Erik and Lyle Menendez – two brothers convicted of murdering their parents in a case that shook America more than three decades ago – should be resentenced by a judge and released on parole, the Los Angeles County district attorney has recommended.

The 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion have gripped the US for years and recently inspired a popular Netflix series.

The case centred on Erik and Lyle Menendez’s motive in the murders, in which their parents were shot 13 times as they watched television.

George Gascón, LA County’s top prosecutor, announced on Thursday that new evidence in the case merited a review of their life sentences.

Erik Menendez, 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, are currently serving life in prison without possibility of parole in California.

There is a long road ahead before the brothers potentially walk free.

A judge will have the final say over whether the brothers should be re-sentenced and a parole board would have to examine whether they should be released from prison after serving more than 30 years.

The pair did not receive notice of Mr Gascón’s decision in advance, nor did members of the Menendez family.

“I believe the brothers were subject to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in their home and molestation,” Mr Gascón said.

He added that, while there is no excuse for murder, “I believe they have paid their debt to society”.

During their criminal trials in the 1990s, prosecutors painted the brothers as rich kids who methodically planned the murders to gain access to their parents’ fortune.

But their defence attorneys argued the brothers were victims of years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and only acted out of self-defence.

The announcement by Mr Gascón – who is facing a tough re-election battle – follows new evidence in the case relating to claims of sexual abuse.

One new piece of evidence was a letter from Erik Menendez to another family member that appears to be from 1988 and details the alleged abuse by his father, Jose.

The other evidence came from a then-underage member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. The band member alleged Jose Menendez, who worked as an executive at record company RCA at the time, drugged and raped him during a visit to Menendez’s home.

The case started on 20 August 1989 when the brothers – then aged 18 and 21 – called police and reported finding their parents’ bodies after returning home.

Mr Gascón said his office plans to file a re-sentencing recommendation in court on Friday. It will contain details and evidence arguing for a lesser sentence.

A hearing will be scheduled, which officials hope to schedule in the next 30-45 days, where a judge will weigh in and hear arguments about their release. The brothers could be in attendance, too.

The hearing is likely to be divisive. Mr Gascón noted this case has divided his office and members of his staff might argue against him in court. At least one member of the Menendez family, Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, has also harshly criticized the district attorney of playing politics with a case when he “has already endured the unimaginable loss of his sister”.

He said the recommendation, if approved by a judge, allows the possibility of parole due to both California law and the brothers’ ages at the time of the crimes. A parole board would have to examine the case and the rehabilitation of the brothers – and if the board approves their release, California Gov Gavin Newsom could still reject it.

There is a hearing scheduled in the case on 26 November but the district attorney’s office hopes to schedule a new hearing to discuss the re-sentencing recommendation.

The Menendez brothers filed a motion in May 2023 detailing the new evidence in their case and asking their convictions be vacated. Mr Gascón said his office had been reviewing the case for more than a year, but he said he made the decision Thursday, only an hour before holding a highly publicised news conference on the landmark case.

The decision was announced 12 days before Election Day, where Mr Gascón is facing a tough re-election and is down by 30 points in some polls. He denied his announcement was political and said it was a long-time coming.

Neama Rahmani, a criminal defence attorney and former federal prosecutor, told BBC News he’d never seen anything like this in his career.

“It’s really the perfect storm of PR and politics,” he said, noting the recent attention from celebrities, a Netflix drama series on the case and an “embattled” district attorney vying to remain in office. “You’re never going to see another case like this. It’s a unicorn.”

Kim Kardashian thanked Mr Gascón for “righting a significant wrong” on her Instagram story on Thursday. She said the case “highlights the importance of challenging decisions and seeking truth”.

Jose and Kitty Menendez were found dead inside their Beverly Hills mansion after being shot multiple times in August 1989.

Their sons – Erik and Lyle – called police, telling authorities they had gotten home and found their parents dead.

Authorities, at first, didn’t suspect the brothers. The couple was shot 13 times with two shotguns. The brutal nature of the crime led authorities to thinking maybe it was a mob hit.

But the brothers started to draw scrutiny with their behaviour – dolling out money on lavish spending sprees – including buying Rolex watches – gambling and partying.

A confession to their psychologist was their undoing. The doctor’s girlfriend audio recorded them making the admission and reported it to authorities.

In March 1990, the brothers were charged by police. They went to trial in 1993 and the brothers admitted to the killings – but argued they acted out of self-defence and feared their parents would kill them first.

They outlined years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse – namely by their father, Jose – who worked had gone on to be a film executive in Hollywood.

Lyle and Erik testified they confronted their parents about the sexual abuse and things had become combative in their household and they believed their parents were planning to kill them.

Family members testified about the abuse they witnessed – but none said they saw sexual abuse firsthand.

Prosecutors argued their motive was money – namely their parents’ $14m (£10.8m) fortune. They outlined their methodical planning, purchasing two shotguns days before the killings and their spending sprees afterwards. They painted the brothers as spoiled sons who thought they could get away with anything.

Their first trial ended with a mistrial, but a second in 1995 led to them to being convicted of first-degree murder.

From the outside, it is hard to comprehend the depth of suffering experienced by civilians in Gaza.

On Monday 21 October, a video emerged from Jabalia that gave an unusually detailed insight into the pressure and the horror imposed on civilians by Israel’s current offensive in northern Gaza. Watching it, you feel almost like an eyewitness.

Every day, like many journalists who are forced to report the war from outside Gaza because Israel will not let us in, I watch many videos that emerge online, harrowing scenes of wounded, dying and bereaved people in hospitals, of men in the rubble rescuing survivors and digging out bodies, and civilians forced to move by the Israelis, walking through thick sand where roads used to be, past the unrecognisable ruins.

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They are all horrible to see, and so was the one that came from the attack in Jabalia on Monday morning. But for me it was unusual because it showed the pain, grief, chaos, panic and hopelessness in the seconds and minutes immediately after an attack.

The moment is so extreme that taking out a phone to film it is the last thing most people do. Over many years as a reporter in wars, I have seen and experienced the same disbelief and shock. It takes time for the brain to catch up with the utterly changed reality that your eyes are seeing.

The Jabalia Boys Elementary school was attacked just after 09:00 in the morning, on 21 October. It was no longer a place of learning but had been turned into a shelter for displaced civilians, like many schools in Gaza run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. All the ones still standing, that is.

In the video, a paramedic called Nevine al Dawawi, increasingly panic-stricken, runs between dead and dying civilians, using her phone to document what is happening (when I reported this first, on the day of the strike, she was misidentified as Nabila.)

We managed to track down Nevine in Gaza City. She was able to give us her own account of what happened on Monday morning. She answered questions, and much more composed now, she played back the video.

In it, she is agitated and scared, running between civilians lying in their own blood, next to dead bodies.

“Calm down,” she screams at a badly hurt woman sitting in a pool of blood.

“I swear I don’t have anything to stop the bleeding.”

She runs down a passage pockmarked by shrapnel. On a stairwell she sees more casualties, turns away in horror, picks up a bag and says “let’s go, so no-one else gets killed”.

A man’s voice on the video says, “stay with us Nevine.” Grabbing the bag, which is full of wound dressings, she goes back to the stairwell that is running with blood. A child’s voice says, please help, my sister is dying, please help me.

A woman says my children are gone. Nevine asked how she knew.

“Look at them,” the woman says. One is very still, the other has a severe head wound and is either dead or dying.

Nevine hands over dressings, even though it is too late. They are all she has, and she is the only paramedic there.

Nevine told us that the woman on the stairs whose children were killed was Lina Ibrahim Abu Namos. Journalists working for the BBC found her in Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabalia where she is being treated for shrapnel injuries. Two of Lina’s seven children were killed, her eldest daughter and her only son.

Her husband wasn’t with them when the attack happened, as he was already being treated for wounds sustained in an earlier attack.

“I saw my daughter dying, with my own eyes. She was dying in front of me. I couldn’t stop it, and she was my eldest, my whole life, honestly, my entire life. When your eldest dies in front of you…”

“I couldn’t save her, and I was also wounded. I couldn’t handle myself, I found myself falling on the ground. I started crawling towards her.”

Nevine, the paramedic, explained that they had been “besieged” at the school for 16 or 17 days. Above them was the buzz of quadcopters, small drones used extensively by the IDF. It has a range of them, for surveillance and espionage, to issue orders through loudspeakers, for dropping bombs or firing at Palestinians they want to kill.

“We were living in so much fear. When the school was hit, we had people killed and injured. There was nothing there to eat or drink. The water tanker that was usually sent to us was bombed by the Israelis. It was like that for days. Three days ago, a quadcopter descended on the school at nine in the morning, giving us an ultimatum to get out by 10. The quadcopter loudspeaker said we had to evacuate the school because we were in a dangerous fighting zone.”

“We didn’t have time to pack our stuff. It gave us just one hour. After just 10 minutes, Israeli airplanes bombed the school. It was a big massacre with over 30 wounded and more than 10 killed.”

In the video, the wounded and dead on the bloody stairs are not the only casualties. Nevine leaves the stairwell, and runs to a man probably in his sixties, who is leaning over a pile of bags with his head in his hands. She looks to see if somehow, he has survived a severe neck wound and screams when she sees that he has not.

“Help him, he’s dead – it’s Uncle Abu Mohammed.”

Three days later I sent questions for a Palestinian freelance journalist to ask her at al Ahli hospital in Gaza City. One was about Abu Mohammed.

“He was our neighbour. His two sons were also killed… one had half his head gone.”

She talked our reporter through the video as she played it back on her phone.

“The video showed girls torn to pieces. It also shows men with their intestines protruding from stomach wounds… A 10-year-old boy had his bowels bulging outside his stomach. His mum was killed, injured in the heart.”

“Some women who were taking cover were also injured and others killed. A cleaner at the school was shredded into pieces. A 12-year-old girl had a leg blown off. So did a woman displaced from Beit Hanoun, a town in Gaza’s north. She was aged between 35 and 40.”

The day before the attack on the school, as Israel’s offensive intensified, Tor Wennesland – the senior UN diplomat in Jerusalem – issued a strong statement.

“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern Strip amidst conflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. I condemn the continuing attacks on civilians. This war must end, the hostages held by Hamas must be freed, the displacement of Palestinians must cease, and civilians must be protected wherever they are. Humanitarian aid must be delivered unimpeded.”

Israel insists that it acts in self-defence, and claims its forces respect the laws of war. Almost every day for the last year in Gaza, and more recently in Lebanon it says that civilians get killed because armed groups use them as human shields.

We put that to the paramedic, Nevine al Dawawi.

The IDF claimed Hamas was using civilians as human shields, is that true?

“No, Hamas was not using civilians as human shields. They were protecting us and standing with us.”

For many in Israel, her statement that Hamas were in the area will be taken as a justification for the horrors that the IDF brought down on the civilians just after 9 in the morning on Monday 21 October.

But war crimes lawyers will ask whether the attack was justified. The laws of war say that civilians must be protected, and that casualties inflicted on them should be in proportion to the military threat faced by an attacking force.

If senior Hamas commanders were there, or a big concentration of fighters preparing to fight, perhaps the attack could be justified by the Israel Defense Forces’ own lawyers.

But if Hamas, whose structure as a fighting force has been dismantled in a year of relentless Israeli attacks, had only a few local men with guns in the area, then the attack would breach the law.

In the unlikely event that the Palestinians in the video ever had a day in court, their lawyers could say that the military threat to the IDF at that moment did not justify wounding 30 civilians, inflicting life changing injuries, and killing more than 10 others, including many children.

I am forced to use conditional tenses because I am writing this in Jerusalem, not after interviewing eyewitnesses at the scene of the attack in Jabalia in Gaza. Reporters will always struggle to get to get to the best possible version of the truth they can find when they are stopped from getting to the place where the story happened.

Israel allowed reporters into their border communities along the border with Gaza in the days after the Hamas attacks last year. I was in Kfar Azza kibbutz when they were still recovering the bodies of dead Israelis, as soldiers checked buildings with bursts of gunfire. They wanted us to see where Hamas had killed around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and dragged more than 250 into captivity in Gaza.

The evidence is piling up that Israel has done things in Gaza that it does not want journalists to see, which is why they will not let us cross into the territory, except on rare and highly controlled visits with the army. I have been in only once, in the first month of the war, when Israeli firepower had already turned the areas of northern Gaza that I saw into a wasteland.

As a result, journalists rely on videos and statements that emerge from Palestinians inside Gaza, including some very brave journalists, and from international diplomats, medics and aid workers who are allowed into Gaza, and witnesses like Nevine with smartphones.

In the hospital, Lina Ibrahim Abu Namos was haunted by her loss of her eldest daughter, her only son, and everything they called home.

“I had seven children, and now I only have five left… What can I say? I don’t even know. By God, they have broken our hearts. We are exhausted, emotionally drained. We’ve lost everything.”

“What crime have the children committed? What have they done? What have we done to deserve this?”

“What have we done to the Israelis? I swear, they’ve destroyed our children.”

“I’m so scared. I don’t eat or drink. Nothing. All I need is for my children to stay around me, because we are scared and we’ve been displaced from one place to another. What is left for my daughters and for me? There’s no home, nowhere safe, nothing. I’m just one of many people with nowhere to go, no safety. I’m exhausted.”

Georgians know all about Russia’s wars. Several years before Russia invaded Ukraine, its army launched a five-day war in August 2008. The city of Gori was bombed and occupied, and a fierce battle further north in Shindisi left the station destroyed and the railway abandoned.

So when the country’s four opposition groups label Saturday’s pivotal election as a choice between Russia or Europe, their aim is to end 12 years of rule by the governing Georgian Dream party, who they accuse of drifting back into Russia’s orbit.

They want to revive Georgia’s stalled bid to join the European Union.

“In these streets we had Russians,” says Mindia Goderdzishvili, running the campaign in Gori for opposition group Coalition for Change. “People here have this in their memories and the government uses this in a bad way, playing on their emotions because they want to stay in power.”

Georgian Dream, known as GD, and its powerful billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili vehemently reject the opposition’s framing of the vote as a choice between Russia or Europe.

Theirs is the party of peace, they argue, while the opposition, backed by an unidentified “global war party” wants to drag Georgia into war.

A short distance from the bombed out station in Shindisi lie the graves of 17 Georgian soldiers who died defending the town. The separation line is not far north from here and beyond it is South Ossetia, one of two breakaway Georgian regions still under Russian military occupation.

“I don’t think anybody can guarantee Georgia’s security today,” says Maka Bochorishvili, the head of Georgia’s EU integration committee tells the BBC at Georgian Dream’s new headquarters in Tbilisi.

“We are not members of Nato, we don’t have that umbrella over our head. The last war of 2008 was not long ago.”

Her party still promises to take former Soviet republic Georgia into the European Union by 2030, but that commitment seems hollow when the EU has put the process on hold because of a law targeting “foreign influence” that threatens countless media and non-government groups.

Add to that a recent law targeting LGBT rights in Georgia, and it is no surprise that EU ambassador Pawel Herczynski feels that “instead of getting closer, Georgia is moving away from the European Union”.

Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has openly called for voters to support opposition groups, who have backed her plan for a one-year technocratic government if they win.

Much of the spotlight in this election has focused on Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and is considered the guiding force behind the ruling party.

Ivanishvili has gone into Saturday’s election promising to ban the biggest opposition party, the United National Movement, because of what it did before GD came to power.

UNM’s former leader, Mikheil Saakashvili is locked up in jail, but GD wants to go after other opposition figures too, so the ban could extend far beyond one party. For that to happen, they would need to win a big majority.

That seems unlikely, although Georgia’s opinion polls are unreliable and questions have been raised over the secrecy of the vote, despite a new electronic voting system.

Ivanishvili visited Gori during the election campaign and promised an apology to the people of South Ossetia for the 2008 war, which he blamed on Saakashvili’s government, rather than the Russians who bombed the city.

The billionaire doubled down on that at the party’s final campaign rally in the heart of Tbilisi on Wednesday. Speaking behind protective glass, he told supporters that the UNM had committed treason.

His rationale, presumably, is that by going after the biggest opposition party, voters will be dissuaded from backing any of the others.

For Aleksandre, a 30-year-old voter in Shindisi, the idea that Saakashvili started the war is “absurd”.

Most of the people of his age have left the town because of the lack of opportunities there.

He would rather the government focus on reviving the railway line and protect Georgians from creeping Russian encroachment on Georgian land.

The Kremlin has made no secret of its preference for Georgian Dream.

A few months ago Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service accused the US of preparing to stage a Ukraine-style revolution in the streets to stop GD from winning a fourth term in office. The SVR had no evidence for its allegation, and the US denied it.

Now Russia has latched on to an unfounded allegation made by Georgian Dream’s founder that a high-ranking foreign official asked Georgia’s former prime minister to join a war with Russia “for three or four days”.

“I don’t see any reason not to believe [it],” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian media.

Gori’s memory of Georgia’s northern neighbour is not based solely on what happened in 2008.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin grew up here and tourists come here to see his childhood home and personal railway carriage, although the guides no longer gloss over the millions he sent to their deaths in Soviet gulags.

Opposition campaigners in Gori say some voters retain a lingering affection for the Soviet period, but that most people have moved on.

The broad consensus here and across Georgia is that their future lies within the European Union, rather than outside it. What is less clear is who they think will give them that chance.

Venezuela has criticised Brazil’s decision to veto its admission to the Brics group of emerging economies.

Venezuela’s foreign ministry described the move, which came at the group’s summit in Russia attended by more than 20 heads of state, as an “immoral aggression”.

Relations between the two left-wing governments have worsened since July’s contested presidential election in Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro said he had secured re-election, despite evidence that the opposition’s Edmundo González won by a landslide.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva initially supported Maduro, but eventually said he would not accept the official results until a breakdown of the vote was released.

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Multiple foreign governments have said they believe the opposition won the election in Venezuela, but stopped short of recognising González as the president.

“The Brazilian foreign ministry has decided to maintain the veto that [former Brazilian president] Jair Bolsonaro has applied against Venezuela for years, reproducing the hatred, exclusion and intolerance promoted from the centres of power in the West,” the Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Venezuelan people feel indignation and shame at this inexplicable and immoral aggression,” it added.

Venezuela had lobbied hard to join the Brics, with Maduro even making a surprise appearance at the summit in the city of Kazan and declaring that his country was “part of the Brics family”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hosted the summit, said he agreed with Venezuela’s position, but added that it would only be able to join the Brics if there was a consensus in favour among its members.

“We know Brazil’s position. We don’t agree, Venezuela is fighting for its survival,” Putin said at a news conference on Thursday.

He said he discussed the issue with Lula when they spoke on the phone this week. Lula was scheduled to travel to Russia for the summit, but cancelled the trip after injuring his head in an accident at home on Saturday.

Putin added that he would work to help the two South American neighbours mend relations.

The Brics began as a grouping that unites Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa. Last year, however, the original members agreed to admit a number of new joiners, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Lula is a passionate advocate of the Brics as a means of reforming global governance and giving a greater voice to the developing world.

He has criticised the “paralysis” of global institutions, while praising the expansion of the Brics as strengthening the fight for more diverse perspectives.

But other observers retort that the Brics are themselves paralysed by their own internal contradictions, with Russia at war in Ukraine, while China and India have their own mutual squabbles.

The latest Brics summit in Kazan was seen as an opportunity for President Putin to demonstrate that attempts to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine had failed.

But in his attempts to strengthen the grouping as a counterweight to the Western-led world, he has also exposed other divisions, leaving relations between Brasília and Caracas at their lowest ebb since Lula’s re-election two years ago.

The UK “can’t change our history”, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has told the BBC when asked about paying reparations to countries impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.

His comments come after diplomatic sources told the BBC that Commonwealth heads of government want to start a “meaningful conversation” about an issue that could mean the UK paying billions of pounds for its historical role in the trade.

Sir Keir, who is currently in Samoa for a meeting of Commonwealth countries, said the trade was “abhorrent” and that it was important to “talk about our history”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves ruled out making payments, in an interview earlier on Thursday, saying “that’s not something that this government is doing”.

Sir Keir said the focus should be on “today’s challenges” including resilience in the face of climate change and boosting trade between Commonwealth nations.

He added he wanted to help member countries work with international financial institutions to “unlock money that might help them” in relation to climate change.

Leaders from 56 countries are attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Samoa on Friday and Saturday.

Commonwealth leaders are expected to defy the UK and debate ways of securing reparations for historical slavery. At its height, Britain was the world’s biggest slave-trading nation. Downing Street has said the issue is not on the agenda for the summit.

Reparatory justice for slavery can come in many forms, including financial reparations, debt relief, an official apology, educational programmes, building museums, economic support, and public health assistance.

In the run-up to the summit, there have been growing calls from Commonwealth leaders for the UK to apologise and make reparations.

Formally opening the summit on Friday, King Charles said that members of the Commonwealth “know and understand each other such that we can discuss the most challenging issues with openness and respect”.

“Our cohesion requires that we acknowledge where we have come from,” he said.

“I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.

“It is vital therefore that we understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future.

“None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons, and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”

He also spoke of the need to tackle climate change, saying Commonwealth nations should seek to be an “example to the rest of the world”, and paid tribute to his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, saying the group “mattered a great deal” to her.

During the gathering, a new Commonwealth secretary general will be elected. All three of the candidates – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – back reparatory justice.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas, said he believed the UK would change its stance, saying: “It may take a while for people to come around but come around they will.”

Mitchell has also urged the UK government to offer an apology, telling the Commonwealth gathering: “It’s a simple matter – it can be done, one sentence, one line.”

Asked if an apology would be offered, Sir Keir said: “Of course, an apology has already been made in relation to the slave trade, and that’s not surprising, it’s what we would expect.”

In 2007, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised for the slave trade. Following talks with the Ghanaian president, he said: “I have said we are sorry and I say it again.”

During the interview with the BBC, Sir Keir was also asked about a complaint Donald Trump’s team has filed against the Labour Party objecting to its staff and activists volunteering for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

“I think this needs to be seen for what it is,” the prime minister said, adding: “It is some Labour Party members and staff in their free time campaigning.

“It’s happened in every election in different parts of the world. All political parties do it… I think it needs to be put in it’s proper perspective.”

Sir Keir added that both he and Trump wanted to have a “good working relationship” and that the pair recently had dinner together.

He dismissed suggestions that his party were still adjusting to being in government, saying he had “absolute clarity” on his “number one mission” of economic growth.

Next Wednesday Chancellor Rachel Reeves, will set out the government’s tax and spending plans in the Budget.

Ahead of this Reeves told the BBC she would be changing the government’s self-imposed debt rules to free up money for infrastructure spending.

Asked about the Budget, Sir Keir said the economy barely grew under the Conservatives and that he wanted to “clear the decks” and “clear up the mess”.

“I believe in running towards problems. If you know what the problem is, what the challenge is, every business knows this, every family knows it, run towards it and fix it.”

The Conservatives have challenged Labour’s argument that they created a £22bn black hole in the economy and questioned the chancellor’s decision to change the debt rules.

The party’s shadow Treasury minister Gareth Davies said “uncertainty over additional borrowing risks interest rates staying higher and for longer.

“It’s families up and down the country who would pay the price.”

The headlines are pretty grim – without action the world could warm by a massive 3.1C this century, the UN says in a new report published today.

But how likely is that?

As is often the case with climate change and the science behind it – the answer is complicated.

The UN Emissions Gap report indicates that if only “current policies” are implemented the world could warm by up to 3.1C.

This would be “catastrophic” for the world according to the UN, leading to dramatic increases in extreme weather events including heatwaves and floods.

Working outside under that level of warming would be extremely difficult if not impossible.

But that number isn’t strictly new, and has to be seen in context.

The UN’s predictions of temperature rise have stayed essentially the same over the past three years since countries met in Glasgow for COP26.

The new report says: “A continuation of current policies is estimated to limit global warming to a maximum of 3.1C (range 1.9-3.8C) over the course of the century.”

This figure is in line with a projection from the most recent IPCC report from 2021 which showed a rise of up to 3.6C of warming this century under a higher level of emissions.

Today’s report says that if countries put into action the promises they have already made in their carbon cutting plans then temperatures will rise by 2.6C to 2.8C.

And if every country puts these plans into action and follows through on their existing net zero pledges, the Emissions Gap report says the rise could be contained to 1.9C.

These cooler scenarios are obviously far from guaranteed and let’s be clear – even a rise of 1.9C would be disastrous. We’ve heated our planet by 1.1C so far and we’re feeling the effects on so many levels, not least an increase in extreme weather and rising sea levels.

That these temperature projections haven’t really budged is one of the things that is frustrating the UN – while countries have made promises at COP27 and COP28, action on the ground has been very slow.

The UN report says that the goals of the Paris agreement to keep global temperatures under 2C while making efforts to stay below 1.5C are now in very serious danger.

However, it is important to bear in mind the timing of this report, coming just a few weeks before political leaders gather in Azerbaijan for COP29.

Countries have agreed to put new carbon cutting plans on the table by next spring. These will cover the ten years to 2035.

Scientists understand that if the emissions curve isn’t bent by then, extremely challenging temperature rises around or above 3C will be likely.

This next set of plans, called nationally determined contributions, have been described by the UN climate chief as among the most important documents produced this century.

So this report has to be seen as part of the push for higher ambition from world leaders.

What else is new in the report?

There are a number of factors that are new and helping to push up emissions according to the UN.

A boom in flying in 2023 saw carbon from aviation rise 19.5% compared to 2022, as passenger travel returned close to pre-pandemic levels.

Road transport emissions also rose, but there were other key factors including the impact of climate change, driving up temperatures forcing people to resort to more air conditioning.

“We are seeing or starting to see more severe impacts of climate change, so heat waves have driven up energy demand for cooling of homes and offices,” said Dr Anne Olhoff, from UNEP.

“They have also impacted the hydropower generation, which has gone down. And what do you then do when it goes down? You switch to more coal.”

Another element is the transition to electricity for vehicles and heating – the increasing number of electric vehicles and heat pumps are also driving up demand for power, often met by fossil fuel sources.

Venice is to double the number of days it charges tourists an entrance fee in 2025, following a “successful” trial last year, the city’s mayor said.

Luigi Brugnaro said the objective remained that of discouraging tourists from visiting the city on the same days “to give Venice the respect it deserves”.

Day trippers who book ahead will have to pay €5 (£4.17; $5.41) to access the Italian city on certain days between April and July, rising to €10 if they book less than four days in advance.

A charge was first introduced last April and it covered 29 days – mostly weekends and public holidays – over a four-month period.

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• Venice backs €5 fee for day-trip tourists

The tax will be applied every Friday through Sunday and on public holidays between 18 April and 27 July 2025, for a total of 54 days.

All visitors over the age of 14 will have to pay the charge on their phones and download a QR code to show inspectors, who will check people at random in common arrival areas, like the train station.

Those without a ticket risk getting a fine.

As with the previous charge, people with hotel and guest house reservations will be exempt, as will residents of the Veneto region, students enrolled at Venice university, and those visiting relatives who live in Venice.

“Venice has gone from being the city most exposed to and criticised for the phenomenon of overtourism, to being the city that is reacting to this phenomenon the earliest and most proactively on the global stage,” said city councillor Simone Venturini.

According to Italian media, in the first eight days of the scheme in April Venice authorities collected the amount they were hoping to make in three months.

By the end of the trial period in mid-July, the city had collected about €2.4m (£2m; $2.5m) in entrance fees.

But mayor Brugnaro said he would have to wait for further analysis to see whether the budget for the scheme completely breaks even.

The cost of the ticket booking platform and the communication campaign that followed the announcement of the initiative cost around €3m, Italian media reported.

Venice opposition councillor Giovanni Andrea Martini said in July that the entrance fee system was a “failure” as it had not helped spread out the flow of tourists that visit Venice.

At the time, Mr Martini also said that a potential raise of the fee from €5 to €10 was be “useless” and would merely “turn Venice into a museum”.

Last year Unesco said the city should be added to a list of world heritage sites in danger, as the impact of climate change and mass tourism threaten to cause irreversible changes to it.

And in 2021, large cruise ships were banned from entering the historic centre of Venice via the Giudecca canal after a ship crashed into a harbour.

Critics also argued that the ships were causing pollution and eroding the foundations of the city, which suffers from regular flooding.

The UK is “not going to be paying out” reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told the BBC.

Her comments come as diplomatic sources told the BBC that the Commonwealth heads of government are preparing to begin a “meaningful conversation” about an issue which could potentially mean the UK owing billions of pounds.

The chancellor said she understood why Commonwealth leaders would be making such demands, but it was not something the UK government would commit to.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who is attending the summit, said he wanted to discuss current challenges, especially climate change, rather than issues of the past.

“That’s where I’m going to put my focus – rather than what will end up being very, very long endless discussions about reparations,” he said.

“Of course slavery is abhorrent to everybody; the trade and the practice, there’s no question about that. But I think from my point of view… I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work… on the current future-facing challenges.”

The chancellor reiterated that message in an interview with the BBC, saying: “We’re not going to be paying out the reparations that some countries are speaking about.

“I understand why they make those demands but that’s not something that this government is doing.”

Commonwealth leaders at the Samoa summit are expected to defy the UK and debate ways of securing reparations for historical slavery. At its height, Britain was the world’s biggest slave-trading nation.

Downing Street insists the issue is not on the agenda for the summit of 56 Commonwealth countries.

King Charles is in Samoa for a four-day visit and is due to formally open the summit later with a speech paying tribute to his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the role the Commonwealth played in her life.

The King will say how “all nations are equal in this unique and voluntary association” which “is committed to developing free and democratic societies”, and will also speak of the “existential threat” of climate change and its impact on Commonwealth nations.

He will say that the Commonwealth, thanks to its scale and diversity – representing a third of humanity – can “discuss the most challenging issues with openness and respect”, and also speak to the importance of recognising and understanding the path of history, and where that may have given rise to contemporary challenges.

In the run-up to this year’s summit, there have been growing calls from Commonwealth leaders for the UK to apologise and make reparations worth for the country’s historic role in the slave trade.

A report published last year by the University of West Indies – backed by Patrick Robinson, a judge who sits on the International Court of Justice – concluded the UK owed more than £18tn in reparations for its role in slavery in 14 Caribbean countries.

Frederick Mitchell, foreign minister of the Bahamas, believes the UK could change its stance and he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Once you broach the subject it may take a while for people to come around but come around they will.”

Reparatory justice for slavery can come in many forms, including financial reparations, debt relief, an official apology, educational programmes, building museums, economic support, and public health assistance.

On a visit to Kenya last year, the King expressed the “greatest sorrow and regret” over the “wrongdoings” of the colonial era, but stopped short of issuing an apology, which would have required the agreement of ministers.

Mr Mitchell told the Commonwealth gathering: “It’s a simple matter – it can be done, one sentence, one line.”

He said to the BBC: “The word is apologise, that’s the word.”

Asked how much reparations should amount to, he said it was not just a matter of money but of “respect, acknowledging the past was a wrong that needs to be corrected”.

He said member countries “want the conversation to start” but “there appears to be even a reluctance to have the conversation”.

Earlier, a UK government spokesperson said: “Reparations are not on the agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The government’s position has not changed – we do not pay reparations.

“We are focused on using the summit at [the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] to discuss the shared opportunities which we can unlock across the Commonwealth – including securing more economic growth.”

It is understood the Downing Street position – that reparatory justice is not on the agenda – while technically correct, has angered some Caribbean ministers when it was obvious the issue would be discussed at the summit.

Some non-Caribbean countries are not unsympathetic towards the British position and want the summit to focus more on existing challenges – such as climate change, which is adversely affecting many Commonwealth countries, about half of whom are small island states.

But all three candidates hoping to be elected this weekend as the next secretary general of the Commonwealth – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – have made clear they support reparatory justice.

Canada has announced a sharp cut in the number of immigrants it allows into the country in an effort to “pause population growth”, marking a notable shift in policy for the Justin Trudeau government.

As part of the changes, Canada will reduce the number of permanent residents in 2025 from a previous target of 500,000 to 395,000 – a 21% drop.

Prime Minister Trudeau said his government “didn’t get the balance quite right” when it bolstered immigration post-pandemic to address labour shortages.

Public support for immigration in Canada has been waning, with opinion polls suggesting rising concern over the growing numbers and its impact on housing and social services.

The move comes on the heels of already announced reduced targets for both international students and temporary foreign workers.

On Thursday, Trudeau and Canada’s immigration minister Marc Miller announced further cuts, this time to the number of new permanent residents.

The goal, Miller said, is to set a smaller target of 365,000 new permanent residents by 2027.

This reduction will pause population growth in Canada over the next two years, Trudeau said, giving provinces time to catch up on bolstering their healthcare programmes and housing stock.

The prime minister said that “Canadians are justifiably proud” of their welcoming immigration system, which he said had helped bolster the country’s economy and build diverse communities.

“Our immigration system has always been responsible and it has always been flexible,” Trudeau said. “We are acting today because of the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right.”

The vast majority of Canada’s population growth last year – about 97% – was driven by immigration, according to federal data.

At the same time, Canada’s unemployment rate has increased to 6.5% and stands at over 14% for young people.

The move marks a departure from decades of open immigration policies in Canada, which has relied on newcomers to meet population targets and to fill labour gaps.

Since Trudeau was elected in 2015, his government has raised annual permanent resident targets from 272,000 to 485,000 this year. The biggest jump was seen in 2021 after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trudeau and his government have been criticised for increasing immigration without bolstering services or housing construction, and economists have warned that Canada’s rapidly growing population has put a strain on housing and public services like healthcare.

Earlier this month, a poll by the Environics Institute, which has tracked Canadians’ attitudes towards immigration since 1977, revealed that 58% of Canadians now feel that immigration levels were too high.

The institute said the findings suggest that public opinion on immigration levels has “effectively flipped from being acceptable (if not valuable) to problematic”.

The cuts to immigration targets have been criticised by advocacy groups like the Migrant Rights Network, who wrote in an open letter to Trudeau and Miller that migrants are being unfairly blamed for Canada’s affordability crisis.

“Migrants are not responsible for Canada’s housing crisis, lack of jobs, or inadequate healthcare or other public services,” they said.

The group added that these issues are rather a result of “decades of federal and provincial policies that have underfunded and privatized public services”.

Mozambique’s ruling party, Frelimo, has won the country’s divisive, violence-marred election, extending its 49-year grip on power in the southern African nation, according to official results.

Daniel Chapo, Frelimo’s relatively unknown presidential candidate, seen as an agent of change, will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served two terms.

At 47, Chapo, who gained 71% of the vote, will be the first president born after independence in 1975. His closest challenger, Venancio Mondlane got 20%.

Chapo said in his victory speech: “We remained silent all this time, for respecting the law. We are an organised party that prepares its victories.”

Following the announcement of the result, there have been violent protests in several towns and a number of people have been killed. There is also heavy police presence in some areas.

The election has been marred by allegations of rigging and the killing of opposition supporters, prompting protests across the country.

Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa, who has also been hit by allegations of election fraud over the years, prematurely congratulated Chapo on his “resounding victory”, even before the results were announced.

Ossufo Momade, the candidate of former rebel group Renamo, which was previously the main opposition party, came in third with 6%.

Political analyst Tomas Viera Mario told the BBC that Renamo had lost its “historical position” because Momade, 68, had failed to attract young voters.

The numbers announced surprised all voters, including some members and sympathisers of the ruling party, especially Frelimo’s landslide victory.

The deputy chairperson of the electoral commission Fernando Mazanga, who was appointed by Renamo, said the “results are against electoral justice”.

“These results do not represent the reality,” he said.

The electoral commission says 43% of the more than 17 million registered voters took part in the poll.

Parliamentary and provincial elections were held at the same time as the presidential vote.

Frelimo won 195 of the 250 seats in parliament. The opposition Podemos, which backed Mondlane for president, got 31 seats and Renamo secured 20 seats.

Frelimo also won all the provincial elections.

President Nyusi followed the election results with a jubilant television address to the nation.

“With more than 70% of the votes, I don’t see any teacher failing a student,” he said.

The election had been seen as a turning-point for the resource-rich country which is wracked by economic problems, corruption, and poverty.

Mondlane had called for a national strike on Thursday in protest at the alleged rigging.

He said that the protests would honour his lawyer and a party official who were shot dead last week in what he described as politically motivated killings.

He claimed that he won the election despite preliminary polls showing that Chapo was well ahead.

Mondlane now has until December to contest the results.

On Monday, he organised nationwide demonstrations, which were dispersed by police firing live rounds and tear gas.

The election has also been criticised by EU election observers, who said some results may have been doctored.

They said there were “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results”.

Political analyst Adriano Nuvunga decried what he called a pattern of fraudulent elections in Mozambique.

The electoral commission has declined to comment on allegations of vote-rigging, according to Reuters.

Chapo will be sworn into office in January.

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Israel’s intensified bombing campaign of Lebanon has caused more damage to buildings in two weeks than occurred during a year of cross-border fighting with Hezbollah, according to satellite-based radar data assessed by the BBC.

Data shows that more than 3,600 buildings in Lebanon appear to have been damaged or destroyed between 2 and 14 October 2024. This represents about 54% of the total estimated damage since cross-border hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah broke out just over a year ago.

The damage data was gathered by Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. They compared radar satellite images to reveal sudden changes in the height or structure of buildings which indicate damage.

Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental expert from the Pax for Peace organisation, reviewed the satellite-based radar data and warned of the impact of Israel’s bombing.

“The Israeli military campaign seems to be creating a ‘dead zone’ in the south of Lebanon to drive out the population, and making it difficult for Hezbollah to re-establish positions, at the cost of the civilian population,” he said.

Cross-border hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah broke out after the armed Lebanese group started firing rockets in and around northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Israel invaded southern Lebanon in a dramatic escalation on 30 September to destroy, it said, Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in “limited, localised, targeted raids”.

Satellite photos, radar imagery, and military records show recent Israeli bombardment in Lebanon has focused on the southern border region. It has also expanded to central and northern areas, including the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The Israeli army said it hit thousands of Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut.

Most of the strikes on Beirut have targeted Dahieh, a southern suburb that is home to thousands of civilians. The Israeli military claims the area is home to Hezbollah’s command headquarters.

A series of Israeli strikes on buildings in the area killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September.

Separate data from the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled), which has been analysed by the BBC, indicates at least 2,700 attacks by the Israeli military on Lebanese areas from 1 September until 11 October 2024. While these attacks primarily focus on southern border areas, they have also extended to northern and central regions. Each Israeli attack can also include several bombings.

Hezbollah has carried out around 540 attacks against Israel in the same timeframe, according to Acled. Each Hezbollah attack can include a barrage of rockets, missiles and drones.

The Israeli military says air strikes in Lebanon are targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.

It regularly adds it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by attacks from the Iran-backed group.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of near-daily attacks by Hezbollah. But some rockets have reached further south and damaged homes in and around the coastal city of Haifa.

Hezbollah reiterated it would continue sending rockets into Israel unless a ceasefire is reached. The group’s deputy secretary general claimed rockets would focus on military targets, but warned Hezbollah had the right to attack anywhere in Israel in response to strikes across Lebanon.

On the Lebanese side, many Israeli air strikes targeted the city of Tyre, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut, according to the BBC’s analysis of the latest monthly data collected by Acled.

Lebanon’s government says up to 1.3 million people have been internally displaced, whilst Prime Minister Najib Mikati warned of the “largest displacement” in the country’s history.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been issuing evacuation orders to residents across the country, including areas of Beirut.

In the south, the army instructed residents of several villages to leave their homes and “immediately head north of the Awali River,” which meets the coast about 50 km (30 miles) from the Israeli border.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe,” Gabriel Karlsson, Middle East Manager at the British Red Cross in Beirut, told the BBC.

He said there are insufficient shelters to accommodate so many evacuees.

“I saw children sleeping in the streets,” Karlsson added, urging humanitarian organisations to coordinate their efforts to address the escalating crisis.

Lebanese officials say at least 2,350 have been killed and over 10,000 injured in Israeli attacks. The Lebanon health minister said many casualties were civilians.

On the Israeli side, 60 people have been killed and more than 570 wounded by Hezbollah attacks, Israeli authorities say.

“Collateral damage is inevitable in war”, Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, told the BBC.

The retired major-general blamed Hezbollah for the war and claimed Israel’s ground offensive would force the group out from the border areas.

Zwijnenburg, from the Pax for Peace organisation, however, has warned of the impact of Israel’s military campaign on civilians and the populated areas.

“The heavy blast radius kills and maims civilians nearby”, he said, in reference to Israeli air strikes.

“Open-source data combined with satellite imagery also showed that civilian infrastructure such as irrigation channels, gas stations and electricity grids were damaged, which is worsening the humanitarian situation,” he added.

Negotiations over a potential Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal are set to resume in Doha in the coming days, officials from the US, Israel and Qatar have said.

A spokesperson for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an Israeli delegation will travel to Qatar on Sunday.

It is not yet clear whether Hamas has agreed to participate in the talks.

The US believes the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week – seen as one of the group’s most extreme figures – may open the door to an agreement, though Hamas has accused Israel of being the primary block to any deal.

“With Sinwar gone,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told journalists, “there is a real opportunity to bring home [the hostages] and to accomplish the objective.”

Mr Blinken said that objective was to reach a deal “so that Israel can withdraw, so that Hamas cannot reconstitute, and so that the Palestinian people can rebuild their lives and rebuild their futures”.

A senior Palestinian official told the BBC that a Hamas delegation was meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials on Thursday evening as part of discussions on the current situation in Gaza and ways to overcome obstacles to stop the escalation.

An official in Egypt confirmed to the BBC that high-level Egyptian security leaders would be meeting a delegation from Hamas in Cairo.

Qatar’s foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Qatari mediators had “re-engaged” with Hamas since Sinwar’s death, but there was “no clarity” over the groups current plans with regards to ceasefire talks.

“There has been an engagement with the representatives from the political office in Doha. We had some meetings with them in the last couple of days,” he said, adding that Egypt was also in “ongoing” discussions with Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X that he welcomes Egypt’s “readiness to advance a deal for the release of the hostages”.

Previous discussions over such a deal have focused on a proposal from US President Joe Biden in May, which was “positively” received by Hamas.

That proposal laid out a three-step plan that would begin with a six-week ceasefire, in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza.

There would also be a “surge” of humanitarian aid, as well as an exchange of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

It would eventually lead to a permanent “cessation of hostilities” and a major reconstruction plan for Gaza.

But talks faltered, with a key sticking-point being Netanyahu’s insistence on an Israeli troop presence on the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi corridor.

Blinken is on his 11th visit to the Middle East since the start of the current war between Israel and Hamas more than a year ago, and is set to end his trip on Friday.

During the visit, he announced an additional $135 million of aid “in humanitarian assistance, water, sanitation, maternal health for Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, as well as in the region”, taking the total amount of US aid since the start of the war to some $1.2 billion.

An Israeli airstrike on a school building in central Gaza has killed at least 17 people, according to a local hospital.

Al-Awda hospital told AFP and Reuters that the strike on Thursday hit the Al-Shuhada school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The Hamas-run government media office reported the same death toll and said the school was being used as a shelter for displaced people.

Videos from the scene, verified by the BBC, show wounded children being carried out in the arms of men.

Israel said it had targeted a Hamas command centre at the site “used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks” against Israel and its troops.

The government media office said “thousands of displaced people” were using the school as a shelter when the strike hit, “most of them children and women”.

Nine children were among the 17 killed, with more than 52 injured, the media office added.

Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, also told AFP that 17 people were killed and dozens wounded.

In recent weeks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has hit several buildings being used as shelters across Gaza, saying it was targeting Hamas personnel and infrastructure.

Israel does not allow international media organisations – including the BBC – independent access to Gaza, making it difficult to verify facts on the ground, so we rely on information from video footage and testimonies, as well as Israeli and Hamas official statements.

In northern Gaza, the IDF has been intensifying a weeks-long offensive against what it said were Hamas fighters who had regrouped there.

At least 650 people have been killed since the new offensive in the north began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israeli military said it was facilitating evacuations of civilians while it continued “operating against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”.

But residents unwilling or unable to comply with Israeli evacuation orders are said to be living in increasingly desperate conditions, with food and other essential supplies running out.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that during the first three weeks of October, Israeli authorities permitted only four out of 70 coordinated aid missions to north Gaza.

The US warned Israel last week to urgently boost aid or risk having some military assistance cut off.

Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in Gaza, said that trucks carrying food, water and medical supplies had been transferred to the north over the past week.

OCHA said earlier this week that humanitarian access remains restricted.

The final stage of an emergency polio vaccination campaign in the area has been postponed by UN agencies because of intense Israeli bombardments, mass displacement and lack of access.

The last phase of the two-stage rollout – prompted by Gaza’s first case of polio in 25 years, which left a baby boy paralyzed – was due to begin on Wednesday.

Almost 120,000 children in northern Gaza had been expected to receive a second dose of the oral polio vaccine.

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 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.

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.

Four years after Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in a brutal and deadly clash along a disputed Himalayan border, the nations’ leaders have finally met formally.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Russia.

The meeting came days after the two sides announced they had reached an agreement on “disengagement and resolution of issues in these areas”.

On Wednesday, Modi and Xi welcomed the step and pledged to resume dialogue between their nations.

The leaders have agreed to set an “early date” for a meeting between their top officials to resolve the issues.

India-China relations have been affected by tensions for decades – the root cause being an ill-defined, 3,440km (2,100-mile)-long disputed border. Rivers, lakes and snowcaps along the frontier mean the line often shifts, bringing soldiers face-to-face at many points, at times sparking a confrontation.

The two countries fought a war in 1962 in which India suffered a heavy defeat. Since then, there have been several skirmishes between the two sides.

When India repealed Article 370 of its constitution in 2019, taking away guaranteed autonomy for Indian-administered Kashmir, China denounced the move at the UN Security Council. Kashmir included the high-altitude Ladakh, parts of which China claims.

The clash in Galwan Valley in 2020 was their worst confrontation in decades. At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops were killed.

Later that year, the two countries pulled back troops from some parts of the disputed border and pledged to de-escalate tensions – but the situation remained tense.

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

The military standoff also affected business ties between the two as Delhi increased its scrutiny of Chinese investments in the country and banned several popular Chinese mobile apps, including TikTok. It also stopped direct passenger flights to China.

While Wednesday’s meeting between Modi and Xi saw their first formal talks since October 2019, the leaders had a pull-aside meeting at the G20 summit in Bali in 2022. Months later, China said they had reached a “consensus” during the meeting to restore bilateral ties.

The two leaders also met informally on the sidelines of the 2023 Brics summit in Johannesburg, where they agreed to intensify efforts to disengage and de-escalate, Reuters reports.

The same year, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan and agreed to step up talks.

Last month, Jaishankar said about 75% of the “disengagement” at the border had been sorted out.

A few days later, civil aviation authorities from the two sides also met and discussed early resumption of direct passenger flights.

Several media organisations, including Bloomberg, have reported that the Indian businesses have put pressure on the government to relax restrictions on China saying they hurt India’s high-end manufacturing, such as the chipmaking sector.

But Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday that India would be cautious while easing restrictions on Chinese businesses.

On Monday, Jaishankar said the two countries had agreed to resume border patrols and go back to the situation that existed before the 2020 clash.

“With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed,” he added.

The Indian Army chief said the countries were now trying to restore trust. “That will happen once we are able to see each other and we are able to convince and reassure each other that we are not creeping into buffer zones that have been created,” General Upendra Dwivedi said.

China’s foreign ministry did not comment on specifics regarding the deal, but confirmed the two sides had “reached resolutions on relevant issues”.

“China commends the progress made and will continue working with India for the sound implementation of these resolutions,” spokesperson Lin Jian said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Modi and Xi have announced that their special representatives will meet to find solutions “to explore a fair, reasonable and mutually-acceptable solution to the boundary question”, India’s external affairs ministry said in a statement.

It added that their ministers and other officials would also work to stabilise and rebuild bilateral relations.

The leaders talked about the importance of maintaining good ties, with PM Modi saying their relationship was vital for global peace.

“Maintaining peace and stability on the border should remain our priority. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity should remain the basis of our relations,” he said.

The Brics summit was attended by leaders of 36 countries who discussed ways to reduce Global South’s dependence on dollar as currency for trade between countries. The summit was also attended by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

President Xi told Modi that the international community was watching the meeting closely. He said Delhi and Beijing must set an example for boosting the unity of developing countries and “to contribute to promoting multi-polarisation and democracy in international relations”.

“China and India are both ancient civilisations, major developing countries and important members of the Global South. We are both at a crucial phase in our respective modernisation endeavours,” he added.

“The louder you can talk, the better, because I’ve played rock and roll for 50 years.”

Bruce Springsteen has just E Street Shuffled into the room. Uncannily charismatic, he carries the practised ease of someone who knows the destabilising effect their presence can have on regular people.

He takes time to greet every member of the BBC’s film crew individually, then breaks the ice with a joke about a journalist who mistakenly called him “Springstein”. That reminds me of a local radio DJ in Belfast who always used to introduce him as “Bruce Springsprong”.

“Really?” he laughs. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”

In fact, we’ve been pre-warned that he doesn’t like being called The Boss – the nickname coined in the early days of his career with The E Street Band, when he’d be responsible for collecting and distributing the takings after a show.

“I hate being called ‘Boss’,” he told Creem magazine in 1980. “Always did, from the beginning. I hate bosses. I hate being called the boss.”

The term is conspicuously absent from his new Disney+ documentary, Road Diary, which charts the process of putting together Springsteen’s first tour since the pandemic – from handwritten notebooks to footage of his band “shaking off the cobwebs” after six years apart.

At times, the preparations lack the rigour you might expect.

“It’s all a little bit casual,” frets Steve Van Zandt, Springsteen’s guitarist and one of his oldest friends, after the star calls time on rehearsals.

“There’s a certain percentage [of songs] that we’re gonna [screw] up anyway,” Springsteen retorts.

“That’s what they’re paying for. They want to see it live. That means a few mistakes!”

If you’ve caught any of the star’s recent shows, you’ll know the stakes are never that high. The band are tighter than a tourniquet. Mistakes are noticeably absent.

The documentary comes exactly 60 years after Springsteen’s first gig, playing an $18 guitar with a band called The Rogues.

He’s never let anyone film the inner workings of his shows before, so why do it on this tour?

“Well, because I could be dead by the next one,” he laughs.

“I’m 75 years old now. I’ve decided that the waiting-to-do-things part of my life is over.”

“We’re closer to the end than we are to the beginning,” agrees Van Zandt, “but the point of this tour was that we’re not going out quietly, man.

“We’re going to balance that mortality with vitality.”

That philosophy was fully on display at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light in May, when Springsteen braved torrential rain to play for three hours to 50,000 drenched fans.

The weather was so brutal that Springsteen lost his voice. Doctors ordered him not to sing for a week, forcing him to postpone several shows.

What made him continue?

“Well, I’m there to have a good time,” he says. “I’m going to insist on it, whether it’s raining or the sun is shining – because I’m there for the people that are there.

“I look out and I go, ‘These are my people. These are the people who’ve listened to my music for the past 30 or 40 years. I’m going to do the best show I possibly can’, you know?

“It sounds corny, but you have to love your audience and, for the most part, I’ve never found that hard to do.”

It took audiences a while to reciprocate, however.

Born in New Jersey, to Douglas Springsteen, a bus driver, and Adele Springsteen, a secretary, Bruce paid little attention to music until he saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show and bought himself a guitar.

He spent his teens playing around the city with a Beatles-inspired band named The Castiles (after a brand of shampoo), taking gigs wherever they’d have him.

“I’ve played pizza parlours, I’ve played bowling alleys. I’ve played [psychiatric] hospitals and Sing Sing prison. I even played a supermarket opening once,” he recalls.

Back then, the setlist was all R&B covers and Motown hits – but Springsteen was a nervous performer.

In his autobiography, he talks about blinking 100 times a minute and chewing his knuckles. Van Zandt calls him “the most introverted guy you’ve met in your whole life”.

So how did he become the performer who, with the E Street Band, started tearing up stages all around the world?

“Introversion is a funny thing,” he says. “There’s a yin and a yang to it.

“On my own, I can be very internal. I’ve written a lot of internal music – Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Nebraska, parts of The River – all about people who live these very intense, borderline violent, internal lives.

“But the joyful side of me, which I got from my mother, allows me to sing Rosalita and Born to Run and Hungry Heart.

“I’m Irish-Italian, so I got the blues and I got the joy at the same time.”

It’s a typical Springsteen answer – analytical, sincere, intrinsically linking his life to his music.

Van Zandt, who witnessed Springsteen’s transformation, sees it differently.

“His first two records didn’t do well. Record companies were ready to drop him. His only dream was about to die.

“So my very shy friend reaches inside and says, ‘I’ll put the guitar down and start fronting the band’, which is huge move, right? Because the guitar’s a defence, it’s actually a wall between you and your audience. So he had to put that away and learn a whole new craft.”

It all came to a head at New York’s Bottom Line Club, shortly before the release of Springsteen’s breakout album Born To Run in 1975.

Over the course of five nights and 10 shows, the star showcased his new sound to fans, journalists and radio progammers.

“And all of a sudden, he’s dancing on the tables,” Van Zandt recalls. “I’m like, ‘Wow, where’d that come from?’

“I think it was sort of a defensive urge, like, ‘You’re not going to stop me’.”

Whatever it was, it worked.

Born To Run was a massive commercial success, selling six million copies in the US alone.

The album was constructed with the same desperation as those live shows, pieced together over 14 months (six of them on the title track alone) as Springsteen fought and scraped to save his career.

The songs – Thunder Road, Jungleland, Born To Run – throbbed with longing, as his characters fought to escape the confines of small-town, blue collar American life.

It’s a story he was familiar with. As a child, he witnessed the chilling effects of unemployment and the Vietnam War on his neighbourhood.

His subsequent rise to fame reads like a movie treatment for the American Dream, but he’s aware that luck and timing played a role.

“I wouldn’t want to be a young band starting today,” he says. “The day of the quote ‘rock star’ is in twilight.

“But I’ve had some encouragement. My young friend, Zach Bryan, just sold out two stadium nights in Philadelphia, so there’s still some young people coming up.”

No-one can match Springsteen, though, and he’s increasingly aware that time’s against him.

His last two albums confront mortality head-on, prompted by the realisation that he was the “last man standing” from his teenage band The Castiles.

On tour, he pays tribute to the E Street musicians who’ve crossed The River. Meanwhile his wife, Patti Scialfa, has cut back her appearances with the band, after being diagnosed with myeloma, a rare blood cancer, in 2018.

“She’s doing well, we caught it early,” Springsteen says.

“She’s having a tough time at the moment because she needs to have a shoulder replaced and a hip replaced. So that, on top of the myeloma, makes it very difficult for her to get out and get around.

“But she’s made a beautiful new record that’ll be coming out, hopefully, this year. And we’ve been married for 34 years. I love her to death.”

Despite the realities of age, Springsteen isn’t slowing down. He’s back in Europe next summer to make up for the concerts he missed after Sunderland, adding another 12 dates for good measure.

“Do you think you can outlast The E Street Band?”, he demands every night, daring the audience to meet their energy, joule for joule.

Their shared history is the show’s heartbeat. Famously, they’ll take requests from the audience, often playing other artists’ songs at the drop of a hat. Springsteen traces that ability back to their early club gigs.

“I know every song these guys have ever played, so I’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, we played that back in 1964, I think we can fake our way through that one’.”

And the secret to their 50-year camaraderie? Distance.

“When we’re not playing, we rarely see each other,” Springsteen confesses. “We’ve seen each other enough!”

He continues: “The arc of most bands is to break apart.

“Even two guys can’t stay together. Simon can’t stand Garfunkel, Don couldn’t stand Phil Everly, and then you have the kids in Oasis… so the tradition carries on.

“It’s the nature of people to not get along, so that’s something you need to write into your projection of the kind of band you want to be in.

“I don’t like drama. I don’t want people knocking heads. I don’t want to hear about a bunch of bull backstage. I don’t put up with any of that stuff. We weeded it out a long time ago.

“The band started out crazy and made its way to sanity.”

In the documentary, Springsteen promises they’ll keep playing “until the wheels come off”.

I wonder if that’s because, as he’s said in the past, the shows help him fend off depression.

“I’ve been pretty lucky with the depression,” he says “It hasn’t bothered me in quite a while, but I definitely go on stage to lose myself.

“You have to surrender to the moment and see what comes up. Learn a little bit about yourself.”

What has he learnt on his latest tour?

“Let me see,” he says, leaning back to think.

“I learnt that my back really hurts a lot.”

A rare typescript of children’s story The Little Prince, one of the most translated books ever published, is set to go on sale for $1.25m (£963,313).

The typescript, which is a typed copy of a text, was produced in New York by its author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, while in exile from Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s and is one of three known to be in existence.

The copy contains handwritten notes and sketches by Saint-Exupéry. It will go on sale at the Abu Dhabi Art Festival in the United Arab Emirates in November.

Having the “typed manuscript…is an extremely rare event”, said Sammy Jay, senior literature specialist from the typescript’s seller Peter Harrington Rare Books.

Saint-Exupéry wrote Le Petit Prince, in the original French, for children while living in exile in New York during World War Two. It was published in 1943.

He was an experienced aviator, and after writing the book, returned to Europe on a reconnaissance mission for the Free French air force fighting Nazi Germany. He disappeared on his last mission, and no one knows how or where his plane went down.

The famous work of fiction is about a pilot stranded in a desert who meets a small boy called the Little Prince who is visiting Earth.

Since its publication, The Little Prince has gone on to sell millions of books around the world.

Saint-Exupéry’s original handwritten manuscript is in New York. Two other typescripts are known to be in existence, one in France’s national library and another in the Harry Ransom Center in Texas.

Mr Jay told the BBC that Saint-Exupéry gave those two typescripts to friends before his disappearance, but the third one “wasn’t inscribed or given to someone”.

The third was in a private collection in France “for decades” and is the only copy that has come up to be sold to the public, he said, adding that it is “astounding” to have it.

“It’s very exciting because the quest [for me] is always to find something more and more amazing…I don’t know how I’m going to beat it,” Mr Jay said.

Peter Harrington Rare Books has possessed the typescript since the start of 2024 and has been cataloguing and conducting research on it, as well as making it ready for sale.

The cover shows evidence of stubbed-out cigarettes and the typescript contains Saint-Exupéry’s handwritten notes, annotations, and edits on its pages.

It also features what has been thought to be the first written appearance of one of the story’s most famous lines: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; the essential is invisible to the eye.”

This typescript is “much more intimate” than the other two, Mr Jay said, highlighting notes and “doodles” the author made on it.

Two sketches of the Little Prince accompany the artefact, one of which was a preliminary sketch for the book’s final illustration, according to Peter Harrington Rare Books.

The Little Prince is part of a “global literary heritage” as one of the most translated books in the world, Mr Jay said.

He said there was the possibility a museum or library outside of Europe could buy the typescript in November, which could show a “recognition of its global status”.

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, which is at the centre of border disputes between India 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.”

Two months ago, Kamala Harris was crowned as the Democratic presidential nominee at a jubilant national convention in Chicago.

For thousands of party faithful, she was the electoral saviour, replacing an 81-year-old incumbent who seemed incapable of defeating Donald Trump and winning another term.

But even then, senior party strategists told me they worried Democrats were over confident about her path to victory.

Now, as election day looms and anxieties grow, it seems their concerns were well-founded.

There is no doubt that Harris enjoyed a surge of momentum, and an instant and significant boost in the polls compared to President Joe Biden, who was lagging far behind Trump. Yet it appears she was winning back those who normally vote Democratic anyway, but who had worried about Biden and his age.

For victory, Harris needs to attract voters from beyond the Democrats’ base, while holding together the fragile coalition that helped Biden win in 2020.

The latest polls show a race that has tightened in recent weeks and is now essentially a tie. Worrying for Democrats is that Trump has gained ground in the crucial “blue wall” states that offer Harris her clearest path to victory – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – as well as among black and Latino voters.

Although the race is neck-and-neck in the key swing states, poll numbers are within the margin of error. In other words, they could be wrong.

But Harris’s criticism of Trump, her Republican opponent, has become much darker in the last few days. At the convention, she laughed at Trump, dismissing him as an “unserious man” and “weird”. Now she is calling him a “fascist” and “increasingly unhinged and unstable”.

Her original message of wanting to bring “joy” has turned to one of fear – warning of what she says are the dangerous consequences of a second Trump term.

Polling suggests Harris is likely to win the popular vote. But that won’t be enough. She has to win key battleground states to win in the electoral college.

But in recent weeks as I’ve travelled through most of those states, the reservations many voters still have about Harris – a woman they feel they still don’t know enough about – have been clear.

Harris has a very particular problem in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab-American voters in the US.

Biden won the state in 2020 by just over 150,000 votes, but his administration’s inability to rein in Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon has deeply hurt the party’s standing among the 300,000 Arab-Americans living here.

Harris, Biden’s vice-president, is being held equally responsible.

In the Haraz coffee shop in Dearborn, a Middle Eastern-style café serving Turkish coffee and pomegranate juice, I met a group of lifelong Democrats who normally would be out campaigning.

I expected to hear some of them say they couldn’t vote for Harris, and would be sitting out the vote. But Samraa Luqman, who describes herself as further left than most Democrats, said she is not only voting Trump but is actively encouraging others to do so.

“I believe there has to be accountability for all the lives lost,” she told me. “I do not forgive the Democrats for it, and I will not be scared into voting for them.”

Chadi Abdulrazek said he could never have imagined voting for Trump a year ago, but now Samraa may persuade him.

“If I do want to punish the Democrats, specifically this administration, then I might have to consider that,” he said. ”Every time I say that, I feel like I have to go and throw up. But also I think about my family, my people, in Palestine and in Lebanon”

Harris has spoken about her anger over the suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, but these voters want her to say she will refuse to supply weapons to Israel if they are used in strikes that kill civilians.

In Michigan, the working-class and union vote could prove pivotal, too. Jean Ducheman, a United Auto Workers union official in the city of Lansing, Michigan, is more optimistic about Harris.

When I spoke to him in July, he wanted Biden to step aside because of his age. But he also had deep reservations about Harris. Now he says he is convinced she is the best choice and that she is winning over some of his undecided colleagues.

Mr Ducheman believes that campaigning extensively in Michigan has made a real difference.

“She came and spoke to us and that’s really appreciated,” he said, despite the fact that some unions have chosen not to endorse Harris.

The most important swing state is Pennsylvania because it has the largest number of votes in the all-important electoral college. With polls deadlocked, both sides have poured hundreds of millions into advertising here to reach undecided voters.

On every visit, I’ve found voters care the most about the economy. And it’s an area where Trump seems to enjoy a significant advantage: No matter how much Democrats point to rosy job numbers or economic growth, people simply felt better off four years ago before record-high inflation cut into monthly budgets.

At a national hunting and fishing event in Bald Eagle National Park, I met Gene Wool, one of those hard-to-find undecideds.

He said he was reluctant to vote for Trump because of what he described as the “scandals surrounding him”.

But Mr Wool is sure that when Trump was in office, food and petrol prices were lower.

“Most of my friends are probably going to vote for Trump,” he says, adding that he thinks Pennsylvania will swing that way, too.

Harris is focusing on women in the Pennsylvania suburbs – especially those who may usually vote Republican but are turned off byTrump’s rhetoric and behaviour.

Recent Harris events where she has appeared with moderate Republicans like former congresswoman Liz Cheney are aimed at persuading this group that it’s preferable to vote Democratic even if you don’t agree with Harris’s policies – just to keep Trump out of the White House.

Harris holds a very strong lead among female voters across the nation in an election with the country’s biggest ever gender divide.

She has not campaigned on the historic nature of her candidacy, almost never mentioning that if elected she would be the first female president. But she does stress her support for women’s reproductive rights.

Trump boasts of appointing the Supreme Court justices who ended the nation’s right to an abortion, in place for over 50 years. But he knows that the very strict abortion bans some states introduced afterwards are deeply unpopular with a lot of voters, forcing him to walk a careful line.

Early one evening in Phoenix, Arizona, recently, I joined some volunteers in a trendy downtown bar having a “postcard party”. They were writing personal messages about why they believe in abortion rights to be sent to Arizona voters. Many are not usually politically active.

In Arizona, one of the two battleground states in America’s west, there is a proposition on the ballot to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution – effectively overturning the current law that forbids terminating a pregnancy after 15 weeks.

The hope for Democrats is that women in the ten states with such abortion ballot measures are driven to the polls by that issue, and while there, cast a presidential vote for Harris.

Nicole Nye told me it was the first time she had become involved in a political campaign, and she has already recruited a voter – her 62-year-old mother who had never voted before.

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“I said to her [that] I’m very concerned about my rights. She was fortunate enough to grow up in a time when those rights had been secured for her …It’s concerning that that’s up in the air for me.”

Arizona polls suggest voters are likely to support the proposition by a wide margin, but that may not translate into votes for Harris. As many as one in five people say they plan to vote to guarantee abortion rights in Arizona, but at the same time cast a ballot for Trump.

Neither Harris nor Trump know who will be the next president of the United States. Nor do any of the pollsters or political pundits.

But it appears Harris has not been able to sustain the excitement and optimism she generated when she first became a presidential candidate. She now has to slog it out, fighting for every vote, to stand a chance of breaking what the last woman to run for US president, Hillary Clinton, called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling”.

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.

When the air strike hit on Monday night, Fouad Hassan, 74, was sitting on his balcony in south Beirut’s Jnah neighbourhood, reading his phone.

No evacuation order was given by the Israeli army before the rocket slammed into the home of his children and grandchildren a short walk away.

“When the bombing happened, I fainted,” Fouad says. “I was taken to get oxygen due to the smoke from the strike. When I got better, I realised that the entire neighbourhood was devastated.”

Now a pile of mangled steel and masonry lies where a number of residential buildings stood closely together. Where buildings are still standing, people’s possessions can be seen inside through holes blasted in the walls.

A digger and about 40 local men are doing the slow work to excavate and look for bodies under the rubble.

“Look at the destruction – a whole neighbourhood wiped out, the people here dead,” Fouad says, gesturing over the bomb site. “My granddaughter died here, and my grandson is still in a coma. Both were 23 years old.”

Fouad is a well-known figure in the community. An actor and comedian, he has appeared on Lebanese television and is known by his stage name Zaghloul. As we walk around the bomb site, locals come to shake Fouad’s hand and offer words of condolence.

Taking his phone from his pocket, Fouad shows us a picture of his granddaughter, Alaa. She looks confident, posing for the camera and wearing a smart gold dress.

“She was happily engaged, looking forward to getting married in three months,” Fouad says. “She applied to be Miss Lebanon and was shredded to pieces. Why? Why does the world allow this?”

Since Israel began escalating its air strikes against Hezbollah in September, rockets have hit across the length and breadth of the country. It is a military campaign that Israel’s leaders feel has been brought them huge wins so far – having claimed the lives of Hezbollah’s senior leadership.

However it is also a campaign that has taken many innocent lives, with numerous reports of entire families being killed in strikes around the country.

Over 1,900 Lebanese people have been killed, according to government figures, since Israel stepped up the air strikes. The statistics do not differentiate between Hezbollah fighters and civilians.

Despite issuing no evacuation order to residents in advance on Monday night, the Israeli army subsequently stated that they were aiming for a “Hezbollah terrorist target”, but did not elaborate further.

First reports coming from the scene suggested that the compound of the Rafik Hariri hospital, the capital’s largest public hospital, had been struck, which the Israeli army denied.

The damage to the hospital is superficial, but across a road littered with parked cars that have their windows blown out, lies a poor neighbourhood that was hit.

Fouad’s son, Ahmed joins us. He shows us a picture of his son who lies in intensive care in the hospital, his face bandaged and bloody.

“This was my house; it’s gone now, just like everything else. We have no place to go and no clothes. This is a massacre. We have no base here, no Hezbollah, there’s nothing,” Ahmed tells us.

It is not clear why its army chooses to issue evacuation orders before some missile strikes and not others – but when Israel does strike without warning in a dense residential area, the human cost can be indiscriminate and high.

Fouad tells us of playing with the young children in the neighbourhood who were killed in the strike.

“Whenever I entered the neighbourhood, they would shout, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa! What did you bring us?’ I would give them candies, crisps, and popcorn. Their loss fills me with sorrow; they all died. Their mother is still trapped under the rubble with one of her children.”

As we begin to leave the site, a hush falls over those gathered and we see a stretcher carrying a wrapped body being taken away by the digger.

We are told that a mother was found next to a child.

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” and when asked he says more drilling for oil will lower energy costs.

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
• Where Donald Trump stands on 10 issues

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 to a four-year low. 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. She says she would revive that deal if elected.

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

• What Harris really did about the border crisis
• Could Trump really deport a million migrants?

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.

• 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

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

A tropical storm has dumped one month’s worth of rains over large swathes of the northern Philippines, leaving more than 20 people dead and forcing 150,000 others to evacuate.

Trami made landfall Thursday on the northeast coast of Luzon, the country’s most populous island, and caused widespread flooding and landslides.

The Bicol peninsula was worst-hit, where floodwaters chased people and their pets to the second storey of their homes.

Typhoons are common in the Philippines at this time of the year, but Trami’s rains were unusually heavy, the state weather bureau told BBC News.

People trapped on their roofs posted photos of their ordeal on social media to appeal for rescue, prompting the coast guard to deploy rubber boats.

“It’s getting dangerous. We’re waiting for rescuers,” Karen Tabagan from the flooded municipality of Bato told AFP News agency.

The rains also triggered volcanic mudslides or lahar in villages surrounding Mount Mayon, an active volcano in Bicol. Photos showed the tyres of cars and the front doors of houses partially buried in dark grey mud.

The storm, known locally as Kristine, had dumped one month’s worth of rain over 24 hours in Bicol, Ana Claren, a forecaster at the state weather bureau in Manila, told BBC News.

The rainfall amount also exceeded what the weather bureau considers “normal” over 30 years of observation, she said.

“The rains were really severe. We did not expect this,” Glenda Bonga, the acting governor of Albay province, told local broadcaster ANC.

The storm, which was packing winds of up to 95 km/h (59 mph), was forecast to leave the country’s north-west coast late Thursday evening.

Rescuers were also searching for a missing fisherman after a boat sunk in the waters off Bulacan province, west of Manila, the local disaster agency told AFP news agency.

Rescue work has been difficult as the winds were causing a strong current, said Geraldine Martinez, a rescue officer in Bulacan’s Obando municipality.

At least a dozen flights across the country had been cancelled.

Even as it was on its way out of the Philippines, officials have continued to warn of heavy rainfall, flooding, landslides and storm surges.

Another low pressure area off Bicol could intensify into a tropical depression by the end of the week, Ms Claren said.

The Philippines is hit by an average of four typhoons annually, some of them deadly.

However, recent years have seen typhoons with stronger, more destructive winds and heavier rains.

Authorities in India are evacuating nearly 1.5 million people from the path of an approaching cyclone in the eastern states of Odisha (formerly Orissa) and West Bengal.

Thousands of relief workers have been deployed to minimise damage from Cyclone Dana, which is expected to make landfall in the next 24 hours.

Transportation services have already been affected, with scores of trains and flights cancelled.

India’s weather department has said a depression over the Bay of Bengal is expected to turn into a severe cyclonic storm by Thursday evening.

The storm is expected to hit the coastal areas with wind speeds of 100-120 km/h (62-74 mph).

On Wednesday, Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said arrangements were in place to ensure the safety of residents in districts along the cyclone’s path.

State officials said they had prepared temporary relief camps with food, water and health facilities.

“We are fully prepared to deal with the storm. Don’t panic, be safe and be careful,” Majhi told the media.

Odisha is evacuating more than a million people from 14 districts, while West Bengal is evacuating over 300,000 people from coastal areas.

Officials from the two states and rescue teams are on alert. Schools in the coastal regions have been shut.

Flight operations from Bhubaneswar and Kolkata city airports have been suspended from Thursday evening to Friday morning and more than 200 trains have been cancelled as authorities brace for the storm.

Fishermen have been warned against venturing into the sea and contingency plans have been made for Paradip port in Odisha to ensure safety of the staff and people living nearby.

The weather department has said “heavy to very heavy” rainfall is expected along the coast for the next 24 hours.

Odisha and West Bengal experience severe storms and cyclones every year.

In 1999, more than 10,000 people were killed in a cyclone in Odisha.

Last year, at least 16 people lost their lives when a cyclone lashed India and Bangladesh.

Mech Dara, an award-winning Cambodian journalist who was arrested and charged with incitement earlier this month, has been released on bail.

Mr Dara, who has reported for the BBC, was released after a pro-government news outlet published a prison video of him asking the country’s leaders for forgiveness.

Mr Dara was charged on 1 October over accusations that five social media posts could “incite social unrest”. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court accused Dara of “provocative” and “false” posts about a rock quarry on a sacred mountain.

Human rights groups and governments including the United States have spoken out over his arrest.

Upon leaving jail in Kandal province on Thursday, Mr Dara told reporters: “I thank everyone who helped get me out of jail on bail.”

He added he needed to take time to recover from his time in detention.

“My health is weak. My brain is not working yet,” he said.

His release comes a day after a video was released on pro-government Fresh News, showing Mr Dara in orange prison uniform.

In the video, Mr Dara apologises to Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen and his son Hun Manet, the current prime minister, saying his posts contained “false information that is harmful to the leaders and the country”.

The video was released on the same day USAID administrator Samantha Power told reporters in Phnom Penh that she raised Mr Dara’s arrest with the prime minister.

One of Cambodia’s most prominent journalists, Mr Dara was honoured by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last year for his work exposing online scam operations based in Cambodia, which are staffed mostly by trafficked workers.

Often victims are lured by adverts promising easy work and extravagant perks. Once they arrive in the country, they are held prisoner and forced to work in online scam centres. Those who do not comply face threats to their safety. Many have been subject to torture and inhuman treatment.

Mr Dara was arrested on the vague charge of incitement, which is often used in Cambodia against government critics.

Cambodia’s independent media landscape has been hit hard in recent years, with publications including the Cambodia Daily and Voice of Democracy – both of which Mr Dara worked for – closed down by authorities.

Pioneering surgery to remove large brain tumours through the eyebrows of patients has been successfully carried out in Scotland.

In what has been described as a “world first”, NHS Grampian said tumours the size of large apples have been removed using the technique.

Consultant neurosurgeon Anastasios Giamouriadis has adapted the already-existing eyebrow technique to enable him to now remove larger growths – a development which he described as a “game-changer”.

The surgery is said to have fewer complications, a shorter operating and recovery time, and less scarring as a result. One recipient – who described her tumour as like a tennis ball – said she was out of hospital in just two days with nothing but a black eye.

Traditional surgery for patients with tumours at the front of their brain involves having to remove a large part of the skull, to remove a large part of the skull, in what is known as a craniotomy.

It is a lengthy, complex process, which can take up to 10 hours, and exposes healthy parts of the brain during the operation.

Known as the Modified Eyebrow Keyhole SupraOrbital Approach for Brain Tumours, the new technique means patients are expected to be left with only a small scar and a black eye.

Some are able to leave hospital just 24 hours later and return to work within days.

Doreen Adams, 75, from Aberdeen, previously had a craniotomy to remove a tumour.

This is the removal of part of the skull to expose the brain

She has now had the new surgery, and described the difference as “night and day” between the two surgeries.

“You hear of these things, but no – going through your eyebrow? No – you just can’t think,” she told BBC Scotland News.

“My tumour was like a tennis ball – how can you get that out of small here.

“In two days this man – this wonderful young man – is going to give me my life back.

“And that’s exactly what he’s gone and done.”

She explained: “My recovery from the surgery at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was much, much quicker.

“I was out of hospital two days later and back to my normal life almost immediately.

“I was out in two days with nothing apart from a black eye.

“To think you can have brain surgery and be back to normal within a few days is quite incredible.

“I’m very grateful to Mr Giamouriadis and NHS Grampian – it’s fantastic that we have this innovative approach and these skills here in the north east.”

Mr Giamouriadis told BBC Scotland News: “I noticed over my career, especially during my training, that even when the operation goes really well without any complications it takes quite a significant time for the patients to recover.”

He said of the new process: “I didn’t invent this type of surgery, but I have modified it to give me more space, through the eyebrows, and it is allowing me to remove very big brain tumours.

“We are not aware of anywhere else in the world that has managed to remove tumours as large as we have.

“We are entering through the eyebrow. It gives us a very limited space but allows us to carry out the surgery more quickly and with less complications.”

He said the operation can be over in as little as three hours.

“Traditionally people would be left with scars across their full forehead, we avoid that with this method,” he explained.

“Normally our patients will go home on the second day with a bruised eye, as expected, which will return back to normal within a few days.

“It makes a huge impact for the patient, for their families, for the society, for the organisation, for the NHS.

“It’s a game-changer.”

The owners of a container ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge have been ordered to pay the US government more than $100m (£77.1m) in damages, the US justice department has announced.

Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Private Limited, the companies that owned and operated the Dali have agreed to pay, resolving a month-long civil lawsuit.

The justice department called the 26 March collision that killed six and sent tonnes of debris into the river “one of the worst transportation disasters in recent memory”.

Payment will go to the US Treasury and other federal agencies directly affected by the collision or involved in the response.

“This is a tremendous outcome that fully compensates the United States for the costs it incurred in responding to this disaster and holds the owner and operator of the Dali accountable,” said Brian Boynton, head of the justice department’s civil division, in a press release on Thursday.

The department said the settlement does not include any damages for the reconstruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The state has filed its own claim for those damages.

The US blamed the incident on electrical and mechanical systems failures on the ship. It alleged the Dali was inadequately maintained, which it said caused the ship to lose power and crash into a bridge column.

Six men – all construction workers fixing potholes on the bridge – died when they were plunged into the water after the container ship hit the structure.

The Dali’s collision sent tonnes of debris into the Patapsco River, freezing traffic for months at one of the busiest ports in the US.

In response, the US coordinated dozens of federal, state and local agencies to remove 50,000 tonnes of steel, concrete, and asphalt from the shipping channel and from the Dali, the justice department said.

The bridge collapse also caused “economic devastation” as shipping was brought to a standstill. The Port of Baltimore reopened in June for commercial navigation.

The incident also blocked a key route for local commuters.

A woman says she was “slightly disappointed” after mistaking the bright colourful lights of a nearby tomato factory for a mystical aurora.

Dee Harrison, 56, of Ipswich, uploaded three images to social media of what she believed was a Northern Lights-style phenomenon in the sky above nearby Bramford.

The pictures, showing a pink and red glow, piqued the interest of hundreds of people, with many praising the “impressive” snaps, but all was not as it seemed.

The “beautiful” glare – seen early in the morning on Wednesday – actually came from Suffolk Sweet Tomatoes’ LED light units, which are used to encourage the growth of its stock.

Mrs Harrison said: “It was about 05:15 BST and I was driving along Paper Mill Lane and could see to my left the sky was red.

“At first I thought something was on fire but when I parked up I could see this deep pink sky – it looked brighter through my phone camera so I thought it was an aurora.

“But it wasn’t unfortunately, so I was a bit disappointed because I thought I was up early seeing this aurora and I had it all to myself.

“I have driven that way for over two years and this was the first time I had seen it – it’s funny how I haven’t noticed it before.”

The aurora faux pas comes just a couple of weeks after the real Northern Lights were once again spotted across the UK, following a similar sight back in May.

They have been particularly visible in 2024 due to the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2003, according to Sean Elvidge, a professor in space environment at the University of Birmingham.

One of the social media users who pointed out the lights were actually coming from the Great Blakenham tomato factory was 34-year-old Adam Cotterell.

He lives two miles away in Somersham and said he could often see the sky light up in a colourful glow “in the right weather conditions”.

“Since the tomato factory has been there you have always been able to see a red and pink hue in the sky when there is mist or fog in the air,” he added.

“It is most apparent in the winter months on a cold foggy night, not so much through the summer months because the summer air is dry.

“But as we are now coming into winter you will see it more with the damp evening air and low lying mists.

“It’s still an interesting sight to see, but it won’t beat the true aurora like the one back in May – that was an incredible night.”

Erik and Lyle Menendez – two brothers convicted of murdering their parents in a case that shook America more than three decades ago – should be resentenced by a judge and released on parole, the Los Angeles County district attorney has recommended.

The 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion have gripped the US for years and recently inspired a popular Netflix series.

The case centred on Erik and Lyle Menendez’s motive in the murders, in which their parents were shot 13 times as they watched television.

George Gascón, LA County’s top prosecutor, announced on Thursday that new evidence in the case merited a review of their life sentences.

Erik Menendez, 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, are currently serving life in prison without possibility of parole in California.

There is a long road ahead before the brothers potentially walk free.

A judge will have the final say over whether the brothers should be re-sentenced and a parole board would have to examine whether they should be released from prison after serving more than 30 years.

The pair did not receive notice of Mr Gascón’s decision in advance, nor did members of the Menendez family.

“I believe the brothers were subject to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in their home and molestation,” Mr Gascón said.

He added that, while there is no excuse for murder, “I believe they have paid their debt to society”.

During their criminal trials in the 1990s, prosecutors painted the brothers as rich kids who methodically planned the murders to gain access to their parents’ fortune.

But their defence attorneys argued the brothers were victims of years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and only acted out of self-defence.

The announcement by Mr Gascón – who is facing a tough re-election battle – follows new evidence in the case relating to claims of sexual abuse.

One new piece of evidence was a letter from Erik Menendez to another family member that appears to be from 1988 and details the alleged abuse by his father, Jose.

The other evidence came from a then-underage member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. The band member alleged Jose Menendez, who worked as an executive at record company RCA at the time, drugged and raped him during a visit to Menendez’s home.

The case started on 20 August 1989 when the brothers – then aged 18 and 21 – called police and reported finding their parents’ bodies after returning home.

Mr Gascón said his office plans to file a re-sentencing recommendation in court on Friday. It will contain details and evidence arguing for a lesser sentence.

A hearing will be scheduled, which officials hope to schedule in the next 30-45 days, where a judge will weigh in and hear arguments about their release. The brothers could be in attendance, too.

The hearing is likely to be divisive. Mr Gascón noted this case has divided his office and members of his staff might argue against him in court. At least one member of the Menendez family, Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, has also harshly criticized the district attorney of playing politics with a case when he “has already endured the unimaginable loss of his sister”.

He said the recommendation, if approved by a judge, allows the possibility of parole due to both California law and the brothers’ ages at the time of the crimes. A parole board would have to examine the case and the rehabilitation of the brothers – and if the board approves their release, California Gov Gavin Newsom could still reject it.

There is a hearing scheduled in the case on 26 November but the district attorney’s office hopes to schedule a new hearing to discuss the re-sentencing recommendation.

The Menendez brothers filed a motion in May 2023 detailing the new evidence in their case and asking their convictions be vacated. Mr Gascón said his office had been reviewing the case for more than a year, but he said he made the decision Thursday, only an hour before holding a highly publicised news conference on the landmark case.

The decision was announced 12 days before Election Day, where Mr Gascón is facing a tough re-election and is down by 30 points in some polls. He denied his announcement was political and said it was a long-time coming.

Neama Rahmani, a criminal defence attorney and former federal prosecutor, told BBC News he’d never seen anything like this in his career.

“It’s really the perfect storm of PR and politics,” he said, noting the recent attention from celebrities, a Netflix drama series on the case and an “embattled” district attorney vying to remain in office. “You’re never going to see another case like this. It’s a unicorn.”

Kim Kardashian thanked Mr Gascón for “righting a significant wrong” on her Instagram story on Thursday. She said the case “highlights the importance of challenging decisions and seeking truth”.

Jose and Kitty Menendez were found dead inside their Beverly Hills mansion after being shot multiple times in August 1989.

Their sons – Erik and Lyle – called police, telling authorities they had gotten home and found their parents dead.

Authorities, at first, didn’t suspect the brothers. The couple was shot 13 times with two shotguns. The brutal nature of the crime led authorities to thinking maybe it was a mob hit.

But the brothers started to draw scrutiny with their behaviour – dolling out money on lavish spending sprees – including buying Rolex watches – gambling and partying.

A confession to their psychologist was their undoing. The doctor’s girlfriend audio recorded them making the admission and reported it to authorities.

In March 1990, the brothers were charged by police. They went to trial in 1993 and the brothers admitted to the killings – but argued they acted out of self-defence and feared their parents would kill them first.

They outlined years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse – namely by their father, Jose – who worked had gone on to be a film executive in Hollywood.

Lyle and Erik testified they confronted their parents about the sexual abuse and things had become combative in their household and they believed their parents were planning to kill them.

Family members testified about the abuse they witnessed – but none said they saw sexual abuse firsthand.

Prosecutors argued their motive was money – namely their parents’ $14m (£10.8m) fortune. They outlined their methodical planning, purchasing two shotguns days before the killings and their spending sprees afterwards. They painted the brothers as spoiled sons who thought they could get away with anything.

Their first trial ended with a mistrial, but a second in 1995 led to them to being convicted of first-degree murder.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is about to do one of the biggest interviews of his presidential campaign – with America’s number one podcaster, Joe Rogan.

With 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers, The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE for short) has built a massive, mostly male, audience since it first launched 15 years ago.

Confirming media reports of the upcoming interview, set to be taped on Friday, Trump described his counterpart as “a nice guy” with whom he expected a “very interesting” conversation.

“I do a lot of shows,” he told Fox News Radio on Wednesday. “Good, bad or indifferent. I do a lot of shows and they come out good.”

That response makes light of the Trump campaign’s calculated media strategy, which has focused on podcasts popular with younger men over traditional media outlets like 60 Minutes.

And it underplays just how big a deal this could be for the former president, long-time listeners say.

“Rogan is about to have the most listened-to podcast in human history,” says Matthew Foldi, a conservative journalist and self-styled JRE expert who has spent thousands of hours listening to the entire catalogue – in chronological order and at 3.5x speed – since 2020.

A New Jersey native, Rogan began his career as a stand-up comedian in the Boston area before relocating to California in the 1990s. He featured in two sitcoms – Hardball and NewsRadio – and gained national exposure as host of the US edition of the Fear Factor game show.

He became one of the first comics to venture into podcasting in 2009, quickly building an audience with his easy-going conversation style and sense of humour. By 2020, he had signed one of the largest licensing deals in the business, with Spotify, where he has dominated the podcasting ranks.

Known for discussing everything from current affairs and politics to aliens and drug use, Rogan hosts an ideologically diverse mix of guests – from astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson to far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to comedians like Chris Rock and Kevin Hart – in lengthy hours-long interviews.

Part of his appeal, says Kat Rosenfield, a freelance culture writer and novelist, is his willingness to talk to anyone, about anything.

“He is very naturally curious. He wants to ask questions. He wants to know what’s up with his guests and he has good instincts to make it an engaging listen.”

But his willingness to absorb contrarian perspectives has also landed him in hot water.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was criticised for promoting vaccine scepticism, leading to a coalition of medical experts to call out Spotify for allowing “false and societally harmful assertions” to spread.

In 2022, musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify in protest over Rogan’s use of the platform to spread alleged Covid misinformation. The company ultimately took down some 70 previously-released episodes.

Also that year, Rogan came under fire when a video compilation of him repeatedly using racially insensitive language on his show made the rounds on social media. He has since apologised.

Ms Rosenfield casts Rogan’s personal politics as being libertarian – very socially liberal, as seen in his support for same-sex marriage and universal drug legalisation, but also someone who treasures free speech and gun rights.

In 2020, he endorsed Bernie Sanders for president after the then-Democratic candidate appeared on his show.

“Rogan seemed like a refreshing alternative at a moment when audiences sort of lost their trust in many [mainstream media] outlets,” Ms Rosenfield argues.

“He doesn’t think he’s smarter than his audience, which I think is quite endearing to people who listen to the show. He doesn’t talk down to people and he always says ‘don’t listen to me, I don’t know anything’.”

Trump and Rogan have not always seen eye-to-eye.

As recently as 2022, the podcaster said he did not want to “help” Trump electorally because he was “an existential threat to democracy”.

Earlier this year, he praised Robert F Kennedy Jr, then running as an independent presidential candidate, as “the only one that makes sense to me”.

That didn’t go down well with Trump, who said Rogan would get “booed” the next time he was at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event.

But it’s also their shared love of the UFC, and mixed martial arts in general, hints at some of the common ground they may have during the interview.

Rogan is a long-time colour commentator and interviewer for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events. Trump, too, is a fan of the sport, which he has discussed at length on other podcasts.

The two are both long-time friends of UFC CEO Dana White, who lauded Rogan this week as “the best combat sports commentator of all time” and has lavished praise on Trump as “the ultimate American badass”.

They also share two other allies – RFK Jr and Elon Musk, both of whom have recently got behind Trump.

Rogan spoke fondly of Trump on a recent show as a “wheeling, dealing billionaire character that everybody enjoyed” whose deregulation agenda had helped the economy.

He added that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza “scared the [expletive] out of him” – two wars Trump has vowed to end if elected, although he has not provided specifics on how.

Mr Foldi, the conservative journalist and Rogan super fan, says the attention that Trump will get from this podcast could help him dominate the closing days of the campaign and win over straggling undecided voters.

“This is the most viewed show on earth, and the eyeballs that you’re going to get… is second to none.”

Like Mr Foldi, who is 28, Rogan’s listeners are overwhelmingly young and male. Almost 80% are men, and half are between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Edison Research, which produces survey-based data on podcasting in the US.

Such figures suggest Rogan’s audience is part of a crucial voting bloc to whom the Trump campaign has made clear it is trying to reach. In August, the campaign told reporters it is focused on persuading a group of voters it says makes up about 10% of the electorate in key swing states. This group is disproportionately young, male and racially diverse.

Cancelling traditional media interviews with the likes of CBS and NBC, Trump has instead spent time with podcasters who appeal to predominantly male audiences, including comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Von, social media influencer Logan Paul, retired wrestler Mark Calaway (AKA The Undertaker) and YouTube pranksters The Nelk Boys. But in sheer audience size and cultural reach, JRE is arguably the lynchpin of this podcast tour.

Harris too has made podcasts part of her media blitz, albeit to a lesser extent. She sat down earlier this month with Call Her Daddy – the top-ranked show among women – and spoke at length with host Alex Cooper about reproductive rights, the top issue galvanising Democrats and particularly female voters this year.

About the same time that Rogan’s episode is airing, Harris is scheduled to sit down with famed social psychologist Brene Brown for her podcast, Unlocking Us, which is also popular with female listeners.

In spite of objections from some corners, Harris’s team reportedly met with Rogan’s staff last week, according to Reuters, but no appearance on the show has been announced.

As anticipation for the Trump interview builds, Americans on social media are fantasising about the questions they would like Rogan to pose, on everything from alien declassification to documents about Jeffrey Epstein.

If Rogan stays true to form, Mr Foldi says, no topic will be out of bounds.

“For Trump, I see very little drawback because, whatever you think of the guy, he’s clearly comfortable in who he is,” he adds.

“The only way that you crumble on [JRE] is if he asks you about the core of who you are and you don’t have a comfortable answer.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• ELECTORAL COLLEGE: What is it?
• 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
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

From the outside, it is hard to comprehend the depth of suffering experienced by civilians in Gaza.

On Monday 21 October, a video emerged from Jabalia that gave an unusually detailed insight into the pressure and the horror imposed on civilians by Israel’s current offensive in northern Gaza. Watching it, you feel almost like an eyewitness.

Every day, like many journalists who are forced to report the war from outside Gaza because Israel will not let us in, I watch many videos that emerge online, harrowing scenes of wounded, dying and bereaved people in hospitals, of men in the rubble rescuing survivors and digging out bodies, and civilians forced to move by the Israelis, walking through thick sand where roads used to be, past the unrecognisable ruins.

• Bowen: Year of killing and broken assumptions has taken Middle East to edge of deeper, wider war
• US warns Israel over Gaza aid
• Nowhere is safe in Gaza, says doctor working there

They are all horrible to see, and so was the one that came from the attack in Jabalia on Monday morning. But for me it was unusual because it showed the pain, grief, chaos, panic and hopelessness in the seconds and minutes immediately after an attack.

The moment is so extreme that taking out a phone to film it is the last thing most people do. Over many years as a reporter in wars, I have seen and experienced the same disbelief and shock. It takes time for the brain to catch up with the utterly changed reality that your eyes are seeing.

The Jabalia Boys Elementary school was attacked just after 09:00 in the morning, on 21 October. It was no longer a place of learning but had been turned into a shelter for displaced civilians, like many schools in Gaza run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. All the ones still standing, that is.

In the video, a paramedic called Nevine al Dawawi, increasingly panic-stricken, runs between dead and dying civilians, using her phone to document what is happening (when I reported this first, on the day of the strike, she was misidentified as Nabila.)

We managed to track down Nevine in Gaza City. She was able to give us her own account of what happened on Monday morning. She answered questions, and much more composed now, she played back the video.

In it, she is agitated and scared, running between civilians lying in their own blood, next to dead bodies.

“Calm down,” she screams at a badly hurt woman sitting in a pool of blood.

“I swear I don’t have anything to stop the bleeding.”

She runs down a passage pockmarked by shrapnel. On a stairwell she sees more casualties, turns away in horror, picks up a bag and says “let’s go, so no-one else gets killed”.

A man’s voice on the video says, “stay with us Nevine.” Grabbing the bag, which is full of wound dressings, she goes back to the stairwell that is running with blood. A child’s voice says, please help, my sister is dying, please help me.

A woman says my children are gone. Nevine asked how she knew.

“Look at them,” the woman says. One is very still, the other has a severe head wound and is either dead or dying.

Nevine hands over dressings, even though it is too late. They are all she has, and she is the only paramedic there.

Nevine told us that the woman on the stairs whose children were killed was Lina Ibrahim Abu Namos. Journalists working for the BBC found her in Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabalia where she is being treated for shrapnel injuries. Two of Lina’s seven children were killed, her eldest daughter and her only son.

Her husband wasn’t with them when the attack happened, as he was already being treated for wounds sustained in an earlier attack.

“I saw my daughter dying, with my own eyes. She was dying in front of me. I couldn’t stop it, and she was my eldest, my whole life, honestly, my entire life. When your eldest dies in front of you…”

“I couldn’t save her, and I was also wounded. I couldn’t handle myself, I found myself falling on the ground. I started crawling towards her.”

Nevine, the paramedic, explained that they had been “besieged” at the school for 16 or 17 days. Above them was the buzz of quadcopters, small drones used extensively by the IDF. It has a range of them, for surveillance and espionage, to issue orders through loudspeakers, for dropping bombs or firing at Palestinians they want to kill.

“We were living in so much fear. When the school was hit, we had people killed and injured. There was nothing there to eat or drink. The water tanker that was usually sent to us was bombed by the Israelis. It was like that for days. Three days ago, a quadcopter descended on the school at nine in the morning, giving us an ultimatum to get out by 10. The quadcopter loudspeaker said we had to evacuate the school because we were in a dangerous fighting zone.”

“We didn’t have time to pack our stuff. It gave us just one hour. After just 10 minutes, Israeli airplanes bombed the school. It was a big massacre with over 30 wounded and more than 10 killed.”

In the video, the wounded and dead on the bloody stairs are not the only casualties. Nevine leaves the stairwell, and runs to a man probably in his sixties, who is leaning over a pile of bags with his head in his hands. She looks to see if somehow, he has survived a severe neck wound and screams when she sees that he has not.

“Help him, he’s dead – it’s Uncle Abu Mohammed.”

Three days later I sent questions for a Palestinian freelance journalist to ask her at al Ahli hospital in Gaza City. One was about Abu Mohammed.

“He was our neighbour. His two sons were also killed… one had half his head gone.”

She talked our reporter through the video as she played it back on her phone.

“The video showed girls torn to pieces. It also shows men with their intestines protruding from stomach wounds… A 10-year-old boy had his bowels bulging outside his stomach. His mum was killed, injured in the heart.”

“Some women who were taking cover were also injured and others killed. A cleaner at the school was shredded into pieces. A 12-year-old girl had a leg blown off. So did a woman displaced from Beit Hanoun, a town in Gaza’s north. She was aged between 35 and 40.”

The day before the attack on the school, as Israel’s offensive intensified, Tor Wennesland – the senior UN diplomat in Jerusalem – issued a strong statement.

“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern Strip amidst conflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. I condemn the continuing attacks on civilians. This war must end, the hostages held by Hamas must be freed, the displacement of Palestinians must cease, and civilians must be protected wherever they are. Humanitarian aid must be delivered unimpeded.”

Israel insists that it acts in self-defence, and claims its forces respect the laws of war. Almost every day for the last year in Gaza, and more recently in Lebanon it says that civilians get killed because armed groups use them as human shields.

We put that to the paramedic, Nevine al Dawawi.

The IDF claimed Hamas was using civilians as human shields, is that true?

“No, Hamas was not using civilians as human shields. They were protecting us and standing with us.”

For many in Israel, her statement that Hamas were in the area will be taken as a justification for the horrors that the IDF brought down on the civilians just after 9 in the morning on Monday 21 October.

But war crimes lawyers will ask whether the attack was justified. The laws of war say that civilians must be protected, and that casualties inflicted on them should be in proportion to the military threat faced by an attacking force.

If senior Hamas commanders were there, or a big concentration of fighters preparing to fight, perhaps the attack could be justified by the Israel Defense Forces’ own lawyers.

But if Hamas, whose structure as a fighting force has been dismantled in a year of relentless Israeli attacks, had only a few local men with guns in the area, then the attack would breach the law.

In the unlikely event that the Palestinians in the video ever had a day in court, their lawyers could say that the military threat to the IDF at that moment did not justify wounding 30 civilians, inflicting life changing injuries, and killing more than 10 others, including many children.

I am forced to use conditional tenses because I am writing this in Jerusalem, not after interviewing eyewitnesses at the scene of the attack in Jabalia in Gaza. Reporters will always struggle to get to get to the best possible version of the truth they can find when they are stopped from getting to the place where the story happened.

Israel allowed reporters into their border communities along the border with Gaza in the days after the Hamas attacks last year. I was in Kfar Azza kibbutz when they were still recovering the bodies of dead Israelis, as soldiers checked buildings with bursts of gunfire. They wanted us to see where Hamas had killed around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and dragged more than 250 into captivity in Gaza.

The evidence is piling up that Israel has done things in Gaza that it does not want journalists to see, which is why they will not let us cross into the territory, except on rare and highly controlled visits with the army. I have been in only once, in the first month of the war, when Israeli firepower had already turned the areas of northern Gaza that I saw into a wasteland.

As a result, journalists rely on videos and statements that emerge from Palestinians inside Gaza, including some very brave journalists, and from international diplomats, medics and aid workers who are allowed into Gaza, and witnesses like Nevine with smartphones.

In the hospital, Lina Ibrahim Abu Namos was haunted by her loss of her eldest daughter, her only son, and everything they called home.

“I had seven children, and now I only have five left… What can I say? I don’t even know. By God, they have broken our hearts. We are exhausted, emotionally drained. We’ve lost everything.”

“What crime have the children committed? What have they done? What have we done to deserve this?”

“What have we done to the Israelis? I swear, they’ve destroyed our children.”

“I’m so scared. I don’t eat or drink. Nothing. All I need is for my children to stay around me, because we are scared and we’ve been displaced from one place to another. What is left for my daughters and for me? There’s no home, nowhere safe, nothing. I’m just one of many people with nowhere to go, no safety. I’m exhausted.”

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

The UK “can’t change our history”, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has told the BBC when asked about paying reparations to countries impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.

His comments come after diplomatic sources told the BBC that Commonwealth heads of government want to start a “meaningful conversation” about an issue that could mean the UK paying billions of pounds for its historical role in the trade.

Sir Keir, who is currently in Samoa for a meeting of Commonwealth countries, said the trade was “abhorrent” and that it was important to “talk about our history”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves ruled out making payments, in an interview earlier on Thursday, saying “that’s not something that this government is doing”.

Sir Keir said the focus should be on “today’s challenges” including resilience in the face of climate change and boosting trade between Commonwealth nations.

He added he wanted to help member countries work with international financial institutions to “unlock money that might help them” in relation to climate change.

Leaders from 56 countries are attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Samoa on Friday and Saturday.

Commonwealth leaders are expected to defy the UK and debate ways of securing reparations for historical slavery. At its height, Britain was the world’s biggest slave-trading nation. Downing Street has said the issue is not on the agenda for the summit.

Reparatory justice for slavery can come in many forms, including financial reparations, debt relief, an official apology, educational programmes, building museums, economic support, and public health assistance.

In the run-up to the summit, there have been growing calls from Commonwealth leaders for the UK to apologise and make reparations.

Formally opening the summit on Friday, King Charles said that members of the Commonwealth “know and understand each other such that we can discuss the most challenging issues with openness and respect”.

“Our cohesion requires that we acknowledge where we have come from,” he said.

“I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.

“It is vital therefore that we understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future.

“None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons, and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”

He also spoke of the need to tackle climate change, saying Commonwealth nations should seek to be an “example to the rest of the world”, and paid tribute to his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, saying the group “mattered a great deal” to her.

During the gathering, a new Commonwealth secretary general will be elected. All three of the candidates – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – back reparatory justice.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas, said he believed the UK would change its stance, saying: “It may take a while for people to come around but come around they will.”

Mitchell has also urged the UK government to offer an apology, telling the Commonwealth gathering: “It’s a simple matter – it can be done, one sentence, one line.”

Asked if an apology would be offered, Sir Keir said: “Of course, an apology has already been made in relation to the slave trade, and that’s not surprising, it’s what we would expect.”

In 2007, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised for the slave trade. Following talks with the Ghanaian president, he said: “I have said we are sorry and I say it again.”

During the interview with the BBC, Sir Keir was also asked about a complaint Donald Trump’s team has filed against the Labour Party objecting to its staff and activists volunteering for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

“I think this needs to be seen for what it is,” the prime minister said, adding: “It is some Labour Party members and staff in their free time campaigning.

“It’s happened in every election in different parts of the world. All political parties do it… I think it needs to be put in it’s proper perspective.”

Sir Keir added that both he and Trump wanted to have a “good working relationship” and that the pair recently had dinner together.

He dismissed suggestions that his party were still adjusting to being in government, saying he had “absolute clarity” on his “number one mission” of economic growth.

Next Wednesday Chancellor Rachel Reeves, will set out the government’s tax and spending plans in the Budget.

Ahead of this Reeves told the BBC she would be changing the government’s self-imposed debt rules to free up money for infrastructure spending.

Asked about the Budget, Sir Keir said the economy barely grew under the Conservatives and that he wanted to “clear the decks” and “clear up the mess”.

“I believe in running towards problems. If you know what the problem is, what the challenge is, every business knows this, every family knows it, run towards it and fix it.”

The Conservatives have challenged Labour’s argument that they created a £22bn black hole in the economy and questioned the chancellor’s decision to change the debt rules.

The party’s shadow Treasury minister Gareth Davies said “uncertainty over additional borrowing risks interest rates staying higher and for longer.

“It’s families up and down the country who would pay the price.”

“The louder you can talk, the better, because I’ve played rock and roll for 50 years.”

Bruce Springsteen has just E Street Shuffled into the room. Uncannily charismatic, he carries the practised ease of someone who knows the destabilising effect their presence can have on regular people.

He takes time to greet every member of the BBC’s film crew individually, then breaks the ice with a joke about a journalist who mistakenly called him “Springstein”. That reminds me of a local radio DJ in Belfast who always used to introduce him as “Bruce Springsprong”.

“Really?” he laughs. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”

In fact, we’ve been pre-warned that he doesn’t like being called The Boss – the nickname coined in the early days of his career with The E Street Band, when he’d be responsible for collecting and distributing the takings after a show.

“I hate being called ‘Boss’,” he told Creem magazine in 1980. “Always did, from the beginning. I hate bosses. I hate being called the boss.”

The term is conspicuously absent from his new Disney+ documentary, Road Diary, which charts the process of putting together Springsteen’s first tour since the pandemic – from handwritten notebooks to footage of his band “shaking off the cobwebs” after six years apart.

At times, the preparations lack the rigour you might expect.

“It’s all a little bit casual,” frets Steve Van Zandt, Springsteen’s guitarist and one of his oldest friends, after the star calls time on rehearsals.

“There’s a certain percentage [of songs] that we’re gonna [screw] up anyway,” Springsteen retorts.

“That’s what they’re paying for. They want to see it live. That means a few mistakes!”

If you’ve caught any of the star’s recent shows, you’ll know the stakes are never that high. The band are tighter than a tourniquet. Mistakes are noticeably absent.

The documentary comes exactly 60 years after Springsteen’s first gig, playing an $18 guitar with a band called The Rogues.

He’s never let anyone film the inner workings of his shows before, so why do it on this tour?

“Well, because I could be dead by the next one,” he laughs.

“I’m 75 years old now. I’ve decided that the waiting-to-do-things part of my life is over.”

“We’re closer to the end than we are to the beginning,” agrees Van Zandt, “but the point of this tour was that we’re not going out quietly, man.

“We’re going to balance that mortality with vitality.”

That philosophy was fully on display at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light in May, when Springsteen braved torrential rain to play for three hours to 50,000 drenched fans.

The weather was so brutal that Springsteen lost his voice. Doctors ordered him not to sing for a week, forcing him to postpone several shows.

What made him continue?

“Well, I’m there to have a good time,” he says. “I’m going to insist on it, whether it’s raining or the sun is shining – because I’m there for the people that are there.

“I look out and I go, ‘These are my people. These are the people who’ve listened to my music for the past 30 or 40 years. I’m going to do the best show I possibly can’, you know?

“It sounds corny, but you have to love your audience and, for the most part, I’ve never found that hard to do.”

It took audiences a while to reciprocate, however.

Born in New Jersey, to Douglas Springsteen, a bus driver, and Adele Springsteen, a secretary, Bruce paid little attention to music until he saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show and bought himself a guitar.

He spent his teens playing around the city with a Beatles-inspired band named The Castiles (after a brand of shampoo), taking gigs wherever they’d have him.

“I’ve played pizza parlours, I’ve played bowling alleys. I’ve played [psychiatric] hospitals and Sing Sing prison. I even played a supermarket opening once,” he recalls.

Back then, the setlist was all R&B covers and Motown hits – but Springsteen was a nervous performer.

In his autobiography, he talks about blinking 100 times a minute and chewing his knuckles. Van Zandt calls him “the most introverted guy you’ve met in your whole life”.

So how did he become the performer who, with the E Street Band, started tearing up stages all around the world?

“Introversion is a funny thing,” he says. “There’s a yin and a yang to it.

“On my own, I can be very internal. I’ve written a lot of internal music – Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Nebraska, parts of The River – all about people who live these very intense, borderline violent, internal lives.

“But the joyful side of me, which I got from my mother, allows me to sing Rosalita and Born to Run and Hungry Heart.

“I’m Irish-Italian, so I got the blues and I got the joy at the same time.”

It’s a typical Springsteen answer – analytical, sincere, intrinsically linking his life to his music.

Van Zandt, who witnessed Springsteen’s transformation, sees it differently.

“His first two records didn’t do well. Record companies were ready to drop him. His only dream was about to die.

“So my very shy friend reaches inside and says, ‘I’ll put the guitar down and start fronting the band’, which is huge move, right? Because the guitar’s a defence, it’s actually a wall between you and your audience. So he had to put that away and learn a whole new craft.”

It all came to a head at New York’s Bottom Line Club, shortly before the release of Springsteen’s breakout album Born To Run in 1975.

Over the course of five nights and 10 shows, the star showcased his new sound to fans, journalists and radio progammers.

“And all of a sudden, he’s dancing on the tables,” Van Zandt recalls. “I’m like, ‘Wow, where’d that come from?’

“I think it was sort of a defensive urge, like, ‘You’re not going to stop me’.”

Whatever it was, it worked.

Born To Run was a massive commercial success, selling six million copies in the US alone.

The album was constructed with the same desperation as those live shows, pieced together over 14 months (six of them on the title track alone) as Springsteen fought and scraped to save his career.

The songs – Thunder Road, Jungleland, Born To Run – throbbed with longing, as his characters fought to escape the confines of small-town, blue collar American life.

It’s a story he was familiar with. As a child, he witnessed the chilling effects of unemployment and the Vietnam War on his neighbourhood.

His subsequent rise to fame reads like a movie treatment for the American Dream, but he’s aware that luck and timing played a role.

“I wouldn’t want to be a young band starting today,” he says. “The day of the quote ‘rock star’ is in twilight.

“But I’ve had some encouragement. My young friend, Zach Bryan, just sold out two stadium nights in Philadelphia, so there’s still some young people coming up.”

No-one can match Springsteen, though, and he’s increasingly aware that time’s against him.

His last two albums confront mortality head-on, prompted by the realisation that he was the “last man standing” from his teenage band The Castiles.

On tour, he pays tribute to the E Street musicians who’ve crossed The River. Meanwhile his wife, Patti Scialfa, has cut back her appearances with the band, after being diagnosed with myeloma, a rare blood cancer, in 2018.

“She’s doing well, we caught it early,” Springsteen says.

“She’s having a tough time at the moment because she needs to have a shoulder replaced and a hip replaced. So that, on top of the myeloma, makes it very difficult for her to get out and get around.

“But she’s made a beautiful new record that’ll be coming out, hopefully, this year. And we’ve been married for 34 years. I love her to death.”

Despite the realities of age, Springsteen isn’t slowing down. He’s back in Europe next summer to make up for the concerts he missed after Sunderland, adding another 12 dates for good measure.

“Do you think you can outlast The E Street Band?”, he demands every night, daring the audience to meet their energy, joule for joule.

Their shared history is the show’s heartbeat. Famously, they’ll take requests from the audience, often playing other artists’ songs at the drop of a hat. Springsteen traces that ability back to their early club gigs.

“I know every song these guys have ever played, so I’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, we played that back in 1964, I think we can fake our way through that one’.”

And the secret to their 50-year camaraderie? Distance.

“When we’re not playing, we rarely see each other,” Springsteen confesses. “We’ve seen each other enough!”

He continues: “The arc of most bands is to break apart.

“Even two guys can’t stay together. Simon can’t stand Garfunkel, Don couldn’t stand Phil Everly, and then you have the kids in Oasis… so the tradition carries on.

“It’s the nature of people to not get along, so that’s something you need to write into your projection of the kind of band you want to be in.

“I don’t like drama. I don’t want people knocking heads. I don’t want to hear about a bunch of bull backstage. I don’t put up with any of that stuff. We weeded it out a long time ago.

“The band started out crazy and made its way to sanity.”

In the documentary, Springsteen promises they’ll keep playing “until the wheels come off”.

I wonder if that’s because, as he’s said in the past, the shows help him fend off depression.

“I’ve been pretty lucky with the depression,” he says “It hasn’t bothered me in quite a while, but I definitely go on stage to lose myself.

“You have to surrender to the moment and see what comes up. Learn a little bit about yourself.”

What has he learnt on his latest tour?

“Let me see,” he says, leaning back to think.

“I learnt that my back really hurts a lot.”

Venezuela has criticised Brazil’s decision to veto its admission to the Brics group of emerging economies.

Venezuela’s foreign ministry described the move, which came at the group’s summit in Russia attended by more than 20 heads of state, as an “immoral aggression”.

Relations between the two left-wing governments have worsened since July’s contested presidential election in Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro said he had secured re-election, despite evidence that the opposition’s Edmundo González won by a landslide.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva initially supported Maduro, but eventually said he would not accept the official results until a breakdown of the vote was released.

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Multiple foreign governments have said they believe the opposition won the election in Venezuela, but stopped short of recognising González as the president.

“The Brazilian foreign ministry has decided to maintain the veto that [former Brazilian president] Jair Bolsonaro has applied against Venezuela for years, reproducing the hatred, exclusion and intolerance promoted from the centres of power in the West,” the Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Venezuelan people feel indignation and shame at this inexplicable and immoral aggression,” it added.

Venezuela had lobbied hard to join the Brics, with Maduro even making a surprise appearance at the summit in the city of Kazan and declaring that his country was “part of the Brics family”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hosted the summit, said he agreed with Venezuela’s position, but added that it would only be able to join the Brics if there was a consensus in favour among its members.

“We know Brazil’s position. We don’t agree, Venezuela is fighting for its survival,” Putin said at a news conference on Thursday.

He said he discussed the issue with Lula when they spoke on the phone this week. Lula was scheduled to travel to Russia for the summit, but cancelled the trip after injuring his head in an accident at home on Saturday.

Putin added that he would work to help the two South American neighbours mend relations.

The Brics began as a grouping that unites Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa. Last year, however, the original members agreed to admit a number of new joiners, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Lula is a passionate advocate of the Brics as a means of reforming global governance and giving a greater voice to the developing world.

He has criticised the “paralysis” of global institutions, while praising the expansion of the Brics as strengthening the fight for more diverse perspectives.

But other observers retort that the Brics are themselves paralysed by their own internal contradictions, with Russia at war in Ukraine, while China and India have their own mutual squabbles.

The latest Brics summit in Kazan was seen as an opportunity for President Putin to demonstrate that attempts to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine had failed.

But in his attempts to strengthen the grouping as a counterweight to the Western-led world, he has also exposed other divisions, leaving relations between Brasília and Caracas at their lowest ebb since Lula’s re-election two years ago.

Canada has announced a sharp cut in the number of immigrants it allows into the country in an effort to “pause population growth”, marking a notable shift in policy for the Justin Trudeau government.

As part of the changes, Canada will reduce the number of permanent residents in 2025 from a previous target of 500,000 to 395,000 – a 21% drop.

Prime Minister Trudeau said his government “didn’t get the balance quite right” when it bolstered immigration post-pandemic to address labour shortages.

Public support for immigration in Canada has been waning, with opinion polls suggesting rising concern over the growing numbers and its impact on housing and social services.

The move comes on the heels of already announced reduced targets for both international students and temporary foreign workers.

On Thursday, Trudeau and Canada’s immigration minister Marc Miller announced further cuts, this time to the number of new permanent residents.

The goal, Miller said, is to set a smaller target of 365,000 new permanent residents by 2027.

This reduction will pause population growth in Canada over the next two years, Trudeau said, giving provinces time to catch up on bolstering their healthcare programmes and housing stock.

The prime minister said that “Canadians are justifiably proud” of their welcoming immigration system, which he said had helped bolster the country’s economy and build diverse communities.

“Our immigration system has always been responsible and it has always been flexible,” Trudeau said. “We are acting today because of the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right.”

The vast majority of Canada’s population growth last year – about 97% – was driven by immigration, according to federal data.

At the same time, Canada’s unemployment rate has increased to 6.5% and stands at over 14% for young people.

The move marks a departure from decades of open immigration policies in Canada, which has relied on newcomers to meet population targets and to fill labour gaps.

Since Trudeau was elected in 2015, his government has raised annual permanent resident targets from 272,000 to 485,000 this year. The biggest jump was seen in 2021 after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trudeau and his government have been criticised for increasing immigration without bolstering services or housing construction, and economists have warned that Canada’s rapidly growing population has put a strain on housing and public services like healthcare.

Earlier this month, a poll by the Environics Institute, which has tracked Canadians’ attitudes towards immigration since 1977, revealed that 58% of Canadians now feel that immigration levels were too high.

The institute said the findings suggest that public opinion on immigration levels has “effectively flipped from being acceptable (if not valuable) to problematic”.

The cuts to immigration targets have been criticised by advocacy groups like the Migrant Rights Network, who wrote in an open letter to Trudeau and Miller that migrants are being unfairly blamed for Canada’s affordability crisis.

“Migrants are not responsible for Canada’s housing crisis, lack of jobs, or inadequate healthcare or other public services,” they said.

The group added that these issues are rather a result of “decades of federal and provincial policies that have underfunded and privatized public services”.

Georgians know all about Russia’s wars. Several years before Russia invaded Ukraine, its army launched a five-day war in August 2008. The city of Gori was bombed and occupied, and a fierce battle further north in Shindisi left the station destroyed and the railway abandoned.

So when the country’s four opposition groups label Saturday’s pivotal election as a choice between Russia or Europe, their aim is to end 12 years of rule by the governing Georgian Dream party, who they accuse of drifting back into Russia’s orbit.

They want to revive Georgia’s stalled bid to join the European Union.

“In these streets we had Russians,” says Mindia Goderdzishvili, running the campaign in Gori for opposition group Coalition for Change. “People here have this in their memories and the government uses this in a bad way, playing on their emotions because they want to stay in power.”

Georgian Dream, known as GD, and its powerful billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili vehemently reject the opposition’s framing of the vote as a choice between Russia or Europe.

Theirs is the party of peace, they argue, while the opposition, backed by an unidentified “global war party” wants to drag Georgia into war.

A short distance from the bombed out station in Shindisi lie the graves of 17 Georgian soldiers who died defending the town. The separation line is not far north from here and beyond it is South Ossetia, one of two breakaway Georgian regions still under Russian military occupation.

“I don’t think anybody can guarantee Georgia’s security today,” says Maka Bochorishvili, the head of Georgia’s EU integration committee tells the BBC at Georgian Dream’s new headquarters in Tbilisi.

“We are not members of Nato, we don’t have that umbrella over our head. The last war of 2008 was not long ago.”

Her party still promises to take former Soviet republic Georgia into the European Union by 2030, but that commitment seems hollow when the EU has put the process on hold because of a law targeting “foreign influence” that threatens countless media and non-government groups.

Add to that a recent law targeting LGBT rights in Georgia, and it is no surprise that EU ambassador Pawel Herczynski feels that “instead of getting closer, Georgia is moving away from the European Union”.

Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has openly called for voters to support opposition groups, who have backed her plan for a one-year technocratic government if they win.

Much of the spotlight in this election has focused on Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and is considered the guiding force behind the ruling party.

Ivanishvili has gone into Saturday’s election promising to ban the biggest opposition party, the United National Movement, because of what it did before GD came to power.

UNM’s former leader, Mikheil Saakashvili is locked up in jail, but GD wants to go after other opposition figures too, so the ban could extend far beyond one party. For that to happen, they would need to win a big majority.

That seems unlikely, although Georgia’s opinion polls are unreliable and questions have been raised over the secrecy of the vote, despite a new electronic voting system.

Ivanishvili visited Gori during the election campaign and promised an apology to the people of South Ossetia for the 2008 war, which he blamed on Saakashvili’s government, rather than the Russians who bombed the city.

The billionaire doubled down on that at the party’s final campaign rally in the heart of Tbilisi on Wednesday. Speaking behind protective glass, he told supporters that the UNM had committed treason.

His rationale, presumably, is that by going after the biggest opposition party, voters will be dissuaded from backing any of the others.

For Aleksandre, a 30-year-old voter in Shindisi, the idea that Saakashvili started the war is “absurd”.

Most of the people of his age have left the town because of the lack of opportunities there.

He would rather the government focus on reviving the railway line and protect Georgians from creeping Russian encroachment on Georgian land.

The Kremlin has made no secret of its preference for Georgian Dream.

A few months ago Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service accused the US of preparing to stage a Ukraine-style revolution in the streets to stop GD from winning a fourth term in office. The SVR had no evidence for its allegation, and the US denied it.

Now Russia has latched on to an unfounded allegation made by Georgian Dream’s founder that a high-ranking foreign official asked Georgia’s former prime minister to join a war with Russia “for three or four days”.

“I don’t see any reason not to believe [it],” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian media.

Gori’s memory of Georgia’s northern neighbour is not based solely on what happened in 2008.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin grew up here and tourists come here to see his childhood home and personal railway carriage, although the guides no longer gloss over the millions he sent to their deaths in Soviet gulags.

Opposition campaigners in Gori say some voters retain a lingering affection for the Soviet period, but that most people have moved on.

The broad consensus here and across Georgia is that their future lies within the European Union, rather than outside it. What is less clear is who they think will give them that chance.

Venice is to double the number of days it charges tourists an entrance fee in 2025, following a “successful” trial last year, the city’s mayor said.

Luigi Brugnaro said the objective remained that of discouraging tourists from visiting the city on the same days “to give Venice the respect it deserves”.

Day trippers who book ahead will have to pay €5 (£4.17; $5.41) to access the Italian city on certain days between April and July, rising to €10 if they book less than four days in advance.

A charge was first introduced last April and it covered 29 days – mostly weekends and public holidays – over a four-month period.

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The tax will be applied every Friday through Sunday and on public holidays between 18 April and 27 July 2025, for a total of 54 days.

All visitors over the age of 14 will have to pay the charge on their phones and download a QR code to show inspectors, who will check people at random in common arrival areas, like the train station.

Those without a ticket risk getting a fine.

As with the previous charge, people with hotel and guest house reservations will be exempt, as will residents of the Veneto region, students enrolled at Venice university, and those visiting relatives who live in Venice.

“Venice has gone from being the city most exposed to and criticised for the phenomenon of overtourism, to being the city that is reacting to this phenomenon the earliest and most proactively on the global stage,” said city councillor Simone Venturini.

According to Italian media, in the first eight days of the scheme in April Venice authorities collected the amount they were hoping to make in three months.

By the end of the trial period in mid-July, the city had collected about €2.4m (£2m; $2.5m) in entrance fees.

But mayor Brugnaro said he would have to wait for further analysis to see whether the budget for the scheme completely breaks even.

The cost of the ticket booking platform and the communication campaign that followed the announcement of the initiative cost around €3m, Italian media reported.

Venice opposition councillor Giovanni Andrea Martini said in July that the entrance fee system was a “failure” as it had not helped spread out the flow of tourists that visit Venice.

At the time, Mr Martini also said that a potential raise of the fee from €5 to €10 was be “useless” and would merely “turn Venice into a museum”.

Last year Unesco said the city should be added to a list of world heritage sites in danger, as the impact of climate change and mass tourism threaten to cause irreversible changes to it.

And in 2021, large cruise ships were banned from entering the historic centre of Venice via the Giudecca canal after a ship crashed into a harbour.

Critics also argued that the ships were causing pollution and eroding the foundations of the city, which suffers from regular flooding.