late Queen a coloniser.

“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising her majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said, as she was being sworn in.

After criticism from other senators, she then repeated the oath as printed.

So Monday’s incident wouldn’t have come as much surprise to anyone who follows Australian politics. Lidia Thorpe has made her views clear – that British settlement saw huge numbers of Indigenous people massacred and the scars of colonisation are still very apparent for many First Nations people in Australia.

Whether or not you agree with Lidia Thorpe’s approach, the fact is that there are deep disparities between First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to many indicators including education, health and life expectancy.

Last year Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a young Indigenous man was more likely to go to jail than university, which is borne out by statistics, as ABC showed.

And between 2020 and 2022, the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was estimated to be eight years shorter than non-Indigenous Australians.

“I wanted to send a clear message to the King of England that he’s not the King of this country, he’s not my king, he’s not sovereign,” Thorpe told the BBC after being removed from the Great Hall after heckling. “To be sovereign you have to be of this land. He’s not of this land.”

She went on.

“How can he stand up there and say he’s the King of our country – he’s stolen so much wealth from our people and from our land and he needs to give that back. And he needs to entertain a conversation for a peace treaty in this country,” she said.

“We can lead that, we can do that – we can be a better country but we cannot bow to the coloniser whose ancestors he spoke about in there are responsible for mass murder, for mass genocide.”

One of Lidia Thorpe’s biggest grievances is the fact that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation that has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people. She’s been pushing for that as a priority.

For her, last year’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament – a body made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders providing advice to parliament on Indigenous issues – was a distraction from what was important – a treaty.

Australians resoundingly voted against the proposal and she was one of a minority of First Nations people who also voted no.

She told the BBC at the time that the Voice was about “assimilating us into the colonial constitution to make us nice, neat little Indigenous Australians that will continue to be oppressed by the coloniser”.

But she was in the minority among First Nations people to do so. Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted yes but Aboriginal people make up close to 4% of Australia’s population. Nationally, just over 60% of voters across Australia voted against.

Not all Indigenous leaders appear as troubled by royal visits as Lidia Thorpe.

Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, said she respected the late Queen, even describing her as “beautiful”.

What about the current visit by King Charles?

“I don’t think it’s that important. We’re our own country,” Allira Davis told the BBC, speaking before Lidia Thorpe heckled him in Canberra.

“Understanding the history of what has happened in this country is really, really key. We’re not just a white country anymore. We’re a very brown country. We’re a very multicultural country.

“So I’m all for becoming a republic, but we need to deal with recognising our First Nations people.”

So although Lidia Thorpe reflects a view shared by many about the damage that colonisation did – and still does – not everyone agrees with her approach.

Local media have reported that former co-workers have found her difficult to work with.

But Lidia Thorpe – who is now an independent after leaving the Greens over the party’s support for the Yes vote in the referendum – is unlikely to change tack. She thinks the King needs to play a bigger role in making good the ills of the past.

Questions have been raised about the legality of cash incentives offered by tech billionaire Elon Musk to swing-state voters who sign his petition before the US election on 5 November.

The petition was created by Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which was set up to support Donald Trump in the presidential contest.

Voters in Pennsylvania are being offered cash sums for simply signing the petition. And one random swing-state signatory a day is being given a million-dollar prize.

But legal experts have suggested that it may break American law to offer money for an act requiring someone to be signed up as a voter. BBC News has contacted Mr Musk’s team and America PAC for comment.

The petition created by America PAC encourages voters in six swing states – Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina – to sign a “petition in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms”.

Those who refer another voter who signs up are promised a sum of $47 (£36) each.

Higher sums of $100 for signing or referring are offered in Pennsylvania, the battleground state that both the Trump and Harris campaigns believe could potentially decide the race’s eventual victor.

America PAC says those who sign the petition are signalling their support for the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution.

Each day until polling day on 5 November, a $1m prize will be randomly awarded to any signatory in one of the seven swing states.

The first lottery-style jumbo cheque was handed out to a surprised attendee at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on 19 October.

“I believe [Elon] Musk’s offer is likely illegal,” said Paul Schiff Berman, the Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at the George Washington University.

He pointed to the US Code of electoral law, which states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence.

“His offer is only open to registered voters, so I think his offer runs afoul of this provision,” Mr Berman told the BBC.

The justice department declined to comment. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been approached for comment.

The strategy may be covered by a loophole, because no-one is being directly paid to register or vote, a former chairman of the FEC suggested.

Brad Smith told the New York Times the giveaway was “something of a grey area” but “not that close to the line.”

“He’s not paying them to register to vote. He’s paying them to sign a petition – and he wants only people who are registered to vote to sign the petition. So I think he comes out OK here,” he said.

But an election law professor at Northwestern University told the Associated Press that the context was important.

“It’s not quite the same as paying someone to vote, but you’re getting close enough (to polling day) that we worry about its legality,” Michael Kang said.

Adav Noti of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center said Mr Musk’s scheme “violates federal law and is subject to civil or criminal enforcement by the Department of Justice”.

“It is illegal to give out money on the condition that recipients register as voters,” Mr Noti told the BBC.

• Harris or Trump: Who is ahead in US election polls?
• Musk offers prize of $1m a day to swing states voters
• Who is Elon Musk and what is his net worth?

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, described the move as “deeply concerning” and called for law enforcement agencies to investigate.

In response, Mr Musk said it was “concerning that he would say such a thing”.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who has campaigned in recent weeks for Kamala Harris, said the offer was both “innovative and desperate”.

“You only do that because you think you have to, but using a sweepstake is not a bad idea. Whether or not it will work is another whole thing. It could just as easily backfire,” he told CNBC.

The world’s richest man had an uneven relationship with Trump when Trump was president, but Mr Musk has increasingly voiced his displeasure with Democrats in recent years.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, he announced that he had left the party and encouraged his followers to vote Republican.

This year, he has involved himself in American politics like never before, making donations and supportive social media posts on behalf of several Republicans.

In comments last week, he described much of the US-Mexico border as tantamount to the film World War Z.

Mr Musk launched America PAC in July with the aim of supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign for president. He has so far donated at least $75m to the group.

America PAC’s website says it wants “secure borders”, “safe cities”, “free speech”, “sensible spending”, a “fair justice system” and “self-protection”.

Trump said on Sunday that he had not followed Mr Musk’s giveaway, but described him as a friend.

In recent weeks, Mr Musk has appeared on the campaign trail for the first time, first by Trump’s side and more recently in town hall appearances by himself.

• 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: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador, seeking the “immediate withdrawal” of North Korean troops which it says are being trained to fight in Ukraine.

About 1,500 North Korean soldiers, including those from the special forces, have already arrived in Russia, according to Seoul’s spy agency.

In a meeting with the ambassador Georgiy Zinoviev, South Korea’s vice-foreign minister Kim Hong-kyun denounced the move and warned that Seoul will “respond with all measures available”.

Mr Zinoviev said he would relay the concerns, but stressed that the cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is “within the framework of international law”.

It is unclear what cooperation he was referring to. The ambassador did not confirm allegations that North Korea has sent troops to fight with Russia’s military.

Later on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters the cooperation between the two nations is “not directed against third countries”.

He added it “should not worry anyone”, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Pyongyang has not commented on the allegations.

South Korea has long accused the North of supplying weapons to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine, but it says the current situation has gone beyond the transfer of military materials.

Some South Korean media reports have suggested as many as12,000 North Korean soldiers are expected to be deployed.

“[This] not only gravely threatens South Korea but the international community,” Kim said on Monday.

Moscow and Pyongyang have stepped up cooperation after their leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un signed a security pact in June, will pledges that their countries will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

Last week, Putin introduced a bill to ratify the pact.

Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to fight with Russia “would mark a significant escalation” in the conflict, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Monday.

In a phone call with Rutte on Monday, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol urged the alliance to explore “concrete countermeasures”, adding that he will take steps to strengthen security cooperation between South Korea, Ukraine and Nato.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy, who is visiting Seoul, called Russia’s actions “reckless and illegal”, adding that London would work with Seoul to respond, according to Yoon’s office.

The United States and Japan have also condemned the deepening military ties between North Korea and Russia.

Meanwhile, in response to a BBC question about the alleged North Korea-Russia cooperation, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that China hopes all parties will work to de-escalate the situation and aim for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis.

Some defence experts told BBC Korean that North Korea’s involvement could complicate the war.

“North Korea’s involvement could open the door for greater international participation in the conflict, potentially drawing in more countries,” said Moon Seong-mok from the Korea National Strategy Institute.

“The international community will likely increase sanctions and pressure on both Russia and North Korea, but it remains to be seen whether North Korea’s involvement will truly benefit either country,” Dr Moon said.

But others believe the Russian military units will have difficulties incorporating North Korean troops into their frontlines.

Apart from the language barrier, the North Korean army has no recent combat experiences, they said.

Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express, said the North Korean soldiers could be asked to guard sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which will free up Russian units to fight elsewhere.

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

India and China have agreed on patrolling arrangements to de-escalate tensions along a disputed Himalayan border which has seen deadly hand-to-hand clashes in recent years, India’s top diplomat has said.

Vikram Misri said on Monday the two sides have agreed on “disengagement and resolution of issues in these [border] areas that had arisen in 2020”.

He was referring to the Galwan Valley clashes – the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975, in which both sides suffered casualties.

Relations between the neighbours have been strained since then.

“An agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” Mr Misri said.

Mr Misri, however, did not give any details about the disengagement process and whether it would cover all points of conflict along the disputed border.

The Indian foreign secretary’s statement comes just a day before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Russia for a meeting of Brics nations which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Mr Misri didn’t confirm if a bilateral meeting between Mr Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping was on the agenda.

His remarks on Monday mark a major development between the two nuclear-armed nations since the Galwan clashes.

Troops in the Galwan Valley fought with clubs and sticks because of 1996 agreement between the two countries that prohibited the use of guns and explosives near the border.

Several rounds of talks between their diplomats and military leaders in the last four years had not resulted in a major breakthrough.

• India-China clash: An extraordinary escalation ‘with rocks and clubs’
• China says Indian troops fired ‘provocative’ shots in border dispute

Troops from the two sides clashed in the northern Sikkim area in 2021 and again in the Tawang sector of the border in 2022.

Border tensions have cast a long shadow on India-China relations for decades. The two countries fought a war in 1962 in which India suffered a heavy defeat.

Business relations between the two Asian giants have also suffered due to the tensions.

The root cause is an ill-defined, 3,440km (2,100-mile)-long disputed border. Rivers, lakes and snowcaps along the frontier mean the line often shifts, bringing soldiers face to face at many points, sparking a confrontation.

The two nations have been also competing to build infrastructure along the border, which has sparked further tensions.

People in Moldova have backed the Eastern European country’s proposed changes to its constitution and commitment to joining the EU by the thinnest of margins in a referendum.

Official data put Yes on 50.46% and No on 49.54% on Monday afternoon, with more than 99.6% of votes counted.

The knife-edge nature of the vote has come as a shock to many. The referendum had been widely expected to comfortably pass in the country of 2.6 million, which borders Romania and Ukraine.

The vote was combined with presidential elections in which Maia Sandu, the incumbent pro-EU president, failed to win re-election outright and faces a second round next month.

Responding to the referendum result, she said pro-EU forces had won the first battle in a “difficult fight”, which she also called “unjust”.

She accused those she called Moldova’s “enemies” – and criminal groups – of trying to buy votes and said it was a dangerous phenomenon for any democracy.

On Sunday, Sandu had denounced the narrow result as the product of foreign interference in Moldovan politics and said Moldova had suffered an “unprecedented assault on democracy”.

On neither occasion did she refer to Russia explicitly, but in recent weeks Moldovan authorities uncovered a giant scheme of payments coming from Moscow – and paid to people to vote against her and the EU referendum.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Sandu would need to present “evidence” for her claims that there had been foreign interference in the vote.

EU spokesperson Peter Stano said on Monday that the vote had taken place “under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies”.

Last month Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman and politician who now lives in Russia, said he would pay money to convince “as many people as possible” to vote No or to abstain in the EU referendum. This week, Shor then made a video statement telling people to vote for “anyone but Sandu” in the presidential election.

On Sunday, the BBC stumbled upon evidence of vote-buying at a polling station for residents of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria – which is economically, politically and militarily supported by Russia.

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.

When we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote, she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.

She would not reply when asked who she had voted for.

As well as the referendum on changing the constitution, Moldovans also voted in the country’s presidential election on Sunday.

The votes were seen as key tests for the country, which is facing a choice between pushing on with EU membership or keeping close ties to Russia.

Sandu topped the election first round with 41% of the vote versus her closest opponent’s 26%.

The result for Aleksandr Stoianoglo, who is supported by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists, was considerably higher than expected.

Sandu will now face a difficult second round on 3 November in which her eliminated rivals – populist Renato Usatii and former Gagauzia governor Irina Vlah – will likely unite against her behind Stoianoglo.

She accused “criminal groups” of working together with “foreign forces”, using money, lies, and propaganda to sway the vote.

Sandu also said her government had “clear evidence” that 300,000 votes were bought, which she called “a fraud of unprecedented scale”.

Moldova is currently in talks with the EU on becoming a member. These accession talks will continue despite Sunday’s outcome, as the referendum was not legally binding.

The vote, however, was supposed to make the process irreversible. Instead, it feels a little shakier now.

At Sandu’s election headquarters on Sunday evening, the mood was extremely subdued, with one of her advisers describing the result so far as “not what we expected”.

Sandu, who has cultivated close ties with Moldova’s EU neighbours, had campaigned for the Yes vote in the referendum. She had previously said the vote was would set up the future of Moldova for “many decades ahead”.

When the first results began trickling in showing that the No vote had done better than expected, Sandu’s team put the disappointing results down to the first count coming in from villages and rural areas.

The big city count narrowed the lead for the No vote, but by 01:00 (22:00 GMT) few thought the Yes camp could still stand a chance.

Many of Sandu’s supporters left her headquarters in Chisinau where they had been hoping to celebrate her victory before the count was even over. The little EU flags they’d been given to wave were abandoned, on chairs or strewn on the ground.

But as the night went on, the gap narrowed even further.

In the end, the Yes vote clinched it – but only just.

Voter turnout stood at more than 51% when polls closed at 21:00 local time (18:00 GMT), making the referendum valid.

Several presidential candidates boycotted the referendum. Aleksandr Stoianoglo said he did not support the idea of changing the constitution – although he added he was a supporter of his country’s “European aspirations”.

However, many young people queuing at polling stations on Sunday were vocal about their support for Moldova’s future as an EU member state, with some saying they were voting because they wanted to choose a European future for their country – for the sake of the economy and for more opportunities.

Some said they were fed up of being “pulled” towards Moscow, decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and Moldova became independent.

“We have to choose a European future for our country, for our children, our future – for geopolitics, for peace, that’s the most important,” a voter called Oksana told the BBC. “Because we are between Europe and Russian influence, and we have to choose what we want.”

Piece of advice for you – never buy a huge amount of champagne unless you’re absolutely certain it’s worth celebrating.

In November 2016, Russian ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky was so excited by Donald Trump’s victory, and so sure that it would transform US-Russian relations, he splashed out on 132 bottles of bubbly down at the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and partied away (in his party offices) in front of the TV cameras.

He wasn’t the only one celebrating.

The day after Trump’s surprise White House win, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state channel RT, tweeted her intention to drive around Moscow with an American flag in her car window.

And I’ll never forget the moment a Russian official told me she had smoked a cigar and drunk a bottle of champagne (yes, MORE champagne) to toast Trump winning.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump winning?

In Moscow, expectations were high that Trump would scrap sanctions against Russia; perhaps, even, recognise the Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine, as part of Russia.

“The value of Trump was that he never preached on human rights in Russia,” explains Konstantin Remchukov, the owner and editor-in-chief of newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

It didn’t take long for all that fizz to go flat.

“Trump introduced the heaviest sanctions against Russia at that time,” recalls Remchukov.

“By the end of his term, a lot of people were disappointed in his presidency.”

Which is why, eight years on – publicly at least – Russian officials are more cautious about the prospect of a second Trump term.

President Vladimir Putin has even come out and backed the Democratic Party candidate, although that “endorsement” was widely interpreted as a Kremlin joke (or Kremlin trolling).

Putin claimed he liked Kamala Harris’s “infectious” laugh.

But you don’t need to be a seasoned political pundit to understand that out on the campaign trail it’s what Trump has been saying, not Harris, that’s guaranteed to put a smile on Putin’s face.

For instance, Trump’s criticism of the scale of US military assistance for Ukraine, his apparent reluctance to blame Putin for Russia’s full-scale invasion and, during the presidential debate, his refusal to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war.

By contrast, Kamala Harris has argued that support for Ukraine is in America’s “strategic interest” and she has referred to Putin as “a murderous dictator”.

Not that Russian state TV has been particularly complimentary about her either. A few weeks ago one of Russia’s most acerbic news anchors was completely dismissive of Harris’s political abilities. He suggested she would be better off hosting a TV cookery show.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ON THE GROUND: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime

There’s another possible outcome that may well suit the Kremlin – a super tight election, followed by a contested result. An America consumed by post-election chaos, confusion and confrontation would have less time to focus on foreign affairs, including the war in Ukraine.

US-Russian relations soured under Barack Obama, grew worse under Donald Trump and, in the words of the recently departed Russian ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov, they are “falling apart” under Joe Biden.

Washington lays the blame fully on Moscow.

It was just eight months after Putin and Biden met for a summit in Geneva that the Kremlin leader ordered the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Not only did the Biden administration send a tsunami of sanctions Russia’s way, but US military aid has been crucial in helping Kyiv survive more than two-and-a-half years of Russia’s war. Amongst the advanced weaponry America has supplied Ukraine are Abrams tanks and HIMARS rocket systems.

It’s hard to believe now that there was a time, not so long ago, when Russia and the US pledged to work as partners to strengthen global security.

In the late 1980s Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev formed a geo-political double-act to slash their countries’ respective nuclear arsenals.

If there was one thing Reagan seemed to enjoy as much as nuclear disarmament it was reciting Russian proverbs to Gorbachev in broken Russian (“Never buy 132 bottles of champagne unless you’re certain it’s worth celebrating” would have been a good one).

In 1991 the First Ladies of the USSR and America, Raisa Gorbacheva and Barbara Bush, unveiled an unusual monument in Moscow – a mother duck with eight ducklings.

It was a replica of a sculpture in Boston Public Gardens and was presented to Moscow as a symbol of friendship between Soviet and American children.

It’s still popular with Muscovites today. Russians flock to Novodevichy Park to pose for photos with the bronze birds, although few visitors know the back story of superpower “duck diplomacy”.

Like US-Russian relations themselves, the ducks have taken a few knocks. On one occasion some of them were stolen and had to be replaced.

It’s to the Moscow mallard and her ducklings I head to find out what Russians think of America and of the US election.

“I want America to disappear,” says angry angler Igor who’s fishing in a nearby pond. “It has started so many wars in the world. The US was our enemy in Soviet times and it still is. It doesn’t matter who’s president.”

America as Russia’s eternal enemy – that’s a worldview often reflected here in the state media. Is Igor so angry because he gets his news from Russian TV? Or perhaps it’s because he hasn’t caught many fish.

Most of the people I chat to here do not see America as an evil adversary.

“I’m all for peace and friendship,” says Svetlana. “But my friend in America is scared to call me now. Maybe there’s no free speech there. Or, perhaps, it’s here in Russia that there’s no freedom of speech. I don’t know.”

• Book claims Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin
• WATCH: Trump sidesteps question on Putin phone calls

“Our countries and our two peoples should be friends,” says Nikita, “without wars and without competing to see who has more missiles. I prefer Trump. When he was president there weren’t any big wars.”

Despite the differences between Russia and America there is one thing the two countries have in common – they have always had male presidents.

Can Russians ever see that changing?

“I think it would be great if a woman became president,” says Marina.

“I would be happy to vote for a woman president here [in Russia]. I’m not saying it would be better or worse. But it would be different.”

• Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• What the world thought of Harris-Trump debate

Gunmen in Mexico have shot dead a Catholic priest who was an outspoken advocate for indigenous rights and who had condemned the violence plaguing his community.

Father Marcelo Pérez was killed after celebrating Mass in the southern state of Chiapas on Sunday, the prosecutor’s office said.

The Jesuit priest had spent almost two decades fighting for the rights of the Tzotzil indigenous group, of which he was a member.

The Jesuit Order said his murder should not be “minimised” as an isolated case – insisting it was part of the wave of violence that organised crime groups have unleashed in Chiapas.

“Father Marcelo has been a symbol of resistance and support in Chiapas, defencing the dignity, the rights of the people, and the construction of an authentic peace,” the Jesuit Order said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said his murder was being investigated and would not go unpunished.

Mexico’s bishops’ conference described Father Marcelo as one of the “prophetic voices” that had fought for peace, and said justice in Chiapas had been silenced.

The priest was killed by two men on a motorcycle, who opened fire on his vehicle in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

The incident happened early on Sunday as Father Marcelo was returning to his parish after saying Mass in the Cuxtitali neighbourhood of the city.

He had been transferred to San Cristóbal de Las Casas after receiving death threats in the rural parish where he had previously worked.

The priest had tried to negotiate an end to the violence caused by clashes between a criminal gang and a vigilante group.

In an interview last month, he had described the southern state of Chiapas as “a time bomb”.

“There are many [people who have] disappeared, many who have been kidnapped, many who have been murdered because of the presence of organised crime here,” he said as he was leading a protest march he described as a “pilgrimage”.

Chiapas has seen a spike in violence over the past year, with the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel fighting for control of the area.

The criminal groups extort migrants who cross the southern state on their way north to Mexico’s border with the United States.

Communities in the region have been hard hit by the violence, sometimes having to hide in their homes for days as shots ring out outside.

But the targeted murder of an outspoken human rights advocate is seen as a dangerous escalation of the violence that has been plaguing the community for months.

Over a million people in South Sudan have been affected by floods across much of the country, the UN’s humanitarian organisation, Ocha, has said.

More than a quarter of those – many in the north – have been forced from their homes by rising waters.

Ocha said the displaced were seeking refuge on higher ground, but the rains have also meant that getting aid to those who need it had become increasingly difficult.

This is one of the worst flood seasons that South Sudan – a country with a population of more than 11 million people – has experienced in recent decades.

In Pibor, in the east, 112,000 people have lost their homes, according to a government relief agency there.

Those who have fled to higher ground “don’t even have food, they left everything in that previous location”, Joseph Nyao, director of Relief and Rehabilitation told the BBC from Pibor.

He added that the government was urging people in areas threatened by floods to “immediately move to higher grounds that have been identified by local authorities for their safety”.

“The level of water is still increasing and the displacement is continuing.”

In May, the government alerted the international community to the risk of exceptional floods that were expected to hit the country in the subsequent months.

Ocha said that since the rains began 15 major supply routes have been rendered impassable, affecting the delivery of essential humanitarian aid to some 500,000 people in different parts of the country.

This all comes as South Sudan continues to deal with the impact of the 18-month civil war in neighbouring Sudan.

More than half a million Sudanese refugees and returnees from South Sudan have been registered in South Sudan since April last year.

South Sudan, already in the throes of a worsening humanitarian situation, is seeing its ability to respond become further overstretched, Ocha warned.

• ‘I thought I would die with my six children’ – Nigeria dam collapse survivor
• Vital Moroccan reservoir shrinking
• Climate change is turbo-charging Somalia’s problems
• A quick guide to South Sudan

Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric accused of masterminding a bloody attempted coup in 2016, has died aged 83, the Turkish foreign minister has confirmed.

The cleric, who had been living in self-imposed exile in the US, died after being admitted to a Pennsylvania hospital, according to reports in Turkish media.

Sometimes described as Turkey’s second most powerful man, Gulen was the spiritual leader of the Gulen movement, a powerful Islamic community with followers in Turkey and worldwide.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the Gulen movement for the 2016 attempted coup, accusations Gulen denied.

Speaking at a press conference in Ankara, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said intelligence sources had confirmed Gulen’s death, describing him as the leader of a “dark organisation”.

Gulen rose to prominence by arguing that young people in Turkey had lost their way and education was the best response.

He became known for promoting a tolerant Islam which emphasised altruism, modesty and hard work.

His movement – known in Turkey as Hizmet or “service” – first gained a foothold running schools, and it went on to open educational institutions across Turkey and around the world.

As the movement grew, followers expanded into business and began taking jobs inside the government and military.

Hizmet was once an ally of Erdogan’s, but the Turkish president turned on the movement in 2013, vowing to shut down hundreds of its schools and rid the government of Gulenists, who he called a “state within a state”.

Gulen-allied police officers were accused of carrying out raids against Erdogan’s allies, and the Turkish government formally declared Hizmet a terrorist organisation in May 2016.

Two months later, a faction of the Turkish army attempted to overthrow Erdogan. It said its aim was to protect democracy from the authoritarian Turkish president.

Over the course of a violent night, TV stations were raided by soldiers, explosions were heard in Istanbul and Ankara, protesters were shot and the parliament and presidential buildings were fired upon.

But the coup failed to gain support from the public or the wider military and the army faction leading it was forced to surrender.

The government blamed Gulen, but he denied the claims and condemned the coup.

Thousands of arrests followed, including almost a third of the military top brass as well as thousands of officials and bureaucrats.

By that time, Gulen was already living in self-imposed exile in the US, where he moved in 1999.

Turkey requested his extradition to face trial but the US has said it needed to see evidence of his involvement in the coup first. He remained in the US until he died.

BBC News interviewed Gulen at his remote Pennsylvania estate in 2014.

The cleric proved elusive throughout the interview and dodged questions on who he would vote for in the upcoming Turkish elections.

“If I were to say anything to people I may say people should vote for those who are respectful to democracy, rule of law, who get on well with people,” he said.

Five new civil lawsuits have been filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs in a federal court in New York.

Two men and three women accuse the hip-hop mogul of sexually assaulting them at various parties in LA, New York and Las Vegas.

The youngest plaintiff was 13 at the time of the alleged incident.

Mr Combs remains in custody at a Brooklyn jail. He is separately facing federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, which he denies. The BBC has approached his legal team for comment on the new cases.

His lawyers recently dismissed the flurry of lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity”, stressing that “Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman.”

All five of the new civil cases allege that Mr Combs – or by proxy through his associates – drugged alcoholic beverages at the events that made the plaintiffs dizzy, nauseous and feel outside their bodies.

In several of the suits, plaintiffs allege that Mr Combs raped them, forced oral sex on them, or aggressively groped them.

Mr Combs is currently awaiting trial in May of next year for the federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

The hip-hop icon has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has been denied bail multiple times.

The indictment, along with several lawsuits, implicates his various business enterprises, alleging they played a role in facilitating and funding his abusive actions both inside and outside the music industry.

The lawsuits further accuse Mr Combs of leveraging his power and influence in entertainment to manipulate, intimidate, and silence those around him.

• The parties that led to Diddy’s downfall
• Diddy faces more than 100 new assault allegations

One new case alleges Mr Combs and another male celebrity raped a 13 year-old girl at an after-party for the 2000 VMAs. The second male celebrity is not named in the lawsuit.

Another alleges Mr Combs drugged an independent musical artist at a party and raped her. She says she woke up in pain and with imprints on her arms suggesting she had been tied with ropes while she was unconscious.

In a third case, Mr Combs allegedly exposed himself to a man, and then grabbed the man’s genitals in a “rough” and “sexual” manner.

A fourth involves a celebrity personal trainer, who Mr Combs allegedly assaulted at a party at his Hollywood Hills home in 2022.

The trainer says he saw many high-profile celebrities engaging in group sexual activities at the party, where he was later brought into a small room with Mr Combs, who removed the personal trainer’s pants and performed “non-consensual oral sex onto him”.

The fifth new filing concerns a woman who alleges she was drugged at a party at Mr Combs’ hotel room and woke up naked in bed with the rap musician talking on the phone in the corner of the room.

Mr Combs has faced almost a year of allegations, ranging from rape and sexual assault to grooming and domestic violence.

One lawyer recently said more than 100 clients plan to sue the musician for sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

He is currently in jail while he awaits his trial in New York.

Prosecutors alleged that he also engaged in kidnapping, forced labour, bribery and other crimes.

They described him as the head of a criminal enterprise that abused women, using threats of violence to force them into participating in drug-fuelled orgies with male prostitutes.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was denied bail. His trial is due to take place in May 2025.

The air strike that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shook the earth for hundreds of metres in every direction.

A few blocks away, in the Beirut suburb known as the Dahieh, Mehdi Moussawi thought his own building was falling down.

From his balcony, the 45-year-old taxi driver and his wife Zahraa – who asked that their names be changed for this story – watched as a thick blanket of smoke and dust enveloped everything around them. In the distance, they could hear debris raining down, and overhead the familiar buzz of an Israeli drone.

The drones had become so common over Dahieh in the previous few days that they barely noticed them anymore. A majority Shia suburb in the south of Beirut, Dahieh was once again under Israel’s watchful eye; its more than half a million residents again under threat of death from above.

“The missiles come down from the sky,” Mehdi said, gesturing the arc of a projectile falling to earth, “and suddenly everything you have is gone.”

He was sitting on a dirty, sun-baked patch of pavement on the edge of Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut – now home for the couple and their teenage boys. Around them were hundreds of others in similar circumstances, many from Dahieh. The suburb has borne the brunt of the recent Israeli bombing of Beirut, prompting a mass exodus of virtually its entire population.

Dahieh is largely under the control of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political and paramilitary group that is a powerful force across Lebanon.

Hezbollah refused requests from the BBC for permission to enter the suburb for this story, to see the bomb damage, but a BBC analysis of video footage, Israeli evacuation warnings and recent satellite imagery shows at least 65 air strikes which have severely damaged or completely destroyed buildings. Some of those strikes have comprised dozens of individual bombs, and many have levelled not only the apparent target building but destroyed or severely damaged several adjacent buildings too.

This was the fate of Mehdi and Zahraa’s apartment – to be next door to an Israeli strike. Zahraa wept when she saw footage of their blackened and mangled building. “Look at us,” she pleaded. “Our home is gone. We have no hygiene, we cannot wash. We have nothing.”

Dahieh is often described as a Hezbollah stronghold. The term does not reflect the totality of the suburb – a densely packed residential area where other political parties operate and where not everyone supports Hezbollah – but the group is certainly the strongest force there. Above ground, it is woven through the suburb’s social and political fabric, and provides services like welfare and education. Below, it has bunkers and tunnels from which it can operate.

The IDF has targeted Dahieh in order to assassinate Hezbollah leaders, and says the group uses its bunkers to store weapons among the civilian population. It says it is targeting Hezbollah in order to safely return 60,000 of its own citizens to the north of Israel, which has come under rocket fire from Lebanon over the past year.

Unlike other parts of Beirut, Dahieh doesn’t have its own name, as such – the word simply means ‘suburb’. It is one of the most densely populated residential areas in all of Lebanon – a place of narrow streets and alleyways, where buildings seem to jostle for available space. It was heavily bombed in the previous war, back in 2006, and still bears scars from it.

“Dahieh was originally a very beautiful place but all the wars have taken their toll,” said Rasha al-Ameer, a novelist and publisher who was born and raised in the suburb and still lives there. Her brother, a prominent critic of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Lebanon in 2021.

“It is still a very vivid place and a diverse place. We have a cultural institution there and a lot of political activity,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing if Dahieh was destroyed. Though the bombing has destroyed much already.”

As well as homes, the Israeli air strikes have destroyed or damaged shops, businesses, restaurants and clinics. “Destruction on destruction,” said Mohaned Khalaf, a 45-year-old Sunni Muslim bakery worker, of his street in Burj El Brajneh, the most heavily targeted part of the suburb.

Khalaf, already a refugee once, from Syria, has gone back into Dahieh periodically to check on the apartment he shares with his two brothers and their mother, to see if his furniture remains. “The buildings around ours have been destroyed,” he said. “There is no life left there, not a person to be seen.”

The destruction has tested some Dahieh residents’ patience with Hezbollah – particularly Sunnis and other non-Shias. “This war is hurting everyone,” said Khalaf’s mother, Sameera, who wept on the street. “I am 63 years old,” she said. “I just want a place where I can wash.”

Sameera does not want to return to Dahieh, even after the war. “Yes, we could go back and rebuild, but Hezbollah and Israel will fight this war over and over again,” she said. “And Dahieh will suffer again.”

Shia Muslims, Hezbollah’s more natural support base, took a more supportive view – even those whose lives had been completely upended by the conflict. Members of Hezbollah had handed out food and $100 bills to displaced Shia families on the streets in central Beirut, several families said, and helped assist with shelter places.

“We used to support Hezbollah and we still support Hezbollah,” said Gharib Ali, a 61-year-old janitor who fled the suburb. Around him, his family nodded in agreement. The effect of the war on their lives “changes nothing for the Shia community,” he said. “If anything, it only increases our support. Every Shia feels the same.”

In this way, Mehdi and Zahraa may be something of an outlier – a Lebanese Shia couple, residents of Dahieh for decades, who were critical of Hezbollah for its role in the conflict.

“Dahieh is not Hezbollah, we are not Hezbollah, our building was not Hezbollah,” Zahraa said, angrily. “We went to sleep one night and woke up in someone else’s war.”

The family’s apartment is now uninhabitable, though the building may be salvageable. The Israeli army has sometimes issued social media warnings ahead of its air strikes, but there was no warning for the strike that hit Mehdi and Zahraa’s building. Their eldest son had gone home that day to shower, taking advantage of a seemingly quiet moment, and was knocked over and cut by flying glass when the bomb hit.

International humanitarian law generally requires an effective advance warning ahead of a strike that might affect civilians. But the BBC has found evidence of repeated Israeli strikes against Dahieh and other parts of Beirut where no warning was issued. And where there were warnings, some have been sent as little as 30 minutes beforehand, sometimes in the middle of the night.

“That timeframe is not an effective advance warning for someone who lives in Dahieh,” said Ramzi Keiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These are people are sleeping, they’re in their beds. They are not looking at social media.”

Hezbollah was also possibly violating international humanitarian law, Keiss said, by placing its military commanders in and around the civilian population. “But that doesn’t give you a free pass to bomb as heavily as you can,” he added, referring to Israel.

“When you’re using 2000lbs in densely populated areas, you’re going to put civilians at the risk of great harm.”

Lebanese officials estimate that more than 2,400 people have been killed in the country over the past year and more than 1.2 million been displaced. Israel says 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the same period.

Back in the 2006 war, after Israel had pounded Dahieh and heavily bombed Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, a senior IDF officer, Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot, sketched out what would become known as the “Dahieh doctrine”. It called for applying “disproportionate force” against civilian areas, with the goal of pressuring the people of Lebanon to turn on Hezbollah.

The recent escalation by Israel had gone “beyond Dahieh doctrine”, said Prof Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah and lecturer in politics at Cardiff University. “This is more like Gaza doctrine, which is similar, but has the goal of specifically targeting and displacing a community.”

In Dahieh, Israel’s actions were currently “somewhere between its Dahieh and Gaza doctrines”, she said.

The destruction would not bring about, as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly expressed hope for, a reduction in support for Hezbollah in places like Dahieh, Prof Saad said.

“Whenever Israel invades like this, it only increases support for Hezbollah among Shias,” she said. “After 2006, support skyrocketed. I don’t know much higher it can go now than 90%, but this will solidify it.”

Two weeks after the bombing of Dahieh began, the air strikes ceased unexpectedly, following pressure from the US government, which said it had made it clear to Israel it was unhappy with the “scope and nature” of the targeting of Beirut.

One day passed without any strikes, then another, then another. After three days, residents began returning on Monday and Tuesday to check on their apartments and retrieve possessions. Among them was Mehdi, who took his eldest son’s scooter and headed back into the devastated area around their building to grab clothes for the boys.

Then, early on Wednesday morning, Israel began bombing Dahieh again.

“We knew it was only a matter of time,” said Mehdi. He was sitting with Zahraa and the boys, a few hours after the strikes resumed, on the street by their makeshift tent, which was really just two rugs thrown over an improvised frame.

Towering over them was an upscale, new, and completely empty apartment building. It bore a similar name to their apartment building, Zahraa said. “But for the cost of one of these apartments you could buy an entire neighbourhood in Dahieh,” she said.

They would go back and rebuild, she said. She raised her arms in a mock bicep curl, to demonstrate the strength of the people from the Dahieh. “We have no choice,” Mehdi said. “Some people have choices, we don’t.”

They would return the moment the ceasefire was announced, he said. He knew that there would be no electicity, no water, and no windows in the buildings. But it was still better than being on the street. Overhead, an Israeli drone was buzzing. Mehdi looked up at the empty apartments across the street, and down at the tent they were sleeping under. “God willing, the ceasefire will come before the rain,” he said.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has said at least 87 people were killed and more than 40 injured in Saturday’s Israeli air strike on the city of Beit Lahia in the north of the Palestinian enclave.

The ministry said a number of people were still under the rubble after a residential area was hit.

Israel said it was checking reports of casualties but added that earlier – lower – figures published by Hamas were “exaggerated”. In recent weeks, the Israel military has been carrying out intense bombardment of northern Gaza, saying it wanted to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there.

A senior UN official warned that the “nightmare in Gaza is intensifying” and the war “must stop now”.

The UN’s peace process co-ordinator, Tor Wennesland, said that “nowhere is safe in Gaza”.

In a statement, Tor Wennesland said he condemned the continuing attacks on civilians.

“This war must end, the hostages held by Hamas must be freed, the displacement of Palestinians must cease, and civilians must be protected wherever they are. Humanitarian aid must be delivered unimpeded,” he said.

In a statement on Sunday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry revised its death toll from 73 to 87 after the Israeli strike on Beit Lahia.

The earlier casualty figures were provided by Hamas late on Saturday.

The ministry also said that ambulance crews were unable to reach the site of the Israeli strike.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described the strike as a “precision” attack on a “Hamas terror target”. It told the BBC it was “doing everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians”.

Dr Eid Sabbah, Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director of nursing, said the Israeli strike in Beit Lahia had completely destroyed several buildings, with “more than four, five residential blocks… razed to the ground”.

The strikes targeted an entire residential square, Dr Sabbah said, in between Abu Jidian roundabout and Al Qassam mosque.

Dr Sabbah added that dozens of people were killed and many were wounded “some of whom reached the hospital, some of whom remain under the rubble”.

He urged for an end to the “siege” on hospitals in northern Gaza and “for life to return to normal… before it’s too late, before our nation is exterminated”.

Several images – including the one below – have since emerged on social media showing the treatment of the injured from Beit Lahia at the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

The images have been verified by the BBC as being from the hospital.

Israel confirmed the death of a senior army officer in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area on Sunday.

Col Ahsan Daksa died after leaving his tank and being struck by an explosive, said IDF spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari.

Three other officers were injured, one seriously, during the same incident.

Israel began a renewed military offensive in northern Gaza in early October, saying it was trying to prevent Hamas from regrouping in the area.

In particular, Israeli forces have surrounded and bombarded the densely-populated Jabalia area, which includes an urban refugee camp – with at least 33 people reported killed in a strike late on Friday.

Humanitarian groups have warned that virtually no aid has entered the area in the past few weeks. Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

On Saturday, the UN’s top humanitarian official, Joyce Msuya, said that Palestinians in northern Gaza are enduring “unspeakable horrors” and called for these “atrocities” to stop.

Israel has repeatedly denied it is preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza – but on Tuesday the US told it to boost access within 30 days or risk having some American military assistance cut off.

At least 42,603 ​people have been killed and 99,795 injured in Gaza since the war began last October, the Hamas-run authorities say.

The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, leaving around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response, launching a ground offensive in the enclave.

Elsewhere, Israel continued its air strikes against the Lebanese group Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday.

In a statement, the IDF said: “Earlier this morning, the IAF [Israel’s air force] conducted an intelligence-based strike on a command centre of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters and an underground weapons workshop in Beirut”.

It added that several steps were taken to “reduce the possibility of civilian casualties”, including “issuing advance warnings to residents”.

The IDF also reported that about 160 rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese army said three of it soldiers were killed after a military vehicle was hit by an Israeli air strike in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon.

Israel has not yet commented.

Lebanon’s army has historically stayed out of cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah – but a number of its troops have been killed in Israeli attacks since fighting escalated last month.

Hezbollah – a powerful militant group in Lebanon – says it has been firing on Israeli positions in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran.

The US is investigating a leak of classified documents describing an American assessment of Israel’s plans to attack Iran, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson has confirmed.

The documents were reportedly published online last week and are said to describe satellite imagery showing Israel moving military assets in preparation for a response to Iran’s missile attack on 1 October.

The documents, marked top secret, were shareable within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, CBS, the BBC’s US partner, reported.

For weeks Israel has been deciding how and when to respond to Iran’s latest missile attack. Israel’s defence minister has warned it will be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

The two documents reportedly appear to be attributed to the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (NSA), and were published on an Iranian-aligned Telegram account on Friday.

Johnson, the highest-ranking member of Congress, told CNN on Sunday that “the leak is very concerning”.

“There’s some serious allegations being made, there’s an investigation under way, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours,” the Louisiana Republican lawmaker said.

The Pentagon confirmed in a statement that it was aware of reports about the documents, but did not comment further.

The US agencies involved, as well as the Israeli government, have not publicly commented.

Iran has played down the leak. Its foreign ministry spokesman said the country was prepared to counter Israeli measures no matter what they were.

CNN and Axios first reported the alleged leak, which appears to confirm once again that the US spies on its close ally Israel.

One document makes a reference to Israel’s nuclear capabilities – which neither the US nor Israel ever officially acknowledge – apparently ruling out the use of such an option in any planned strike.

One former American intelligence official told the BBC the unauthorised release was probably an attempt to expose the scale of the planned retaliation, possibly to disrupt it.

The US is investigating whether the information was intentionally leaked by a US agent, or whether it was stolen, possibly through hacking, officials told the Associated Press (AP).

The two documents appear to be based on satellite information obtained from 15-16 October.

The first is titled: “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts a Second Large-Force Employment Exercise,” according to Reuters news agency. It describes ballistic and air-to-surface missile handling.

The second is titled: “Israel: Defense Forces Continue Key Munitions Preparations and Covert UAV Activity Almost Certainly for a Strike on Iran”. It discusses Israeli drone movements.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden said he had a “good understanding” of what Israel was planning.

“Do you have a good understanding of what Israel is going to do right now in response to Iran… and when they will actually respond?” a reporter asked him.

“Yes, and yes,” Biden replied.

“Can you tell us?” asked the reporter.

“No, and no.”

A Palestinian man from Gaza has told the BBC that the house the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in was his home for 15 years before he had to flee in May.

Ashraf Abo Taha said he was “shocked” as he identified the partially destroyed building in Israeli drone footage of the incident as his home on Ibn Sena street in Rafah, southern Gaza.

Sinwar, the key figure behind the 7 October attacks on Israel, was killed by Israeli troops on Wednesday.

The Israeli military released drone footage that it said showed Sinwar in a partially destroyed house before he was killed.

Mr Abo Taha told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline that he had left his home in Rafah for Khan Younis on 6 May, when Israel ordered evacuations and began its military offensive in Rafah, and had not received any news of his house until now.

Mr Abo Taha said his daughter first showed him the footage purportedly capturing Sinwar’s last moments on social media, saying it depicted their house in Rafah. He initially didn’t believe her, he said, until his brother confirmed the house was indeed his.

“I was like ‘yes this is my house’ and I saw the pictures and here I was shocked”, Mr Abo Taha said.

He said he had no idea why Sinwar was there or how he got there.

“Never ever did me and my brothers and sons have anything to do with this,” he said.

The BBC has verified that pictures and videos provided by Mr Abo Taha of his home match imagery of the house where Sinwar was killed.

BBC Verify compared and matched images of the home’s window archways, external decorations on doorways, shelves, and armchairs from the footage.

The BBC cannot independently verify that Mr Abo Taha owned the home.

• Who will lead Hamas after killing of Yahya Sinwar?

The footage of Sinwar’s killing was analysed by the BBC, and the house in which he was last seen was one of the few partially destroyed buildings in a neighbourhood with extensive damage.

The Israeli assault on Rafah in May was met with strong international criticism, and triggered the exodus of more than a million Palestinians, according to the UN.

Many had been forced to move for a second or third time, as they had been sheltering in and around Rafah after being displaced from other parts of Gaza.

Mr Abo Taha said he had built his home in Rafah himself with the help of his siblings. It had cost some 200,000 shekels (£41,400) and had been in good condition when he left, he said.

He described his home’s orange sofas and an orange casserole dish, remembering the last time he saw them as he fled his home.

“These are memories because some of these were brought by my mum and they are very precious to me,” he said.

“What happened has saddened me a lot, the house that I built and all my payments are gone,” he said. “Only God can compensate us.”

Two Hamas officials told the BBC discussions to choose a successor for the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, whose killing was confirmed on Thursday, will begin very soon.

The officials said that Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy and the group’s most senior official outside Gaza, is considered a strong candidate.

Al-Hayya, who is based in Qatar, currently leads the Hamas delegation in ceasefire talks between the group and Israel, and possesses a deep knowledge, connection and understanding of the situation in Gaza.

Hamas leaders will convene once again to select a successor for Sinwar, who was Israel’s most wanted man, just two months after the killing of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official had described Sinwar as the architect of the 7 October attacks, emphasising that his appointment was intended as a bold message of defiance against Israel.

Since July, ceasefire negotiations have stalled, and many believe that Sinwar’s leadership was a significant obstacle to any ceasefire deal.

Despite the killing of Sinwar, a senior Hamas official reiterated to the BBC that the movement’s conditions for accepting a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages have not changed.

Hamas continues to demand a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, an end to hostilities, the transfer of humanitarian aid, and the reconstruction of the war-torn territory – conditions that Israel has categorically rejected, insisting that Hamas must surrender.

When questioned about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Hamas to give up its weapons and surrender, officials from the movement responded: “It is impossible for us to surrender.

“We are fighting for the freedom of our people, and we will not accept surrender. We will fight until the last bullet and the last soldier, just as Sinwar did.”

The assassination of Sinwar was one of the most significant losses for the organisation in decades. However, despite the challenges of replacing him, Hamas has a history of enduring leadership losses since the 1990s.

While Israel has succeeded in killing most of Hamas’s leaders and founders, the movement has proven resilient in its capacity to find new ones.

Amidst this crisis, questions linger regarding the fate of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and who will be responsible for their safety and protection.

In this context, Mohammed Sinwar, Yahya Sinwar’s brother, has emerged as a pivotal figure. He is believed to be leading the remaining armed groups of Hamas and may play a crucial role in shaping the future of the movement in Gaza.

As Hamas navigates this critical moment, the war in Gaza goes on.

Dozens of people were killed in Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza on Saturday as Israeli troops intensified attacks against what Israel says are Hamas attempts to regroup.

Yulia Navalnaya intends to be president of Russia, she tells me. She looks me straight in the eye. No hesitation or wavering.

This, like so many of the decisions she made with her husband, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is unambiguous.

Navalnaya knows she faces arrest if she returns home while President Putin is still in power. His administration has accused her of participating in extremism.

This is no empty threat. In Russia, it can lead to death.

Her husband, President Putin’s most vocal critic, was sentenced to 19 years for extremism, charges that were seen as politically motivated. He died in February in a brutal penal colony in the Arctic Circle. US President Joe Biden said there was “no doubt” Putin was to blame. Russia denies killing Navalny.

Yulia Navalnaya, sitting down for our interview in a London legal library, looks and sounds every inch the successor to Navalny, the lawyer turned politician who dreamt of a different Russia.

As she launches Patriot, the memoir her husband was writing before his death, Yulia Navalnaya restated her plans to continue his fight for democracy.

When the time is right, “I will participate in the elections… as a candidate,” she told the BBC.

“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible”.

For now, that has to be from outside Russia.

She tells me that while Putin is in charge she cannot go back. But Yulia looks forward to the day she believes will inevitably come, when the Putin era ends and Russia once again opens up.

Just like her husband, she believes there will be the chance to hold free and fair elections. When that happens, she says she will be there.

Her family has already suffered terribly in the struggle against the Russian regime, but she remains composed throughout our interview, steely whenever Putin’s name comes up.

Her personal grief is channelled into political messaging, in public anyway. But she tells me, since Alexei’s death, she has been thinking even more about the impact the couple’s shared political beliefs and decisions have had on their children, Dasha, 23, and Zakhar, 16.

“I understand that they didn’t choose it”.

But she says she never asked Navalny to change course.

He was barred from standing for president by Russia’s Central Election Commission.

His investigations through his Anti-Corruption Foundation were viewed by millions online, including a video posted after his last arrest, claiming that Putin had built a one-billion dollar palace on the Black Sea.

The president denied it.

Yulia says: “When you live inside this life, you understand that he will never give up and that is for what you love him”.

Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.

He was flown to Germany for treatment and the German chancellor demanded answers from Putin’s regime.

Navalny worked with open-source investigators Bellingcat and traced the poisoning to Russia’s security service, the FSB.

He began writing his memoir as he recovered.

He and Yulia returned to Russia in January 2021 where he was arrested after landing.

Many ask why they returned.

“There couldn’t be any discussion. You just need to support him. I knew that he wants to come back to Russia. I knew that he wants to be with his supporters, he wanted to be an example to all these people with his courage and his bravery to show people that there is no need to be afraid of this dictator.

“I never let my brain think that he might be killed… we lived this life for decades and it’s about you share these difficulties, you share these views. You support him”.

After his jailing, Navalny continued his book in notebook entries, posts on social media and prison diaries, published for the first time. Some of his writing was confiscated by the prison authorities, he said.

Patriot is revealing – and devastating. We all know Navalny’s final chapter, which makes the descriptions of his treatment – and his courage in the face of it – even more poignant.

Navalny spent 295 days in solitary confinement, punished, according to the book, for violations including the top button of his fatigues being unbuttoned. He was deprived of phone calls and visits.

Yulia Navalnaya told me: “Usually, the normal practice is banishment just for two weeks and it’s the most severe punishment. My husband spent there almost one year.”

In a prison diary from August 2022, Navalny writes from solitary confinement:

Navalnaya says she was prevented from visiting or speaking to her husband for two years before he died. She says Alexei was tortured, starved and kept in “awful conditions”.

After his death, the US, EU and UK announced new sanctions against Russia. These included freezing the assets of six prison bosses who ran the Arctic Circle penal colony and other sanctions on judges involved in criminal proceedings against Navalny.

Yulia calls the reaction to his death by the international community “a joke” and urges them to be “a little less afraid” of Putin. She wants to see the president locked up.

“I don’t want him to be in prison, somewhere abroad, in a nice prison with a computer, nice food… I want him to be in a Russian prison. And it’s not just that – I want him to be in the same conditions like Alexei was. But it’s very important for me”.

The Russians claim Navalny died of natural causes. Yulia believes President Putin ordered the killing.

“Vladimir Putin is answering for the death and for the murder of my husband”.

She says the Anti-Corruption Foundation she now leads in her husband’s place already has “evidence” which she will reveal when they have “the whole picture”.

The book is as much a political work as a memoir, a rallying cry to anyone who believes in a free Russia. It is also being published in Russian, as an ebook and audiobook. But the publishers won’t send hard copies to Russia or Belarus, because they say they can’t guarantee the book would get through customs.

How many Russians will dare to buy it, even in electronic form, is unclear – and how much impact it could have remains questionable.

The message etched on every page is that Navalny never gave up. His arch wit shines through.

He says, in the punishment cell, he is getting “for free” the experience of staying silent, eating scant food and getting away from the outside world that “rich people suffering from a midlife crisis” pay for.

Only once does he share feeling “crushed”, during the hunger strike he undertook in 2021 in order to demand medical care from civilian doctors. “For the first time, I’m feeling emotionally and morally down,” he writes in one entry.

But Yulia says she never worried that he would actually be broken by the regime.

“I’m absolutely confident that is the point why finally they decided to kill him. Because they just realised that he will never give up”.

Even the day before he died, when he appeared in court, Navalny was filmed joking with the judge.

Yulia says laughter was his “superpower”.

“He really, truly laughed at this regime and at Vladimir Putin. That’s why Vladimir Putin hated him so much”.

The writing is laced with a great deal of irony.

The book will sell better if he dies, Navalny writes:

In the end, Patriot is also a love story about two people fully committed to a cause they believed in.

A cause for which Yulia has now become the figurehead.

After a visit from her, Navalny writes:

“The last words I heard him say were, ‘Did you know that you are the best mum in the world?’”

Gelvana Rodrigues’s son, Thiago, was seven years old when toxic mud flooded into their home and killed him.

He was one of 19 people that died after the Mariana dam collapse in Minas Gerais, Brazil on 5 November 2015.

It is remembered as the worst ever environmental disaster in Brazil.

The dam was owned by Samarco, a joint venture between the mining giants Vale and BHP.

It was used to store waste from iron ore mining. When it burst, it unleashed tens of millions of cubic metres of toxic waste and mud.

The sludge swept through communities, destroying hundreds of people’s homes and poisoning the river.

Gelvana was at work when the disaster happened, while her son was staying at home with his grandmother.

After she heard the news, she ran back to find “everything destroyed”.

“I spent three days not eating or sleeping, I just wanted to find my son,” she said.

After seven days, she heard that rescuers had found Thiago’s body.

“That day my life ended, because I lived for him.”

Gelvana is one of the 620,000 people who are taking BHP to court in the UK over the disaster.

A civil trial beginning in London on 21 October will determine whether the Anglo-Australian company was responsible.

The claimants’ lawyers argued successfully that the trial should be held in London because BHP headquarters “were in the UK at the time of the dam collapse”.

If BHP loses this case, a second stage will take place to determine who is entitled to further damages payments, and how much.

A separate trial against Samarco’s second parent company, Brazilian mining company Vale, is taking place in the Netherlands, with about 70,000 plaintiffs.

Both companies have agreed that if either is found liable for damages, they will split the costs.

Marcos Muniz, known as Marquinhos, moved to one of the towns that was hit – Bento Rodrigues – in 1969, when he was six years old, to the same house where his father was born. Later, as an adult, he built his own house on some more land his father had bought there.

Marquinhos worked for Samarco for almost 30 years before he retired. He had livestock, pigs, and orange trees that he looked forward to tending to in retirement.

“I never imagined this could happen,” he said. “If I had known that in the future this would happen, that the place and the community where I was raised would be destroyed, I would definitely have stopped working there.”

Bento Rodrigues now resembles a ghost town. The houses lie in ruins and are still covered in thick mud. Marquinhos’s house was washed into the nearby lake, and only the very tip of it is now visible.

BHP and Vale have set up an organisation called the Renova Foundation tasked with compensating victims.

It has offered them either cash compensation, or a house in a new city that the foundation has built to replace this town called Novo Bento.

The Renova Foundation says it has disbursed more than $7.7bn (£5.9bn) in repair and compensation actions to date, to more than 445,000 people, with about 50% of that being paid directly to affected people.

But the companies say this does not mean they accept liability for the disaster.

The community were given a say in where the city was built, and the design of their new homes.

Marquinhos has been offered a house there but fears, in this modern city, his way of life and community will be lost.

The new city is still being constructed. It is up on the hills, as opposed to down by a lake, and it has a more modern, urban feel to it.

Darliza das Graças moved there a year ago. She owned a small bar in the “old” Bento Rodrigues and runs a restaurant now.

“Life here is wonderful, it’s good. But at the beginning it was very difficult, there were few residents,” she said.

“Now they are coming, it’s much better.”

More than 100 people have been resettled there so far, but – nine years on – there are still some who have not yet moved in because their house is not ready, or because they have chosen not to.

While Darliza is happy here, she says she preferred her old life because “the community there was more united”. Not everyone from her old community has chosen to live here.

BHP and Vale deny claims of liability in their entirety and argue the UK legal action is “unnecessary as it duplicates matters already covered by the existing and ongoing work of the Renova Foundation and other legal proceedings in Brazil”.

All companies involved say they remain “committed” to repairing the damage caused. BHP and Vale have made a fresh offer to the Brazilian government, expected to be signed on Friday, to pay out more than 170bn reais ($45bn) in compensation.

Samarco added the Renova Foundation has compensated 18 of the 19 families of victims who died and continue to contact families and lawyers in cases that have not been resolved.

Fernanda Lavarello, head of corporate affairs at BHP Brasil, said: “What happened in 2015 was a tragedy. We are sorry about what happened. Since then, BHP never abandoned the country and is doing everything it can to repair the environment and life of those families.”

“Some processes are taking longer than expected, because it is quite complex, but for the families that chose quickly to have their houses built here, their houses are ready, and they have already moved in.”

The UK legal case against BHP began in 2018 when residents and some local companies and authorities decided to seek what their lawyers describe as “fair and full compensation” for the damage suffered.

The claimants’ lawyers – Pogust Goodhead – argue BHP is liable because Samarco was a “legal entity for their production of Iron Ore and BHP were operationally in control of the company and their decisions. This means that BHP knew or ought to have known when key decisions were made which resulted in the collapse of the dam.”

If they win, they expect that the compensation could reach $44bn (£34bn) in what has been described as one of the largest collective environmental lawsuits in the world.

For some, like Marquinhos, this is about trying to receive more compensation than previously offered, so that he can afford to rebuild his life in a place of his choosing.

For some, no amount of money can compensate for what they lost.

“Nothing can bring a life back,” Gelvana says about her son Thiago. “There is no money in the world that can buy a life. I just want justice so that no mother will be sitting here in the same place as me.”

It all started with a friend request.

Kirat Assi thought she’d hit the jackpot when Bobby, a handsome cardiologist, got in touch with her in 2009.

He wasn’t a total stranger. The pair were both from west London’s Sikh community and had friends in common.

So, Kirat accepted, and her online chats developed into deeper conversations before blossoming into a full-on love story.

The two became more and more entangled in each other’s lives but they never met, even after years of correspondence.

Bobby would provide increasingly outlandish excuses. He’d had a stroke. He’d been shot. He had entered witness protection.

The tall tales, though, were always backed up by someone close to Bobby – or so Kirat thought.

In truth, she was the victim of a wildly elaborate and traumatising catfishing scheme.

After nine years, when the excuses ran thin, Kirat finally came face-to-face with Bobby.

But she didn’t recognise the person in front of her.

The person she’d been messaging was her female cousin, Simran, who had been the brains behind everything.

Looking back now, Kirat asks herself: “How could you have been so stupid?”

Kirat’s shocking story was a hit for podcast maker Tortoise in 2021. You can listen to that on BBC Sounds here. Now, three years on, Netflix has recently released a documentary which features her recounting her experience.

She says that telling her story has prompted others to ask the same question: “How can somebody fall for that?”

It’s also prompted abuse from some people online.

“For people who might still think I’m stupid. That’s fine, you’re allowed your opinion,” she tells BBC Asian Network News.

But Kirat says people shouldn’t make assumptions – and countering these was partly what prompted her to tell her story.

“I’m not stupid, I’m not dumb. I’m the one that’s chosen to speak.

“I’m the one that’s put myself out in the firing line and I hope others will come forward,” she says.

Which prompts another question: Why would someone who’d been duped in this way put themselves in the public eye?

• LISTEN: Kirat Assi’s full interview with BBC Asian Network

Kirat, who’s from a Punjabi background, says speaking out was important because she wanted to challenge stigmas in the South Asian community.

“We are so scared to open up about these issues,” she says.

“Because of how a community will be seen by wider society, the victims in our communities keep suffering.”

Kirat says her dad’s reaction to her story is a good example of what she means.

“He doesn’t want to know what happened,” she says.

“Because to face up to what happened, and how horrific it was, it’s going to be painful.

“I love my dad and I know my dad loves me,” she says, adding: “It’s a different set of values that he has been brought up with.”

Kirat says she hasn’t spoken directly to “the real Bobby” about what happened, and puts this down to the community’s reluctance to have difficult conversations.

She wonders if her experience would have been the same if she’d come from another background.

“I’d be making different decisions,” she says.

“Because we have responsibilities towards our community. You have the pressure of family.”

Despite some negative reactions to the re-tellings of Sweet Bobby, Kirat says she would rather deal with questions up-front.

“If you do see me, don’t be scared to approach me,” she says.

“And if you want to say something which might be controversial to me, it’s OK.

“Let’s have a discussion about it,” she says.

When Kirat’s asked if speaking to podcast or documentary producers has given her a sense of closure, she’s less certain.

Simran rejected offers to be involved in the documentary, where she’s played by an actress.

Kirat successfully brought civil action against her cousin, receiving compensation and an apology at the end of the case.

A statement from Simran included in the show says: “This matter involves events that began when she was a schoolgirl. She considers it a private matter and strongly objects to what she describes as numerous unfounded and damaging accusations.”

Kirat says Simran hasn’t faced any criminal charges, and wants her to be held accountable.

“I’m not OK with that person being out there,” says Kirat.

There’s another question that she’s no closer to answering: Why?

Kirat doesn’t think she will ever truly find out what drove the campaign against her.

“I think I’ve long given up,” she says.

“The extent to which that person went, you can’t ever justify it.

“I can’t understand why you didn’t stop… what gave you pleasure from hearing somebody in pain.”

But not having answers is not stopping her from moving forward with life, including dating again.

“I’m working really hard, harder than I should have to right now to rebuild my life and career,” she says.

“I don’t carry the victim mentality around with me. I don’t want to be that person.

“I’m going to carry on working towards goals and dreams.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

A dramatic and unprecedented surge in hoax bomb threats targeting Indian airlines is wreaking havoc on flight schedules, diverting planes and causing widespread disruption.

A video posted on social media last week showed passengers draped in woollens, walking down the icy ladder of an Air India plane into the frigid air of Iqaluit, a remote city in Canada.

The 211 passengers on the Boeing 777, originally en route from Mumbai to Chicago, had been diverted early on 15 October due to a bomb threat.

“We have been stuck at the airport since 5am with 200 passengers… We have no idea what’s happening or what we are supposed to do next… We are completely stranded,” Harit Sachdeva, a passenger, posted on social media. He praised the “kind airport staff” and alleged Air India was not doing enough to inform the passengers.

Mr Sachdeva’s post captured the frustration and anxiety of passengers diverted to an unknown, remote destination. Hours later, a Canadian Air Force plane ended their ordeal by ferrying the stranded passengers to Chicago. Air India confirmed that the flight had been diverted to Iqaluit due to a “security threat posted online”.

The threat was false, mirroring scores of similar hoaxes targeting India’s airlines so far this year. Last week alone, there were at least 90 threats, resulting in diversions, cancellations and delays. In June, 41 airports received hoax bomb threats via email in a single day, prompting heightened security.

For context, between 2014 and 2017, authorities recorded 120 bomb hoax alerts at airports, with nearly half directed at Delhi and Mumbai, the country’s largest airports. This underscores the recurring nature of such threats in recent years, but this year’s surge has been sensational. (It’s hard to know how India compares to other countries as data is not readily available.)

“I am deeply concerned over the recent disruptive acts targeting Indian airlines, affecting domestic and international operations. Such mischievous and unlawful actions are a matter of grave concern. I condemn attempts to compromise safety, security and operational integrity of our aviation sector,” federal aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, said.

So what is going on?

Hoax bomb threats targeting airlines are often linked to malicious intent, attention-seeking, mental health issues, disruption of business operations or a prank, experts say. In 2018, a rash of jokes about bombs by airplane passengers in Indonesia led to flight disruptions. Even fliers have proved to be culprits: last year, a frustrated passenger tried to delay a SpiceJet flight by calling in a bomb hoax alert after missing his check-in at an airport in India’s Bihar.

These hoaxes end up wreaking havoc in one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. More than 150 million passengers flew domestically in India last year, according to the civil aviation ministry. More than 3,000 flights arrive and depart every day in the country from more than 150 operational airports, including 33 international airports.

Last week’s hoaxes peaked even as India’s airlines carried 484,263 passengers on 14 October, a record on a single day for the country. India has just under 700 commercial passenger planes in service, and an order backlog of more than 1,700 planes, according to Rob Morris of Cirium, a consultancy. “All this would certainly render India the fastest growing commercial aircraft market today,” says Mr Morris.

Consider the consequences of a bomb threat alert on an airline.

If the plane is in the air, it must divert to the nearest airport – like the Air India flight that diverted last week to Canada or a Frankfurt-bound Vistara flight from Mumbai that diverted to Turkey in September. Some involve fighter jets to be scrambled to escort planes reporting threats like what happened with a Heathrow-bound Air India flight over Norfolk and a Singapore-bound Air India Express last week.

Once on the ground, passengers disembark, and all baggage and cargo and catering undergo thorough searches. This process can take several hours, and often the same crew cannot continue flying due to duty hour limitations. As a result, a replacement crew must be arranged, further prolonging the delay.

“All of this has significant cost and network implications. Every diverted or delayed flight incurs substantial expenses, as grounded aircraft become money-losing assets. Delays lead to cancellations, and schedules are thrown off balance.” says Sidharath Kapur, an independent aviation expert.

The dramatic rise in bomb threats on social media from anonymous accounts has complicated efforts to identify perpetrators. The motives remain unclear, as does whether the threats come from a single individual, a group, or are simply copycat acts.

Last week, Indian authorities arrested a 17-year-old school dropout for creating a social media account to issue such threats. His motivations remain unclear, but he is believed to have targeted four flights – three international – resulting in two delays, one diversion and one cancellation. Investigators suspect that some posts may have originated from London and Germany after tracing IP addresses.

Clearly, tracking down hoaxers presents a significant challenge. While Indian law mandates life imprisonment for threats to airport safety or service disruption, this punishment is too severe for hoax calls and would likely not withstand legal scrutiny. Reports suggest the government is considering placing offenders on a no-fly list and introducing new laws that could impose a five-year prison term.

Ultimately, such hoax threats can cause serious anxiety for passengers. “My aunt called to ask if she should take her booked flight given these threats. ‘Should I take a train?’ she asked. I told her, ‘Please continue to fly’,” says an aviation consultant, who preferred to remain unnamed. The threats continue to disrupt lives and sow fear.

Alcohol smuggler Guled Diriye is exhausted.

He has just returned from his trip transporting contraband from the Ethiopian border.

The 29-year-old slumps in his chair inside a colonial-style villa battered by years of fighting in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu – a city once known as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

His sandals are covered in a potent orange dust – the residue from the desert.

Mr Diriye’s dark eyes droop. The bags underneath speak of sleepless nights, the hours of tension traversing the dangerous roads and negotiating checkpoints with armed men.

There is also the haunting memory of a fellow smuggler who was shot dead.

“In this country, everyone is struggling and looking for a way out. And I found my way by making regular trips by road from the Ethiopian border to Mogadishu,” he says, explaining that smuggling was a means to support his family in a tough economic climate.

The use and distribution of alcohol is illegal. Somalia’s laws must comply with Sharia (Islamic law), which forbids alcohol, but it has not stopped a growing demand, particularly among young people in many parts of the country.

Mr Diriye’s neighbour Abshir, knowing he had fallen on hard times as a minibus-taxi driver, introduced him to the precarious world of alcohol smuggling.

Rickshaws began to take over the city, pushing minibus drivers out of business.

Both were childhood friends who had sheltered together in the same camp in 2009 during the height of the insurgency in Mogadishu – he was someone he could trust.

“I began picking up boxes of alcohol at designated drop points in Mogadishu on [his] behalf and manoeuvring through the city and offloading them at designated locations. I didn’t realise it at first but this was my introduction into smuggling.”

His involvement snowballed and Mr Diriye soon found himself navigating from the porous frontier with Ethiopia through Somalia’s rural hinterlands.

He understands that he is breaking the law, but says the poverty that he finds himself in overrides that.

The smuggling journey begins in Somali border towns such as Abudwak, Balanbale, Feerfeer and Galdogob.

“Alcohol mostly originates in [Ethiopia’s capital] Addis Ababa and makes it to the city of Jigjiga, in the Ogaden region,” Mr Diriye says.

The Ogaden or, as it is officially known in Ethiopia, the Somali region, shares a 1,600km (990-mile) border with Somalia. People on both sides share ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious ties.

Once the alcohol is loaded, it is moved across the plains of the Somali region, and then smuggled across the border into Somalia.

The border town of Galdogob is a major hub for trade and travel and has been hit hard by the flow of alcohol being smuggled from Ethiopia.

Tribal elders have raised concerns over alcohol-related violence.

“Alcohol causes so many evils [such as shootings],” says Sheikh Abdalla Mohamed Ali, the chairman of the local tribal council in the town.

“[It] has been seized and destroyed on multiple occasions but it’s like living next to a factory. It keeps putting out more and more, no matter what we do.”

“Our town will always be in the midst of danger.”

But for the smugglers the goal is to get the alcohol to the capital.

“I drive a truck that transports vegetables, potatoes and other food products. When the truck is loaded up it’s filled with whatever I’m transporting, but I make the most money from the alcohol on board,” Mr Diriye says.

Sometimes smugglers cross into Ethiopia to pick it up and at other times they receive it at the border. But whichever approach is taken, concealment is a crucial part of the profession as the risks from being caught are immense.

“The loader’s job is the most important. Even more important than driving. He’s tasked with concealing the alcohol in our truck, with whatever we have on board. Without him, I wouldn’t be able to move around so easily — at least not without getting caught.

“The average box of alcohol I move has 12 bottles. I usually transport anywhere from 50 to 70 boxes per trip. Usually half the load on my truck is filled with alcohol.”

Large swathes of south-central Somalia are run by armed groups, where the government has little to no control: militias, bandits and the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab roam with impunity.

“You can never travel on your own. It’s too risky. Death is always on our minds,” Mr Diriye says. But that concern does not get in the way of business and there is a brutal pragmatism to thinking about the make-up of the team.

“If I get wounded in an attack on the road, there has to be a back-up who can continue the journey. Everyone knows how to drive and knows the roads well.”

Smugglers drive on dirt tracks and roads that have not been renovated in decades. Landmines and unexploded ordnances left behind from previous conflicts are also an issue.

“I travel through at least eight to 10 towns to reach Mogadishu. But we don’t count the towns, we count the checkpoints and who mans them,” Mr Diriye says.

They encounter various clan militias with different allegiances, either lingering in the distance or at roadblocks.

“In case we get jammed up by a clan militia, if one of us is from the same clan as that militia or even a similar sub-clan, it increases our chances of survival. This is why all three of us are from different clans.”

He painfully recalls: “I’ve encountered numerous attacks.

“One of the guys that works with me is relatively new. He replaced my last helper who was killed two years ago.”

Mr Diriye had been driving in suffocating heat for six hours, so decided to nap, passing the wheel to his helper.

“While I was sleeping in the back, I heard a large burst of gunfire that suddenly woke me up. We where surrounded by militiamen. My loader was screaming as he ducked in the passenger seat.” The substitute driver was killed.

Once the commotion ceased, the loader and Mr Diriye picked up their dead colleague from the front seat and put him in the back of the truck.

“I’ve never seen so much blood in my life. I had to wipe [it] away from the steering wheel and keep on driving. In all my years, nothing prepared me for what I saw that day.”

As the pair drove off and got a good distance away from the militiamen, they pulled over to the side of the road and laid his body there.

“We didn’t even have a sheet to cover his body, so I took off my long-sleeved buttoned-up shirt and made do with it.

“It was a difficult decision but I knew I couldn’t keep driving around smuggling alcohol with a dead body in the truck. We had a few government checkpoints up ahead and I couldn’t jeopardise my load or my freedom.”

Two years later he says the guilt of leaving the body by the road still haunts him.

He left behind a family, and Mr Diriye is unsure they even know the truth surrounding the circumstances of his disappearance and death.

The danger that Mr Diriye faces is a recurring reality that many smugglers endure while illicitly ferrying alcohol from Ethiopia to Mogadishu, in order to quench the growing demand.

Dahir Barre, 41 has a slim build with noticeable scars on his face that appear to tell a story on their own. He has a dark sense of humour and seems hardened by the near-decade of smuggling that enables him to bypass the possible consequences of what he does.

“We face a lot of problems and dangers but still continue to drive despite the risk due to the poor living conditions in Somalia,” he says.

Mr Barre has been smuggling alcohol from Ethiopia since 2015 and says lack of opportunity made worse by years of poverty pushed him into the dangerous trade.

“I used to do security for a hotel in the city centre. I was armed with an AK-47 and was tasked with patting people down at the entrance.”

Long nights in a dangerous job with meagre pay did not feel worth it.

“One hundred dollars a month to stand in the way of potential car bombs that might plough through the front entrance sounds crazy now that I think of it.”

One of the day-shift guards then put him in touch with friends from the border region and “I’ve been travelling these roads ever since”.

“Back in 2015 I was only getting $150 per trip, compared to $350 per trip now and those days it was far riskier because al-Shabab had control over more territory, so you risked more encounters with them.

“Even the bandits and militias were more dangerous back then.

“If you had red or brown stained teeth, the militias would assume you chewed khat and smoked cigarettes, meaning you had money so they would abduct you and hold you for ransom.

“As drivers we’ve been through a lot and the danger still exists,” Mr Barre says.

If they are caught by al-Shabab fighters then it can be most dangerous since the armed group has a zero-tolerance policy on contraband, especially alcohol. The Islamist insurgents set the vehicle on fire and then detain the smugglers before fining them.

Other armed men can be more easily bribed with money or liquor.

It takes an average of seven to nine days to reach Mogadishu from the Ethiopian border. The smugglers then make their way to a pre-arranged drop-off point.

“When we arrive, a group of men will show up and unload the regular food products into a separate truck, then leave. Afterwards, once that’s done, another individual will arrive, sometimes accompanied by more than one vehicle and they’ll take the boxes of alcohol,” Mr Diriye says.

“But it doesn’t end there. Once it leaves my possession, it’ll pass through more hands, eventually ending up with local dealers in the city, who can be reached with a simple phone call.”

Mr Diriye often thinks about his entry into smuggling, and where his future may lie.

“My neighbour Abshir who initially got me into smuggling alcohol, stopped doing it himself three years ago.”

Abshir offered his nephew, an unemployed graduate at the time, a job in smuggling. But he was killed on his third trip in an ambush by bandits.

“Afterwards Abshir quit smuggling. He became religious and turned to God. I rarely see him any more.”

Despite the dangers, Mr Diriye says it will not deter him.

“Death is something that is predestined. I can’t let fear come in the way of making a living. Sure, sometimes I want to throw the keys on the table and start afresh but it’s not that easy. Temptation is everywhere and so is poverty.”

• PODCAST: The impact of secret drinking in Somali border towns
• Inside Somalia’s beauty pageant
• Ground-breaking Somali TV drama shatters taboos
• Somalia’s hidden world of sex work
• Why Somalia’s once-banned boxing thrives in the former warzone
• A quick guide to Somalia

It’s perhaps no surprise that the décor of TV BRA’s new studio is shocking pink.

It’s the favourite colour of two of the station’s reporters, Emily Ann Riedel – who is wearing a pink top when I visit – and Petter Bjørkmo. “I even had pink hair!” Bjørkmo tells me, laughing, before adding that he had to get rid of it “because I am a reporter – reporters have to look decent.”

All the reporters at TV BRA – which means “TV Good” – are disabled or autistic; most have a learning disability.

• For an easy English version of this article, click here

Every week, they put together an hour-long magazine programme covering news, entertainment and sport, which is broadcast on a major Norwegian streaming platform, TV2 play, as well as TV BRA’s own app and website.

The show is presented in simple Norwegian and is slower than mainstream news reports, making it much easier to follow. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people tune in every week.

The station’s 10 reporters are dotted around the country, where they work as local news correspondents.

Riedel, who has Down’s Syndrome, lives and works in the seaside city of Stavanger. She has had to learn to contain her effusive personality.

“I have to follow the script and not talk about personal stuff – because here is about the news. When I work here I have to be very professional.”

Although she has been at the station for years, some things are still novel, like the mascara she wears before going on camera, and which she says weighs down her eyelids.

“I don’t need it because I look beautiful,” Riedel tells me with a smile. “I have inner beauty and outside beauty.”

“Yeah that’s right,” chuckles Camilla Kvalheim, the managing editor of the station – and also, currently, make-up artist. “But in the studio, with heavy lights and everything, you look paler.”

Kvalheim and a small technical crew who are not disabled produce and edit all the reports.

Although Riedel and her colleagues have mild learning impairments – they can mostly speak English well, and travel without support – some things are a challenge.

I watch as the team tries to get to grips with a new autocue system. The presenters frequently have to read a line many times to get a good take.

“Sometimes it can be difficult to say what’s in the cue cards, so we have to do it again and again,” says Kvalheim. She also has to provide on-the-job training for her team, who did not study journalism at university before joining the TV station.

Nevertheless her expectations of her team are high.

“She says: ‘Can you please do that again? Can you repeat what you said? Can you look directly into the camera, I want you to be perfect – this is very important,’” says Riedel.

“And when she is being proud, when we are finished, then she says: ‘I like this part! I like this part! That is what I want to see! Use your energy to be the best that you can be!’”

It’s been pointed out that people with learning disabilities can be held back by overly positive feedback, which stops them from developing their skills. That is not an issue here.

“If we are going to be seen by the audience we have to have a professional look,” says Kvalheim unapologetically. “If they are going to be respected as reporters and journalists they need to follow the ethical standards of other news organisations.”

The origins of TV BRA began more than a decade ago, when she was working as a teacher for people with a learning disability at a residential care home in Bergen, and decided to pursue a passion for filmmaking. She found that as soon as she got a camera out, the dynamic between her and the people she was working with changed.

“Suddenly when we were working together on those films, we were a crew, we were a team. It wasn’t me over them – we were equal,” Kvalheim recalls.

Finding that her creative collaborators had much to say about the world, she was encouraged to continue the work, and it steadily built momentum.

Now it is a national network, with a proper studio – but Kvalheim admits that her reporters are not paid the same sort of money as their peers at other networks.

The station receives state funding, and has revenue from supplying TV2 with a weekly show, but money is extremely tight.

A good job, then, that the team are motivated by things other than money. In Norway, as in every country, people with learning disabilities face issues ranging from low employment rates to access to support and housing. Being able to understand the news empowers the wider community to campaign on these issues.

A recent report from Petter Bjørkmo is a case in point. He visited a woman with more severe learning disabilities, who lives in sheltered accommodation in Trondheim. “The city – the government – wants to take away her shopping,” he told me, meaning her budget to be accompanied to the shops by a support worker.

“They told her that she has to go online. But she can’t! Because she can’t speak very well, it’s hard for her to get online to buy food. She needs help!”

Bjørkmo’s report a got a “massive response” from viewers, says Kvalheim, though it did not cause the local government to rethink their position.

“TV BRA is very important,” agrees Svein Andre Hofsø, another reporter. “Because we are talking about people with a disability, and what are our rights in real life.”

Hofsø, a roving news reporter based in Oslo, was well-known even before joining TV BRA.

He took the title role in a 2013 film, Detective Downs. Before the last parliamentary election, in 2021, Andre got the chance to don his detective’s fedora again, but this time his job was to grill various politicians on their policies in his tongue-in-cheek style.

One such sequence shows him sitting on a bench outside the parliament building in Oslo, pretending to read a newspaper. A politician, Jonas Gahr Støre – the leader of the Labour Party – strolls outside but behind a pillar, a stooge is waiting to ambush him. As Hofsø looks on, the stooge throws a butterfly net over the unsuspecting Støre.

In the next scene, we see Støre in a chair in a basement. Hofsø shines an angle-poised lamp in his face, and shows him photos of disabled people looking sad and lonely. “If we vote for you, what will you do for us?”

At this point, Støre sets out his policies for disabled people. And after the election, he did indeed become prime minister.

Camilla Kvalheim laughs when she recalls the encounter. “That was very funny. Every time we’ve met him since, he says, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in that butterfly net?!’”

On the day I visit TV BRA, they are paid a visit from Silje Hjemdal, a local lawmaker for the right-wing Progress Party.

A team of four reporters quiz her on everything from roads to immigration, and what she thinks of plans for the lavish new national theatre in Oslo (being from Bergen, she has some doubts about the project). Kvalheim is there too, steering the questions.

Hjemdal’s answers are serious, but there is also a warmth to the encounter; she is a long-term supporter of the station .“A lot of politicians now know what TV BRA is, so I would say it’s a big, big progress, just the five last years,” she tells me.

TV BRA is not the only TV news station presented by people with learning disabilities. Similar, albeit smaller, programmes exist in Iceland and Denmark. Meanwhile Slovenia, Holland and several other countries offer an “easy news” service – simplified reports, though not presented by people with a learning disability.

For viewers of TV BRA, this kind of service is essential. “I think this TV station is really important for our community,” says Anne-Britt Ekerhovd, a fan of the station, who has a learning disability. “They explain things really well. In different news like NRK, they explain it too hard for us to understand. TV BRA is much easier to understand.”

Another fan of the station, Espen Giertsen, agrees: “There is something special about this – they are making TV in a new way.”

TV BRA’s reporters are very conscious of the important role they have in serving this often-neglected audience.

“If they have tonnes of weight on themselves, I want them to lift it up, so they can be free, so they can feel like they are accepted,” says Emily Ann Riedel.

People Fixing the World – The pioneering TV news service

JK Rowling has revealed she turned down two offers of a peerage in the House of Lords and would turn down a third.

The author’s remarks came after Conservative Party leader hopeful Kemi Badenoch said she would give Rowling a peerage for her stance on gender – a position critics have described as being transphobic.

The Harry Potter author said in a post on X that she had been offered peerages “once under Labour and once under the Tories”, adding she “still wouldn’t take it” if offered the honour for a third time.

Most peers sitting in the House of Lords are appointed by the monarch on the prime minister’s advice, with nominations vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

Badenoch praised Rowling in an interview with the Talk TV online streaming service, saying they both believed protections for women should be based not on self-identified gender but rather biological sex.

The MP for North West Essex said of Rowling: “I don’t know whether she would take it, but I certainly would give her a peerage.”

The former equalities minister went on to praise Baroness Cass for her review of NHS children’s gender services – work Badenoch “managed to get” the doctor a peerage for.

Writing on X, Rowling said: “It’s considered bad form to talk about this but I’ll make an exception given the very particular circumstances.

“I’ve already turned down a peerage twice, once under Labour and once under the Tories. If offered one a third time, I still wouldn’t take it.”

She said in an apparent reference to Badenoch: “It’s not her, it’s me.”

Rowling was awarded an OBE in 2001, and was made a Companion of Honour in 2017 by Prince William, then the Duke of Cambridge, for her work.

While the precise dates the author was offered the two peerages are unclear, the first would have come in the New Labour years, when Rowling was still writing the Harry Potter series.

The final book in Rowling’s best-selling wizard series was published in 2007. In the years since, she has written articles, plays and a series of crime books for adults under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

The crime series, known collectively under the title Cormoran Strike, were published throughout the 2010s – during which time Rowling was presumably offered a peerage for the second time.

If she had taken up a seat in the House of Lords, the author would most likely have been given the title of Baroness Rowling – and if she found the time to attend sessions, she would have a say in the work of Parliament’s second chamber, considering draft laws and potentially participating in select committees.

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to read top political analysis, gain insight from across the UK and stay up to speed with the big moments. It’ll be delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said he will give away $1m (£766,000) a day to a registered voter in key swing states until the US presidential election on 5 November.

The winner will be chosen at random from those who sign a pro-US Constitution petition by Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which he set up to support Republican nominee Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

The first lottery-style cheque was given away to a surprised attendee at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on Saturday night. Another cheque was handed out on Sunday.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who supports Kamala Harris, called Mr Musk’s strategy “deeply concerning.”

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

Shapiro told NBC News’ Meet the Press that law enforcement should potentially look at the payments.

The contest is open to voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, all key battleground states that will ultimately decide the White House election.

Election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his personal Election Law Blog that he believed Mr Musk’s offer was “clearly illegal”.

Federal law states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence.

Though Mr Musk is technically asking voters to sign a form, Mr Hasen questioned the intent behind the strategy.

“Who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal,” said Mr Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law school.

Those who sign the petition – which pledges to support free speech and gun rights – must submit their contact details, potentially allowing America PAC to contact them about their vote.

Both Mr Musk and America PAC have been approached for comment.

Campaigns and political action committees rely on tactics like petition signing, survey requests, or merchandise purchases to build massive databases of voter information. That data can then be used more accurately to target voters, or raise funds from supporters who are already onboard.

In Pennsylvania, Mr Musk is giving voters $100 for signing the petition, plus another $100 for each person they refer who signs. Voters in other battleground states get $47 per referral.

But the strategy may be covered by a loophole under US election law because no-one is being directly paid to vote – despite introducing money into a process that could identify likely Trump voters.

In the US, it is illegal to provide payments to get people to vote – not only for a certain candidate, but to simply cast a ballot.

The rule prompted icecream-maker Ben & Jerry’s to give its product free to everyone on election day in 2008, having initially planned to limit it just to those with an “I voted” sticker.

While campaigning on Sunday, Trump was asked about Mr Musk’s giveaway.

“I haven’t followed that,” he said, adding that he speaks to Mr Musk often and he is a “friend”.

The founder of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly Twitter, has emerged as a key Trump supporter.

Mr Musk launched America PAC in July with the aim of supporting the former president’s campaign.

He has so far donated $75m (£57.5m) to the group, which has quickly become a central player in Trump’s election bid.

The Trump campaign is highly reliant on outside groups such as America PAC to canvas voters.

A statement on the group’s website reads: “America PAC was created to support these key values: Secure Borders, Safe Cities, Sensible spending, Fair Justice System, Free Speech, Right to Self-Protection.”

Mr Musk said he wants to get “over a million, maybe two million, voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment”.

“I think [it] sends a crucial message to our elected politicians,” he added.

Mr Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $248bn (£191bn), according to US business magazine Forbes.

The premiere of a new film about Pharrell Williams was briefly disrupted by animal rights protesters at the London Film Festival on Sunday.

A screening of Piece By Piece, a biopic of the musician told using Lego, closed the festival, but was delayed after campaigners shouted and hung banners over the balcony in the Royal Festival Hall.

They shouted “stop the torture, stop the pain”, in reference to the use of animal skins and fur by fashion house Louis Vuitton, where Williams serves as men’s creative director.

The singer and producer, who was on stage at the time, remained calm and applauded the activists, telling them: “God bless you.”

Addressing the rest of the audience as the protesters were being removed, he added: “The changes they seek don’t happen overnight, it takes a lot of planning, and we are working on those things.

“But they want to be heard, so we heard them.”

Williams has been creative director of the Louis Vuitton men’s collection since February 2023.

BBC News has asked Louis Vuitton for comment.

This is the second major screening of the singer’s biopic to be disrupted, after animal rights groups also targeted the movie’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last month.

After the London screening, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) claimed responsibility.

They said: “We are calling him out for using wild-animal skins and fur in his Louis Vuitton designs. It’s time for him to stop supporting cruelty!”

At the previous screening in Toronto, a woman ran on stage and shouted: “Pharrell, stop supporting killing animals for fashion.”

The singer replied: “You know what? You’re right. God bless you. It’s OK. Everybody give her a round of applause please.”

Once she was removed, Williams told the audience: “You know, Rome wasn’t made in a day and sometimes when you have plans to change things and situations, you have to get in a position of power and influence where you can change people’s minds and help progression.”

Williams is known for hits such as Happy and for being one half of production duo the Neptunes, who worked on some of the biggest hits of the last two decades.

Piece by Piece, directed by Morgan Neville, uses Lego bricks to depict Williams’s early life in Virginia through to his rise to fame.

The film, released in the UK next month, has received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the “inventive” take on the traditional biopic.

Egypt has been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) – an achievement hailed by the UN public health agency as “truly historic”.

“Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Egyptian authorities launched their first efforts to stamp out the deadly mosquito-borne infectious disease nearly 100 years.

Certification is granted when a country proves that the transmission chain is interrupted for at least the previous three consecutive years. Malaria kills at least 600,000 people every year, nearly all of them in Africa.

In a statement on Sunday, the WHO praised “the Egyptian government and people” for their efforts to “end a disease that has been present in the country since ancient times”.

It said Egypt was the third country to be certified in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region, following the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Globally, 44 countries and one territory have reached this milestone.

But the WHO said the certification was only “the beginning of a new phase”, urging Egypt to be on the alert to preserve its malaria-free status.

To get the WHO certification, a country must demonstrate the capacity to prevent the re-establishment of transmission.

The UN public health agency said first efforts to limit human-mosquito contact in Egypt began in the 1920s when it banned rice cultivation and agricultural crops near homes.

Malaria is caused by a complex parasite which is spread by mosquito bites.

Vaccines are now being used in some places – but monitoring the disease and avoiding mosquito bites are the most effective ways to prevent malaria.

Former military general Prabowo Subianto has been sworn in as Indonesia’s president, as he announced the country’s largest cabinet since the 1960s.

The 73-year-old, who had been dogged by allegations of human rights abuse for decades, was inagurated on Sunday as the country’s eighth president.

This spells the end of an era under former leader Joko Widodo, known locally as Jokowi, who presided over a decade of economic growth and infrastructure development.

Having failed twice to become president, Prabowo finally clawed his way to the highest office after winning over 58% of the vote in February’s elections, against two rivals.

Prabowo was sworn in with his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s eldest son.

More than 30 leaders attended the inauguration, including British foreign minister David Lammy, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

He named 48 ministers and 58 vice-ministers in his new cabinet, compared with 34 ministers and 30 vice-ministers under Jokowi. They were officially sworn in on Monday afternoon.

Some observers believe Prabowo’s cabinet make-up – with 17 of the 48 ministers re-appointed from Jokowi’s cabinet – was a “political reward” to his predecessor, whose tacit support is said to have propelled Prabowo’s electoral victory.

The re-appointments include that of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto.

“It seems that Prabowo wants to repay those who supported him politically rather than prioritising institutional reforms,” public policy scholar Lina Miftahul Jannah told BBC Indonesian.

A “bloated cabinet” can complicate bureaucracy and lengthen the policy-making process, she said, adding that re-organising the different ministries would also be resource intensive.

“That costs a lot, in the sense that it’s not just the money spent, but the energy as well,” Dr Jannah.

Some see the lineup as a sign of policy continuity in South East Asia’s largest economy.

The re-appointments also show that Prabowo “does not want to take further risks”, political scientist Burhanuddin Muhtadi told Reuters.

“That’s why he chose key figures that served under Jokowi,” he said. Prabowo had promised during his campaign to continue Jokowi’s development and infrastructure-focussed policies.

In his inauguration speech on Sunday, Prabowo vowed to eradicate corruption, poverty, and said he would be president for all Indonesians.

“We must always realise that a free nation is where the people are free,” said the president in a fiery speech that lasted almost an hour.

“They must be freed of fear, poverty, hunger, ignorance, oppression, suffering.”

On the foreign policy front, he affirmed Indonesia’s longstanding policy of non alignment – where the country does not ally itself with major power blocs.

“We will stand against all colonialism and we will defend the interests of oppressed people worldwide,” he said.

Prabowo’s new cabinet will kick off their term with a three-day retreat at a military academy in central Java.

The ministers and their deputies will sleep in tents, and the retreat is aimed at bonding the cabinet and helping members understand Prabowo’s vision, Reuters cited the migrant protection minister Abdul Kadir Karding as saying.

Prabowo will make his first global appearances at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit happening next month and at the G20 summit right after.

TikTok owner, ByteDance, says it has sacked an intern for “maliciously interfering” with the training of one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models.

But the firm rejected claims about the extent of the damage caused by the unnamed individual, saying they “contain some exaggerations and inaccuracies”.

It comes after reports about the incident spread over the weekend on social media.

The Chinese technology giant’s Doubao ChatGPT-like generative AI model is the country’s most popular AI chatbot.

“The individual was an intern with the [advertising] technology team and has no experience with the AI Lab,” ByteDance said in a statement.

“Their social media profile and some media reports contain inaccuracies.”

Its commercial online operations, including its large language AI models, were unaffected by the intern’s actions, the company added.

ByteDance also denied reports that the incident caused more than $10m (£7.7m) of damage by disrupting an AI training system made up of thousands of powerful graphics processing units (GPU).

As well as firing the person in August, ByteDance said it had informed the intern’s university and industry bodies about the incident.

ByteDance operates some of the world’s most popular social media apps, including TikTok and its Chinese-equivalent Douyin.

It is widely seen as a leader when it comes to algorithm development due to how appealing its apps are to users.

Like many of its peers in China and around the world, the social media giant is investing heavily in AI.

It uses the technology to power its Doubao chatbot as well as many other applications, including a text-to-video tool called Jimeng.

South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador, seeking the “immediate withdrawal” of North Korean troops which it says are being trained to fight in Ukraine.

About 1,500 North Korean soldiers, including those from the special forces, have already arrived in Russia, according to Seoul’s spy agency.

In a meeting with the ambassador Georgiy Zinoviev, South Korea’s vice-foreign minister Kim Hong-kyun denounced the move and warned that Seoul will “respond with all measures available”.

Mr Zinoviev said he would relay the concerns, but stressed that the cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is “within the framework of international law”.

It is unclear what cooperation he was referring to. The ambassador did not confirm allegations that North Korea has sent troops to fight with Russia’s military.

Later on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters the cooperation between the two nations is “not directed against third countries”.

He added it “should not worry anyone”, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Pyongyang has not commented on the allegations.

South Korea has long accused the North of supplying weapons to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine, but it says the current situation has gone beyond the transfer of military materials.

Some South Korean media reports have suggested as many as12,000 North Korean soldiers are expected to be deployed.

“[This] not only gravely threatens South Korea but the international community,” Kim said on Monday.

Moscow and Pyongyang have stepped up cooperation after their leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un signed a security pact in June, will pledges that their countries will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

Last week, Putin introduced a bill to ratify the pact.

Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to fight with Russia “would mark a significant escalation” in the conflict, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Monday.

In a phone call with Rutte on Monday, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol urged the alliance to explore “concrete countermeasures”, adding that he will take steps to strengthen security cooperation between South Korea, Ukraine and Nato.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy, who is visiting Seoul, called Russia’s actions “reckless and illegal”, adding that London would work with Seoul to respond, according to Yoon’s office.

The United States and Japan have also condemned the deepening military ties between North Korea and Russia.

Meanwhile, in response to a BBC question about the alleged North Korea-Russia cooperation, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that China hopes all parties will work to de-escalate the situation and aim for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis.

Some defence experts told BBC Korean that North Korea’s involvement could complicate the war.

“North Korea’s involvement could open the door for greater international participation in the conflict, potentially drawing in more countries,” said Moon Seong-mok from the Korea National Strategy Institute.

“The international community will likely increase sanctions and pressure on both Russia and North Korea, but it remains to be seen whether North Korea’s involvement will truly benefit either country,” Dr Moon said.

But others believe the Russian military units will have difficulties incorporating North Korean troops into their frontlines.

Apart from the language barrier, the North Korean army has no recent combat experiences, they said.

Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express, said the North Korean soldiers could be asked to guard sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which will free up Russian units to fight elsewhere.

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

Piece of advice for you – never buy a huge amount of champagne unless you’re absolutely certain it’s worth celebrating.

In November 2016, Russian ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky was so excited by Donald Trump’s victory, and so sure that it would transform US-Russian relations, he splashed out on 132 bottles of bubbly down at the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and partied away (in his party offices) in front of the TV cameras.

He wasn’t the only one celebrating.

The day after Trump’s surprise White House win, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state channel RT, tweeted her intention to drive around Moscow with an American flag in her car window.

And I’ll never forget the moment a Russian official told me she had smoked a cigar and drunk a bottle of champagne (yes, MORE champagne) to toast Trump winning.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump winning?

In Moscow, expectations were high that Trump would scrap sanctions against Russia; perhaps, even, recognise the Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine, as part of Russia.

“The value of Trump was that he never preached on human rights in Russia,” explains Konstantin Remchukov, the owner and editor-in-chief of newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

It didn’t take long for all that fizz to go flat.

“Trump introduced the heaviest sanctions against Russia at that time,” recalls Remchukov.

“By the end of his term, a lot of people were disappointed in his presidency.”

Which is why, eight years on – publicly at least – Russian officials are more cautious about the prospect of a second Trump term.

President Vladimir Putin has even come out and backed the Democratic Party candidate, although that “endorsement” was widely interpreted as a Kremlin joke (or Kremlin trolling).

Putin claimed he liked Kamala Harris’s “infectious” laugh.

But you don’t need to be a seasoned political pundit to understand that out on the campaign trail it’s what Trump has been saying, not Harris, that’s guaranteed to put a smile on Putin’s face.

For instance, Trump’s criticism of the scale of US military assistance for Ukraine, his apparent reluctance to blame Putin for Russia’s full-scale invasion and, during the presidential debate, his refusal to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war.

By contrast, Kamala Harris has argued that support for Ukraine is in America’s “strategic interest” and she has referred to Putin as “a murderous dictator”.

Not that Russian state TV has been particularly complimentary about her either. A few weeks ago one of Russia’s most acerbic news anchors was completely dismissive of Harris’s political abilities. He suggested she would be better off hosting a TV cookery show.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ON THE GROUND: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime

There’s another possible outcome that may well suit the Kremlin – a super tight election, followed by a contested result. An America consumed by post-election chaos, confusion and confrontation would have less time to focus on foreign affairs, including the war in Ukraine.

US-Russian relations soured under Barack Obama, grew worse under Donald Trump and, in the words of the recently departed Russian ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov, they are “falling apart” under Joe Biden.

Washington lays the blame fully on Moscow.

It was just eight months after Putin and Biden met for a summit in Geneva that the Kremlin leader ordered the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Not only did the Biden administration send a tsunami of sanctions Russia’s way, but US military aid has been crucial in helping Kyiv survive more than two-and-a-half years of Russia’s war. Amongst the advanced weaponry America has supplied Ukraine are Abrams tanks and HIMARS rocket systems.

It’s hard to believe now that there was a time, not so long ago, when Russia and the US pledged to work as partners to strengthen global security.

In the late 1980s Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev formed a geo-political double-act to slash their countries’ respective nuclear arsenals.

If there was one thing Reagan seemed to enjoy as much as nuclear disarmament it was reciting Russian proverbs to Gorbachev in broken Russian (“Never buy 132 bottles of champagne unless you’re certain it’s worth celebrating” would have been a good one).

In 1991 the First Ladies of the USSR and America, Raisa Gorbacheva and Barbara Bush, unveiled an unusual monument in Moscow – a mother duck with eight ducklings.

It was a replica of a sculpture in Boston Public Gardens and was presented to Moscow as a symbol of friendship between Soviet and American children.

It’s still popular with Muscovites today. Russians flock to Novodevichy Park to pose for photos with the bronze birds, although few visitors know the back story of superpower “duck diplomacy”.

Like US-Russian relations themselves, the ducks have taken a few knocks. On one occasion some of them were stolen and had to be replaced.

It’s to the Moscow mallard and her ducklings I head to find out what Russians think of America and of the US election.

“I want America to disappear,” says angry angler Igor who’s fishing in a nearby pond. “It has started so many wars in the world. The US was our enemy in Soviet times and it still is. It doesn’t matter who’s president.”

America as Russia’s eternal enemy – that’s a worldview often reflected here in the state media. Is Igor so angry because he gets his news from Russian TV? Or perhaps it’s because he hasn’t caught many fish.

Most of the people I chat to here do not see America as an evil adversary.

“I’m all for peace and friendship,” says Svetlana. “But my friend in America is scared to call me now. Maybe there’s no free speech there. Or, perhaps, it’s here in Russia that there’s no freedom of speech. I don’t know.”

• Book claims Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin
• WATCH: Trump sidesteps question on Putin phone calls

“Our countries and our two peoples should be friends,” says Nikita, “without wars and without competing to see who has more missiles. I prefer Trump. When he was president there weren’t any big wars.”

Despite the differences between Russia and America there is one thing the two countries have in common – they have always had male presidents.

Can Russians ever see that changing?

“I think it would be great if a woman became president,” says Marina.

“I would be happy to vote for a woman president here [in Russia]. I’m not saying it would be better or worse. But it would be different.”

• Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• What the world thought of Harris-Trump debate

India and China have agreed on patrolling arrangements to de-escalate tensions along a disputed Himalayan border which has seen deadly hand-to-hand clashes in recent years, India’s top diplomat has said.

Vikram Misri said on Monday the two sides have agreed on “disengagement and resolution of issues in these [border] areas that had arisen in 2020”.

He was referring to the Galwan Valley clashes – the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975, in which both sides suffered casualties.

Relations between the neighbours have been strained since then.

“An agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” Mr Misri said.

Mr Misri, however, did not give any details about the disengagement process and whether it would cover all points of conflict along the disputed border.

The Indian foreign secretary’s statement comes just a day before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Russia for a meeting of Brics nations which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Mr Misri didn’t confirm if a bilateral meeting between Mr Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping was on the agenda.

His remarks on Monday mark a major development between the two nuclear-armed nations since the Galwan clashes.

Troops in the Galwan Valley fought with clubs and sticks because of 1996 agreement between the two countries that prohibited the use of guns and explosives near the border.

Several rounds of talks between their diplomats and military leaders in the last four years had not resulted in a major breakthrough.

• India-China clash: An extraordinary escalation ‘with rocks and clubs’
• China says Indian troops fired ‘provocative’ shots in border dispute

Troops from the two sides clashed in the northern Sikkim area in 2021 and again in the Tawang sector of the border in 2022.

Border tensions have cast a long shadow on India-China relations for decades. The two countries fought a war in 1962 in which India suffered a heavy defeat.

Business relations between the two Asian giants have also suffered due to the tensions.

The root cause is an ill-defined, 3,440km (2,100-mile)-long disputed border. Rivers, lakes and snowcaps along the frontier mean the line often shifts, bringing soldiers face to face at many points, sparking a confrontation.

The two nations have been also competing to build infrastructure along the border, which has sparked further tensions.

Questions have been raised about the legality of cash incentives offered by tech billionaire Elon Musk to swing-state voters who sign his petition before the US election on 5 November.

The petition was created by Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which was set up to support Donald Trump in the presidential contest.

Voters in Pennsylvania are being offered cash sums for simply signing the petition. And one random swing-state signatory a day is being given a million-dollar prize.

But legal experts have suggested that it may break American law to offer money for an act requiring someone to be signed up as a voter. BBC News has contacted Mr Musk’s team and America PAC for comment.

The petition created by America PAC encourages voters in six swing states – Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina – to sign a “petition in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms”.

Those who refer another voter who signs up are promised a sum of $47 (£36) each.

Higher sums of $100 for signing or referring are offered in Pennsylvania, the battleground state that both the Trump and Harris campaigns believe could potentially decide the race’s eventual victor.

America PAC says those who sign the petition are signalling their support for the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution.

Each day until polling day on 5 November, a $1m prize will be randomly awarded to any signatory in one of the seven swing states.

The first lottery-style jumbo cheque was handed out to a surprised attendee at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on 19 October.

“I believe [Elon] Musk’s offer is likely illegal,” said Paul Schiff Berman, the Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at the George Washington University.

He pointed to the US Code of electoral law, which states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence.

“His offer is only open to registered voters, so I think his offer runs afoul of this provision,” Mr Berman told the BBC.

The justice department declined to comment. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been approached for comment.

The strategy may be covered by a loophole, because no-one is being directly paid to register or vote, a former chairman of the FEC suggested.

Brad Smith told the New York Times the giveaway was “something of a grey area” but “not that close to the line.”

“He’s not paying them to register to vote. He’s paying them to sign a petition – and he wants only people who are registered to vote to sign the petition. So I think he comes out OK here,” he said.

But an election law professor at Northwestern University told the Associated Press that the context was important.

“It’s not quite the same as paying someone to vote, but you’re getting close enough (to polling day) that we worry about its legality,” Michael Kang said.

Adav Noti of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center said Mr Musk’s scheme “violates federal law and is subject to civil or criminal enforcement by the Department of Justice”.

“It is illegal to give out money on the condition that recipients register as voters,” Mr Noti told the BBC.

• Harris or Trump: Who is ahead in US election polls?
• Musk offers prize of $1m a day to swing states voters
• Who is Elon Musk and what is his net worth?

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, described the move as “deeply concerning” and called for law enforcement agencies to investigate.

In response, Mr Musk said it was “concerning that he would say such a thing”.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who has campaigned in recent weeks for Kamala Harris, said the offer was both “innovative and desperate”.

“You only do that because you think you have to, but using a sweepstake is not a bad idea. Whether or not it will work is another whole thing. It could just as easily backfire,” he told CNBC.

The world’s richest man had an uneven relationship with Trump when Trump was president, but Mr Musk has increasingly voiced his displeasure with Democrats in recent years.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, he announced that he had left the party and encouraged his followers to vote Republican.

This year, he has involved himself in American politics like never before, making donations and supportive social media posts on behalf of several Republicans.

In comments last week, he described much of the US-Mexico border as tantamount to the film World War Z.

Mr Musk launched America PAC in July with the aim of supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign for president. He has so far donated at least $75m to the group.

America PAC’s website says it wants “secure borders”, “safe cities”, “free speech”, “sensible spending”, a “fair justice system” and “self-protection”.

Trump said on Sunday that he had not followed Mr Musk’s giveaway, but described him as a friend.

In recent weeks, Mr Musk has appeared on the campaign trail for the first time, first by Trump’s side and more recently in town hall appearances by himself.

• 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: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Lidia Thorpe is no stranger to controversy and it’s not the first time she’s voiced her views on the British monarchy.

The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman has been a senator for Victoria since 2020, the first Aboriginal senator from that state.

Prior to that, she had a history of Indigenous activism – she also worked as the chairperson of Naidoc (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) for the state of Victoria, an organisation that works to recognise and teach Australians about First Nations cultures and their histories.

In 2022, while being sworn in to parliament after a re-election, she called the late Queen a coloniser.

“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising her majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said, as she was being sworn in.

After criticism from other senators, she then repeated the oath as printed.

So Monday’s incident wouldn’t have come as much surprise to anyone who follows Australian politics. Lidia Thorpe has made her views clear – that British settlement saw huge numbers of Indigenous people massacred and the scars of colonisation are still very apparent for many First Nations people in Australia.

Whether or not you agree with Lidia Thorpe’s approach, the fact is that there are deep disparities between First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to many indicators including education, health and life expectancy.

Last year Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a young Indigenous man was more likely to go to jail than university, which is borne out by statistics, as ABC showed.

And between 2020 and 2022, the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was estimated to be eight years shorter than non-Indigenous Australians.

“I wanted to send a clear message to the King of England that he’s not the King of this country, he’s not my king, he’s not sovereign,” Thorpe told the BBC after being removed from the Great Hall after heckling. “To be sovereign you have to be of this land. He’s not of this land.”

She went on.

“How can he stand up there and say he’s the King of our country – he’s stolen so much wealth from our people and from our land and he needs to give that back. And he needs to entertain a conversation for a peace treaty in this country,” she said.

“We can lead that, we can do that – we can be a better country but we cannot bow to the coloniser whose ancestors he spoke about in there are responsible for mass murder, for mass genocide.”

One of Lidia Thorpe’s biggest grievances is the fact that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation that has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people. She’s been pushing for that as a priority.

For her, last year’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament – a body made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders providing advice to parliament on Indigenous issues – was a distraction from what was important – a treaty.

Australians resoundingly voted against the proposal and she was one of a minority of First Nations people who also voted no.

She told the BBC at the time that the Voice was about “assimilating us into the colonial constitution to make us nice, neat little Indigenous Australians that will continue to be oppressed by the coloniser”.

But she was in the minority among First Nations people to do so. Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted yes but Aboriginal people make up close to 4% of Australia’s population. Nationally, just over 60% of voters across Australia voted against.

Not all Indigenous leaders appear as troubled by royal visits as Lidia Thorpe.

Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, said she respected the late Queen, even describing her as “beautiful”.

What about the current visit by King Charles?

“I don’t think it’s that important. We’re our own country,” Allira Davis told the BBC, speaking before Lidia Thorpe heckled him in Canberra.

“Understanding the history of what has happened in this country is really, really key. We’re not just a white country anymore. We’re a very brown country. We’re a very multicultural country.

“So I’m all for becoming a republic, but we need to deal with recognising our First Nations people.”

So although Lidia Thorpe reflects a view shared by many about the damage that colonisation did – and still does – not everyone agrees with her approach.

Local media have reported that former co-workers have found her difficult to work with.

But Lidia Thorpe – who is now an independent after leaving the Greens over the party’s support for the Yes vote in the referendum – is unlikely to change tack. She thinks the King needs to play a bigger role in making good the ills of the past.

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.

People in Moldova have backed the Eastern European country’s proposed changes to its constitution and commitment to joining the EU by the thinnest of margins in a referendum.

Official data put Yes on 50.46% and No on 49.54% on Monday afternoon, with more than 99.6% of votes counted.

The knife-edge nature of the vote has come as a shock to many. The referendum had been widely expected to comfortably pass in the country of 2.6 million, which borders Romania and Ukraine.

The vote was combined with presidential elections in which Maia Sandu, the incumbent pro-EU president, failed to win re-election outright and faces a second round next month.

Responding to the referendum result, she said pro-EU forces had won the first battle in a “difficult fight”, which she also called “unjust”.

She accused those she called Moldova’s “enemies” – and criminal groups – of trying to buy votes and said it was a dangerous phenomenon for any democracy.

On Sunday, Sandu had denounced the narrow result as the product of foreign interference in Moldovan politics and said Moldova had suffered an “unprecedented assault on democracy”.

On neither occasion did she refer to Russia explicitly, but in recent weeks Moldovan authorities uncovered a giant scheme of payments coming from Moscow – and paid to people to vote against her and the EU referendum.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Sandu would need to present “evidence” for her claims that there had been foreign interference in the vote.

EU spokesperson Peter Stano said on Monday that the vote had taken place “under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies”.

Last month Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman and politician who now lives in Russia, said he would pay money to convince “as many people as possible” to vote No or to abstain in the EU referendum. This week, Shor then made a video statement telling people to vote for “anyone but Sandu” in the presidential election.

On Sunday, the BBC stumbled upon evidence of vote-buying at a polling station for residents of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria – which is economically, politically and militarily supported by Russia.

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.

When we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote, she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.

She would not reply when asked who she had voted for.

As well as the referendum on changing the constitution, Moldovans also voted in the country’s presidential election on Sunday.

The votes were seen as key tests for the country, which is facing a choice between pushing on with EU membership or keeping close ties to Russia.

Sandu topped the election first round with 41% of the vote versus her closest opponent’s 26%.

The result for Aleksandr Stoianoglo, who is supported by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists, was considerably higher than expected.

Sandu will now face a difficult second round on 3 November in which her eliminated rivals – populist Renato Usatii and former Gagauzia governor Irina Vlah – will likely unite against her behind Stoianoglo.

She accused “criminal groups” of working together with “foreign forces”, using money, lies, and propaganda to sway the vote.

Sandu also said her government had “clear evidence” that 300,000 votes were bought, which she called “a fraud of unprecedented scale”.

Moldova is currently in talks with the EU on becoming a member. These accession talks will continue despite Sunday’s outcome, as the referendum was not legally binding.

The vote, however, was supposed to make the process irreversible. Instead, it feels a little shakier now.

At Sandu’s election headquarters on Sunday evening, the mood was extremely subdued, with one of her advisers describing the result so far as “not what we expected”.

Sandu, who has cultivated close ties with Moldova’s EU neighbours, had campaigned for the Yes vote in the referendum. She had previously said the vote was would set up the future of Moldova for “many decades ahead”.

When the first results began trickling in showing that the No vote had done better than expected, Sandu’s team put the disappointing results down to the first count coming in from villages and rural areas.

The big city count narrowed the lead for the No vote, but by 01:00 (22:00 GMT) few thought the Yes camp could still stand a chance.

Many of Sandu’s supporters left her headquarters in Chisinau where they had been hoping to celebrate her victory before the count was even over. The little EU flags they’d been given to wave were abandoned, on chairs or strewn on the ground.

But as the night went on, the gap narrowed even further.

In the end, the Yes vote clinched it – but only just.

Voter turnout stood at more than 51% when polls closed at 21:00 local time (18:00 GMT), making the referendum valid.

Several presidential candidates boycotted the referendum. Aleksandr Stoianoglo said he did not support the idea of changing the constitution – although he added he was a supporter of his country’s “European aspirations”.

However, many young people queuing at polling stations on Sunday were vocal about their support for Moldova’s future as an EU member state, with some saying they were voting because they wanted to choose a European future for their country – for the sake of the economy and for more opportunities.

Some said they were fed up of being “pulled” towards Moscow, decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and Moldova became independent.

“We have to choose a European future for our country, for our children, our future – for geopolitics, for peace, that’s the most important,” a voter called Oksana told the BBC. “Because we are between Europe and Russian influence, and we have to choose what we want.”

An Australian senator has defended heckling King Charles and accusing him of genocide after he addressed Australia’s Parliament House, telling the BBC that “he’s not of this land”.

Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian woman, interrupted the ceremony in the capital of Canberra by shouting for about a minute before she was escorted away by security.

After making claims of genocide against “our people”, she could be heard yelling: “This is not your land, you are not my King.”

But Aboriginal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan, who had earlier welcomed the King and Queen, said Thorpe’s protest was “disrespectful”, adding: “She does not speak for me.”

The ceremony concluded without any reference to the incident, and the royal couple proceeded to meet hundreds of people who had waited outside to greet them.

After her protest, Thorpe told the BBC she had wanted to send a “clear message” to the King.

“To be sovereign you have to be of the land,” she said. “He is not of this land.”

• Why an Australian senator heckled King Charles

Thorpe, who is an independent senator from Victoria, is among those who have advocated for a treaty between Australia’s government and its first inhabitants.

Unlike New Zealand and other former British colonies, a treaty with Indigenous peoples in Australia was never established. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people emphasise that they never ceded their sovereignty or land to the Crown.

She called on the King to instruct the Parliament to discuss a peace treaty with the first peoples.

“We can lead that, we can do that, we can be a better country – but we cannot bow to the coloniser, whose ancestors he spoke about in there are responsible for mass murder and mass genocide.”

Thorpe, who was wearing a traditional possum skin cloak, described the late Queen Elizabeth II as “colonising” and was made to repeat her oath when she was sworn in as a senator in 2022.

There has been a long-held debate on how to tackle the glaring disparities between First Nations people and the wider population, including poorer health, wealth and education outcomes and greater incarceration rates.

Last year a referendum on giving greater political rights and recognition to Indigenous people was resoundingly rejected.

Thorpe was elected to parliament as a member of the Greens but left the party over its support for the Yes campaign in that vote as she supported a separate movement and has staged attention-grabbing protests in the past.

Despite the protest, many others were happy to see the royals, with people queueing outside Parliament House all morning in the punishing Canberra sun, waving Australian flags.

Jamie Karpas, 20, said she did not realise the royal couple were visiting on Monday, adding: “As someone who saw Harry and Meghan the last time they were here, I’m very excited. I think the Royal Family are part of the Australian culture. They are a big part of our lives.”

Meanwhile, CJ Adams, a US-Australian student at the Australian National University, said: “He’s the head of state of the British empire right – you’ve got to take the experiences you can get while in Canberra.”

A small number of dissenters had also gathered on the lawn in front of the Parliament House building.

The royal visit to Canberra was always going to touch on Australia’s history with its Indigenous peoples, but Thorpe’s intervention meant the King and Queen faced it more directly than initially planned.

The King and Queen had arrived in Canberra earlier in the day and were greeted by a reception line of politicians, schoolchildren and Ngunnawal Elder Aunty Serena Williams, a representative of the Indigenous people.

They were given a traditional welcome into the Great Hall of Canberra’s Parliament House to the sound of a digeridoo.

The King spoke about indigenous communities and what he had learnt from them saying his own experience had been “shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom”.

“In my many visits to Australia, I have witnessed the courage and hope that have guided the nation’s long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation,” he said.

But as he sat down, the shouts of Thorpe’s protest rang around the hall.

Her intervention was criticised by Aunty Sheridan, the Aboriginal elder who delivered part of the official welcome speech for the King and Queen in Parliament House.

She told the BBC: “The King’s not well. He’s going through chemo and he didn’t need this.

“I surely appreciate him visiting here. It may be the last time he comes. Heaps of people share my thoughts.”

Buckingham Palace has made no official comment on Thorpe’s protest, instead focussing on the crowds who had turned up to see the King and Queen in Canberra.

A palace source said that the royal couple were deeply touched by the many thousands who had turned out to support them.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer praised the King’s work during his Australia tour, particularly given the monarch’s recent health challenges.

When asked by reporters if it was “disgraceful” for Australian politicians to heckle the King, Starmer replied: “Look, I think the King is doing a fantastic job, an incredible ambassador, not just for our country, but across the Commonwealth.”

King Charles’s visit – in a year in which he has been receiving cancer treatment – is his first to Australia since succeeding his mother Queen Elizabeth II. Because of his health, the tour is shorter than previous royal visits.

Australia is a Commonwealth country where the King serves as the head of state.

For decades, Australia has debated whether to break from the monarchy and become a republic. In 1999 the question was put to the public in a referendum – which is the only way to change the nation’s constitution – and resoundingly defeated.

Polls suggest support for the movement has grown since then, and the country’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who shook the King’s hand just before the senator’s intervention, is a long-term republican.

However, Albanese’s government has ruled out holding a second vote on the issue anytime soon, following the unsuccessful referendum on Indigenous recognition last year.

A lighter moment came earlier in the day when the King petted an alpaca who was wearing a small crown, when he stopped to talk to members of the public after a visit to Canberra’s war memorial.

The royal couple also planted trees at Government House before the King, a long-term environmentalist, visited the National Bushfire Behaviour Research Laboratory.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said he will give away $1m (£766,000) a day to a registered voter in key swing states until the US presidential election on 5 November.

The winner will be chosen at random from those who sign a pro-US Constitution petition by Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which he set up to support Republican nominee Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

The first lottery-style cheque was given away to a surprised attendee at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on Saturday night. Another cheque was handed out on Sunday.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who supports Kamala Harris, called Mr Musk’s strategy “deeply concerning.”

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

Shapiro told NBC News’ Meet the Press that law enforcement should potentially look at the payments.

The contest is open to voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, all key battleground states that will ultimately decide the White House election.

Election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his personal Election Law Blog that he believed Mr Musk’s offer was “clearly illegal”.

Federal law states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence.

Though Mr Musk is technically asking voters to sign a form, Mr Hasen questioned the intent behind the strategy.

“Who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal,” said Mr Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law school.

Those who sign the petition – which pledges to support free speech and gun rights – must submit their contact details, potentially allowing America PAC to contact them about their vote.

Both Mr Musk and America PAC have been approached for comment.

Campaigns and political action committees rely on tactics like petition signing, survey requests, or merchandise purchases to build massive databases of voter information. That data can then be used more accurately to target voters, or raise funds from supporters who are already onboard.

In Pennsylvania, Mr Musk is giving voters $100 for signing the petition, plus another $100 for each person they refer who signs. Voters in other battleground states get $47 per referral.

But the strategy may be covered by a loophole under US election law because no-one is being directly paid to vote – despite introducing money into a process that could identify likely Trump voters.

In the US, it is illegal to provide payments to get people to vote – not only for a certain candidate, but to simply cast a ballot.

The rule prompted icecream-maker Ben & Jerry’s to give its product free to everyone on election day in 2008, having initially planned to limit it just to those with an “I voted” sticker.

While campaigning on Sunday, Trump was asked about Mr Musk’s giveaway.

“I haven’t followed that,” he said, adding that he speaks to Mr Musk often and he is a “friend”.

The founder of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly Twitter, has emerged as a key Trump supporter.

Mr Musk launched America PAC in July with the aim of supporting the former president’s campaign.

He has so far donated $75m (£57.5m) to the group, which has quickly become a central player in Trump’s election bid.

The Trump campaign is highly reliant on outside groups such as America PAC to canvas voters.

A statement on the group’s website reads: “America PAC was created to support these key values: Secure Borders, Safe Cities, Sensible spending, Fair Justice System, Free Speech, Right to Self-Protection.”

Mr Musk said he wants to get “over a million, maybe two million, voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment”.

“I think [it] sends a crucial message to our elected politicians,” he added.

Mr Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $248bn (£191bn), according to US business magazine Forbes.

Yulia Navalnaya intends to be president of Russia, she tells me. She looks me straight in the eye. No hesitation or wavering.

This, like so many of the decisions she made with her husband, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is unambiguous.

Navalnaya knows she faces arrest if she returns home while President Putin is still in power. His administration has accused her of participating in extremism.

This is no empty threat. In Russia, it can lead to death.

Her husband, President Putin’s most vocal critic, was sentenced to 19 years for extremism, charges that were seen as politically motivated. He died in February in a brutal penal colony in the Arctic Circle. US President Joe Biden said there was “no doubt” Putin was to blame. Russia denies killing Navalny.

Yulia Navalnaya, sitting down for our interview in a London legal library, looks and sounds every inch the successor to Navalny, the lawyer turned politician who dreamt of a different Russia.

As she launches Patriot, the memoir her husband was writing before his death, Yulia Navalnaya restated her plans to continue his fight for democracy.

When the time is right, “I will participate in the elections… as a candidate,” she told the BBC.

“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible”.

For now, that has to be from outside Russia.

She tells me that while Putin is in charge she cannot go back. But Yulia looks forward to the day she believes will inevitably come, when the Putin era ends and Russia once again opens up.

Just like her husband, she believes there will be the chance to hold free and fair elections. When that happens, she says she will be there.

Her family has already suffered terribly in the struggle against the Russian regime, but she remains composed throughout our interview, steely whenever Putin’s name comes up.

Her personal grief is channelled into political messaging, in public anyway. But she tells me, since Alexei’s death, she has been thinking even more about the impact the couple’s shared political beliefs and decisions have had on their children, Dasha, 23, and Zakhar, 16.

“I understand that they didn’t choose it”.

But she says she never asked Navalny to change course.

He was barred from standing for president by Russia’s Central Election Commission.

His investigations through his Anti-Corruption Foundation were viewed by millions online, including a video posted after his last arrest, claiming that Putin had built a one-billion dollar palace on the Black Sea.

The president denied it.

Yulia says: “When you live inside this life, you understand that he will never give up and that is for what you love him”.

Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.

He was flown to Germany for treatment and the German chancellor demanded answers from Putin’s regime.

Navalny worked with open-source investigators Bellingcat and traced the poisoning to Russia’s security service, the FSB.

He began writing his memoir as he recovered.

He and Yulia returned to Russia in January 2021 where he was arrested after landing.

Many ask why they returned.

“There couldn’t be any discussion. You just need to support him. I knew that he wants to come back to Russia. I knew that he wants to be with his supporters, he wanted to be an example to all these people with his courage and his bravery to show people that there is no need to be afraid of this dictator.

“I never let my brain think that he might be killed… we lived this life for decades and it’s about you share these difficulties, you share these views. You support him”.

After his jailing, Navalny continued his book in notebook entries, posts on social media and prison diaries, published for the first time. Some of his writing was confiscated by the prison authorities, he said.

Patriot is revealing – and devastating. We all know Navalny’s final chapter, which makes the descriptions of his treatment – and his courage in the face of it – even more poignant.

Navalny spent 295 days in solitary confinement, punished, according to the book, for violations including the top button of his fatigues being unbuttoned. He was deprived of phone calls and visits.

Yulia Navalnaya told me: “Usually, the normal practice is banishment just for two weeks and it’s the most severe punishment. My husband spent there almost one year.”

In a prison diary from August 2022, Navalny writes from solitary confinement:

Navalnaya says she was prevented from visiting or speaking to her husband for two years before he died. She says Alexei was tortured, starved and kept in “awful conditions”.

After his death, the US, EU and UK announced new sanctions against Russia. These included freezing the assets of six prison bosses who ran the Arctic Circle penal colony and other sanctions on judges involved in criminal proceedings against Navalny.

Yulia calls the reaction to his death by the international community “a joke” and urges them to be “a little less afraid” of Putin. She wants to see the president locked up.

“I don’t want him to be in prison, somewhere abroad, in a nice prison with a computer, nice food… I want him to be in a Russian prison. And it’s not just that – I want him to be in the same conditions like Alexei was. But it’s very important for me”.

The Russians claim Navalny died of natural causes. Yulia believes President Putin ordered the killing.

“Vladimir Putin is answering for the death and for the murder of my husband”.

She says the Anti-Corruption Foundation she now leads in her husband’s place already has “evidence” which she will reveal when they have “the whole picture”.

The book is as much a political work as a memoir, a rallying cry to anyone who believes in a free Russia. It is also being published in Russian, as an ebook and audiobook. But the publishers won’t send hard copies to Russia or Belarus, because they say they can’t guarantee the book would get through customs.

How many Russians will dare to buy it, even in electronic form, is unclear – and how much impact it could have remains questionable.

The message etched on every page is that Navalny never gave up. His arch wit shines through.

He says, in the punishment cell, he is getting “for free” the experience of staying silent, eating scant food and getting away from the outside world that “rich people suffering from a midlife crisis” pay for.

Only once does he share feeling “crushed”, during the hunger strike he undertook in 2021 in order to demand medical care from civilian doctors. “For the first time, I’m feeling emotionally and morally down,” he writes in one entry.

But Yulia says she never worried that he would actually be broken by the regime.

“I’m absolutely confident that is the point why finally they decided to kill him. Because they just realised that he will never give up”.

Even the day before he died, when he appeared in court, Navalny was filmed joking with the judge.

Yulia says laughter was his “superpower”.

“He really, truly laughed at this regime and at Vladimir Putin. That’s why Vladimir Putin hated him so much”.

The writing is laced with a great deal of irony.

The book will sell better if he dies, Navalny writes:

In the end, Patriot is also a love story about two people fully committed to a cause they believed in.

A cause for which Yulia has now become the figurehead.

After a visit from her, Navalny writes: