As someone who served four Israeli prime ministers and was deputy head of the country’s National Security Council, Eran Etzion’s judgement was trusted at the highest levels of the state.

A longstanding critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is also someone whose years of public service earned him widespread respect.

But now Mr Etzion, a former soldier himself, is warning that Israel’s military – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – might be committing war crimes in northern Gaza. And he is suggesting that officers and troops should reject illegal orders.

“They should refuse. If a soldier or an officer is expected to commit something that might be suspected as a war crime, they must refuse. That’s what I would do if I were a soldier. That’s what I think any Israeli soldier should do,” he tells me.

We are sitting on the balcony of his home in Shoresh in central Israel.

Here there is the quiet sunshine of an autumn morning. A peaceful neighbourhood where some builders are working on house improvements.

Less than 40 miles down the road is the Gaza neighbourhood of Jabalia.

As Mr Etzion and I are speaking, doctors and medical staff at the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia are sending desperate voice notes to the international community begging for aid.

One senior nurse – in a message heard by the BBC – speaks in an exhausted voice of relentless privations allegedly imposed by the Israelis besieging Jabalia.

“My friend, I’m so so tired,” he says. “I can’t explain how tired I am. The water is empty. We don’t have water. We contacted the Israeli force to allow us to charge water to the tank, but they don’t accept that…. And we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The situation is very very bad.”

Another nurse says: “I am sorry for my language, I can’t talk well. I am very fatigued and dizzy. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. We try to give the food that we found to the patients and families and we don’t eat ourselves.”

Tens of thousands of people are now fleeing Jabalia as the Israeli army continues its offensive against what it says is an attempt by Hamas to regroup.

Mr Etzion is worried for the civilians of Jabalia and his country. “There is a very dangerous erosion of norms. There is a very widespread sense of revenge, of rage,” he says.

This is because, Mr Etzion says, Israel is in the grip of trauma after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 taken hostage into Gaza.

“The will to revenge could be understood. It’s human, but we’re not a gang, we’re not a terror organisation, and we’re not a militia. We’re a sovereign country. We have our history, we have our morals, we have our values, and we must operate under international law and under international standards if we want to continue to be a member of the international community, which we do.”

He is speaking out as a former soldier, as someone whose children served in the IDF, and whose family and friends still serve. “I’m just a concerned citizen trying to raise my voice. So that’s what I’m doing. I want to make sure that no soldier is involved in anything that could be constituted as a war crime.”

Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its conduct during the war. The United States has threatened to cut arms shipments if Israel does not surge aid into Gaza.

The UN has accused the Israelis of repeatedly blocking or impeding the transfer of aid, most recently into northern Gaza.

The IDF has consistently rejected allegations that it is implementing a deliberate policy of starvation to force residents to flee from Jabalia. Israel has long accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields, launching attacks from schools and medical facilities.

“Hamas does not hesitate to abuse Gazans, exploit them, steal aid from them, and forcefully prevent them from evacuating when it is necessary for them to do so,” the IDF said in May.

One of Britain’s most prominent war crimes lawyers, Prof Philippe Sands KC, told me that that while Israel had a right to self defence after the 7 October attacks, it was now violating international law.

“It has to be proportionate. It has to meet the requirements of international humanitarian law. It must distinguish between civilians and military targets.

“It doesn’t allow you to use famine as a weapon of war. It doesn’t allow you to forcibly deport or evacuate large numbers of people.

“So it’s impossible to see what is going on now in Gaza, as it’s impossible to see what happened on 7 October, and not say crimes are screaming out.”

Prof Sands has led the genocide case against Myanmar, and the case for Palestinian statehood at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. The book also details his own Jewish family’s experience of the Holocaust.

I ask if the crisis in Gaza makes him worry about the survival of international law.

He points to the fact that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister.

The prosecutor also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders. All three, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, are now dead.

“It [international law] is not working on the ground in relation to Russia and Ukraine. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Sudan. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Palestine and Israel.

“There’s just no ifs and buts. We just have to, we have to recognize that. But that is not a reason to tear up the entire system.

“If you ask yourself what the alternative is, which is basically no pieces of paper with the words Treaties written on it, you’re back to the 1930s, and at least what we have now is a system of rules which allows people to stand up and say: ‘This is a violation of a treaty’.”

We asked the IDF for an interview but they said no spokesperson was available today, and referred us to an earlier statement which says: “The IDF will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”

And today the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the army’s humanitarian relief wing, said it was their policy to facilitate the entrance of aid into Gaza “without limits”.

This is Israel’s narrative. But as scenes of civilian suffering continue to emerge from Jabalia it is being widely challenged.

Striking Boeing workers have rejected a new offer from the aviation giant, which included a 35% pay rise over four years.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union said 64% of its striking members voted against the proposed deal.

More than 30,000 of Boeing’s workers have joined the walkout, which started on 13 September, after an initial offer was rejected.

It comes just hours after Boeing boss Kelly Ortberg warned the company is at a “crossroads” as losses at the firm surged to roughly $6bn (£4.6bn).

“After 10 years of sacrifices, we still have ground to make up, and we’re hopeful to do so by resuming negotiations promptly,” union representatives said in a statement.

“This is workplace democracy – and also clear evidence that there are consequences when a company mistreats its workers year after year,” it added.

It is the second time that the striking workers have rejected a proposed deal in a formal vote. The previous offer was turned down last month by 95% of workers.

Earlier, Mr Ortberg, who took over as chief executive in August, said he had been working “feverishly” to stabilise the firm, as it worked to repair its reputation, which has been hit by manufacturing and safety concerns.

“This is a big ship that will take some time to turn, but when it does, it has the capacity to be great again,” he said.

The latest crisis at Boeing erupted in January with a dramatic mid-air blowout of a piece of one of its passenger planes.

Its space business also suffered a reputational hit after its Starliner vessel was forced to return to Earth without carrying astronauts.

The strike has compounded the problems, leading to a dramatic slowdown in production.

Mr Ortberg said the firm was “saddled with too much debt” and had disappointed customers with lapses in performance across the business.

Boeing’s commercial aircraft business reported operating losses of $4bn in the last three months, while its defence unit lost nearly $2.4bn.

“They clearly have a lot to recover from, both operationally and financially,” said Ben Toscanos of S&P Ratings.

“The first step will be to resolve the strike… so we’ll see how that plays out,” he added.

Mr Ortberg argued the firm was in a strong position, with a backlog of roughly 5,400 orders for its planes.

But he warned investors that restarting the firm’s factories, whenever the strike does end, will be tricky.

“It’s much harder to turn this on than it is to turn it off. So it’s critical, absolutely critical, that we do this right,” he said.

“We have a detailed return-to-work plan in place and I’m really looking forward to getting everybody back and getting to work on that plan.”

The company announced plans earlier this month to cut roughly 10% of its workforce. Thousands of other staff are already on a rolling furlough due to the strike, which has also hit suppliers.

Mr Ortberg told investors that his first priority was a “fundamental culture change”.

“We need to prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix and understand root cause,” he said.

There aren’t many world leaders who’ve been in power for 30 years.

Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has been accused of stealing elections, crushing dissent and dismantling democracy.

The UK, the EU and the US do not recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

There’s something else you should know about him: if there’s any leader who knows Vladimir Putin inside out, it is Lukashenko. The two men have known each other for years and meet regularly.

Alexander Lukashenko met me on the sidelines of the Brics summit of emerging economies. He wants Belarus to become a member.

I asked him to comment on claims that North Korea had sent troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine.

“Rubbish,” Lukashenko replied. “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.”

“And if the reports are confirmed?” I asked.

“It would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line,” replied Alexander Lukashenko.

“Even if we got involved in the war this would be a path to escalation. Why? Because you, the Anglo-Saxons, would immediately say that another country had got involved on one side… so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine.”

I ask him whether Vladimir Putin has ever asked Lukashenko to provide Belarussian troops for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

“Never. Neither he, nor [former Defence Minister] Sergei Shoigu, nor the current Defence Minister Andrei Belousov has ever raised that question.”

But Belarus has played a part in Russia’s war. In February 2022 Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, partly, from Belarusian territory. Why did the country’s leader allow the Kremlin to do that?

“How do you know I gave permission for Belarusian territory to be used?” Lukashenko asks me.

“Because Belarusian territory was used [for the invasion].”

“There were exercises going on involving several thousand Russian soldiers. Putin started withdrawing these troops from where they were in southern Belarus, down a road, along the border with Ukraine.

“At one point he redirected some of these troops to Kyiv. I’m sure they’d been provoked. It’s up to Putin how he withdraws his troops. Via Kyiv. Or he could have gone through Minsk.”

“Didn’t you call Putin to ask what was going on?” I ask.

“No. He didn’t call me. And I didn’t call him. These are his troops and he has the right to move them out whichever way he likes.”

That comment reflects the degree of influence the Kremlin has in neighbouring Belarus.

Another example: Russia has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

“Is Putin ready to use those weapons in the war in Ukraine?” I ask.

“Putin will never use the weapons stationed in Belarus without the Belarusian president’s consent,” Lukashenko tells me.

“Are you ready to allow the use of nuclear weapons?”

“I’m completely ready, otherwise why have these weapons? But only if the boot of one [foreign] soldier steps into Belarus. We have no plans to attack anyone.”

Human rights groups estimate there are currently 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko had previously told me there were none.

But speaking to me today (perhaps inadvertently) he used the phrase “political prisoner”, when speaking about the small number freed in recent months.

Some commentators have interpreted the releases as a message from Lukashenko to the West that he seeks better relations.

He denies that.

“We freed political prisoners on humanitarian grounds,” he says. “They were mostly elderly people and the sick. That’s all.

“This is no step towards improving relations with you. If you don’t want relations with us, that’s fine. We’ll get by without you.”

At least five people have been killed and 22 injured in an attack at the headquarters of an aviation company near the Turkish capital Ankara, authorities have confirmed.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that two attackers, a woman and a man, have been “neutralised”, adding that the attack had most likely involved Kurdish rebel group the PKK.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Turkey’s defence ministry announced late on Wednesday that air strikes had been launched at Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq and northern Syria.

Various videos from the attack earlier on Wednesday show at least two people firing guns around the entrance of Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), which is located some 40km (25 miles) outside the capital.

Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said four of the victims were TAI employees while the fifth was a taxi driver.

Local media had earlier reported that the attackers killed the cab driver before taking his vehicle to carry out the attack.

The blast took place around the time of a shift change, and staff had to be directed to shelters, they said.

Yerlikaya also confirmed that seven special ops forces members were among the 22 who were injured in the attack.

The PKK is banned as a terrorist organisation in Turkey, the US and UK, and has been fighting against the Turkish state since the 1980s for greater rights for the country’s significant Kurdish minority.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who is in Russia for the Brics summit – condemned what he called a “vile terror attack” during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in remarks broadcast live on TV.

He later posted a lengthy statement on X, saying that security forces acted quickly to neutralise the threat, and that “no terrorist organisation, no evil focus targeting our security will be able to achieve their goals”.

Turkish authorities have imposed a media blackout on details of the attack, and users in large areas of the country have reported not being able to use social media sites like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

The president of Turkey’s Radio and TV Supreme Council, Ebubekir Sahin, warned that all images relating to the incident should be removed from social media, and urged users not to share images which “will serve the purpose of terrorism”.

TAI is a key player in Turkey’s aerospace industry, designing, developing and manufacturing various aircraft for commercial and military use.

It is the company designated by the Nato member to be the licensed manufacturer for the US-designed F-16 fighter jets. TAI also plays a role in modernising older aircraft for use by the Turkish military.

The firm’s two principal owners are the Turkish Armed Forces and a civilian arm of Turkey’s government charged with improving its defence capabilities and managing military procurement.

The blast took place as a major trade fair for defence and aerospace industries was going on in Istanbul this week.

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On Wednesday afternoon, Kamala Harris stood in front of the vice-presidential residence in Washington DC, and delivered a short but withering attack on her Republican presidential opponent.

Calling Donald Trump “increasingly unhinged and unstable,” she cited critical comments made by John Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, in a New York Times interview.

The vice-president quoted Kelly describing Trump as someone who “certainly falls into the general definition of fascists” and who had spoken approvingly of Hitler several times.

She said her rival wanted “unchecked power” and later, during a CNN Town Hall, was asked point-blank if she believed he was a “fascist”. “Yes, I do,” she replied.

The Trump campaign quickly accused the Democratic candidate of peddling lies. She is increasingly desperate, spokesman Steven Cheung said, because “she is flailing, and her campaign is in shambles.”

In the home stretch of political campaigns – particularly one as tight and hard-fought as the 2024 presidential race – there is a natural tendency for candidates to turn negative. Attacks tend to be more effective in motivating supporters to head to the polls and disrupting the opposing campaigns.

For Harris, however, the heavier hand toward Trump stands in contrast to the more optimistic, “joyful” messaging of the early days of her campaign.

While she did warn at the Democratic convention of a Trump presidency without the guardrails, Harris largely stepped back from President Joe Biden’s core campaign message that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy.

According to political strategist Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, however, it is clear why Harris was quick this time to amplify Kelly’s dark portrait of Trump as a man with authoritarian tendencies.

“Everything she does now is tactical,” he said. “The imperative was to make sure as many voters as possible know about what Kelly said.”

The vice-president’s latest remarks come on the heels of a multi-week strategy by her campaign to appeal to independent voters and moderate Republicans who could be open to supporting the Democratic ticket. Polls suggest the race is extremely tight, with neither candidate having a decisive lead in any of the battleground states.

The suburbs around the biggest cities in key battleground states – Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix, for instance – are populated by college-educated professionals who have traditionally voted for Republicans but who polls indicate have doubts about returning Trump to the White House.

“Her case for how she wins this thing is to create as broad a coalition as possible and bring over disaffected Republicans – people who just don’t feel that they can vote for Trump again,” Mr Bennett said.

Devynn DeVelasco, a 20-year-old independent from Nebraska, is one of those who had already been convinced by the long list of senior Republicans who worked for then-President Trump but now say he is unfit for office.

Although she hopes some Republicans will join her in supporting Harris, she worries there is fatigue around the claims made about the former president.

“When these reports [about Kelly’s comments] came out I wasn’t shocked, it didn’t change much,” Ms DeVelasco told the BBC.

Republican strategist Denise Grace Gitsham said voters have been hearing similar rhetoric about Trump since 2016 so any new allegations were unlikely to move the dial.

“If you’re voting against Donald Trump because you don’t like his personality, you’re already a decided voter,” she told the BBC. “But if you’re somebody who’s looking at the policies and that matters more to you than a vibe or a personality, then you’re going to go with the person who you felt you did best under while they were in the White House.”

Both Harris and Trump have been sharpening their barbs in recent days. During a swing through Midwest battleground states on Monday, Harris repeatedly warned of the consequences of a Trump presidency – on abortion rights, on healthcare, on the economy and on US foreign policy.

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On Friday, she will hold a rally in Texas – the state she has said most dramatically represents the anti-abortion future if Trump is back in power. Next Tuesday, she will shift focus to Washington DC, with a rally reportedly planned by the National Mall, where Trump spoke before some of his supporters attacked the US Capitol.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued his drumbeat of attacks on his Democratic counterpart. At a town hall forum in North Carolina, he said Harris was “lazy” and “stupid” and only became her party nominee because of her ethnicity and gender.

He also issued his own warning, saying that “we may not have a country anymore” if Harris wins.

None of these lines are a particular departure for Trump, however, as he has spent most of his campaign attacking Democrats and sticking to his core message on immigration, trade and the economy.

Harris’s closing pitch, meanwhile, directed toward winning over anti-Trump Republicans and independents isn’t without its risks, said Democratic strategist Bennet.

“You are always shorting one thing to try to help promote something else,” he said. “The candidate’s time and the time spent on advertising are the two most precious commodities. And how you spend those matters.”

Trump has been a polarising figure in American politics for more than eight years now. Most Americans have strongly held, and deeply ingrained, opinions about the man by now.

If anti-Trump sentiment puts Harris over the top on election day, her latest strategic emphasis will have paid off. If not, the second-guessing will come fast and furious.

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

A twelfth monkey died at a Hong Kong zoo, with tests underway to determine if it succumbed to the same bacterial infection that killed 11 other monkeys in the past 10 days.

The De Brazza’s monkey had been isolated since 13 October when the first eight deaths were reported.

Autopsies have found a large amount of sepsis-inducing bacteria that likely came from contaminated soil near the primates’ enclosures, authorities said.

Workers who were digging up soil near the cages were believed to have brought in contaminated soil through their shoes, Hong Kong’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Secretary told local broadcaster RTHK.

The risk of the infection spreading to humans is “fairly low”, said Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at the City University of Hong Kong.

He added that soil contamination is often underreported in Asia but “it is always worrying if multiple mortalities suddenly occur in captive animal populations where this has not happened before”.

The 11 monkeys found dead earlier include the critically endangered cotton-top tamarins, as well as white-faced sakis, common squirrel monkeys, and a De Brazza’s monkey.

Authorities said they died due to melioidosis, an infectious disease that can spread through contact with contaminated soil, air or water.

It is caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a soil-dwelling bacteria strain endemic in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

The twelfth monkey died on Tuesday and early results indicated that it too had “similar lesions… in the tissues of its organs”, officials said.

While authorities said the health of the remaining 78 mammals in the zoo was “normal”, the mammals section has been closed since 14 October for disinfection and cleaning.

The Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens is the city’s oldest park and sits at its centre, spread over 14 acres.

Animal rights group Peta has said it is concerned about the risk of zoonotic diseases like monkeypox, which can spread from animals to humans.

“The only way to ensure the emotional and physical health of animals and prevent further deaths and the spread of zoonotic diseases is to stop imprisoning them for ‘entertainment’ and instead focus on protecting their natural habitats,” Peta’s campaign manager Abigail Forsyth told the BBC.

The earliest report of melioidosis in Hong Kong dates back to the mid-1970s, when 24 dolphins suddenly died of the disease in Ocean Park, a theme park.

An Indian climate activist who ended a 16-day-long hunger strike this week says his fight to save the ecology of his hometown – an icy cold desert in the northernmost part of India – is far from over.

Sonam Wangchuk, 58, became a familiar name in India when Bollywood star Aamir Khan played a character inspired by him in the 2009 blockbuster 3 Idiots.

Mr Wangchuk has also had a long career as an engineer and innovator. But in recent months, he has made headlines for holding protests seeking more autonomy for people in his home region of Ladakh, a mountainous cold desert bordering Pakistan and China.

Ladakh was part of Indian-administered Kashmir until 2019, when Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s government removed the state’s special status and split it into two federally governed territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Earlier this month, assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time since the abrogation. But Ladakh continues to be a federal territory without legislative powers.

People in Ladakh say this is unfair, and that they need their own representatives. They are also worried about the pace of infrastructural activities in the region, which they say is harming its fragile environment.

• The thousands of Indians protesting in freezing cold

Before beginning his hunger strike, Mr Wangchuk and his supporters walked for hundreds of kilometres from Ladakh to reach capital Delhi. They argued that more autonomy to Ladakh – under a constitutional provision called the Sixth Schedule -would help prevent exploitation of natural resources.

Their march on foot came after months-long talks between locals in Ladakh and federal government officials failed.

At Delhi’s borders, the protesters were detained for hours after which Mr Wangchuk began his hunger strike. He ended it on Monday after the government promised that talks would resume soon.

With his protests and interviews, Mr Wangchuk has ensured that the demands of the people of Ladakh have remained part of mainstream media discourse in India for weeks now.

Mr Wangchuk has a long history of challenging the status quo.

As a child, he studied for three years in Srinagar city (then the capital of Jammu and Kashmir state) where lessons were taught in English, Urdu and Hindi. In an interview, he recalled being the “butt of jokes” in class.

“In Srinagar, I was a dumb boy from Ladakh who could not speak Hindi or English,” he said.

In the 1980s, his experiences led him to question the education system in Ladakh, which he said did not address local needs. He protested against the use of textbooks in English and Urdu in a region where most people spoke the Ladakhi language.

“All the textbooks, even in early primary classes, came from Delhi. The examples were of unfamiliar cultures and environments like ships, oceans, coconut trees and monsoon rains,” says a note on the website of a school co-founded by him. “These alien examples in alien languages only confused Ladakhi children.”

Since then, he has worked with local authorities and communities to ensure that the education system addresses the unique needs of children in Ladakh.

His innovations have also made news.

Mr Wangchuk studied mechanical engineering after a relative noticed his experiments with concave mirrors to brighten dark buildings and cook food.

In recent years, he has developed a low-cost mud house that maintains a temperature of 15C even in -15C conditions.

He has also designed an artificial spring in the shape of an ice stupa – a hemispherical structure common in Buddhist cultures – that stores downstream water for use during late spring when farmers need water.

Earlier this year, Mr Wangchuk sat on a 21-day protest in the freezing cold “to remind the government of its promises to safeguard Ladakh’s environment and tribal indigenous culture”.

He was joined by thousands who fasted with him and held demonstrations.

It was when those protests didn’t yield the desired results that Mr Wangchuk walked to Delhi.

In the capital, he has continued his demands for the sixth schedule in Ladakh – this provision, which has been implemented in India’s northeastern states, gives special powers to tribal populations to safeguard their interests in matters including natural resources and infrastructure. Ladakh has a majority tribal population.

“The sixth schedule gives locals not just a right but a responsibility to conserve their climate, forests, rivers and glaciers,” he told reporters.

Mr Wangchuk and his supporters say that the fragile Himalayan ecology is in danger in the absence of constitutional safeguards.

The concerns stem from the fact that the government has accelerated infrastructure development in border regions.

Ladakh is strategically significant for India as it shares borders with both China and Pakistan.

The federal government has sanctioned several highways, power projects and military-related infrastructure in Ladakh, which Mr Wangchuk says will harm the region, especially in the absence of consultation with local representatives.

“We don’t oppose development. We want sustainable growth,” he said.

Mr Wangchuk and his supporters say that Ladakh’s ecology means that it can’t follow the development models of other Indian states. They say that people in cities are not mindful of the unique needs of Himalayan regions.

“You don’t get to see this in your cities but in Ladakh, there are proper winter, summer, and spring seasons, just like you read in books,” said Haji Mustafa, who had walked with Mr Wangchuk to Delhi.

Protesters have also complained about locals not benefiting from the projects in Ladakh.

“Our natural resources are getting exploited. Unemployment is very high. Local businessmen are unhappy. So, who is this development for?” Mr Mustafa asked.

The BBC has sent questions to Tashi Gyalson, who heads the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.

In the meantime, protesters say they will continue their fight until they have a say in what happens in Ladakh.

Earlier this week, as the government agreed to resume talks, Mr Wangchuk expressed hope that a solution would emerge soon.

“I hope the talks will be held in mutual trust and will result in a happy ending for all,” he said. “And that I will not have to sit on fast again or march 1,000km to the capital.”

The world economy could contract by the size of the combined French and German economies, if there is a broad-based trade war between the world’s major economies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has told the BBC.

It comes as concerns are heightened ahead of the possible re-election of Donald Trump.

Trump says he plans to introduce a universal tax or tariff of up to 20% on all imports into the US, while the European Union is already planning retaliation if Washington goes ahead with the new levy.

Last week, Trump said “tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, and global markets and finance ministers are now beginning to take seriously the prospect of him enacting the ideas.

IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said the Fund could not yet assess the specifics of Trump’s trade plans, but thinks that “if you have some very serious decoupling and broad scale use of tariffs, you could end up with a loss to world GDP of close to 7%”.

“These are very large numbers, 7% is basically losing the French and German economies. That’s the size of the loss that would be,” she continued.

Ms Gopinath also said tariffs worth hundreds of billions of dollars “is very different from the world we’ve lived in over the past two of three decades”.

The IMF’s deputy chief said another of the Fund’s main messages at its Annual Meetings was to warn on ballooning levels of global government debt.

She said the current period of steady economic growth was a “moment to rebuild your fiscal buffers” as “this will not be the last crisis. There will be additional shocks. You will need the fiscal space to respond. And now is the time to do it”.

Ms Gopinath said it was also necessary to “look at the bright side” with a resilient world economy after “some very tough knocks”.

She suggested the world economy had seen a soft landing from the multiple crises.

“Past experiences with bringing down inflation have not been with a soft landing. It was a big, big increases in unemployment. So that was a big hit, and it has turned out to be much better than many feared”, she said.

Ms Gopinath added that it was a “good win” for central banks everywhere that inflation has come down without high unemployment. But that now was the time to rebuild resilience in a fragile world.

At least 19 people, including six women and five children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, a local official has said.

Suad Hammoud told the BBC that the dead included former school principal Ahmed Ezzedine and three generations of his family, who all lived in the three-storey building in the village of Teffahta.

The village’s imam, Sheikh Abdo Abo Rayya, was killed while walking near the house at the time of the strike along with two passers-by, she added.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the incident, but it has repeatedly said it takes measures to mitigate harm to civilians.

It has carried out thousands of air strikes across Lebanon over the past four weeks, targeting what it has said are the armed group Hezbollah’s operatives, infrastructure and weapons.

Ms Hammoud said Wednesday’s strike in Teffahta happened after the funeral for Ahmed Ezzedine’s cousin and brother-in-law, Khodr, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in the neighbouring village of Marwanieh on Monday.

But she said a report by the state-run National News Agency (NNA) that the strike had targeted a wake for mourners to express their condolences was incorrect.

“Only the house’s residents were there. They came back after the funeral. There were no strangers there,” she said.

“People are aware that the circumstances do not allow them offering condolences in person, so there are no wakes in the village anymore.”

Also inside the house with Mr Ezzedine were his wife, sister, daughters, daughter-in-law, sons-in-law and his grandchildren, she said.

Mr Ezzedine lived on the ground floor, while his children and their families lived on the upper floors. But everyone is believed to have been on the ground floor when the house was hit.

A video posted on social media showed shortly afterwards showed a huge plume of smoke rising from a hillside in Teffahta where the house was located.

On Wednesday morning, Lebanese TV broadcast footage of a pile of rubble and twisted metal that once made up the upper floors.

The Lebanese health ministry has not reported how many people were killed in the strike. But Ms Hammoud and Teffahta’s community Facebook account put the death toll at 19.

The Facebook account named the five children as Mohammed Yassin, Ahmed and Malak Ezzedine, and Sara and Mohammed Kinyar, and the six women as Zaineb, Malak, Hadiya, Fadiya and Fatima Ezzedine and Zaina Taleb.

Sheikh Abo Rayya was walking near the house at the time of the strike, according to Ms Hammoud.

“The houses in the village aren’t isolated, they’re very close to one another,” she said, adding that another two men identified by the Facebook account as Rabih Younes and Hussein Saleh were also likely to have been passers-by killed by the explosion.

A relative of Sheikh Abo Rayya told the BBC that strike happened at about 17:10 local time, about 15 minutes after the funeral.

They insisted that the sheikh was not the target, noting that the house had been “obliterated”.

“Sheikh Abdo was just passing by the house. He wasn’t inside the house. He was on his way to the mosque with his companion. They were going to prayers,” they said.

“The imam was going down the hill and the pressure wave blew him away. He didn’t die immediately. He was injured and died at the hospital around five hours later.”

Last week, the UN human rights office received reports that 12 women and two children were among 23 people killed in an Israeli air strike on a four-storey residential building in the northern Lebanese town of Aitou.

It called for an investigation into the attack, expressing concerns with respect to international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality.

The Israeli military said it “struck a target belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation”.

Israel’s launched an 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 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 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.

US actor Ron Ely, best known for playing the role of Tarzan in the 1960s television show of the same name, has died aged 86.

“The world has lost one of the greatest men it has ever known – and I have lost my dad.” the actor’s daughter, Kirsten Casale Ely, said in an Instagram post.

Tarzan originally aired on NBC television network from 1966 to 1968, during which time the actor broke a number of bones and was reported to have been attacked by animals while performing his own stunts.

After retiring from acting in 2001, Ely became an author and published two mystery novels.

Ely made a brief return to acting for one television film, Expecting Amish, in 2014, where he played an Amish elder.

In the 1980s, he appeared in other hit television programmes including cruise ship-based comedy The Love Boat, as well as Wonder Woman with star Lynda Carter.

Born in Texas in 1938, Ely went on to marry his high school sweetheart in 1959, before divorcing two years later.

He was also known for hosting the Miss America pageant in the early 1980s, where he met his wife Valerie. The couple went on to have three children.

Ely died at his home in Los Alamos in Santa Barbara, California on 29 September.

Announcing the death in an Instagram post on Wednesday, the actor’s daughter said: “My father was someone that people called a hero. He was an actor, writer, coach, mentor, family man and leader.”

She added: “I knew him as my dad – and what a heaven sent honour that has been. To me, he hung the moon.”

Israel has carried out at least four air strikes on the historic Lebanese port city of Tyre, hours after expanding its evacuation orders to cover several central neighbourhoods.

Videos showed huge clouds of black smoke rising from a seafront area that is only a few hundred metres from Unesco World Heritage-listed Roman ruins.

Lebanon’s state news agency said the strikes caused “massive destruction” to homes and infrastructure, but there were no reports of any casualties.

The Israeli military said it targeted command-and-control centres of Hezbollah, including its Southern Front headquarters.

The military’s Arabic spokesman had earlier issued a map of the neighbourhoods where he said it was going to act “forcefully” against the Iran-backed armed group.

Tens of thousands of residents had already fled the city in recent weeks in response to Israel’s intense air campaign and ground invasion.

But before the strikes began, a spokesman for a disaster management unit said about 14,000 people were still living in the city, including those displaced from elsewhere in the south.

“You could say that the entire city of Tyre is being evacuated,” Bilal Kashmar told AFP news agency, adding that many people were heading towards the suburbs.

Wael Farraj said he and his family had fled in response to the evacuation order and that they were sitting by the sea when they heard that their home had been destroyed.

“We took the children, grabbed what we could,” he told Reuters news agency as he inspected the damage. “We came back and looked, and our house had collapsed.”

“We are staying here and we are steadfast. We will remain here… among the rubble.”

Another man, Issam Awad, said: “Just like everyone else, we were sitting, and suddenly, without warning, the bombing started.”

“Thank God, we’re all fine, and no-one got hurt by the explosions.”

The Israeli military said the strikes were part of its efforts to target Hezbollah’s activities and obstruct its attempts to rebuild its military capabilities.

It also accused the group of systematically taking over civilian and religious areas to carry out attacks in a way that endangered the Lebanese population.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli aircraft carried out multiple air strikes elsewhere in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley on Wednesday.

The regions were also targeted overnight along with the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

The Israeli military said the strikes in Beirut targeted weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, as well as command centres belonging to Hezbollah.

On Wednesday evening the pro-Hezbollah TV channel al-Mayadeen said its bureau in the city had been hit by an Israeli strike.

The military also said it had killed the Hezbollah sector commanders for the southern areas of Jibchit, Jouaiya and Qana in air strikes over the past several days, and that its troops had killed about 70 Hezbollah fighters during operations inside southern Lebanon to dismantle the group’s infrastructure and weapons caches.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

However, the group did say its fighters had launched barrages of rockets into Israel on Wednesday, including one in the morning that targeted the Gilot intelligence base, which is north of the central city of Tel Aviv.

Rocket alert sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, prompting senior US officials travelling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to be ushered to a safe room in their hotel. It is not known whether or not Blinken himself was also forced to shelter.

Another rocket barrage hit two factory buildings in the northern Israeli towns of Acre and Kiryat Bialik, causing damage but no injuries.

Later, Hezbollah confirmed that Hashem Safieddine, who had been expected to become the group’s next leader, was killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Beirut on 4 October.

Safieddine was the cousin of Hezbollah’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in another strike in the capital the previous week.

Israel’s launched its full-scale military campaign 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 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 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.

Mohammed Sukayneh picked his way through slabs of rubble and twisted metal, clutching a few plastic bags – all he could recover from his home of 45 years.

It was brought down on top of him and his family last night by an Israeli airstrike, that killed at 18 people, four of them children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

The attack happened without warning in a place where people thought they would be safe – about 150 metres from the entrance to Lebanon’s largest public hospital, the Rafik Hariri hospital in southern Beirut.

Mohammed and his family were asleep in their beds.

“We didn’t recognise what is happening,” he said.

“After the strike we hear the sound like ‘boom, boom, boom, boom’ like this. And everything is thrown on us. Stones, metal, steel, fresh blood, fresh meat on us. You couldn’t speak, you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t take your oxygen.”

He names five neighbours who are still under the rubble of their home. And there were others, killed in an instant, in their own neighbourhood – including two 19-year-old girls who were sitting outside his door.

Mohammed, 54, survived with a grazed arm, but his 20-year-old nephew is now in intensive care. “Half of his brain is crushed,” he said.

• Lebanon says 18 killed in Israeli strike near southern Beirut hospital
• Biden ‘deeply concerned’ about apparent leak of Israel plan to attack Iran

A civil defence worker at the scene told us six residential buildings had been brought down, most of them three or four stories high.

A veiled woman sat on the ground, with her hands on her head, rocking back and forth in distress. “There are no Hezbollah here,” she said, “we are all civilians”.

A neighbour said, “everyone flew through the air”.

Minutes later more remains were recovered from the rubble and carried away in a black body bag.

I asked Mohammed what he thought Israel could have been targeting, in this heavily populated area.

“They are hitting everything randomly,” he replied, his voice strengthened by anger.

“Without seeing there is children. Where are the guns here? Where are the rockets here? Blind, Israeli enemies. Blind.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it struck a “Hezbollah terrorist target near the hospital” without providing any information about what the target was. It says the hospital itself was not targeted or hit.

Rafik Hariri hospital director Jihad Saadeh said it was struck by shrapnel but is functioning normally and will not be evacuated.

Not so for the Al Sahel private hospital, about 2km away, which was emptied out last night.

“We evacuated instantly, like crazy,” says Dr Mazen Alameh, the general manager.

“We cannot risk anyone’s lives. We cannot take it as granted that they (Israel) will not bomb.”

The hurried evacuation of 10 patients and 50 staff came after a public claim by the Israeli military that the hospital was sitting on top of a Hezbollah bunker, full of riches.

The IDF gave no proof but produced a 3D animation, claiming to show a bunker beneath the building. “There are hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold inside the bunker, right now,” said the IDF spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari.

It sounded like an invitation to a heist.

At the hospital today management and doctors gathered to deny “Israel’s false allegation” and give us a tour, including the two floors below ground. The hospital is in the southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, but staff insist strongly that it is not linked with any group.

“It’s really shocking to say that Sahel Hospital is affiliated with any party in Lebanon,” says Dr Alameh. “It’s a private hospital. It’s a teaching hospital for doctors, physicians and other medical students.”

He dismissed Israel’s claim of a hidden bunker. “The hospital was founded 40 years ago on an old house,” he said.

“It’s impossible to have any tunnel or infrastructure underneath. Any person in the world can come here and see everything they want.”

We were encouraged to check in every corner. Nowhere was off limits, not even the morgue. Bundles of surgical scrubs, and packets of surgical instruments were opened to show there was nothing concealed.

After the tour, we were allowed to move around freely. We saw empty wards and anxious staff, but no hint of a bunker.

Israel claimed the entrance was in a neighbouring building. We went there too and had free access to the parking lot underneath. If there was an entrance to a secret bunker, we did not find it.

The only door we saw led to a lift, which we could not open. But that door was not concealed, and seemed an unlikely access point to a hidden chamber full of gold.

As we left the hospital as an Israeli drone circled overhead in the sunshine. Israel says its air force is “monitoring the compound but it will not strike the hospital itself.”

For now, Al Sahel remains closed, but doctors want to get back to treating the sick.

“We are an institution helping people,” said Dr Walid Alameh, the medical director, and a cousin of Dr Mazen.

“The founder of this hospital is my father,” he said, becoming emotional. “This is my home. Hopefully tomorrow we will open.”

But Israel is imposing its own wartime schedule here.

This afternoon it bombed Beirut again, a short drive from the hospital, and on Hezbollah’s doorstep.

A spokesman for the armed group had called a rare press conference.

As it was underway, the IDF issued a warning, telling residents of two nearby buildings to leave as they were “located near Hezbollah facilities.”

Half an hour later two more multi story buildings vanished from the skyline in seconds, reduced to dark clouds of smoke and ash.

In homes, and in hospitals here, many are stricken by fear.

Palestinians who fled from the Israeli ground offensive on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza have given harrowing accounts of the situation there.

One man told the BBC that he saw streets strewn with bodies after being ordered to leave a shelter by Israeli forces, while a woman said some people left in such panic that they left their children behind.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees called for a temporary truce to enable safe passage for families still wishing to flee, while two local hospitals warned that they were running out of supplies.

The Israeli military said its troops were continuing operations against Hamas fighters while enabling the secure evacuation of civilians.

More than 400 people are reported to have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced since the military said it was launching a third offensive in the Jabalia area on 6 October, saying it was rooting out Hamas fighters who had regrouped there.

It came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Israel to try to revive the stalled diplomatic process for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal in the wake of last week’s killing by Israeli troops of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

After meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he told reporters that he wanted “to make sure that this is a moment of opportunity to move forward”.

Mr Blinken also emphasized the need for Israel to take additional steps to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme interviewed several displaced people who had recently fled Jabalia camp and sought refuge in the nearby Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City.

A man called Saleh said he had “endured a siege for 16 days” while sheltering with his family at Abu Hussein Primary School for Boys.

Medics and rescue workers said more than 20 people were killed in an Israeli air strike there last week. The Israeli military named on Tuesday 18 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters who it said were among the dead.

“The shelling grew closer and intensified each day, with Israeli forces advancing towards us. Today, we heard bombings very near… We feared for our lives,” Saleh said.

“We received messages via [Israeli] quadcopters urging us to evacuate, so we began to move under the watch of Israeli soldiers, who demanded we go towards either the south or west of Gaza… I had my grandmother with me, she was unable to move, like many others.”

Another man, Mohammed al-Danani, said he was at the same school and that he had “witnessed the bodies of martyrs on the streets” after complying with the evacuation order.

Engy Abdel Aal said she had been in the Abu Rashid Pond area when quadcopters broadcast orders directing people to move towards the town of Beit Lahia, just north of the camp.

“The situation was incredibly difficult, no-one knew where to go. It’s tragic and catastrophic in every sense,” she said. “Some people had to flee without their children, leaving them behind in the school while they escaped with others.”

The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that it troops were “continuing combat in the Jabalia area, while enabling the secure evacuation of civilians from the combat zone”.

“As a result, thousands of civilians have been evacuated. Dozens of terrorists were arrested from among the civilians,” it said in a post on X that included a video showing crowds walking through damaged streets.

The military also said that troops “eliminated 10 terrorists that posed a threat and operated adjacent to them” in a single strike, without giving any details.

The Palestinian Red Crescent meanwhile posted a video that it said showed an ambulance transporting the bodies of five people, including children, killed by shelling in Jabalia town on Monday.

Another graphic video filmed on the same day showed paramedic Nevin al-Dawasah trying to help dead and wounded men, women and children at a tented camp next to Jabalia Preparatory School for Boys.

After fleeing the area on Tuesday, Ms Dawasah told AFP news agency that people had been complying with an evacuation order when “suddenly there was shelling”.

“We had martyrs and wounded and there was no safe passage for the ambulances to come,” she said.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the reports.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Philippe Lazzarini, said its staff in northern Gaza were reporting that they could not find food, water or medical care.

“The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble,” he wrote on X. “People are just waiting to die. They feel deserted, hopeless and alone.”

Mr Lazzarini called for “an immediate truce, even if for few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.

A UN spokesman said Israeli authorities were continuing to deny requests from its Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to help rescue civilians trapped under the rubble and to deliver desperately needed supplies to hospitals.

The director of the Indonesian hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals near Jabalia, told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme that Israeli troops were stationed outside its gates and that there was constant gunfire in the vicinity.

“This has created an atmosphere of fear and confusion among patients and medical staff,” Dr Marwan al-Sultan said. “We are also facing a critical shortage of fuel, medical supplies, personnel, food, and water.”

“Additionally, ongoing power outages force the hospital to rely on alternative energy sources that last only eight to 10 hours. During the remaining time, the medical staff cannot operate the electric generators, which endangers patients who require oxygen.”

Dr Sultan also denied reports that there had been a fire at the hospital on Monday, saying there had been a blaze inside an adjacent school, near several generators.

The Israeli military has said it is ensuring hospitals remain operational during the offensive.

It has also said that more than 230 lorries carrying food, water, medical supplies and shelters have been transferred to northern Gaza via the Erez West crossing since last week, following a two-week period when the UN said there were no deliveries.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 42,710 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

US investigators are trying to find out how a pair of highly classified intelligence documents were leaked online.

The documents, which appeared on the messaging app Telegram on Friday, contain an alleged US assessment of Israeli plans to attack Iran.

The assessment is based on interpretation of satellite imagery and other intelligence.

On Monday White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden was “deeply concerned” about the leak.

• Latest updates: Hezbollah launches rockets after Israeli strike kills four in Lebanon

Officials have not determined whether the documents were released due to a hack or a leak, Mr Kirby said.

For three weeks now, Israel has been vowing to hit Iran hard in retaliation for Iran’s massed ballistic missile attack on Israel on 1 October.

Iran says that was in response to Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on 27 September.

Military analysts say the phrasing used in the headings looks credible and is consistent with similar classified documents revealed in the past.

Headed “Top Secret”, they include the acronym “FGI”, standing for “Foreign Government Intelligence”.

The documents appear to have been circulated to intelligence agencies in the Five Eyes alliance, the five Western nations that regularly share intelligence, namely the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The acronym “TK” in the documents refers to “Talent Keyhole”, a codeword covering satellite-based Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Imagery Intelligence (IMINT).

Taken together, the two documents are a classified US assessment of Israel’s preparations to hit targets in Iran, based on intelligence analysed on 15-16 October by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

What features prominently is the mention of two Air-launched Ballistic Missile (ALBM) systems: Golden Horizon and Rocks.

Rocks is a long-range missile system made by the Israeli company Rafael and designed to hit a variety of targets both above and below ground. Golden Horizon is thought to refer to the Blue Sparrow missile system with a range of around 2,000km (1,240 miles).

The significance of this is that it would indicate that the Israeli Air Force is planning to carry out a similar but greatly expanded version of its ABLM attack on an Iranian radar site near Isfahan in April.

By launching these weapons from long range and far from Iran’s borders it would avoid the need for Israeli warplanes to overfly certain countries in the region like Jordan.

The documents also report no sign of any preparations by Israel to activate its nuclear deterrent.

At the request of Israel, the US government never publicly acknowledges that its close ally Israel even possesses nuclear weapons, so this has caused some embarrassment in Washington.

Glaringly absent from these documents is any mention of what targets Israel intends to hit in Iran, or when.

The US has made no secret of its opposition to the targeting of either Iran’s nuclear research facilities or its oil installations.

That leaves military bases, most likely those belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its affiliated Basij militia as these two institutions are seen as the backbone of the Islamic Republic, projecting its military reach abroad and suppressing popular protest at home.

As regards timing, many had expected Israel to have carried out its promised retaliation by now. But back in April, Iran waited 12 days before hitting back at Israel with a barrage of 300 drones and missiles after an Israeli air strike hit its diplomatic buildings in Damascus, killing several senior IRGC commanders.

Part of the current delay in Israel’s response is likely due to US concerns at escalation with less than a month to go before the US presidential elections.

Possibly yes, by someone who wanted to derail Israel’s plans.

Iran has a large and sophisticated cyber-warfare capability so the possibility of a hostile hack is also being investigated.

These documents, if genuine as thought highly likely, show that despite the close defence relationship between the US and Israel, Washington still spies on its ally in case it is not being given the full picture.

They show that plans by the Israeli Air Force to carry out some kind of long-range retaliation against Iran are well advanced and that mitigation is being put in place against an expected Iranian response.

In short: if and when Israel does carry out these plans then the Middle East will once again experience a period of extreme tension.

There aren’t many world leaders who’ve been in power for 30 years.

Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has been accused of stealing elections, crushing dissent and dismantling democracy.

The UK, the EU and the US do not recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

There’s something else you should know about him: if there’s any leader who knows Vladimir Putin inside out, it is Lukashenko. The two men have known each other for years and meet regularly.

Alexander Lukashenko met me on the sidelines of the Brics summit of emerging economies. He wants Belarus to become a member.

I asked him to comment on claims that North Korea had sent troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine.

“Rubbish,” Lukashenko replied. “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.”

“And if the reports are confirmed?” I asked.

“It would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line,” replied Alexander Lukashenko.

“Even if we got involved in the war this would be a path to escalation. Why? Because you, the Anglo-Saxons, would immediately say that another country had got involved on one side… so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine.”

I ask him whether Vladimir Putin has ever asked Lukashenko to provide Belarussian troops for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

“Never. Neither he, nor [former Defence Minister] Sergei Shoigu, nor the current Defence Minister Andrei Belousov has ever raised that question.”

But Belarus has played a part in Russia’s war. In February 2022 Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, partly, from Belarusian territory. Why did the country’s leader allow the Kremlin to do that?

“How do you know I gave permission for Belarusian territory to be used?” Lukashenko asks me.

“Because Belarusian territory was used [for the invasion].”

“There were exercises going on involving several thousand Russian soldiers. Putin started withdrawing these troops from where they were in southern Belarus, down a road, along the border with Ukraine.

“At one point he redirected some of these troops to Kyiv. I’m sure they’d been provoked. It’s up to Putin how he withdraws his troops. Via Kyiv. Or he could have gone through Minsk.”

“Didn’t you call Putin to ask what was going on?” I ask.

“No. He didn’t call me. And I didn’t call him. These are his troops and he has the right to move them out whichever way he likes.”

That comment reflects the degree of influence the Kremlin has in neighbouring Belarus.

Another example: Russia has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

“Is Putin ready to use those weapons in the war in Ukraine?” I ask.

“Putin will never use the weapons stationed in Belarus without the Belarusian president’s consent,” Lukashenko tells me.

“Are you ready to allow the use of nuclear weapons?”

“I’m completely ready, otherwise why have these weapons? But only if the boot of one [foreign] soldier steps into Belarus. We have no plans to attack anyone.”

Human rights groups estimate there are currently 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko had previously told me there were none.

But speaking to me today (perhaps inadvertently) he used the phrase “political prisoner”, when speaking about the small number freed in recent months.

Some commentators have interpreted the releases as a message from Lukashenko to the West that he seeks better relations.

He denies that.

“We freed political prisoners on humanitarian grounds,” he says. “They were mostly elderly people and the sick. That’s all.

“This is no step towards improving relations with you. If you don’t want relations with us, that’s fine. We’ll get by without you.”

As the Arctic warms, polar bears face a growing risk of contracting viruses, bacteria and parasites that they were less likely to encounter just 30 years ago, research has revealed.

In a study that has provided clues about how polar bear disease could be linked to ice loss, scientists examined blood samples from bears in the Chukchi Sea – between Alaska and Russia.

They analysed samples that had been gathered between 1987 and 1994, then collected and studied samples three decades later – between 2008 and 2017.

The researchers found that significantly more of the recent blood samples contained chemical signals that bears had been infected with one of five viruses, bacteria or parasites.

It is difficult to know, from blood samples, how the bears’ physical health was affected, but wildlife biologist Dr Karyn Rode from the US Geological Survey said it showed that something was changing throughout the whole Arctic ecosystem.

The researchers tested for six different pathogens in total – viruses, bacteria or parasites that are primarily associated with land-based animals but have been recorded before in marine animals, including species that polar bears hunt.

The study covered three decades, Dr Rode said, “when there had been a substantial loss of sea ice and there’s been increased land use in [this population of polar bears]”.

“So we wanted to know if exposure had changed – particularly for some of these pathogens that we think are primarily land-oriented.”

The five pathogens, as disease-causing agents are collectively called, that have become more common in polar bears, are two parasites that cause toxoplasmosis and neosporosis, two types of bacteria that cause rabbit fever and brucellosis, and the virus that causes canine distemper.

“Bears in general are pretty robust to disease,” explained Dr Rode. “It’s not typically been known to affect bear population, but I think what it just highlights is that things [in the Arctic] are changing.”

• There are about 26,000 polar bears left in the world, with the majority in Canada. Populations are also found in the US, Russia, Greenland and Norway
• Polar bears are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with climate change a key factor in their decline
• Adult males can grow to be around 3m long and can weigh close to 600kg
• Polar bears can eat up to 45kg of blubber in one sitting
• These bears have a powerful sense of smell and can sniff out prey from up to 16km away
• They are strong swimmers and have been spotted up to 100km offshore. They can swim at speeds of around 10km per hour, due in part to their paws being slightly webbed

In the US, polar bears are classified as a threatened species; scientists say the biggest threat to their future is the continuing loss of sea ice habitat, which they depend on as a platform from which to pounce on their marine prey.

Previous research using collar cameras on bears has shown that, as they spend more of the year on land – when there is no available sea ice to hunt from – the bears are unable to find enough calories.

Dr Rode explained that polar bears are top predators: “Our study suggested that they’re getting their exposure to some pathogens primarily through their prey species.

“So what we saw as changes in pathogen exposure for polar bears is indicative of changes that other species are also experiencing.”

The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS One.

LinkedIn: the social network for CVs, apparently motivational corporate messages and – as of late last night – transatlantic diplomatic spats.

When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations, posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida.

In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”

Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown – a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian” [sic].

Bombastic as that may sound, it’s hardly of trivial interest that a Labour Party that has conspicuously sought to improve its ties to Trump and his team is now being formally accused of “blatant foreign interference” on behalf of his opponent, Kamala Harris.

So what’s behind all this?

Under the FEC rules, foreign volunteers on US campaigns are permissible, as long as they are just that – volunteers – and are not compensated for their work.

That is exactly what Labour says these operatives were: volunteers. While Patel’s LinkedIn post told those interested in campaigning that “we will sort your housing”, it is being argued that this was imprecise language.

Sir Keir Starmer told reporters last night that Labour officials going to the US to campaign are “doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there”.

There is a question over what exactly Patel meant by saying she had “10 spots available” for people willing to campaign in North Carolina.

Did that entail travel costs to get there being covered? Even if it did, Labour are adamant that they did not pay.

But arguably the more pertinent charge, diplomatically at least, is the allegation that the Labour Party as an institution is formally coming to the aid of the Democrats.

This is being denied too. Labour sources say that Ms Patel was, in her spare time, organising party officials to go out to the US in their spare time.

That was the argument from Steve Reed, the environment secretary, this morning: “It’s up to private citizens how they use their time and their money”.

And of course, it’s not surprising that those on the left of politics here would want the Democratic candidate to win the US election, just as at least one recent former Conservative special adviser is currently in a swing state campaigning for Trump.

There’s another element to this, too. The British political world is utterly obsessed with American politics, even if it is an almost totally unrequited passion.

Every four years, British politicos stream across the Atlantic for a taste of campaigning on a far bigger canvas.

There are numerous examples. Earlier this summer Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, was at the Republican convention just days after his election as an MP, as was Liz Truss, the former prime minister, just days after she lost her seat.

Penny Mordaunt, the former Conservative cabinet minister, worked for George W Bush before she became an MP. Liam Fox, another ex-Conservative MP, has had ties with senior figures in the Republicans for a number of years.

Not that the parties on either side of the Atlantic always match up neatly.

In January 2020, I was shadowing a small group of canvassers for Joe Biden in the New Hampshire presidential primary, when I realised that one of them was Sir Simon Burns, the former Conservative MP for Chelmsford.

In recent weeks Sir Robert Buckland, who lost his seat as a Conservative at the general election, has been in the US campaigning for Harris.

Be all that as it may, it’s undeniable that this is a seriously awkward spot for the Labour government to find itself in, exactly two weeks before Starmer could well be placing a phone call congratulating President-Elect Trump.

In opposition and in government, Labour officials have invested significant energy in trying to forge links to Trump and his allies.

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, spent time with JD Vance, the senator from Ohio who then became Trump’s candidate for vice-president.

Diplomats were delighted with how quickly Starmer managed to speak on the phone to Trump after the failed assassination attempt on him in July, and just a few weeks ago they met for the first time over dinner at Trump Tower in New York.

Senior Labour figures believe that this legal wrangle is not really a rebuke of that approach, but instead just straightforward politicking from the Trump campaign, who are eager to use the Labour volunteers as a way to bash the Harris campaign in the crucial final stretch.

They need to be right.

Because if they are wrong, then this may not be a mere passing awkwardness, but a dispute threatening the most important diplomatic relationship any British prime minister has.

The race between two of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk and Mukesh Ambani, is intensifying as they prepare to face off in India’s satellite broadband market.

After India’s government announced last week that satellite spectrum for broadband would be allocated administratively rather than through auction, this battle has only heated up.

Mr Musk had previously criticised the auction model supported by Mr Ambani.

Satellite broadband provides internet access anywhere within the satellite’s coverage.

This makes it a reliable option for remote or rural areas where traditional services like DSL – a connection that uses telephone lines to transmit data – or cable are unavailable. It also helps to bridge the hard-to-reach digital divide.

India’s telecom regulator has yet to announce spectrum pricing, and commercial satellite internet services are still to begin.

However, satellite internet subscribers in India are projected to reach two million by 2025, according to credit rating agency ICRA.

The market is competitive, with around half a dozen key players, led by Mr Ambani’s Reliance Jio.

Having invested billions in airwave auctions to dominate the telecom sector, Jio has now partnered with Luxembourg-based SES Astra, a leading satellite operator.

Unlike Mr Musk’s Starlink, which uses low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites positioned between 160 and 1,000 km from Earth’s surface for faster service, SES operates medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellites at a much higher altitude, offering a more cost-effective system. Receivers on the ground receive satellite signals and process it to internet data.

Mr Musk’s Starlink has 6,419 satellites in orbit and four million subscribers across 100 countries. He has been aiming to launch services in India since 2021, but regulatory hurdles have caused delays.

If his company enters India this time, it will boost Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to attract foreign investment, many say.

It will also help his government’s efforts to burnish its image as pro-business, countering claims that its policies favour top Indian businessmen like Mr Ambani.

While auctions have proved lucrative for it in the past, India’s government defends its decision to allocate satellite spectrum administratively this time, claiming it aligns with international norms.

Satellite spectrum is not typically allocated by auction as the costs involved could impact the financial rationale or investment in the business, says Gareth Owen, a technology analyst at Counterpoint Research. In contrast, administrative allocation would ensure spectrum is fairly distributed among “qualified” players, giving Starlink a chance to enter the race.

But Mr Ambani’s Reliance says an auction is necessary to ensure fair competition, given the lack of clear legal provisions in India on how satellite broadband services can be offered directly to people.

In letters written to the telecoms regulator earlier in October, seen by the BBC, Reliance repeatedly urged the creation of a “level playing field between satellite-based and terrestrial access services”.

The firm also said that “recent advancements in satellite technologies… have significantly blurred the lines between satellite and terrestrial networks”, and that “satellite-based services are no longer confined to areas unserved by terrestrial networks”. One letter stated that spectrum assignment is done through auctions under India’s telecom laws, with administrative allocation allowed only in cases of “public interest, government functions, or technical or economic reasons preventing auctions.”

On X, Mr Musk pointed out that the spectrum “was long designated by the ITU as shared spectrum for satellites”. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency for digital technology, sets global regulations, and India is a member and signatory.

When Reuters news agency reported that Mukesh Ambani was lobbying the government to reconsider its position, Mr Musk responded to a post on X, saying: “I will call [Mr Ambani] and ask if it would not be too much trouble to allow Starlink to compete to provide internet services to the people of India.”

Mr Ambani’s resistance to the administrative pricing method might stem from a strategic advantage, suggests Mr Owen. The tycoon could be “prepared to outbid Musk”, using an auction to potentially exclude Starlink from the Indian market, he says.

But it is not Mr Ambani alone who supported the auction route.

Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, has said that companies aiming to serve urban, high-end customers should “take telecom licences and buy spectrum like everyone else”.

Mr Mittal – India’s second-largest wireless operator – along with Mr Ambani, controls 80% of the country’s telecom market.

Such resistance is a “defensive move aimed at raising costs for international players seen as long-term threats,” says Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications expert.

“While not immediate competition, satellite technologies are advancing quickly. Telecom companies [in India] with large terrestrial businesses fear that satellites could soon become more competitive, challenging their dominance.”

At stake, clearly, is the promise of the vast Indian market. Nearly 40% of India’s 1.4 billion people still don’t have internet access, with rural areas making up most of the cases, according to EY-Parthenon, a consulting company.

For context, China is home to almost 1.09 billion internet users, which is almost 340 million more than India’s 751 million, according to DataReportal, which tracks global online trends.

India’s internet adoption rate still lags behind the global average of 66.2% but recent studies show that the country is closing the gap.

If priced properly, satellite broadband can help bridge some of this gap, and even help in the internet-of things (IoT), a network that connects everyday objects to the internet, allowing them to talk to each other.

Pricing will be crucial in India, where mobile data is among the cheapest globally – just 12 cents per gigabyte, according to Modi.

“A price war [with Indian operators] is inevitable. Musk has deep pockets. There’s no reason why he cannot offer a year of free services in [some] places to gain a foothold in the domestic market,” says Prasanto K Roy, a technology analyst. Starlink has already cut prices in Kenya and South Africa.

It may not be easy though. In a 2023 report, EY-Parthenon noted that Starlink’s higher costs – almost 10 times those of major Indian broadband providers – could make it difficult to compete without government subsidies.

Many more LEO satellites – the kind Starlink operates – are needed to provide global coverage than MEO satellites, increasing launch and maintenance costs.

And some of the fears of Indian operators could be unfounded.

“Businesses will never switch completely to satellite unless there is no terrestrial option. Terrestrial networks will always be less expensive than satellite, except in thinly populated regions,” says Mr Owen.

Mr Musk could have a first-mover advantage, but “satellite markets are notoriously slow to develop”.

The battle between two of the world’s richest men over internet of space has truly begun.

The tiny villages of Haryana state in India’s rural north-west find themselves in an unlikely spotlight these days.

Farmers’ homes in hamlets around the industrial town of Rohtak are suddenly in demand, doubling up as movie sets.

Alongside the mooing of cows, it isn’t unusual to hear a director shouting “lights, camera, action” here.

A new start-up, called STAGE, has spawned a nascent film industry in this hinterland.

“Batta”, a high-octane drama about power and injustice, is just the latest in half-a-dozen movies under production in the area, Vinay Singhal, founder of STAGE, told the BBC on the film’s sets.

“There were just a dozen odd Haryanvi films made in India’s history before we came in. Since 2019, we’ve made more than 200,” says Mr Singhal.

STAGE makes content for largely under-served provincial audiences, keeping hyper-local tastes, dialectical quirks and the rural cultural syntax in mind.

There are 19,500 different dialects in India, and STAGE has identified 18 that are spoken by a large enough population to merit their own film industry.

The app currently offers content in two languages – Rajasthani and Haryanvi. It has three million paying subscribers and is planning to expand and include other dialects like Maithili and Konkani, which are spoken in north-east and coastal-west India, respectively.

“We’re also on the verge of closing a funding round from an American venture capitalist firm to expand into these territories,” says Mr Singhal, who appeared along with his co-founders on the Indian version of Shark Tank, a business reality show, a year ago.

STAGE is among a growing number of Indian start-ups that are betting big on the rural market opportunity as the next growth frontier. Others include players like Agrostar and DeHaat.

While a bulk of India’s 1.4 billion people still live in its 650,000 villages, they’ve hardly been a market for its booming tech start-ups so far.

Asia’s third-largest economy has been a hotbed for innovation, birthing several dozen unicorns – or tech companies valued at over $1bn – but they’ve all largely built for the “top 10%” of urban Indians, according to Anand Daniel, partner at Accel, which has funded some of the country’s most successful ventures, from Flipkart to Swiggy and Urban Company.

While there have been notable exceptions like online marketplace Meesho, or a few farm technology players, the start-up boom has largely bypassed India’s villages.

That’s now changing as more founders successfully cater to rural consumers and get funded for their ideas.

“Investors don’t show you the door anymore,” says Mr Singhal.

“Five years ago, I didn’t get any money at all. I had to bootstrap the company.”

Accel itself is now cutting more cheques to entrepreneurs solving for the rural market, recently announcing it will invest up to $1m in rural start-ups through its pre-seed accelerator programme.

Unicorn India Ventures, another local VC fund, says 50% of their investments are now in start-ups based in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. And in July this year, the Japanese auto giant Suzuki announced a $40m India fund to invest in start-ups building for rural markets.

So what’s driving this shift?

The untapped market opportunity is large, says Mr Daniel, and there’s a growing realisation among investors and founders that rural doesn’t necessarily mean poor.

Two-thirds of India’s population live in the hinterland and spend about $500bn annually. In fact, the top 20% of this demographic spends more money than half of those that live in the cities, according to Accel’s own estimates.

“As India adds $4tn to GDP over the next decade, at least 5% of that will be digitally influenced, and coming from ‘Bharat’ or rural India,” says Mr Daniel.

That’s a $200bn incremental opportunity.

Giving tailwind to this is the growing penetration of smartphones among middle-income rural families.

Some 450 million Indians now use one outside its cities – which is more than the entire US population.

And click-of-a-button digital payments through the much-touted UPI interface has been a game-changer for companies looking beyond the metros to expand their offering.

“Five or seven years ago, the ability to reach this target group – be it digitally, logistically or in terms of getting payments – wasn’t easy. But the timing right now is much better for this generation of start-ups trying to address this market,” says Mr Daniel.

Also, while most innovation was happening in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru a decade ago, a growing number of entrepreneurs are now emerging from smaller towns, driven by factors such as lower operating costs, availability of local talent, and government initiatives aimed at promoting entrepreneurship in non-metro areas, according to a report from Primus Ventures.

Being close to the ground may have also contributed to exposing founders to the potential of the vast non-metro market.

But cracking rural India is easier said than done.

The small town consumer is price-conscious and geographically dispersed. The number of addressable consumers in any given postcode is far smaller than the cities.

Infrastructure also continues to lag, so “distribution isn’t easy, and operating costs are high”, says Gautam Malik, chief revenue officer at Frontier Markets, a rural e-commerce start-up that does last-mile deliveries to villages with populations below 5,000.

Besides, those using urban templates and force-fitting them to the village context will fail, says Mr Malik.

His company quickly realised why traditional e-commerce wasn’t able to penetrate the very last mile. The village customer simply didn’t trust her money with a third party that didn’t have local presence.

To build that trust factor, Mr Malik and his team had to tie up with village-level women entrepreneurs to act as their sales and delivery agents.

Such differentiation and a commitment for the long haul will be critical, he says, to winning rural India and cracking that incremental $200bn market opportunity.

Shaped and coloured like the country’s rare gemstone, tanzanite, the sparkling new railway terminal in Dar es Salaam is a symbol of Tanzania’s transport ambitions.

The glass panels gleam in the sun, like an outsize version of the prismatic bluish-purple gem that glitters in the light.

The trains – powered by electricity, a first for the region – carry passengers from the commercial hub to the capital, Dodoma, in less than four hours, half the time it takes by road.

It marks the starting point of one of the country’s strategic projects – the building of a 2,560km (1,590-mile) Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) envisaged to connect key cities and link up with neighbours Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The 460km (285-mile) Dar es Salaam to Dodoma leg has been open since August, when President Samia Suluhu described the railway as “a pathway to our future” that would “enhance our standing in the region”.

In Dodoma, the station is another grand building, resembling the rocky hills around the city – an effort to blend the country’s natural heritage with modernity.

It is a reluctant capital. In the middle of the country, it was first designated the centre of power 50 years ago, but it took the strong-willed late President John Magufuli to force government bodies to relocate.

But as most commercial activity, and even some government work, continues in Dar es Salaam, a fast and efficient transport link between the cities has been seen as vital.

The electric train has also made it smooth and convenient for the ordinary Tanzanian. A far cry from the experience on the road or the older slower, narrower train that this service replaces.

Inside the train carriage, the seats are clean, comfortable and reclinable. There is a foldable tray table attached to each one. A member of the train crew is on hand to sell hot and cold drinks as well as snacks.

In economy class there are five seats in each row, three on one side of the aisle and two on the other. In the business and luxury (royal) classes there are two seats on either side of the row, offering more comfort and legroom.

“We are grateful, we are not tired,” Gloria Sebastian who lives in Dar es Salaam, tells the BBC during a trip to visit her family in Dodoma. She is happy about the convenience that the train provides.

And she is not alone.

The man who is overseeing the building and operation of the SGR service says at least 7,000 passengers travel on the eight daily services on the line, which is already approaching capacity.

Machibya Masanja tells the BBC that the demand has been so high that “we cannot meet it with those trips we are making per day. We expect the number [of passengers] will double or triple.” There are plans afoot to add more journeys.

The popularity means that advance planning is essential as services can be fully booked several days in advance.

Payment must be made within an hour of booking in order to reserve a seat. An economy class trip to Dodoma costs a reasonable 40,000 Tanzanian shillings ($15; £11), while going business class will set you back 70,000 shillings ($26).

The early morning service leaves Dar es Salaam at 06:00 but people are required to turn up two hours earlier for security checks.

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The inside of the tanzanite-shaped building resembles an airport terminal. Passengers queue up and go through thorough checks just like in an airport. The luggage is scanned and people are sometimes frisked before accessing the boarding lounge.

One man later told the BBC that he felt the intense scrutiny seemed unnecessary, and there does not seem to have been any direct security threat, but the atmosphere is good-natured.

Nevertheless, there is an edginess from officials evidenced by the fact that a police officer questioned the BBC team who were taking pictures at the terminal – but they were quickly cleared after some checks.

The boarding was calm and orderly and the train pulled away on time.

Gathering speed – the trains currently hit a maximum of 120km/h (75mph) but can go faster – it was soon whizzing through the outskirts of Dar es Salaam as the early morning sun began to illuminate the panoramic view.

We cross a vast countryside – scrub and grassland plains interspersed with views of lush farms – and pass a meandering river, craggy terrain and undulating hills.

There were also the tunnels, causing some discomfort in the eardrum.

“You are advised to be chewing something, yawn or keep your mouth open,” the announcer said, to the amusement of some passengers.

For first-timers, the excitement was evident.

Bernice Augustine was with her daughter for a weekend vacation in Dodoma.

“It is awesome,” she says. “You cannot compare it with the old train: it’s convenient, it’s clean, it’s easy.”

Hilaly Mussa Maginga has bad memories of going on the old line. After the trip to Kigoma he vowed never to get on a train again as he was so tired and his lower back was in pain.

But his curiosity was piqued when he heard about the SGR.

“When you are used to travel for long distances, you sit until it hurts, so when you have this option to travel for a shorter time, there is a lot to enjoy. We’ve come from far, thank God,” he says.

For Mr Maginga the journey on the SGR is a zen-like voyage, a calm, unperturbed travel experience.

The project’s journey to reach this point has not been entirely smooth.

From the initial groundbreaking in 2017, the first section had been scheduled for completion in 2019. But it faced lengthy delays which the railway company attributes to Covid and construction costs as well as labour issues.

There have also been questions about its huge cost, estimated at $10bn (£8bn) upon completion.

Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi is the main contractor for the route’s first four sections, including the Dar es Salaam to Dodoma segment, while Chinese firms are building the other two.

Funding has come from the Tanzanian government and lenders, including from Denmark and Sweden, the Chinese Exim bank and the African Development Bank.

But Mr Masanja says it is too soon to be worried about profitability, saying this will only be realisable once the entire network is complete. He adds that the service is generating enough passenger income to offset operation costs, and that from January the company plans to introduce freight trains.

For now, he says, “its social contribution is much more profitable”.

The service has occasionally been disrupted by power failure but Mr Masanja says they are building a dedicated power transmission line, tapping into the country’s vast power generation capacity to eliminate the risk of unstable power.

Using electricity has reduced the cost of operations to about a third of what would have been spent on diesel, which neighbouring Kenya uses to power its own SGR line, he tells the BBC.

“We are the cheapest in the region, and in Africa, in terms of the cost,” he says.

Not everyone is entirely happy, though.

Adam Ally Mwanshinga, chairman of the Dodoma Bus Terminal Agents’ Union, says his members have lost a significant part of their business because of the railway.

The modern bus station in the capital was not so long ago a bustling terminal, he says, adding there are now 4-500 fewer passengers each day.

While it is cheaper to travel by bus, the convenience of the train has been more attractive for many.

“Business is down and life is difficult,” Mr Mwanshinga says.

“The buses can’t fill up and the many businesses here that used to benefit from the many people coming here are suffering,” he says.

However he seems resigned to the situation, saying that the SGR development “has done well for the majority of the people”.

“It is the nature of life – there are those who benefit and those who will suffer.”

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British actor Idris Elba has told the BBC that he will relocate to Africa within the next decade as part of his plans to support the continent’s movie industry.

The 52-year-old star of the hit series The Wire is behind nascent projects to build a film studio on the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar as well as one in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.

Born in London, Elba, whose mother is from Ghana and father from Sierra Leone, has a strong attachment to Africa.

He wants to leverage his star power to back its burgeoning film business as he says it is vital that Africans get to tell their own stories.

“I would certainly consider settling down here; not even consider, it’s going to happen,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry meeting in Accra.

“I think [I’ll move] in the next five, 10 years, God willing. I’m here to bolster the film industry – that is a 10-year process – I won’t be able to do that from overseas. I need to be in-country, on the continent.”

But in the spirit of Pan-Africanism he will not commit to living in a specific place.

“I’m going to live in Accra, I’m going to live in Freetown [Sierra Leone’s capital], I’m going to live in Zanzibar. I’m going to try and go where they’re telling stories – that’s really important.”

One goal he does have is to make a film in his studio in Accra one day.

Elba, who played South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in the 2013 biopic Long Walk to Freedom, believes that it is vital for Africans to be centre-stage in the entire film-making process. That is in front of the camera, behind the camera and also in financing, distribution, marketing and showing the final product.

He imagines that just as movie audiences around the world know the differences between the US cities of New York and Los Angeles without necessarily ever having visited them, they will one day have a more nuanced understanding of the continent.

“This sector is a soft power, not just across Ghana but across Africa.

“If you watch any film or anything that has got to do with Africa, all you’re going to see is trauma, how we were slaves, how we were colonised, how it’s just war and when you come to Africa, you will realise that it’s not true.

“So, it’s really important that we own those stories of our tradition, of our culture, of our languages, of the differences between one language and another. The world doesn’t know that.”

With Nigeria’s Nollywood producing hundreds of movies a year, films are arguably one of the country’s most successful exports. There is also a tradition, especially in parts of Francophone Africa, of making high-quality films.

Elba has previously recognised the talent in Africa’s film industry, but said the facilities were “lacking”.

A 2022 report from Unesco backed up the actor.

The UN’s cultural agency said that despite “significant growth in production”, the business of film-making across the continent was hindered by issues such as piracy, insubstantial training opportunities and a lack of official film institutions.

Elba believes with the right momentum and involvement of governments willing to create an enabling environment, a virtuous circle can be established.

“We have to invest in our story-telling because when you see me, you see a little version of yourself and that encourages us.”

American voters will face a clear choice for president on election day, between Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Here’s a look at what they stand for and how their policies compare on different issues.

Harris has said her day-one priority would be trying to reduce food and housing costs for working families.

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers and provide incentives to increase housing supply.

Inflation soared under the Biden presidency, as it did in many western countries, partly due to post-Covid supply issues and the Ukraine war. It has fallen since.

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again”.

He has promised to deliver lower interest rates, something the president does not control, and he says deporting undocumented immigrants will ease pressure on housing. Economists warn that his vow to impose higher tax on imports could push up prices.

• US election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?
• Comparing Biden’s economy to Trump’s

Harris wants to raise taxes on big businesses and Americans making $400,000 (£305,000) a year.

But she has also unveiled a number of measures that would ease the tax burden on families, including an expansion of child tax credits.

She has broken with Biden over capital gains tax, supporting a more moderate rise from 23.6% to 28% compared with his 44.6%.

Trump proposes a number of tax cuts worth trillions, including an extension of his 2017 cuts which mostly helped the wealthy.

He says he will pay for them through higher growth and tariffs on imports. Analysts say both tax plans will add to the ballooning deficit, but Trump’s by more.

• Where Kamala Harris stands on 10 issues
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Harris has made abortion rights central to her campaign, and she continues to advocate for legislation that would enshrine reproductive rights nationwide.

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion.

The three judges he appointed to the Supreme Court while president were pivotal in overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, a 1973 ruling known as Roe v Wade.

Harris was tasked with tackling the root causes of the southern border crisis and helped raise billions of dollars of private money to make regional investments aimed at stemming the flow north.

Record numbers of people crossed from Mexico at the end of 2023 but the numbers have fallen since. In this campaign, she has toughened her stance and emphasised her experience as a prosecutor in California taking on human traffickers.

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party immigration bill, backed by Harris.

He has also promised the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history. Experts told the BBC this would face legal challenges.

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Harris has vowed to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”. She has pledged, if elected, to ensure the US and not China wins “the competition for the 21st Century”.

She has been a longtime advocate for a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, and has called for an end to the war in Gaza.

Trump has an isolationist foreign policy and wants the US to disentangle itself from conflicts elsewhere in the world.

He has said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours through a negotiated settlement with Russia, a move that Democrats say would embolden Vladimir Putin.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel but said little on how he would end the war in Gaza.

Harris has criticised Trump’s sweeping plan to impose tariffs on imports, calling it a national tax on working families which will cost each household $4,000 a year.

She is expected to have a more targeted approach to taxing imports, maintaining the tariffs the Biden-Harris administration introduced on some Chinese imports like electric vehicles.

Trump has made tariffs a central pledge in this campaign. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.

He has also promised to entice companies to stay in the US to manufacture goods, by giving them a lower rate of corporate tax.

Harris, as vice-president, helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which has funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy, and electric vehicle tax credit and rebate programmes.

But she has dropped her opposition to fracking, a technique for recovering gas and oil opposed by environmentalists.

Trump, while in the White House, rolled back hundreds of environmental protections, including limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles.

In this campaign he has vowed to expand Arctic drilling and attacked electric cars.

Harris has been part of a White House administration which has reduced prescription drug costs and capped insulin prices at $35.

Trump, who has often vowed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, has said that if elected he would only improve it, without offering specifics. The Act has been instrumental in getting health insurance to millions more people.

He has called for taxpayer-funded fertility treatment, but that could be opposed by Republicans in Congress.

Harris has tried to contrast her experience as a prosecutor with the fact Trump has been convicted of a crime.

Trump has vowed to demolish drugs cartels, crush gang violence and rebuild Democratic-run cities that he says are overrun with crime.

He has said he would use the military or the National Guard, a reserve force, to tackle opponents he calls “the enemy within” and “radical left lunatics” if they disrupt the election.

• Trump’s legal cases, explained

Harris has made preventing gun violence a key pledge, and she and Tim Walz – both gun owners – often advocate for tighter laws. But they will find that moves like expanding background checks or banning assault weapons will need the help of Congress.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, the constitutional right to bear arms. Addressing the National Rifle Association in May, he said he was their best friend.

Harris has called for the decriminalisation of marijuana for recreational use. She says too many people have been sent to prison for possession and points to disproportionate arrest numbers for black and Latino men.

Trump has softened his approach and said it’s time to end “needless arrests and incarcerations” of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

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The message was addressed to “REAL AMERICAN PATRIOTS” to ensure a victory “TOO BIG TO RIG!”

Sent out to a mailing list by the Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, it combined two of the biggest themes of Donald Trump’s campaign: immigration and alleged election fraud.

“Experts are saying that as many as 2.7 million illegals could vote in November,” read the email from Ms Trump – the former president’s daughter-in-law.

But the number cited is derived from a decade-old survey that has been heavily disputed.

And while there is some clear evidence that some immigrants are registered to vote, it’s equally clear that the 2.7 million figure is a major exaggeration.

The roots of the statistic are found in an article, “Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?”, published in the journal Electoral Studies in 2014.

Written by three academics led by Jesse Richman, an associate professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia, the paper says the “number of non-citizen voters… could range from just over 38,000 at the very minimum to nearly 2.8 million at the maximum”.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

Mr Richman and his colleagues did not comb through voter rolls or personally survey immigrants to come to that conclusion, but instead relied on a data set from a long-running Harvard-backed survey called the Cooperative Election Study (CES).

The CES is conducted every year, and Mr Richman examined a number of respondents who self-identified as non-citizens and indicated that they had voted in the 2008 and 2010 elections.

But the people behind CES have repeatedly rejected the conclusions of Mr Richman’s paper, which attracted controversy and attention before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Brian Schaffner, a Tufts University professor who is one of the CES co-principal investigators, told the BBC that it’s not possible to draw statistical conclusions from a relatively small number of survey participants.

The CES is intended to be a survey of legal voters, and few respondents say they are non-citizens. For example, in 2008, 339 out of the nearly 34,000 survey participants said they were not US citizens. The proportion was similar in 2010.

That does not constitute a representative sample of the population, Schaffner said, and it’s a commonly known issue in large surveys – a small proportion of people click wrong or untrue answers.

In recent years, the CES has included more detailed questions about citizenship and registration with the aim of increasing accuracy.

Mr Richman, the author of the Electoral Studies article, drew on that more recent CES data to conclude in 2023 that 1% of non-citizens were registered to vote. That would be approximately 117,000 people based on official estimates of how many undocumented immigrants are in the US.

In an interview with the BBC, he said he stood by his findings – but noted that a substantial uncertainty about non-citizen voting registration and voting remained.

“Predictably, according to what tends to happen in American politics, each side focuses on the edge of that uncertainty that is most convenient,” Mr Richman said.

“Democrats would like there to be absolutely none. Republicans would like it to be a monster that is about to eat democracy. Both of those interpretations are not likely.”

But Mr Schaffner, the CES official, is equally adamant about his argument, that the study he administers is simply not suitable for extrapolation to the population at large to create an estimate of non-citizen voting.

The non-citizen voter claims were given new life in May 2024, when a conservative fact-checking organisation, Just Facts, which describes itself as non-partisan, published an article headlined: “Study: 10% to 27% of Non-Citizens Are Illegally Registered to Vote”.

The post asserted that “roughly 1.0 million to 2.7 million [immigrants] will illegally vote” in November’s election.

The claim went viral in right-wing spaces online, and were spread by news sites and conservative influencers. Elon Musk, who has repeatedly posted misleading messages about immigrants and voting to millions of his followers, shared this post as well.

Lara Trump mentioned the figure in two emails sent out to supporters in early October.

When contacted by the BBC, Just Facts founder James Agresti said he stood by his conclusions, although he characterised the Trump campaign claim as a “half truth, because the study has sizable margins of uncertainty” – and that the email from Lara Trump had used the highest possible number.

Mr Agresti said his calculations – which are based on CES data but with a modified methodology to Mr Richman’s and additional studies and data sets – had found the minimum number of non-citizens registered to vote was around 10 times higher at roughly a million.

Beyond the dispute over methodology, there is another problem with the argument that large numbers of immigrants are voting illegally: there are very few confirmed cases of it.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank compiled a database that includes decades of voting fraud cases. But only about 100 include a reference to non-citizens voting.

Criminal prosecution of illegal voters – not just non-citizens, but felons and other ineligible voters – is also extremely rare.

Despite nearly a decade of attention on illegal voting driven by Trump and Republicans, those numbers have not dramatically risen. Investigations into voter rolls show very few non-citizens registered to vote and even fewer voting.

Conservatives, and some scholars such as Mr Richman, allege that there are so few prosecutions because illegal voting is considered to be a minor crime by many. They say that authorities have spent few resources investigating it in the past.

Still, recent searches of active voter rolls – largely inspired by Trump and Republican Party officials – have turned up a relatively small number of illegal voters.

Mr Richman conducted a survey of Arizona’s four million voter records and found between 1,934 and 6,480 non-citizens registered to vote.

Earlier this year, the office of Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose – a Trump supporter – examined around eight million registrations and found around 600 people on the state’s voter rolls who could not prove their US citizenship.

Meanwhile, the state also struck an additional 155,000 registrations from the rolls, largely because of address changes.

Other states, including New Jersey and Virginia, have also removed hundreds of voters from their rolls in recent years – but the totals have not come close to the 10-to-27% figure cited in the Just Facts blog post.

Databases of criminal cases and official investigations of voter rolls have failed to find evidence of large proportions of immigrant non-citizens who are registered to vote.

The proportion of those who actually vote are, by definition, smaller still. Generally about half to two-thirds of registered American voters turn out to vote in presidential elections.

And the subset of those immigrants who do not have legal permission to be in the US – the “illegals” in Lara Trump’s email – is by definition even smaller.

While it’s clear that there are some non-citizens who are registered to vote, there’s a lack of real-world evidence that those numbers are very large when compared to the overall voting population.

The BBC contacted the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee for comment.

• 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?

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

Vice-President Kamala Harris and her team are prepared if her opponent, Donald Trump, declares victory in the presidential election before all ballots are counted, she told NBC News.

The interview between Harris and Hallie Jackson was taped at the US Naval Observatory and aired Tuesday evening.

The Democratic US presidential nominee answered questions about President Joe Biden’s poor debate performance before dropping out of the race, whether she would pardon former president Trump and the historic significance of her candidacy as a woman.

Here are some key moments:

Ms Jackson asked Harris if she had been honest about Biden when she endorsed his re-election bid.

“You never saw anything like what happened at the debate night behind closed doors with him?” Ms Jackson asked.

“It was a bad debate. People have bad debates,” Harris replied, referring to the face-off between Trump and Biden in June.

Ms Jackson then followed up, saying Biden’s poor debate performance was the reason Harris is now the Democratic party’s nominee.

“Well, you’d have to ask him if that’s the only reason why (he stood down),” Harris said.

Ms Jackson again asked about Biden.

“I am running for president of the United States. Joe Biden is not – and my presidency will be about bringing a new generation of leadership to America,” Harris said.

She then vouched for the president’s political achievements and leadership.

“I speak with not only sincerity, but with a real, first-hand account of watching him do this work. I have no reluctance of saying that,” she said.

Ms Jackson asked Harris what she would do if her Republican opponent declares himself the winner in the presidential race before all votes are counted.

“We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that as well,” Harris said.

In the hours after election day in 2020, Trump falsely declared himself the winner in the race against Biden, while votes still were being counted. The election was not decided until days later.

He currently faces allegations that he pressured officials to reverse the 2020 results and knowingly spread lies about election fraud.

When asked if the Harris team had considered a similar scenario on election day next month, the vice-president responded “of course”.

“This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol… this is a serious matter,” she said.

Ms Jackson asked Harris if she’d pardon Trump if she becomes president.

“I’m not going to get into those hypotheticals. I’m focused on the next 14 days,” she answered.

Asked if pardoning the former president would help unify the country, she said:

“Let me tell you what’s going to help us move on – I get elected president of the United States.”

Harris also was asked whether the US is ready for a woman of colour to be its next president.

“Absolutely,” she said, without hesitating. “…I think part of what is important in this election is not only turning the page, but closing the page and the chapter on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.”

Ms Jackson then pressed Harris on why she has been reluctant to lean into talking about the historic nature of her candidacy on the campaign trail. Harris would be the first female president if elected.

“I’m clearly a woman…. the point that most people really care about is, can you do the job and do you have a plan to actually focus on them,” she said.

When asked if she’s concerned about sexism, Harris said she doesn’t view her candidacy that way. Instead, she said her challenge on the campaign trail is making sure she can talk and listen to as many voters as possible.

“I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race, instead that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to address challenges,” she said.

Harris later went on to discuss her agenda focusing on reproductive rights and abortion access.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• GLOBAL: A third election outcome on minds of Moscow
• ON THE GROUND: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
• WWE: Why Trump is courting old friends from the ring
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The numbers were relatively stable through September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on 10 September, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

In the last few days the gap between them has tightened, as you can see in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

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

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

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

• What is the electoral college?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

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

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

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

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• 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
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

King Charles has arrived in Samoa for a four-day state visit where he will preside for the first time over a gathering of Commonwealth presidents and prime ministers.

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa greeted the King and Queen Camilla at Faleolo International Airport where a red carpet had been rolled out amid high winds and last-minute vacuum cleaning.

The Royal Samoan Police Band began playing as the couple alighted and met local officials.

The King and Queen, who ended their six-day tour of Australia on Tuesday, posted a message on social media saying they “couldn’t wait” to arrive in Samoa and experience the “warmth” of the country’s ancient traditions.

The tweet included a few words in Samoan which loosely translated as “looking forward to meeting the Samoan people”.

Samoa, a small country in the central South Pacific Ocean made up of an archipelago of nine islands, is hosting a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which has the theme “One Resilient Common Future”.

The King, as head of the Commonwealth, will formally open the event that will also be attended by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Charles deputised for Queen Elizabeth II during the last CHOGM staged by Rwanda in 2022, and in Samoa will be joined by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

The route from the airport to Apia – Samoa’s capital – had been spruced up for the royal visit on Wednesday.

Each village along the road had adopted a country, with residents decorating their houses and adorning their lawns with the corresponding flags.

Flashing lights were put in trees, bushes and on roof tops, while car tyres were repurposed as flower pots and painted bright colours.

Climate change, a subject close to the King’s heart, is expected to top the agenda at the meeting held in a part of the world very vulnerable to rising sea levels.

While reparations are not officially on the table, the subject is likely to come up as this group of countries was brought together by British colonisation.

The UK government has said there will no official apology or reparations.

The King and Queen wrapped up the Australian leg of their tour on Tuesday after completing a long list of engagements.

Between them, on Tuesday alone the royal couple visited the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, a food bank, a social housing project, a literacy initiative and a community barbecue.

They met two leading cancer researchers and celebrated the Sydney Opera House’s 50th anniversary.

An Australian arm of the King’s Foundation was officially launched, expanding a charity which promotes sustainability and provides training in traditional craft skills.

But it was not an entirely straightforward trip.

On Monday, an Australian senator defended heckling the King and accusing him of genocide after he addressed Parliament House, telling the BBC “he’s not of this land”.

Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian woman, interrupted the ceremony in the capital 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.

News presenter Andrea Byrne has said she feared her husband would be “better off” without her during the couple’s seven-year experience of infertility.

Byrne, 45, who is married to former Wales rugby international Lee Byrne, 44, has presented Welsh and network news for ITV since 2008.

“You feel so guilty,” recalled Byrne, who was told by doctors that she would likely never be able to carry her own pregnancy.

“I remember those feelings all the time of thinking [Lee] would be better off without me.”

The couple welcomed their daughter Jemima, who “defied science” by being conceived naturally, in 2019.

“I feel very conscious when I’m telling my story, that maybe it’s easier to tell because we did get the ending that we had,” said Byrne.

“But I still feel it’s important to talk about, because I know how lonely we were during that journey.”

After getting married on New Year’s Day in 2012, Byrne said she and her husband began trying to get pregnant straight away.

“We were both at the start of our 30s,” she said. “I didn’t have any reason to think there would be issues.”

After a while, they went to a fertility clinic for tests.

An ultrasound revealed an issue with the thickness of Byrne’s womb lining, which she described in her new book Desperate Rants and Magic Pants as an “unfixable rare genetic defect”.

“It’s the kind of news that you don’t expect to hear,” Byrne told the BBC.

Years of intrusive tests and procedures followed, including multiple rounds of IVF.

“To be honest, the number of cycles, I couldn’t even tell you,” she said.

“We also tried lots of different things on top of the IVF, things that we were advised might work from different specialists.

“We also had some positive pregnancy tests and thought we were pregnant, but unfortunately we had losses as well.

“So it was a real rollercoaster of emotion.”

Byrne said the years of trying to conceive also took a toll on her relationship with her husband.

“I like to think that we’re really strong because of it, but boy, at the time it’s really difficult,” she said.

“There are times when we wondered how we would stay together,” added Byrne, “because it’s so difficult emotionally”.

“I remember I used to say to Lee, and he used to get quite cross with me, because I used to say ‘oh just go and find somebody else, somebody else could do this more easily, just go and find another woman’.

“And he would say to me ‘goodness, we are in this together’.”

Doctors eventually told the couple their only hope was surrogacy and, in 2018, they began exploring the possibility of finding a surrogate in the USA.

In her book, Byrne describes finding out just minutes before she was due to present the evening news that none of the embryos they hoped to use for a surrogate were viable.

She wrote: “I look at my tear-streaked reflection in the mirror, patch up the damaged foundation, breathe deeply, walk out of the dressing room, put on a smile and walk through a busy newsroom, and on to the set.”

Byrne said that moment felt like the end of the road.

“We had a conversation after that news and decided we’d move on and build another life together,” she said.

“I get really emotional about it, because I felt so guilty about not being able to do what every other woman could do.”

But just a few months later, against all the odds, Byrne fell pregnant naturally.

“Amazingly, we fell pregnant again, and this time it was Jemima. It was unbelievable really,” said Byrne.

“We were without hope and they said the chances are you will never be able to carry your own pregnancy.

“So she [Jemima] really did defy everybody, all the medical advice we’d been given, she came along and said ‘nope, I’m going to make it through’.”

Byrne, who also hosts the Making Babies fertility podcast, said writing her book was “emotional” and “in a way cathartic”.

“I know it’s a bit of a cliched word but it does provide a little bit of closure too, I guess,” she said.

The book includes chapters reflecting the fertility experiences of a number of other celebrities who have appeared on Byrne’s podcast, including presenter Gabby Logan and comedian Geoff Norcott.

“I look at Jemima every single day and I’m just so grateful,” said Byrne.

“I’m glad that I am able, hopefully, to use my platform to hopefully have a positive effect and maybe help other people feel less isolated.”

Asked if she had any advice for others experiencing infertility, Byrne said she wished she had been kinder to herself.

“I think it’s very easy when you get some bad news about a cycle, or you’re having a bad time dealing with it, that you catastrophise and think 10 steps ahead,” she said.

“And before you know it you’ve written off any chance of anything, which is very easy to do because it feels so hopeless.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen 10 steps down the road, so just try and deal with what’s happening in that moment. I wish I’d done that more.

“And also been a bit kinder to ourselves, and yourself in the process. Take that time to find little bits of joy where you can and take time out if you need to from it.

“Because it can be all consuming, friendships-wise, family-wise, it affects everything. So you really need to be kind to yourself.”

A young woman spent hours trapped upside down after slipping between two boulders as she tried to retrieve her mobile phone during a hike in Australia.

The woman – named in reports as Matilda Campbell – was walking in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley region earlier this month when she fell into the three-metre crevice.

It was the start of a seven-hour ordeal which would see emergency services undertake a “challenging” rescue – including moving several boulders.

And even after managing to winch a 500kg (1,100lb) rock out the way, they still had to work out how to get the woman out of the “S” bend she had found herself in.

“In my 10 years as a rescue paramedic I had never encountered a job quite like this, it was challenging but incredibly rewarding,” Peter Watts, a paramedic with New South Wales Ambulance service, said, according to a release on the service’s social media pages.

She had already been upside down for more than an hour before rescuers arrived, her friends’ initial attempts to free her having been unsuccessful.

Photos shared by the ambulance service show her hanging between the boulders by her feet, as well as the complicated efforts to keep the area stable as emergency services tried to create a gap big enough to free her.

Mr Watts later described the young woman as a “trooper” in an interview with Australia’s ABC.

“We were all like, how did you get down there – and how are we going to get her out?”

Unbelievably, the rescued woman was left with just minor scratches and bruises, NSW Ambulance said.

She did not, however, manage to retrieve her phone.

“Thank you to the team who saved me you guys are literally life savers,” she wrote in a message online.

“Too bad about the phone tho.”

A McDonald’s sandwich has been making people sick in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

E. coli, a type of bacteria that can cause serious stomach problems, has been found in McDonald’s Quarter Pounder sandwiches, the CDC announced on Tuesday.

So far, the CDC has recorded 49 cases of illness across 10 states. Ten cases resulted in patients being admitted to hospital and one person has died.

Most of the cases were recorded in western and Midwest states, according to the CDC.

The fast-food restaurant is working with investigators to determine which ingredients caused the outbreak, according to a statement from the CDC.

“McDonald’s has pulled ingredients for these burgers, and they won’t be available for sale in some states,” the agency said.

“It is not yet known which specific food ingredient is contaminated,” the CDC added, noting that McDonald’s has already “stopped using fresh slivered onions and quarter-pound beef patties in several states”.

The CDC said that the slivered onions are believed to be the likely source of contamination, and investigators with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are working to determine if the onions were sold to any other business.

No recalls have been issued yet by the CDC or by other health and food regulators.

The first case was recorded on 27 September, investigators say. Victims have ranged in age from 13 to 88.

Of the 10 people taken to hospital, one person developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious condition that can cause kidney failure.

Another person, who the CDC described as “an older adult in Colorado” died after eating at McDonald’s.

Cases have been reported in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

McDonald’s shares fell by about 9% on the New York Stock Exchange after the news broke on Tuesday.

In a statement, McDonald’s said that a preliminary investigation found “that a subset of illnesses may be linked to slivered onions used in the Quarter Pounder and sourced by a single supplier that serves three distribution centers”.

The Chicago-based company added that it has instructed all local restaurants “to remove this product from their supply” and have paused shipments of slivered onions to the region.

The sandwich is also being temporarily removed from the menu in several states, the company said, adding: “We take food safety extremely seriously and it’s the right thing to do.”

Other beef products remain on the menu, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger said in a video message.

“At McDonald’s, you can count on us to do the right thing,” he said.

E. coli are a diverse group of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of humans and animals.

Although many are harmless, some produce toxins that can make you sick.

Symptoms include severe and sometimes bloody diarrhoea, stomach cramps, vomiting and fever.

It usually takes a few days after being infected for symptoms to show.

This is not the first E. coli outbreak to affect McDonald’s in recent years.

In 2022, six children in Alabama were sickened with E. coli after eating chicken McNuggets.

Four children were admitted to hospital. Health inspectors later visited the affected restaurant and found several violations, including improper hand-washing and a lack of gloves.

Austria’s President, Alexander Van der Bellen, has asked the leader of the conservative People’s Party (OVP) and incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer to form a coalition government – despite the fact that the far-right Freedom Party won the general election last month.

The anti-immigrant, Russia-friendly Freedom Party came top in the election in September with almost 29% of the vote and its leader, Herbert Kickl, said he should lead the next government.

However all the other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with him.

Following talks among the three largest parties, President Alexander Van der Bellen said it was clear that Kickl “would not be able to find a coalition partner who would make him Chancellor.”

“The parliamentary election on 29 September is not a race in which the party that crosses the finish line first automatically gets to form the government,” the 80-year-old president said in a televised address.

“If a party wants to govern alone, it must clear the 50% hurdle. It is not sufficient to reach 10, 20 or 30%.”

Van der Bellen said he has asked the current Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, whose conservative party came second with 26.3% to hold coalition talks with the Social Democrats, who came third, with 21%.

However a coalition between the conservatives and the Social Democrats would only have a majority of one seat.

In a statement to the media, Nehammer said that in order to ensure a stable parliamentary majority, a third partner would be needed.

That third party could be either the Greens or the liberal Neos.

Nehammer said he couldn’t tell “whether these talks and negotiations will actually lead to the formation of a government.”

“What I can promise you, however, is that I will act in the spirit of stability, reliability and responsibility for our country.”

In a statement on Facebook, Herbert Kickl said that the President had broken with the “tried and tested normal processes” of Austria’s republic, by not entrusting the winner of the election with the task of forming a government.

“This might seem like a slap in the face for many of you,” he wrote.

“But I promise you: the last word has not been spoken. Today is not the end of the story.”

Ariana Grande has apologised to the actress who plays horror icon Elvira after she accused the singer of ignoring her during a meet-and-greet.

Actress Cassandra Peterson, who’s best known for her Mistress of the Dark alter-ego, said Ariana Grande had requested tickets for herself and family members to one of her stage shows.

She told a panel that she’d posed for photos and signed autographs for “all her friends and relatives” but that Ariana had refused to pose for a picture in return and left before the performance.

Responding via Instagram, Ariana Grande said she was “disheartened” to see the comments and claimed she’d left the event early because she “had an anxiety attack”.

In her response on Cassandra Peterson’s post, Ariana said she didn’t “even remember” getting the chance to meet the star.

She said the event would have happened about seven years ago, after her concert in Manchester was targeted in a terror attack.

At the time, Ariana said, she “was really not great with being in public crowds or loud places”.

“But if I’m misremembering this moment, I sincerely apologise for offending you so.

“Thank you for being so nice to my mum, she told me how lovely you were (she might have different feelings about that now but I’ll talk to her… clearly, we all have our days!).”

She signed off “sending love always”, adding “you’ll always be our queen of Halloween”.

The video of Cassandra Peterson, who’s also appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, discussing the interaction, recently went viral.

She’s heard laughing when someone else on-stage says Ariana is “playing the wrong witch” – referencing her role as Good Witch Glinda in the upcoming film adaption of Wicked.

Fan edits of the movie’s poster made using AI have made headlines during a recent promotional tour.

One fan edit turned the image of Ariana and co-star Cynthia Erivo in-character into an animation of the two fighting.

And Photoshopped versions of the image, with Cynthia’s eyes removed, have also been criticised by the stars.

“None of this is funny,” Cynthia said. “None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”

Ariana agreed fan edits can go “too far” , that she had “so much respect” for Cynthia and found the issue “very complicated”.

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

There aren’t many world leaders who’ve been in power for 30 years.

Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has been accused of stealing elections, crushing dissent and dismantling democracy.

The UK, the EU and the US do not recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

There’s something else you should know about him: if there’s any leader who knows Vladimir Putin inside out, it is Lukashenko. The two men have known each other for years and meet regularly.

Alexander Lukashenko met me on the sidelines of the Brics summit of emerging economies. He wants Belarus to become a member.

I asked him to comment on claims that North Korea had sent troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine.

“Rubbish,” Lukashenko replied. “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.”

“And if the reports are confirmed?” I asked.

“It would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line,” replied Alexander Lukashenko.

“Even if we got involved in the war this would be a path to escalation. Why? Because you, the Anglo-Saxons, would immediately say that another country had got involved on one side… so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine.”

I ask him whether Vladimir Putin has ever asked Lukashenko to provide Belarussian troops for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

“Never. Neither he, nor [former Defence Minister] Sergei Shoigu, nor the current Defence Minister Andrei Belousov has ever raised that question.”

But Belarus has played a part in Russia’s war. In February 2022 Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, partly, from Belarusian territory. Why did the country’s leader allow the Kremlin to do that?

“How do you know I gave permission for Belarusian territory to be used?” Lukashenko asks me.

“Because Belarusian territory was used [for the invasion].”

“There were exercises going on involving several thousand Russian soldiers. Putin started withdrawing these troops from where they were in southern Belarus, down a road, along the border with Ukraine.

“At one point he redirected some of these troops to Kyiv. I’m sure they’d been provoked. It’s up to Putin how he withdraws his troops. Via Kyiv. Or he could have gone through Minsk.”

“Didn’t you call Putin to ask what was going on?” I ask.

“No. He didn’t call me. And I didn’t call him. These are his troops and he has the right to move them out whichever way he likes.”

That comment reflects the degree of influence the Kremlin has in neighbouring Belarus.

Another example: Russia has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

“Is Putin ready to use those weapons in the war in Ukraine?” I ask.

“Putin will never use the weapons stationed in Belarus without the Belarusian president’s consent,” Lukashenko tells me.

“Are you ready to allow the use of nuclear weapons?”

“I’m completely ready, otherwise why have these weapons? But only if the boot of one [foreign] soldier steps into Belarus. We have no plans to attack anyone.”

Human rights groups estimate there are currently 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko had previously told me there were none.

But speaking to me today (perhaps inadvertently) he used the phrase “political prisoner”, when speaking about the small number freed in recent months.

Some commentators have interpreted the releases as a message from Lukashenko to the West that he seeks better relations.

He denies that.

“We freed political prisoners on humanitarian grounds,” he says. “They were mostly elderly people and the sick. That’s all.

“This is no step towards improving relations with you. If you don’t want relations with us, that’s fine. We’ll get by without you.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Kamala Harris stood in front of the vice-presidential residence in Washington DC, and delivered a short but withering attack on her Republican presidential opponent.

Calling Donald Trump “increasingly unhinged and unstable,” she cited critical comments made by John Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, in a New York Times interview.

The vice-president quoted Kelly describing Trump as someone who “certainly falls into the general definition of fascists” and who had spoken approvingly of Hitler several times.

She said her rival wanted “unchecked power” and later, during a CNN Town Hall, was asked point-blank if she believed he was a “fascist”. “Yes, I do,” she replied.

The Trump campaign quickly accused the Democratic candidate of peddling lies. She is increasingly desperate, spokesman Steven Cheung said, because “she is flailing, and her campaign is in shambles.”

In the home stretch of political campaigns – particularly one as tight and hard-fought as the 2024 presidential race – there is a natural tendency for candidates to turn negative. Attacks tend to be more effective in motivating supporters to head to the polls and disrupting the opposing campaigns.

For Harris, however, the heavier hand toward Trump stands in contrast to the more optimistic, “joyful” messaging of the early days of her campaign.

While she did warn at the Democratic convention of a Trump presidency without the guardrails, Harris largely stepped back from President Joe Biden’s core campaign message that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy.

According to political strategist Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, however, it is clear why Harris was quick this time to amplify Kelly’s dark portrait of Trump as a man with authoritarian tendencies.

“Everything she does now is tactical,” he said. “The imperative was to make sure as many voters as possible know about what Kelly said.”

The vice-president’s latest remarks come on the heels of a multi-week strategy by her campaign to appeal to independent voters and moderate Republicans who could be open to supporting the Democratic ticket. Polls suggest the race is extremely tight, with neither candidate having a decisive lead in any of the battleground states.

The suburbs around the biggest cities in key battleground states – Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix, for instance – are populated by college-educated professionals who have traditionally voted for Republicans but who polls indicate have doubts about returning Trump to the White House.

“Her case for how she wins this thing is to create as broad a coalition as possible and bring over disaffected Republicans – people who just don’t feel that they can vote for Trump again,” Mr Bennett said.

Devynn DeVelasco, a 20-year-old independent from Nebraska, is one of those who had already been convinced by the long list of senior Republicans who worked for then-President Trump but now say he is unfit for office.

Although she hopes some Republicans will join her in supporting Harris, she worries there is fatigue around the claims made about the former president.

“When these reports [about Kelly’s comments] came out I wasn’t shocked, it didn’t change much,” Ms DeVelasco told the BBC.

Republican strategist Denise Grace Gitsham said voters have been hearing similar rhetoric about Trump since 2016 so any new allegations were unlikely to move the dial.

“If you’re voting against Donald Trump because you don’t like his personality, you’re already a decided voter,” she told the BBC. “But if you’re somebody who’s looking at the policies and that matters more to you than a vibe or a personality, then you’re going to go with the person who you felt you did best under while they were in the White House.”

Both Harris and Trump have been sharpening their barbs in recent days. During a swing through Midwest battleground states on Monday, Harris repeatedly warned of the consequences of a Trump presidency – on abortion rights, on healthcare, on the economy and on US foreign policy.

SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose

EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election

GLOBAL: A third election outcome on minds of Moscow

ON THE GROUND: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country

WWE: Why Trump is courting old friends from the ring

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

On Friday, she will hold a rally in Texas – the state she has said most dramatically represents the anti-abortion future if Trump is back in power. Next Tuesday, she will shift focus to Washington DC, with a rally reportedly planned by the National Mall, where Trump spoke before some of his supporters attacked the US Capitol.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued his drumbeat of attacks on his Democratic counterpart. At a town hall forum in North Carolina, he said Harris was “lazy” and “stupid” and only became her party nominee because of her ethnicity and gender.

He also issued his own warning, saying that “we may not have a country anymore” if Harris wins.

None of these lines are a particular departure for Trump, however, as he has spent most of his campaign attacking Democrats and sticking to his core message on immigration, trade and the economy.

Harris’s closing pitch, meanwhile, directed toward winning over anti-Trump Republicans and independents isn’t without its risks, said Democratic strategist Bennet.

“You are always shorting one thing to try to help promote something else,” he said. “The candidate’s time and the time spent on advertising are the two most precious commodities. And how you spend those matters.”

Trump has been a polarising figure in American politics for more than eight years now. Most Americans have strongly held, and deeply ingrained, opinions about the man by now.

If anti-Trump sentiment puts Harris over the top on election day, her latest strategic emphasis will have paid off. If not, the second-guessing will come fast and furious.

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

As someone who served four Israeli prime ministers and was deputy head of the country’s National Security Council, Eran Etzion’s judgement was trusted at the highest levels of the state.

A longstanding critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is also someone whose years of public service earned him widespread respect.

But now Mr Etzion, a former soldier himself, is warning that Israel’s military – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – might be committing war crimes in northern Gaza. And he is suggesting that officers and troops should reject illegal orders.

“They should refuse. If a soldier or an officer is expected to commit something that might be suspected as a war crime, they must refuse. That’s what I would do if I were a soldier. That’s what I think any Israeli soldier should do,” he tells me.

We are sitting on the balcony of his home in Shoresh in central Israel.

Here there is the quiet sunshine of an autumn morning. A peaceful neighbourhood where some builders are working on house improvements.

Less than 40 miles down the road is the Gaza neighbourhood of Jabalia.

As Mr Etzion and I are speaking, doctors and medical staff at the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia are sending desperate voice notes to the international community begging for aid.

One senior nurse – in a message heard by the BBC – speaks in an exhausted voice of relentless privations allegedly imposed by the Israelis besieging Jabalia.

“My friend, I’m so so tired,” he says. “I can’t explain how tired I am. The water is empty. We don’t have water. We contacted the Israeli force to allow us to charge water to the tank, but they don’t accept that…. And we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The situation is very very bad.”

Another nurse says: “I am sorry for my language, I can’t talk well. I am very fatigued and dizzy. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. We try to give the food that we found to the patients and families and we don’t eat ourselves.”

Tens of thousands of people are now fleeing Jabalia as the Israeli army continues its offensive against what it says is an attempt by Hamas to regroup.

Mr Etzion is worried for the civilians of Jabalia and his country. “There is a very dangerous erosion of norms. There is a very widespread sense of revenge, of rage,” he says.

This is because, Mr Etzion says, Israel is in the grip of trauma after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 taken hostage into Gaza.

“The will to revenge could be understood. It’s human, but we’re not a gang, we’re not a terror organisation, and we’re not a militia. We’re a sovereign country. We have our history, we have our morals, we have our values, and we must operate under international law and under international standards if we want to continue to be a member of the international community, which we do.”

He is speaking out as a former soldier, as someone whose children served in the IDF, and whose family and friends still serve. “I’m just a concerned citizen trying to raise my voice. So that’s what I’m doing. I want to make sure that no soldier is involved in anything that could be constituted as a war crime.”

Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its conduct during the war. The United States has threatened to cut arms shipments if Israel does not surge aid into Gaza.

The UN has accused the Israelis of repeatedly blocking or impeding the transfer of aid, most recently into northern Gaza.

The IDF has consistently rejected allegations that it is implementing a deliberate policy of starvation to force residents to flee from Jabalia. Israel has long accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields, launching attacks from schools and medical facilities.

“Hamas does not hesitate to abuse Gazans, exploit them, steal aid from them, and forcefully prevent them from evacuating when it is necessary for them to do so,” the IDF said in May.

One of Britain’s most prominent war crimes lawyers, Prof Philippe Sands KC, told me that that while Israel had a right to self defence after the 7 October attacks, it was now violating international law.

“It has to be proportionate. It has to meet the requirements of international humanitarian law. It must distinguish between civilians and military targets.

“It doesn’t allow you to use famine as a weapon of war. It doesn’t allow you to forcibly deport or evacuate large numbers of people.

“So it’s impossible to see what is going on now in Gaza, as it’s impossible to see what happened on 7 October, and not say crimes are screaming out.”

Prof Sands has led the genocide case against Myanmar, and the case for Palestinian statehood at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. The book also details his own Jewish family’s experience of the Holocaust.

I ask if the crisis in Gaza makes him worry about the survival of international law.

He points to the fact that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister.

The prosecutor also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders. All three, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, are now dead.

“It [international law] is not working on the ground in relation to Russia and Ukraine. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Sudan. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Palestine and Israel.

“There’s just no ifs and buts. We just have to, we have to recognize that. But that is not a reason to tear up the entire system.

“If you ask yourself what the alternative is, which is basically no pieces of paper with the words Treaties written on it, you’re back to the 1930s, and at least what we have now is a system of rules which allows people to stand up and say: ‘This is a violation of a treaty’.”

We asked the IDF for an interview but they said no spokesperson was available today, and referred us to an earlier statement which says: “The IDF will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”

And today the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the army’s humanitarian relief wing, said it was their policy to facilitate the entrance of aid into Gaza “without limits”.

This is Israel’s narrative. But as scenes of civilian suffering continue to emerge from Jabalia it is being widely challenged.

Striking Boeing workers have rejected a new offer from the aviation giant, which included a 35% pay rise over four years.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union said 64% of its striking members voted against the proposed deal.

More than 30,000 of Boeing’s workers have joined the walkout, which started on 13 September, after an initial offer was rejected.

It comes just hours after Boeing boss Kelly Ortberg warned the company is at a “crossroads” as losses at the firm surged to roughly $6bn (£4.6bn).

“After 10 years of sacrifices, we still have ground to make up, and we’re hopeful to do so by resuming negotiations promptly,” union representatives said in a statement.

“This is workplace democracy – and also clear evidence that there are consequences when a company mistreats its workers year after year,” it added.

It is the second time that the striking workers have rejected a proposed deal in a formal vote. The previous offer was turned down last month by 95% of workers.

Earlier, Mr Ortberg, who took over as chief executive in August, said he had been working “feverishly” to stabilise the firm, as it worked to repair its reputation, which has been hit by manufacturing and safety concerns.

“This is a big ship that will take some time to turn, but when it does, it has the capacity to be great again,” he said.

The latest crisis at Boeing erupted in January with a dramatic mid-air blowout of a piece of one of its passenger planes.

Its space business also suffered a reputational hit after its Starliner vessel was forced to return to Earth without carrying astronauts.

The strike has compounded the problems, leading to a dramatic slowdown in production.

Mr Ortberg said the firm was “saddled with too much debt” and had disappointed customers with lapses in performance across the business.

Boeing’s commercial aircraft business reported operating losses of $4bn in the last three months, while its defence unit lost nearly $2.4bn.

“They clearly have a lot to recover from, both operationally and financially,” said Ben Toscanos of S&P Ratings.

“The first step will be to resolve the strike… so we’ll see how that plays out,” he added.

Mr Ortberg argued the firm was in a strong position, with a backlog of roughly 5,400 orders for its planes.

But he warned investors that restarting the firm’s factories, whenever the strike does end, will be tricky.

“It’s much harder to turn this on than it is to turn it off. So it’s critical, absolutely critical, that we do this right,” he said.

“We have a detailed return-to-work plan in place and I’m really looking forward to getting everybody back and getting to work on that plan.”

The company announced plans earlier this month to cut roughly 10% of its workforce. Thousands of other staff are already on a rolling furlough due to the strike, which has also hit suppliers.

Mr Ortberg told investors that his first priority was a “fundamental culture change”.

“We need to prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix and understand root cause,” he said.

At least five people have been killed and 22 injured in an attack at the headquarters of an aviation company near the Turkish capital Ankara, authorities have confirmed.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that two attackers, a woman and a man, have been “neutralised”, adding that the attack had most likely involved Kurdish rebel group the PKK.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Turkey’s defence ministry announced late on Wednesday that air strikes had been launched at Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq and northern Syria.

Various videos from the attack earlier on Wednesday show at least two people firing guns around the entrance of Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), which is located some 40km (25 miles) outside the capital.

Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said four of the victims were TAI employees while the fifth was a taxi driver.

Local media had earlier reported that the attackers killed the cab driver before taking his vehicle to carry out the attack.

The blast took place around the time of a shift change, and staff had to be directed to shelters, they said.

Yerlikaya also confirmed that seven special ops forces members were among the 22 who were injured in the attack.

The PKK is banned as a terrorist organisation in Turkey, the US and UK, and has been fighting against the Turkish state since the 1980s for greater rights for the country’s significant Kurdish minority.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who is in Russia for the Brics summit – condemned what he called a “vile terror attack” during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in remarks broadcast live on TV.

He later posted a lengthy statement on X, saying that security forces acted quickly to neutralise the threat, and that “no terrorist organisation, no evil focus targeting our security will be able to achieve their goals”.

Turkish authorities have imposed a media blackout on details of the attack, and users in large areas of the country have reported not being able to use social media sites like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

The president of Turkey’s Radio and TV Supreme Council, Ebubekir Sahin, warned that all images relating to the incident should be removed from social media, and urged users not to share images which “will serve the purpose of terrorism”.

TAI is a key player in Turkey’s aerospace industry, designing, developing and manufacturing various aircraft for commercial and military use.

It is the company designated by the Nato member to be the licensed manufacturer for the US-designed F-16 fighter jets. TAI also plays a role in modernising older aircraft for use by the Turkish military.

The firm’s two principal owners are the Turkish Armed Forces and a civilian arm of Turkey’s government charged with improving its defence capabilities and managing military procurement.

The blast took place as a major trade fair for defence and aerospace industries was going on in Istanbul this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The numbers were relatively stable through September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on 10 September, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

In the last few days the gap between them has tightened, as you can see in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

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

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

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

• What is the electoral college?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

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

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

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

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• 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
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

US actor Ron Ely, best known for playing the role of Tarzan in the 1960s television show of the same name, has died aged 86.

“The world has lost one of the greatest men it has ever known – and I have lost my dad.” the actor’s daughter, Kirsten Casale Ely, said in an Instagram post.

Tarzan originally aired on NBC television network from 1966 to 1968, during which time the actor broke a number of bones and was reported to have been attacked by animals while performing his own stunts.

After retiring from acting in 2001, Ely became an author and published two mystery novels.

Ely made a brief return to acting for one television film, Expecting Amish, in 2014, where he played an Amish elder.

In the 1980s, he appeared in other hit television programmes including cruise ship-based comedy The Love Boat, as well as Wonder Woman with star Lynda Carter.

Born in Texas in 1938, Ely went on to marry his high school sweetheart in 1959, before divorcing two years later.

He was also known for hosting the Miss America pageant in the early 1980s, where he met his wife Valerie. The couple went on to have three children.

Ely died at his home in Los Alamos in Santa Barbara, California on 29 September.

Announcing the death in an Instagram post on Wednesday, the actor’s daughter said: “My father was someone that people called a hero. He was an actor, writer, coach, mentor, family man and leader.”

She added: “I knew him as my dad – and what a heaven sent honour that has been. To me, he hung the moon.”

Shaped and coloured like the country’s rare gemstone, tanzanite, the sparkling new railway terminal in Dar es Salaam is a symbol of Tanzania’s transport ambitions.

The glass panels gleam in the sun, like an outsize version of the prismatic bluish-purple gem that glitters in the light.

The trains – powered by electricity, a first for the region – carry passengers from the commercial hub to the capital, Dodoma, in less than four hours, half the time it takes by road.

It marks the starting point of one of the country’s strategic projects – the building of a 2,560km (1,590-mile) Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) envisaged to connect key cities and link up with neighbours Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The 460km (285-mile) Dar es Salaam to Dodoma leg has been open since August, when President Samia Suluhu described the railway as “a pathway to our future” that would “enhance our standing in the region”.

In Dodoma, the station is another grand building, resembling the rocky hills around the city – an effort to blend the country’s natural heritage with modernity.

It is a reluctant capital. In the middle of the country, it was first designated the centre of power 50 years ago, but it took the strong-willed late President John Magufuli to force government bodies to relocate.

But as most commercial activity, and even some government work, continues in Dar es Salaam, a fast and efficient transport link between the cities has been seen as vital.

The electric train has also made it smooth and convenient for the ordinary Tanzanian. A far cry from the experience on the road or the older slower, narrower train that this service replaces.

Inside the train carriage, the seats are clean, comfortable and reclinable. There is a foldable tray table attached to each one. A member of the train crew is on hand to sell hot and cold drinks as well as snacks.

In economy class there are five seats in each row, three on one side of the aisle and two on the other. In the business and luxury (royal) classes there are two seats on either side of the row, offering more comfort and legroom.

“We are grateful, we are not tired,” Gloria Sebastian who lives in Dar es Salaam, tells the BBC during a trip to visit her family in Dodoma. She is happy about the convenience that the train provides.

And she is not alone.

The man who is overseeing the building and operation of the SGR service says at least 7,000 passengers travel on the eight daily services on the line, which is already approaching capacity.

Machibya Masanja tells the BBC that the demand has been so high that “we cannot meet it with those trips we are making per day. We expect the number [of passengers] will double or triple.” There are plans afoot to add more journeys.

The popularity means that advance planning is essential as services can be fully booked several days in advance.

Payment must be made within an hour of booking in order to reserve a seat. An economy class trip to Dodoma costs a reasonable 40,000 Tanzanian shillings ($15; £11), while going business class will set you back 70,000 shillings ($26).

The early morning service leaves Dar es Salaam at 06:00 but people are required to turn up two hours earlier for security checks.

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The inside of the tanzanite-shaped building resembles an airport terminal. Passengers queue up and go through thorough checks just like in an airport. The luggage is scanned and people are sometimes frisked before accessing the boarding lounge.

One man later told the BBC that he felt the intense scrutiny seemed unnecessary, and there does not seem to have been any direct security threat, but the atmosphere is good-natured.

Nevertheless, there is an edginess from officials evidenced by the fact that a police officer questioned the BBC team who were taking pictures at the terminal – but they were quickly cleared after some checks.

The boarding was calm and orderly and the train pulled away on time.

Gathering speed – the trains currently hit a maximum of 120km/h (75mph) but can go faster – it was soon whizzing through the outskirts of Dar es Salaam as the early morning sun began to illuminate the panoramic view.

We cross a vast countryside – scrub and grassland plains interspersed with views of lush farms – and pass a meandering river, craggy terrain and undulating hills.

There were also the tunnels, causing some discomfort in the eardrum.

“You are advised to be chewing something, yawn or keep your mouth open,” the announcer said, to the amusement of some passengers.

For first-timers, the excitement was evident.

Bernice Augustine was with her daughter for a weekend vacation in Dodoma.

“It is awesome,” she says. “You cannot compare it with the old train: it’s convenient, it’s clean, it’s easy.”

Hilaly Mussa Maginga has bad memories of going on the old line. After the trip to Kigoma he vowed never to get on a train again as he was so tired and his lower back was in pain.

But his curiosity was piqued when he heard about the SGR.

“When you are used to travel for long distances, you sit until it hurts, so when you have this option to travel for a shorter time, there is a lot to enjoy. We’ve come from far, thank God,” he says.

For Mr Maginga the journey on the SGR is a zen-like voyage, a calm, unperturbed travel experience.

The project’s journey to reach this point has not been entirely smooth.

From the initial groundbreaking in 2017, the first section had been scheduled for completion in 2019. But it faced lengthy delays which the railway company attributes to Covid and construction costs as well as labour issues.

There have also been questions about its huge cost, estimated at $10bn (£8bn) upon completion.

Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi is the main contractor for the route’s first four sections, including the Dar es Salaam to Dodoma segment, while Chinese firms are building the other two.

Funding has come from the Tanzanian government and lenders, including from Denmark and Sweden, the Chinese Exim bank and the African Development Bank.

But Mr Masanja says it is too soon to be worried about profitability, saying this will only be realisable once the entire network is complete. He adds that the service is generating enough passenger income to offset operation costs, and that from January the company plans to introduce freight trains.

For now, he says, “its social contribution is much more profitable”.

The service has occasionally been disrupted by power failure but Mr Masanja says they are building a dedicated power transmission line, tapping into the country’s vast power generation capacity to eliminate the risk of unstable power.

Using electricity has reduced the cost of operations to about a third of what would have been spent on diesel, which neighbouring Kenya uses to power its own SGR line, he tells the BBC.

“We are the cheapest in the region, and in Africa, in terms of the cost,” he says.

Not everyone is entirely happy, though.

Adam Ally Mwanshinga, chairman of the Dodoma Bus Terminal Agents’ Union, says his members have lost a significant part of their business because of the railway.

The modern bus station in the capital was not so long ago a bustling terminal, he says, adding there are now 4-500 fewer passengers each day.

While it is cheaper to travel by bus, the convenience of the train has been more attractive for many.

“Business is down and life is difficult,” Mr Mwanshinga says.

“The buses can’t fill up and the many businesses here that used to benefit from the many people coming here are suffering,” he says.

However he seems resigned to the situation, saying that the SGR development “has done well for the majority of the people”.

“It is the nature of life – there are those who benefit and those who will suffer.”

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An Indian climate activist who ended a 16-day-long hunger strike this week says his fight to save the ecology of his hometown – an icy cold desert in the northernmost part of India – is far from over.

Sonam Wangchuk, 58, became a familiar name in India when Bollywood star Aamir Khan played a character inspired by him in the 2009 blockbuster 3 Idiots.

Mr Wangchuk has also had a long career as an engineer and innovator. But in recent months, he has made headlines for holding protests seeking more autonomy for people in his home region of Ladakh, a mountainous cold desert bordering Pakistan and China.

Ladakh was part of Indian-administered Kashmir until 2019, when Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s government removed the state’s special status and split it into two federally governed territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Earlier this month, assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time since the abrogation. But Ladakh continues to be a federal territory without legislative powers.

People in Ladakh say this is unfair, and that they need their own representatives. They are also worried about the pace of infrastructural activities in the region, which they say is harming its fragile environment.

• The thousands of Indians protesting in freezing cold

Before beginning his hunger strike, Mr Wangchuk and his supporters walked for hundreds of kilometres from Ladakh to reach capital Delhi. They argued that more autonomy to Ladakh – under a constitutional provision called the Sixth Schedule -would help prevent exploitation of natural resources.

Their march on foot came after months-long talks between locals in Ladakh and federal government officials failed.

At Delhi’s borders, the protesters were detained for hours after which Mr Wangchuk began his hunger strike. He ended it on Monday after the government promised that talks would resume soon.

With his protests and interviews, Mr Wangchuk has ensured that the demands of the people of Ladakh have remained part of mainstream media discourse in India for weeks now.

Mr Wangchuk has a long history of challenging the status quo.

As a child, he studied for three years in Srinagar city (then the capital of Jammu and Kashmir state) where lessons were taught in English, Urdu and Hindi. In an interview, he recalled being the “butt of jokes” in class.

“In Srinagar, I was a dumb boy from Ladakh who could not speak Hindi or English,” he said.

In the 1980s, his experiences led him to question the education system in Ladakh, which he said did not address local needs. He protested against the use of textbooks in English and Urdu in a region where most people spoke the Ladakhi language.

“All the textbooks, even in early primary classes, came from Delhi. The examples were of unfamiliar cultures and environments like ships, oceans, coconut trees and monsoon rains,” says a note on the website of a school co-founded by him. “These alien examples in alien languages only confused Ladakhi children.”

Since then, he has worked with local authorities and communities to ensure that the education system addresses the unique needs of children in Ladakh.

His innovations have also made news.

Mr Wangchuk studied mechanical engineering after a relative noticed his experiments with concave mirrors to brighten dark buildings and cook food.

In recent years, he has developed a low-cost mud house that maintains a temperature of 15C even in -15C conditions.

He has also designed an artificial spring in the shape of an ice stupa – a hemispherical structure common in Buddhist cultures – that stores downstream water for use during late spring when farmers need water.

Earlier this year, Mr Wangchuk sat on a 21-day protest in the freezing cold “to remind the government of its promises to safeguard Ladakh’s environment and tribal indigenous culture”.

He was joined by thousands who fasted with him and held demonstrations.

It was when those protests didn’t yield the desired results that Mr Wangchuk walked to Delhi.

In the capital, he has continued his demands for the sixth schedule in Ladakh – this provision, which has been implemented in India’s northeastern states, gives special powers to tribal populations to safeguard their interests in matters including natural resources and infrastructure. Ladakh has a majority tribal population.

“The sixth schedule gives locals not just a right but a responsibility to conserve their climate, forests, rivers and glaciers,” he told reporters.

Mr Wangchuk and his supporters say that the fragile Himalayan ecology is in danger in the absence of constitutional safeguards.

The concerns stem from the fact that the government has accelerated infrastructure development in border regions.

Ladakh is strategically significant for India as it shares borders with both China and Pakistan.

The federal government has sanctioned several highways, power projects and military-related infrastructure in Ladakh, which Mr Wangchuk says will harm the region, especially in the absence of consultation with local representatives.

“We don’t oppose development. We want sustainable growth,” he said.

Mr Wangchuk and his supporters say that Ladakh’s ecology means that it can’t follow the development models of other Indian states. They say that people in cities are not mindful of the unique needs of Himalayan regions.

“You don’t get to see this in your cities but in Ladakh, there are proper winter, summer, and spring seasons, just like you read in books,” said Haji Mustafa, who had walked with Mr Wangchuk to Delhi.

Protesters have also complained about locals not benefiting from the projects in Ladakh.

“Our natural resources are getting exploited. Unemployment is very high. Local businessmen are unhappy. So, who is this development for?” Mr Mustafa asked.

The BBC has sent questions to Tashi Gyalson, who heads the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.

In the meantime, protesters say they will continue their fight until they have a say in what happens in Ladakh.

Earlier this week, as the government agreed to resume talks, Mr Wangchuk expressed hope that a solution would emerge soon.

“I hope the talks will be held in mutual trust and will result in a happy ending for all,” he said. “And that I will not have to sit on fast again or march 1,000km to the capital.”

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the deaths of three people at a care home.

Dorset Police said earlier the deaths at the Gainsborough Care Home in Swanage, were being treated as “unexplained” but potential carbon monoxide poisoning was the “primary line of inquiry”.

Emergency services were called to Gainsborough Care Home in Ulwell Road in Swanage, Dorset, at 05:20 BST.

Seven people were taken to hospital and residents were evacuated from the building to a nearby church hall.

Police said a 60-year-old local woman had been detained on Wednesday evening.

Det Ch Insp Neil Third said: “As part of our investigation, we have made one arrest to enable us to establish whether there have been actions or omissions which are grossly negligent and gather as much information as we can about what has happened.

“It is important to note that the arrest process also provides certain legal protection to individuals and I would ask for the media and public to avoid speculating any further now that legal proceedings are active.”

The force said earlier that the families of those who died have been informed and the coroner has been notified.

About 40 residents from the home, run by Agincare, were seen being transferred, some in wheelchairs, to All Saints Church a short distance away.

Dorset Council said it was working with the home and other agencies to support the residents of the care home.

“Many of the residents are vulnerable people with significant care needs, and so we are working with them to understand how to meet their needs in the short term and identify their next steps,” it said on Wednesday.

In an earlier statement, Agincare said it has allocated “extra staffing resources” to provide support after an incident at the site, and that residents moved to a village hall and church are “safe and well”.

They said: “We appreciate that this is a stressful and worrying time for those involved, and have allocated extra staffing resources to provide support locally. We are contacting and updating residents’ families.

“We will continue to work with the lead local authority services to return residents into their home at the earliest opportunity, and will provide further updates in due course.”

South West Ambulance NHS Trust said a hazardous area response team environment crew was sent to the scene along with 10 double-crewed ambulances.

Fire crews from across Dorset were also deployed. They were assisted by a crew from Winchester in Hampshire.

Gas distribution company SGN said it was called to Gainsborough Care Home earlier on Wednesday.

It said engineers were sent to complete safety checks in the building.

“Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by this tragic incident,” a statement said.