Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is set to fall short of a single-party majority after a close-run snap election, exit polls suggest.

The LDP is projected to win from 153 to 219 lower house seats, broadcaster NHK said. The Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) is projected to win from 128 to 191 seats.

A party needs 233 seats to control the house, known as the Diet, meaning the LDP will need to enter a coalition to stay in power.

It was previously in coalition with the smaller Komeito party, though projections suggest their joint vote share may still fall short of a majority, prompting uncertainty about how the world’s fourth-largest economy will be governed.

The election was called by the LDP’s new leader Shigeru Ishiba three days after he was selected as new leader – before he had been officially sworn in as prime minister.

It comes after a tumultuous few years for the LDP which saw a “cascade” of scandals, widespread voter apathy and record-low approval ratings.

The party had seen approval ratings of below 20% earlier in the year, in the wake of a political fundraising corruption scandal.

Yet opposition parties have failed to unite, or convince voters they are a viable option to govern.

The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6% before parliament was dissolved.

“It is so hard to make decisions to choose parties, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a long-time LDP supporter who works in the care-home sector, told the BBC ahead of polls opening.

The LDP, she said, has its problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition also does not stand out at all”.

“They sure complain a lot, but it’s not at all clear on what they want to do,” the 66-year-old said.

For all the apathy, politics in Japan has been moving at a fast pace in recent months.

Shigeru Ishiba took over as prime minister after being voted in by the ruling party following his predecessor Fumio Kishida – who had been in the role since 2021 – making a surprise decision to step down in August.

The move to call the election came at a time when the LDP is desperate to restore its tarnished image among the public. Ishiba – a long-time politician who previously served as defence minister – has described it as the “people’s verdict”.

A series of scandals has tarnished the ruling party’s reputation. Chief among them is the party’s relationship with the controversial Unification Church – described by critics as a “cult” – and the level of influence it had on lawmakers.

Then came the revelations of the political funding corruption scandal. Japan’s prosecutors have been investigating dozens of LDP lawmakers accused of pocketing proceeds from political fundraising events. Those allegations – running into the millions of dollars – led to the dissolution of powerful factions, the backbone of its internal party politics.

“What a wretched state the ruling party is in,” said Michiko Hamada, who had travelled to Urawa station, on the outskirts of Tokyo, for an opposition campaign rally.

“That is what I feel most. It is tax evasion and it’s unforgivable.”

It strikes her as particularly egregious at a time when people in Japan are struggling with high prices. Wages have not changed for three decades – dubbed “the lost 30 years” – but prices have risen at the fastest rate in nearly half a century in the last two years.

This month saw more price hikes on thousands of food products, as well as other day-to-day provisions like mail, pharmaceuticals, electricity and gas.

“I pay 10,000 yen or 20,000 yen ($65 – $130; £50 – £100) more for the food per month (than I used to),” Ms Hamada said.

“And I’m not buying the things I used to buy. I am trying to save up but it still costs more. Things like fruit are very expensive.”

She is not the only one concerned with high prices. Pensioner Chie Shimizu says she now must work part-time to make ends meet.

“Our hourly wage has gone up a bit but it does not match the prices,” she told the BBC as she picked up some food from a stand at Urawa station. “I come to places like this to find something cheaper and good because everything in regular shops is expensive.”

A man has died after a migrant boat sank while attempting to cross the English Channel on Sunday morning.

French officials say the man – an Indian national around 40 years old – suffered a cardiac arrest and could not be revived by emergency services.

The boat deflated shortly after it left the coast at Tardinghen, near Calais, at 05:30 local time (04:30 GMT), and those aboard swam back to shore, French authorities said.

This was the third lethal sinking in the past 10 days, in what is already the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings.

On Wednesday, three people died after a small boat bound for the UK carrying dozens of migrants sank in the Channel. A rescue operation recovered 45 people off the French coast.

Prior to that, a four-month-old baby died when an overloaded migrant boat sank on the evening of 18 October. Rescuers saved 65 others.

More than 100 people have been rescued from migrant boats in distress since Thursday, according the French coastguard.

Several attempts to cross the Channel were stopped by police and gendarmes on Sunday morning – including in Equihen-Plage, Calais and Sangatte – according to French authorities.

Officials say attempted crossings have increased in recent days due to favourable weather conditions.

New UK government figures show the number of migrants who arrived in small boats so far this year has already surpassed 2023’s total.

As of Friday, there had been 29,578 in 2024, compared to 29,437 across all of 2023. Last year’s total was lower than the record of 45,774 arrivals in 2022.

The Home Office has pledged to “stop at nothing” to dismantle people-smuggling gangs that organise small boat crossings.

A spokesperson said: “Our new border security command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute these evil criminals.”

An undercover BBC investigation published on Friday exposed a group of people-smugglers in Germany offering a Channel crossing “package” for €15,000 (£12,500).

The package included an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor and 60 life jackets. The smugglers said they stored the boats in multiple secret warehouses to hide them from the German police.

Figures produced by the UN show this year has already been the deadliest for migrant crossings in the Channel.

The latest sinking means at least 57 people have died attempting the journey in 2024.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of charity Refugee Council, said it was “vital” that the government did “everything possible” to ensure refugees no longer had to put their lives in danger.

He added: “We must not forget that those making the perilous journeys across the Channel are desperate men, women and children fleeing persecution and war, in countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan, simply seeking safety and a future free from fear.”

Pro-Western opposition groups in Georgia have refused to accept results that hand victory to the increasingly authoritarian ruling party, after a pivotal election focused on the country’s future path in Europe.

The Georgian Dream party of billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili claimed outright victory and the central election commission said it had won 54% of the vote based on more than 99% districts counted.

The initial results were dramatically different from exit polls conducted by Western pollsters.

Tina Bokuchava of the opposition United National Movement said the elections had been falsified and the vote “stolen from the Georgian people”.

Another opposition leader, Nika Gvaramia, said Georgian Dream had mounted a “constitutional coup”, while analysts said its increased vote share from four years ago was scarcely credible.

Both Georgian Dream and the four pro-EU opposition groups trying to end its 12 years in power had earlier claimed victory based on competing exit polls.

Voters turned out in big numbers on Saturday in this South Caucasus state bordering Russia, and there were numerous reports of vote violations and violence outside polling stations.

One opposition official in a town south of the capital Tbilisi told the BBC that he was beaten up first by a local Georgian Dream councillor, and then “another 10 men came and I didn’t know what was happening to me”.

A coalition of 2,000 election observers called My Vote said given the scale of vote-fraud and violence it did not believe the preliminary results “reflect the will of Georgian citizens”.

The opposition has described this high-stakes vote as a choice between Europe or Russia. Many saw the vote as the most crucial since Georgians backed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

As soon as voting ended, two exit polls by Edison and HarrisX for pro-opposition TV channels gave Georgian Dream 40.9% and 42% of the vote, with the total for the combined four opposition groups put at 51.9% and 48%. But a poll for the big, government-supporting Imedi TV channel gave Georgian Dream 56%.

Some time later, the central election commission (CEC) came out with initial preliminary results.

The commission had said that 90% of the vote would be released within two hours of the polls closing enabled by new electronic vote-counting system, but it was only on Sunday morning the preliminary results were almost complete.

The CEC has come under criticism for being too close to the government and for rushing through electoral reform ahead of the election without sufficient consultation. Former Georgian ambassador to the EU Natalie Sabanadze said the commission was “fully in the hands of the ruling party now”.

However, commission chairman Giorgi Kalandarishvili said the vote system had been internationally audited and only 20 out of 15,000 machines had failed.

“The onus is on a government body to provide transparency required in an electoral process,” said Dritan Nesho of HarrisX.

“We analysed the data from these precincts and there’s a wide discrepancy from the data we have. In some cases they have precincts in Tbilisi where Georgian Dream are winning by more than 45% of the vote, whereas we know most of the opposition vote came from Tbilisi.”

Georgian Dream is set to have 91 seats in the 150-seat parliament, according to the contested results that give the opposition groups a total of 37% of the vote.

Under Georgia’s new system of proportional representation, many of the other parties failed to reach the 5% threshold to get into parliament.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, told supporters it was a “rare occasion in the world for the same party to achieve such success in such a difficult situation”.

However, opposition leaders and supporters had a very different take.

Tina Bokuchava said her party would not accept Georgia’s European future being stolen and she hoped the other main opposition groups would be able to agree on their next steps.

“This is the moment. In future there may be no such moment,” opposition voter Levan Benidze, 36, told the BBC. “I know there are a lot of geopolitical risks – from Russia – but this could be the pivotal moment, a turning point.”

Although Georgia was made a candidate to join the European Union last December, that move has since been frozen by the EU because of “democratic backsliding – in particular a Russian-style “foreign influence” law targeting groups receiving Western funding.

The USSR may have ceased to exist more than three decades ago, but Moscow still considers much of the old Soviet empire its own backyard and Russia’s sphere of influence.

It will have appreciated Georgian Dream’s campaign promise of a “pragmatic” Russia policy, not to mention Brussels’ decision earlier this year to halt Georgia’s EU accession process.

Georgian Dream has promised voters they are still on course to join the EU, but it has also accused the opposition of helping the West to open a new front in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Georgia’s Russian neighbour still occupies 20% of its territory after a five-day war in 2008.

Bidzina Ivanishvili’s rhetoric has become increasingly anti-Western, indicating that a fourth term for Georgian Dream might pull the country back into Russia’s orbit.

Georgians had a simple choice, the party’s founder said after voting in Tbilisi: either a government that served them, or an opposition of “foreign agents, who will carry out only the orders of a foreign country”.

He has repeatedly spoken of a “global war party” pushing the opposition towards joining the war in Ukraine, with Georgian Dream (GD) cast as the party of peace. For many voters the message has worked.

“The most important thing – for me, my family, my grandchildren – is peace that I wish for all Georgians,” GD voter Tinatin Gvelesiani, 55, told the BBC at a polling station in Kojori, south-west of the capital. “Only Georgian Dream” would bring peace, she added.

Election observers reported a string of violations across the country, from ballot stuffing inside polling stations to intimidation of voters outside.

With less than an hour to go before the polls closed, pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili appealed to opposition voters not to be intimidated.

“Don’t get scared. All this is just psychological pressure on you,” she said in a live address on social media.

The intimidation turned into violence for Azat Karimov, 35, the local chair of the biggest opposition party United National Movement in Marneuli south of Tbilisi.

He told the BBC how he was set upon when his team tried to investigate votes being falsified by Georgian Dream officials.

“[A Georgian Dream councillor]came with 10-20 people… before police could come I told him to calm down. Right away the councillor started beating me.”

On the eve of the vote, a Georgian monitoring group highlighted a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at the election.

The Kremlin has denied meddling in Georgia’s domestic affairs and alleged instead that the West had made “unprecedented attempts” at interference.

Earlier this year Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, accused the United States of planning a “Colour Revolution” in Georgia.

Kim* is a young professional who started using cannabis when family life became messy. Things improved, but her drug habit stuck – and by then, her social circle was primarily made up of people who also used. With a reliable local supplier of weed, Kim’s friends asked her if she would get some for them.

“That’s what I did,” Kim says. “I never marked up the price in any way, because this was friendship… It’s like, I’m helping you to purchase something we both use anyway.”

Singapore, where Kim lives, has some of the harshest drugs laws in the world.

If you sell, give, deliver, administer, transport or distribute narcotics, that’s drug trafficking. And the law also presumes you’re a trafficker if you possess drugs in quantities that cross certain weight thresholds.

Kim’s life unravelled very fast when one of the friends she sourced cannabis for was caught by the state’s Central Narcotics Bureau.

Kim was named as the supplier of the marijuana, and picked up too. After the authorities trawled through her phone, another friend was arrested – and Kim was charged with drug trafficking.

“I was wracked with horror,” she says. “To have charges of trafficking levelled at me? That was just overwhelming. I felt complete and utter fear of what was going to pan out for me.”

Cannabis for recreational use has been decriminalised in many places around the world. In the US, 24 states have legalised it. While cannabis is illegal In the UK, punishments for its possession have plummeted in recent years.

In Singapore, if you’re found with 15g you’re assumed to be trafficking – and with 500g or more, the death penalty is mandatory.

It’s a controversial policy and there have been several recent cases. The most recent execution – of a 64-year-old on a heroin charge – took place on 16 October.

The Singaporean government won’t tell the BBC how many people are currently on death row.

Singapore’s death penalty becomes mandatory in drug cases involving

• 15g diamorphine (heroin)
• 30g cocaine
• 500g cannabis
• 250g methamphetamine

Kim’s not facing execution, but she could be looking at a lengthy prison term.

“The minimum sentence would be five years,” she says. “The worst-case could be up to 20 years.”

While Kim awaits judgement on trafficking charges, her friends have already been dealt with. But they weren’t prosecuted. Classed as drug consumers – not traffickers – they faced very different treatment.

They were sent to the state-run Drug Rehabilitation Centre for six months each.

When anyone’s caught using an illicit substance in Singapore, they’re assessed as low, medium or high risk. Only those deemed at low risk of reoffending are allowed to stay at home, where they are monitored in the community.

Everyone else – even a first-time offender – is sent for compulsory rehabilitation.

There’s no private, residential rehab in Singapore – no mooching around in fluffy bathrobes and then retreating to your own en-suite room.

The Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) is a vast complex run by Singapore’s Prison Service, which makes sense because this is incarceration by any other name. There’s barbed wire, a control room, and CCTV everywhere. Guards patrol the walkways.

In December 2023, 3,981 Singaporeans were inmates – about 1 in 8 of them women.

Institution S1 houses around 500 identically-dressed male inmates, most first or second-time drug offenders.

A cell accommodates seven or eight men. There are two toilets, and a shower behind a waist-high wall. There are no beds. The men sleep on thin, rush mats on the concrete floor. And a detainee will spend at least six months here – even if they’re a casual, rather than addicted, drug user.

“While it is rehabilitation, it’s still a very deterrent regime,” says Supt Ravin Singh. “We don’t want to make your stay too comfortable.”

The men spend up to six hours a day in a classroom on psychology-based courses.

“The aim is to motivate inmates to want to stay away from drugs, to renew their lives without them, and to address negative thinking regarding drugs,” says Lau Kuan Mei, Deputy Director for the Correctional Rehabilitation Service.

“They teach us a lot about how to manage our triggers for using drugs,” says Jon*, who’s in his late 20s and close to the end of a six-month stay.

Jon has a history of using methamphetamine and is one of the inmates prison authorities have selected to talk to the BBC.

Meth (also known as crystal or ice) is a powerful, highly addictive stimulant, and the most commonly abused drug in Singapore and the region.

Earlier this year, on a weekday afternoon, Central Narcotics Bureau officers arrived at Jon’s house where he lives with his parents. Before they took him away, he spoke to his shocked mother.

“She said, ‘learn your lesson, pay your dues, and come back clean,” Jon remembers.

And that’s what he’s aiming to do – but he knows it won’t be easy.

“It’s exciting leaving,” he says. “But I’m also nervous… In here you’re locked up and not faced with drugs.”

Jon’s worried he might be tempted to take meth again. His rehab programme has been obligatory, not voluntary as it might have been if he lived in North America or Europe. Even so, it might not impact his chances of staying drug-free.

“If you look at evidence-based policies in drug addiction… it doesn’t really matter whether the treatment offered is voluntary or non-voluntary,” says Dr Muni Winslow, an addiction psychiatrist who worked in Singapore’s government institutions.

He believes the treatment offered to drug users has improved.

“It’s much better now because the whole criminal justice system has a lot of psychologists and counsellors who are trained in addictions.”

Historically, drugs have been viewed as a criminal justice issue, rather than a health issue in Singapore.

While the state execution of traffickers still sets the tone for how the government and most Singaporeans view narcotics, it hasn’t prevented changes to how drug users are treated. For example, no-one who spends time in the rehab centre gets a criminal record.

“We talked to psychologists and addiction specialists and our thinking evolved,” explains Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam. “If they’re not a threat to society, we don’t need to treat them as criminals.”

Singapore commits huge resources to enabling people to stay clean once they leave the DRC. Most importantly, they’re helped to find work.

But although authorities say the system has changed, critics believe it’s still inhumane.

The Transformative Justice Collective, a group which campaigns against the death penalty, describes the DRC as a form of mandatory detention where prisoners face “humiliation” and “loss of liberties”.

The group says programmes in the centre are superficial and focused on “shame” – failing to tackle the root causes of drug dependence.

“We’ve seen a lot of lives disrupted and a lot of trauma inflicted from being arrested, from being thrown into prison, from having to share a cell,” says Kirsten Han.

“It causes a lot of stress and instability. And these are not harms caused by drugs. These are harms caused by the war on drugs.”

Surveillance remains a critical part of the country’s mission to keep former inmates clean.

At a supervision centre, a neat-looking man in his 50s arrives. He’s been in and out of the Drug Rehabilitation Centre six times, struggling with heroin. But for the last 26 months he’s been drug-free, living at home, monitored by an electronic tag. Now his sentence is over.

When the tag’s snipped off, he’s delighted, and leaves quickly after exchanging a few words with Karen Lee, the director of the Community Corrections Command.

“He looks healthy,” she says. “And that’s what we hope for all our supervisees… While three out of 10 do come back as repeat drug abusers, we shouldn’t forget there are seven supervisees out there, successfully living their lives as reintegrated citizens of Singapore.”

While tagged, the ex-heroin user had another incentive to stay clean: regular urine analysis. Singapore’s state-of-the-art Urine Supervision Cubicles are the first of their kind in the world.

Once a supervisee enters a cubicle, the door locks behind him. After he pees into the urinal the technology tests for drugs including cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin. It takes about seven minutes.

“It’s not so boring – we’ve also prepared videos for him to watch, like Mr Bean!” says Karen Lee.

If the test is negative, a green light goes on, and the man’s free to go. A red light indicates a positive test result – and the supervisee will be re-arrested.

Singapore’s zero-tolerance policy doesn’t distinguish between casual drug users and those with an addiction. And although punishment is no longer front and centre of the system, Singapore retains draconian practices – including a legal requirement for doctors to report patients to the authorities if they disclose use of narcotics. This may well deter people from getting help with problematic drug dependency.

But the harshest treatment is reserved for those convicted of trafficking. Kim – who sourced cannabis for her friends – is trying to keep busy while she waits for the court’s decision about the charges against her.

“Once I heard there was very little possibility of me not serving a sentence, I took some time,” Kim says, “to mourn almost, for the period of my life I would lose. I think I’ve accepted prison on a deeper level. It just never gets easier as the day draws nearer.”

If Kim’s incarcerated – as she expects – she won’t be unusual. In December 2023, around half of the country’s convicted prison population – 2,299 people – were serving time for drug offences.

If you, or someone you know, have been affected by addiction, there are details of organisations who may be able to help at BBC Action Line.

Singapore: Drugs, rehab, execution

The laws against illegal narcotics are notoriously severe in Singapore. Penalties for trafficking include the death penalty, but the government argues its zero-tolerance policy is effective.

If you are caught using any illicit narcotic, including cannabis, you may find yourself in compulsory rehab. The BBC’s Linda Pressly approached Singapore’s authorities and was granted access to the state’s austere Drug Rehabilitation Centre.

She speaks to drug users who have to spend months at the facility before being released back into the community under surveillance.

In a federal courtroom in New York, for the first time I’m face to face with Mike Jeffries – the multi-millionaire ex-fashion boss I’ve spent three years investigating for the BBC. He stares at me directly, lips pursed, and chin raised, as he sits before the judge.

As a result of my reporting, he was arrested this week by the FBI and charged with running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business along with his British partner, Matthew Smith, and their middleman James Jacobson.

Authorities acted after hearing my podcast series, The Abercrombie Guys, in which I unearthed evidence that Mr Jeffries, 80, and Mr Smith, 61, had been at the centre of a sophisticated global operation involving a network of recruiters and a middleman scouting young men for sex.

As CEO of teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jeffries was described to me as an eccentric and superstitious genius who, with his highlighted hair and penchant for flip-flops and plastic surgery, personified the youthful All-American brand he created.

But now, his hair white, his fillers dissolved, and wearing an ankle monitor – he seemed a shadow of the mogul said to have used his power and strength while in charge to abuse vulnerable models.

US prosecutors say he and the others accused used force, fraud and coercion to make men engage in violent and exploitative sex acts from at least 2008-2015. If convicted, they face a maximum of life in prison.

Shoulders slouched, Mr Jeffries’ face was blank as his lawyer entered his plea of not guilty. His life partner Matthew Smith – a UK citizen – is yet to appear in court. He’s considered a flight risk by authorities and is currently detained until trial.

When I think back to how my own investigation began, in January 2021, I never imagined it would lead to this moment.

During the pandemic, I was researching the fashion industry when I stumbled across a cryptic Instagram comment written by a former model named Barrett Pall.

He was part of a group discussing how they felt abuse against male models was being ignored. “We’ve seen it happen with #MeToo, how about #UsToo?” one wrote.

We soon got on the phone. After an hour of talking, he said he felt he could trust with me a secret he’d never really shared before.

“It’s probably like the darkest experience I’ve ever dealt with,” he told me. “They had someone come and shave me, like my whole body, because that’s how they like the boys.”

In 2011, then aged 22, Barrett said he’d been referred by an older model, who was a close friend, to meet a mysterious middleman he described as having a missing nose covered with a snakeskin patch.

He said this man – who I later identified through phone and property records as James Jacobson – had made him perform a sex act as a “tryout” before sending him to Mike Jeffries, then CEO and chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch, and his British partner.

Barrett claimed that, for years, the duo had been throwing elaborate sex events at their palatial home in the Hamptons. He said the one he had attended was facilitated by chaperones in Abercrombie polos and flip-flops, carrying silver platters of alcohol, poppers and lube.

What Barrett told me sparked my initial two-year investigation. I travelled across America, from the suburbs of Ohio to the desert of Palm Springs, tracking down men affected and confronting those involved – including the middleman himself.

Usually when I’m investigating, I can find a few loose threads to pull at by searching newspaper archives, court records or social media. But there was absolutely nothing in the public domain about these allegations.

So I took an old-school approach, piecing together my own trail through word of mouth, knocking on doors, and sending handwritten letters to potential sources. I traced and contacted hundreds of people including former Abercrombie & Fitch models and Mr Jeffries’ ex-household staff, earning trust over months.

Then, a massive breakthrough.

Barrett Pall had an old iPad that wouldn’t turn on – but we got it fixed. Through that, I obtained an itinerary and flight ticket corroborating the event he attended in the Hamptons. It was sent by the middleman James Jacobson and contained some first names and numbers of others involved.

I later recovered more than a dozen of these itineraries from different sources, finally giving me concrete leads. But it took me months to figure out their roles, not wanting to tip the wrong person off while I was still in evidence-gathering mode.

Many men were wary of speaking. Two accused me of being a “spy” for Mike Jeffries – initially fearful of his “money and clout”. I, too, became increasingly paranoid after I began facing hundreds of hacking attempts each day from unknown IP addresses.

• Listen to the full World Of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys on BBC Sounds
• If you are outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts
• Watch: Panorama – The Dark Side of Cool (only in the UK)

We were right to be cautious. In their indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors said Mike Jeffries had employed a full-service security company to oversee non-disclosure agreements (NDA), conduct background checks, and surveil and intimidate anyone who threatened to expose them.

I have since spoken with more than 20 men who attended or helped organise these events for Mr Jeffries and his partner Matthew Smith. Some like Luke, an aspiring model who told me he was recruited under the guise of attending an A&F photoshoot, said they had been misled and not told sex was involved.

How did this operation stay hidden for so long?

The answer I reached was that the shame some men felt talking about same-sex abuse had silenced them as effectively as any NDA. Some told me they had felt suicidal, others completely broken. In many instances, I was the first person they had confided in.

One man, who I’m calling Alex, broke down as he told me he believed he was drugged and raped by an unknown assailant at an opulent event hosted in Marrakesh for which dozens of men had been flown in.

He believed this led to him contracting HIV. “Jeffries was the kingpin,” he told me at the time. “Without him none of this could have happened.”

Ahead of publication, I worked with BBC Panorama to meticulously fact-check my evidence. This involved speaking with those inside the operation – including James Jacobson.

When podcast producer Ruth Evans and I knocked on his door one sweltering day in rural Wisconsin in August 2023, he sank onto his steps, put his head in his hands and swore. He asked me for a deal. “Leave my name out and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.

Mr Jacobson repeated this request dozens of times the following day, when he agreed to meet for coffee. We spoke for two hours.

At times it was bizarre – he admired my shorthand, commented on my British accent and seemed to patronise me – calling me “sweetheart”. He’s a former actor and at one point put on a bunch of accents, and pretended to wear a cloak, trying to convince me he could do an anonymous interview.

But he was charismatic too, and joked about his missing nose, saying the only job he could get these days was as a Bond villain. Eventually, Mr Jacobson said he was just “doing his job” and hadn’t spoken to Mr Jeffries or Mr Smith since 2015.

Ultimately, he didn’t get his deal, and in court, he again sat with his head in his hands as his lawyer entered a plea of not guilty.

After we published in October 2023, some of the men in this story took legal action against Mike Jeffries, Matthew Smith and Abercrombie & Fitch, who they are suing for rape, assault and sex trafficking. All deny wrongdoing. The lawsuit claims it’s likely that more than 100 men were abused during Mr Jeffries’ tenure.

Sources also began contacting me to say they had been approached by law enforcement.

We were not involved in the FBI’s investigation – which was totally independent of mine. Protecting sources is integral to my work. So, it would be the men’s decision to talk.

Looking back, there were moments I considered giving up. I initially faced dead end after dead end. But the more I heard, the more I felt a duty to bring this to light for the first time and hold those involved to account.

More than two years on from our first conversation, I asked Barrett Pall why he decided to speak to me.

He started crying and said: “My gut said trust her. Tell her your story. And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen.”

Announcing the charges, US attorney Breon Peace said: “To anyone who thinks they can exploit and coerce others by using the so-called ‘casting couch’ system, this case should serve as a warning. Prepare to trade that couch for a bed in federal prison.”

A man has died and at least 30 more have been injured after a truck hit a bus stop near an Israeli military base north of Tel Aviv, in what authorities are investigating as a suspected terror attack.

“A truck hit dozens of people who had disembarked at a bus stop. Eight of the wounded were trapped under the truck and others were lying and walking near it,” a medic for Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said.

Many of the injured were reportedly pensioners on a day trip to a nearby museum.

The driver of the truck, named as Rami Natur, an Arab Israeli from the town of Qalansawe in central Israel, was shot dead by a civilian at the scene.

Emergency services were called to the Glilot Junction around 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Sunday following reports of a truck ramming.

Yechiel Ben Moshe told the Ynet website: “We were a group of retirees going to Glilot to visit a museum and listen to a lecture.”

“The bus parked, and people got off. A truck came from behind and I heard a huge noise from the truck.

“It drove toward us to run us over.

“Around me, everyone was injured and bleeding, and others were in shock. It looked like an accident at first, but then shots were fired at the terrorist.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for the police, called for the family of the suspected attacker to be deported from Israel.

Israel is already fighting its enemies on multiple fronts in Gaza and Lebanon.

But this attack raises a different question: how to keep its people safe from attackers already inside Israel, who use vehicles as weapons.

A senior UN official in Sudan says she is deeply troubled by reports of “atrocious crimes” in the central Gezira state, including the mass killing of civilians by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Clementine Nkweta-Salami’s comments came after an activist group said that at least 124 people were killed by the RSF in attacks on villagers over the past week.

The RSF has denied targeting civilians, saying its fighters are clashing with militias armed by the military.

The 18-month conflict in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million.

Gezira state turned into a major battleground last week after the RSF suffered a major blow when one of its commanders, Abu Aqla Kayka, defected to the military.

The army said he had brought “a large number of his forces” with him, in what it described as the first high-profile defection to its side.

In response, the RSF said its fighters would defend themselves and “decisively deal with everyone carrying arms”.

Ms Nkweta-Salami, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, said that preliminary reports suggested that the RSF had carried out a major attack across the state between 20 and 25 October.

She added that it led to mass killings, the raping of women and girls, the widespread looting of markets and homes and the burning down of farms.

Ms Nkweta-Salami said the “atrocious crimes” were on a scale similar to those seen in Sudan’s Darfur region last year, when the RSF was accused of “ethnic cleansing” communities seen to be opposed to it.

Ms Nkweta-Salami said the death toll was still unclear, but preliminary reports suggested that scores of people were killed in Gezira state.

In a statement on Saturday, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, which campaigns for an end to the conflict and democratic rule in Sudan, said the RSF was committing “extensive massacres in one village after another”, the Reuters news agency reported.

The Sudanese doctors’ union called on the UN to push the two sides in the conflict to agree to safe humanitarian corridors into villages that were facing “genocide” at the hands of the RSF.

The doctors’ union added that rescue operations had become impossible and that the army was “incapable” of protecting civilians.

The conflict in Sudan broke out in April 2023 after a fall out between the commanders of the RSF and military, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan respectively.

The two had jointly staged a coup in 2021, derailing Sudan’s transition to democracy, but then got involved in a vicious power struggle.

The two leaders have refused to sign a peace deal, despite efforts by the US and Saudi Arabia to broker an end to the conflict.

• Watch: ‘They ransacked my home and left my town in ruins’
• Rape me, not my daughter’ – women tell BBC of sexual violence in Sudan
• A simple guide to the Sudan war
• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war

Donald Trump enjoys a huge lead among men, while women tell pollsters they prefer Kamala Harris by a similarly large margin. The political gender gap reflects a decade of social upheaval and could help decide the US election.

For the first woman of colour to secure a presidential nomination, and only the second woman to ever get this close, Kamala Harris goes to great lengths not to talk about her identity.

“Listen, I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender,” the vice-president said in a CNN interview last month.

And yet, despite all her efforts to neutralise the subject, gender is shaping up to be the defining issue of this campaign.

“Madame President” would be a new thing for America and it’s reasonable to assume that while many voters love the idea, some find the novelty a little unnerving.

The Harris campaign won’t say it publicly, but one official acknowledged to me recently that they do believe there is “hidden sexism” here that will deter some people from voting for any woman for president.

It’s 2024 and few people want to be the jerk who’ll tell a pollster outright that they don’t think a woman is fit for the Oval Office (though plenty are prepared to share misogynistic memes on social media). A Democratic strategist suggested there’s a code, when voters tell pollsters that Harris is not “ready” or doesn’t have the right “personality” or “what it takes,” what they really mean is that the problem is she’s a woman.

The Trump campaign says gender has nothing to do with it. “Kamala is weak, dishonest, and dangerously liberal, and that’s why the American people will reject her on November 5th,” it said this week. Although Bryan Lanza, a senior adviser to the campaign, texted me to say he’s confident Trump will win because “the male gender gap gives us the edge”.

Last time a woman ran for president, negative attitudes to her gender were clearly a factor. Eight years ago Hillary Clinton touted her being the first female nominee of a major party. The campaign’s slogan “I’m with Her” was a not very subtle reminder of her trailblazing role.

Pennsylvania Congresswoman Madeleine Dean remembers discussing Clinton’s candidacy with voters. I spent an afternoon with Dean as she campaigned in her district this week and she told me that back in 2016 people would tell her, ‘There’s just something about her.’

She says she soon realised that “It was about the ‘her.’ That was a thing. It was that [Hillary] was a woman.”

While Dean thinks that sentiment is less prevalent today, she acknowledges that even now, “there are certain people who just think ‘A powerful woman? No, a bridge too far.’”

A lot has changed for women since 2016. The #MeToo movement in 2017 increased awareness of the subtle – and the not so subtle – discriminations women face at work. It changed the way we talk about women as professionals. MeToo may have made it easier for a candidate like Harris to secure the nomination.

But those big steps forward on the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion were interpreted by some as a step back, especially for young men who felt they’d been left behind. Or the changes were simply a step too far for conservative Americans who prefer more traditional gender roles.

So for some voters, this November’s election has turned into a referendum on gender norms, and the social upheavals of recent years. This seems particularly true for the voters Kamala Harris has a tough time reaching: the young men who live in a world that is rapidly changing for, well, young men.

“Young men often feel like if they ask questions they are labeled as misogynist, homophobic or racist,” says John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

“Frustrated at not feeling understood, many then get sucked into a bro-culture of Donald Trump or Elon Musk. They look at who the Democrats prioritise – women, abortion rights, LGTBQ culture – and they ask ‘what about us?’”

Della Volpe specialises in polling younger voters. He says the young men he is referring to are not part of some radical alt right, incel cabal. They are your sons, or they’re your neighbour’s sons. Indeed, he says, many support equality for women, but they also feel their own concerns go unheard.

Della Volpe ticks through a list of statistics showing ways young men today are worse off than their female counterparts: they are less likely to be in relationships, they are less likely to enrol in college than they used to, they have higher rates of suicide than their female peers.

Young American women meanwhile are steaming ahead. They are better educated than men, they work in service industries that are growing and increasingly they are earning more than men. In the period since Donald Trump was elected president, young women have also become significantly more liberal than young men, according to the Gallup polling group.

Which is all creating a stark gender split. Over the last seven years, the share of young men who say the US has gone “too far” promoting gender equality has more than doubled, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

With his almost intuitive grasp of people’s dissatisfactions, Trump has tapped into that male frustration, and in the final weeks of his campaign he has doubled down on masculinity. He reposted a warning on Truth Social claiming “Manhood is Under Attack.” Recently he joked about a famous golfer’s genitalia.

“This is a guy that was all man,” said Trump, referring to golfer Arnold Palmer. “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there – they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’”

Trump took the locker room talk out of the locker room – and his audience loved it. Riffing about penis size at a political rally, it was the ultimate pushback against stifling political correctness.

In their rallies, and on the airwaves, the Democrats’ response to disaffected men seems to be a dose of tough love. Barack Obama scolded that some men “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.” In a new TV ad, Actor Ed O’Neill was a little snappier but more direct: “Be a man: Vote for a woman.”

In the final days of this campaign, gender is everywhere – and nowhere.

Donald Trump wants manhood front and centre of this race. Kamala Harris barely acknowledges she is a woman running for office. In a New York Times poll, Trump leads with male voters by 14%. Harris leads women by 12%.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls – they may well decide this election.

“Google essentially disappeared us from the internet.”

Launch days. They’re equal parts thrilling and terrifying for many start-up business founders, but they don’t get much worse than the one Shivaun Raff and her husband, Adam, experienced.

It was June 2006 and the couple’s trailblazing price comparison website Foundem – one they had sacrificed well-paid jobs for and built from scratch – had just gone fully live.

They didn’t know it at the time but that day, and those that followed, would mark the beginning of the end for their company.

Foundem had been hit by a Google search penalty, prompted by one of the search engine’s automatic spam filters. It pushed the website way down the lists of search results for relevant queries like “price comparison” and “comparison shopping”.

It meant the couple’s website, which charged a fee when customers clicked on their product listings through to other websites, struggled to make any money.

“We were monitoring our pages and how they were ranking, and then we saw them all plummet almost immediately, ” says Adam.

While the launch day for Foundem didn’t go to plan, it would lead to the start of something else – a 15-year legal battle that culminated in a then record €2.4bn (£2bn) fine for Google, which was deemed to have abused its market dominance.

The case has been hailed as a landmark moment in the global regulation of Big Tech.

Google spent seven years fighting that verdict, issued in June 2017, but in September this year Europe’s top court – the European Court of Justice – rejected its appeals.

Speaking to Radio 4’s The Bottom Line in their first interview since that final verdict, Shivaun and Adam explained that at first, they thought their website’s faltering start had simply been a mistake.

“We initially thought this was collateral damage, that we had been false positive detected as spam,” says Shivaun, 55. “We just assumed we had to escalate to the right place and it would be overturned.”

“If you’re denied traffic, then you have no business,” adds Adam, 58.

The couple sent Google numerous requests to have the restriction lifted but, more than two years later, nothing had changed and they said they received no response.

Meanwhile, their website was “ranking completely normally” on other search engines, but that didn’t really matter, according to Shivaun, as “everyone’s using Google”.

The couple would later discover that their site was not the only one to have been put at a disadvantage by Google – by the time the tech giant was found guilty and fined in 2017 there were around 20 claimants, including Kelkoo, Trivago and Yelp.

Adam, who had built a career in supercomputing, says he had the “eureka moment” for Foundem while smoking a cigarette outside the offices of his previous employer.

Then, price comparison websites were in their infancy, and each specialised in one particular product. But Foundem was different because it let customers compare a large range of products – from clothes to flights.

“No-one else was anywhere close to this,” beams Shivaun, who herself had been a software consultant for several major global brands.

In its 2017 judgement, the European Commission found that Google had illegally promoted its own comparison shopping service in search results, whilst demoting those of competitors.

Ten years before that, though – when Foundem launched – Adam says he had no reason to assume Google was being deliberately anti-competitive over online shopping. “They weren’t really serious players,” he says.

But by the end of 2008, the couple had started to suspect foul play.

It was three weeks before Christmas and the pair received a message warning that their website had suddenly become slow to load. They thought it was a cyber attack, “but actually it was just that everyone had started visiting our website”, Adam laughs.

Channel 5’s The Gadget Show had just named Foundem the best price comparison website in the UK.

“And that was really important,” Shivaun explains, “because we then reached out to Google and said, look, surely it’s not benefiting your users to make it impossible for them to find us.

“And that still got from Google, not a complete ignore, but a basically ‘bog off’.”

“That was the moment we knew, OK, we need to fight,” says Adam.

The couple went to the press, with limited success, and took their case to regulators in the UK, US, and Brussels.

It was in the latter – with the European Commission (EC) – that the case eventually took off, with the launch of an antitrust investigation in November 2010. The couple’s first meeting with the regulators took place in a portable cabin in Brussels.

“One of the things they said was if this is a systemic issue, why are you the first people we’re seeing?” Shivaun recalls. “We said we’re not 100% sure, but we suspect people are afraid, because all businesses on the internet essentially rely on Google for the lifeblood that is their traffic.”

The couple were in a hotel room in Brussels, only a few hundred yards from the commission building, when competition commissioner Margarethe Vestager finally announced the verdict that they, and other shopping websites, had been waiting for.

But there was no popping of champagne corks. Their focus then turned to making sure the EC enforced its decision.

“I guess it was unfortunate for Google that they did it to us,” Shivaun says. “We’ve both been brought up maybe under the delusion that we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies.”

Even Google’s final defeat in the case last month did not spell the end for the couple.

They believe Google’s conduct remains anti-competitive and the EC is looking into it. In March this year, under its new Digital Markets Act, the commission opened an investigation into Google’s parent company, Alphabet, over whether it continues to preference its own goods and services in search results.

A spokesperson for Google said: “The CJEU [European Court of Justice] judgment [in 2024] only relates to how we showed product results from 2008-2017.

“The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.

“For this reason, we continue to strongly contest the claims made by Foundem and will do so when the case is considered by the courts.”

The Raffs are also pursuing a civil damages claim against Google, which is due to begin in the first half of 2026. But when, or if, a final victory comes for the couple it will likely be a Pyrrhic one – they were forced to close Foundem in 2016.

The long fight against Google has been gruelling for them, too. “I think if we had known it was going to be quite as many years as it turned out to be we might not have made the same choice,” Adam admits.

Israel’s attack on Iran deepens the war in the Middle East. Avoiding, or risking, an even worse escalation is at the heart of decisions being taken by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key advisors.

They must decide on the least bad of a series of difficult choices. At one end of the spectrum is hitting back with another wave of ballistic missiles. Israel has already threatened to retaliate again if that happens.

At the other is deciding to draw a line under the destructive exchanges of direct strikes on their respective territories. The risk for Iran if it holds its fire is that looks weak, intimidated and deterred by Israel’s military power and political determination, backed up by the United States.

In the end, the supreme leader and his advisers are likely to take the decision that, in their view, does least harm to the survival of Iran’s Islamic regime.

Iran’s official media in the hours before and after Israel’s attacks carried defiant statements that, at face value, suggest the decision to respond had already been taken. Its language resembles Israel’s, citing its right to defend itself against attack. But the stakes are so high that Iran might decide to walk its threats back.

That is the hope of Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who fell in behind America’s insistence that Israel has acted in self-defence.

“I am clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against Iranian aggression,” he said. “I’m equally clear that we need to avoid further regional escalation and urge all sides to show restraint. Iran should not respond.”

Iran’s own statements have been consistent since its ballistic missile on Israel on 1 October. A week ago, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Turkey’s NTV network that “any attack on Iran will be considered crossing a red line for us. Such an attack will not go unanswered.”

Hours before the Israeli strikes, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baqai said: “Any aggression by the Israeli regime against Iran will be met with full force.” It was, he said, “highly misleading and baseless” to suggest that Iran would not respond to a limited Israeli attack.

As the Israeli aircraft were heading back to base Iran’s foreign ministry invoked its right to self defence “as enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter”. A statement said Iran believed it was both entitled and obligated to respond to foreign acts of aggression.

Israel has set the pace of escalation since the spring. It sees Iran as the crucial backer of the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,200 people – Israelis and more than 70 foreign nationals – on 7 October last year. Fearing that Israel was looking for a chance to strike, Iran signalled repeatedly that it did not want a full-on war with Israel.

That did not mean it was prepared to stop its constant, often deadly, but lower-level pressure on Israel and its allies.

The men in Tehran thought they had a better idea than all-out war. Instead, Iran used the allies and proxies in its so-called “axis of resistance” to attack Israel. The Houthis in Yemen blocked and destroyed shipping in the Red Sea. Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon forced at least 60,000 Israelis from their homes.

Six months into the war, Israel’s retaliation forced perhaps twice as many Lebanese from their homes in the south, but Israel was prepared to do much more. It warned that if Hezbollah did not hold its fire into Israel and move back from the border it would take action.

When that did not happen, Israel decided to break out of a battlefield that had been shaped by Iran’s limited, but attritional war. It landed a series of powerful blows that threw the Islamic regime in Tehran off balance and left its strategy in tatters. That is why, after the latest Israeli strikes, Iranian leaders have only hard choices.

Israel interpreted Iran’s reluctance to fight an all-out war as weakness, and upped the pressure both on Iran and its axis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s commanders could afford to take risks. They had President Joe Biden’s unequivocal support, a safety net that came not just in the shape of massive deliveries of munitions, but with his decision to send significant American sea and air reinforcements to the Middle East to back up the US commitment to defend Israel.

On 1 April an Israeli airstrike destroyed part of Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, the Syrian capital. It killed a top Iranian commander, Brig Gen Mohammed Reza Zahedi, along with other senior officers from the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Americans were furious that they had not been warned and given time to put their own forces on alert. But Joe Biden’s support did not waver as Israel faced the consequences of its actions. On 13 April Iran attacked with drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down by Israel’s defences, with considerable help from armed forces of the US, UK, France and Jordan.

Biden apparently asked Israel to “take the win” hoping that might stop what had become the most dangerous moment in the widening Middle East war. When Israel confined its response to a strike on an air defence site, Biden’s plan seemed to be working.

But since the summer, Israel has repeatedly escalated the war with Iran and its axis of allies and proxies. The biggest blows were landed in a major offensive against Iran’s most important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran had spent years building up Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons as a key part of its forward defence. The idea was an Israeli attack on Iran would be deterred by the knowledge that Hezbollah would hammer Israel from just over the border in Lebanon.

But Israel moved first, implementing plans it had developed since Hezbollah fought it to a standstill in the 2006 war. It blew up booby trapped pagers and walkie talkies it had deceived Hezbollah into buying, invaded south Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, a man who had been a symbol of defiant resistance to Israel for decades. The authorities in Beirut say that Israel’s offensive in Lebanon has so far killed more than 2,500 people, displaced more than 1.2 million and caused enormous damage to a country already on its knees after its economy largely collapsed.

Hezbollah is still fighting and killing Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon and firing large numbers of rockets. But it is reeling after losing its leader and much of its arsenal.

Faced with the near collapse of its strategy, Iran concluded it had to hit back. Allowing its allies to fight and die without responding would destroy its position as the leader of the anti-Israeli and anti-western forces in the region. Its answer was a much bigger ballistic missile attack on Israel on 1 October.

The airstrikes on Friday 25 October were Israel’s response. They took longer to come than many expected. Leaks of Israeli plans could have been a factor.

Israel is also carrying out a major offensive in northern Gaza. The UN human rights chief Volker Turk has called it the darkest moment of Gaza’s war, with the Israeli military subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and the risk of starvation.

It’s impossible for an outsider to know whether the timing of Israel’s attacks on Iran was designed to draw international attention away from northern Gaza. But it might have been part of the calculation.

It is hard to stop successive rounds of strikes and counter strikes when the countries concerned believe they will be seen as weak, and deterred, if they don’t respond. That is how wars spin out of control.

The question now is whether Iran is prepared to give Israel the last word, at least on this stage of the war. President Biden backed Israel’s decision to retaliate after 1 October. But once again he tried to head off an even deadlier escalation, telling Israel publicly not to bomb Iran’s most important assets, its nuclear, oil and gas installations. He augmented Israel’s defences by deploying the THAAD anti-missile system to Israel, and prime minister Netanyahu agreed to take his advice.

The American elections on 5 November are part of both Israel and Iran’s calculations about what happens next. If Donald Trump gets his second term, he might be less concerned than Biden about answering Iranian retaliation, if it happens, with strikes on nuclear, oil and gas facilities.

Once again, the Middle East is waiting. Israel’s decision not to hit Iran’s most valuable assets might, perhaps, give Tehran the chance to postpone a response, at least long enough for diplomats to do their work. At the UN General Assembly last month, the Iranians were suggesting that they were open to a new round of nuclear negotiations.

All this should matter greatly to the world outside the Middle East. Iran has always denied it wants a nuclear bomb. But its nuclear expertise and enrichment of uranium have put a weapon within its reach. Its leaders must be looking for a new way to deter their enemies. Developing a nuclear warhead for their ballistic missiles might be on their agenda.

It’s been 10 months since my family left Gaza but we continue to live with the loss, the pain, the impact of the war in all its excruciating detail.

This month – just before the anniversary of the beginning of the conflict – we saw the most harrowing eight hours we’ve experienced in that time.

We received a video message from my wife’s cousin in Gaza, saying: “The tanks are surrounding us and firing at us. These could be the last moments of our lives.

“Pray for us and do anything to save us.”

My wife collapsed, she even lost consciousness: her uncle, aunts and their families – 26 people in total – were all under attack.

Israeli raids and advances into cities and villages all over Gaza – targeting Hamas – have been common for most of this year now.

We didn’t hear anything from them for several hours. They were under bombardment the whole time. Then, finally, a voice note: “Four people have been injured. Your aunt Wafaa is bleeding, her condition is critical.”

I made countless calls, to the Red Cross, the Palestinian Red Crescent, anyone who could help.

After eight hours, the Israeli army finally allowed them to evacuate and move the wounded on foot.

But it was too late for Wafaa – she succumbed to her injuries shortly after reaching the hospital.

We still have so many relatives in Gaza. My father is there, living in a tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, which was bombed again this week.

I’m often overwhelmed by guilt when I call him from Istanbul, where I’ve fled to with my wife and two children.

There are so many people like me, in Turkey, in Egypt, and further afield around the world – the UK, the US, Europe – where we’ve had to go to find safety.

Not everyone can get out, only those with enough money to pay the high fees for passage elsewhere.

But in Egypt alone, more than 100,000 Gazans have crossed south into the country since November.

They’re not under immediate threat there from Israel’s bombs. But many are struggling to feed their families, provide education for their children, and just re-establish the basics of a normal life.

In an open-air, bustling café in Nasr City in Cairo, dozens of newly arrived refugees huddle in small groups, puffing on hookahs, sharing stories about their homeland.

They’re trying to alleviate the pangs of longing for those not currently with them. They cling to hope that the war will end soon, that they can return. But there’s a constant thrum of anxiety.

A loud traditional Palestinian song plays over the speakers – a hit by Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf, who won the Arab Idol competition a few years ago.

58-year-old Abu Anas Ayyad is among those sitting there, listening. In his past life he had been known as the “King of Gravel”, a successful businessman who had supplied building materials to constructions sites all over Gaza.

He and his family – including four children – escaped. But: “Every missile that hits a building in Gaza feels like a piece of my heart shattering.

“I still have family and friends there,” he says.

“All of this could have been avoided. But Hamas has a different opinion.”

He rues the Iran-backed group’s attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and the consequences now.

“Despite my love for Gaza, I will not return if Hamas remains in power,” he says. He doesn’t want his children to be “used as pawns in a dangerous game played by reckless leaders for the sake of Iran.”

Sitting nearby is Mahmoud Al Khozondr, who before the war had run his family’s renowned hummus and falafel shop in Gaza. It’s an institution in the territory – known for its food and celebrity clientele. The late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat had been a frequent patron, often spotted at its tables.

Mahmoud shows me pictures of his former well-appointed family home on his phone. They now live in a cramped two-room apartment. His children can’t go to school.

“It’s a miserable life,” he says. “We lost everything back home. But we must rise again,” he says.

“We need food for our children, and assistance for our people still in Gaza.”

Living in exile in Egypt is not easy. The authorities have allowed Palestinians to stay temporarily, but they don’t grant official residency. They limit access to education and other key services.

Many Gazans try and send money back to support relatives still in Gaza – but remittance fees are steep and war merchants take a 30% cut.

“It’s heart-breaking to see profits being made from our loved ones’ suffering,” Mahmoud Saqr tells me.

He used to own an electronics store in Gaza. These days he has to take a bundle of cash to a shop in Cairo to transfer money to his sister.

“There’s no receipt, no proof—just a message hours later confirming they’ve received the money,” he tells me, describing the process.

“It’s risky, because we don’t know who is involved in this transaction but we have no choice.”

These are desperate times for everyone.

Over the past year in Turkey, I’ve tried in vain to create a peaceful living environment for my family.

But every time we go to a restaurant, my children reminisce about their favourite spots in Gaza, their large home, their games shop, their friends at the horse club, their classmates.

Some of those classmates have been killed in the Israeli air strikes, which continue.

But since October 7, time has stood still for us. We have yet to move on from that day.

We may have escaped physically, but our souls and hearts remained tethered to our loved ones in Gaza.

Israel has carried out what it described as “precise and targeted” airstrikes on Iran in retaliation for the barrage of missile strikes launched by Tehran against Israel earlier this month.

It is the latest in a series of exchanges between the two countries that for months have sparked fears of an all-out regional war.

But while Iran says Saturday’s strikes against military sites killed four soldiers, early indications suggest the attacks were more limited than had been feared.

Here’s what we know.

Around 02:15 local time (22:45 GMT on Friday), Iranian media reported explosions in and around the capital, Tehran.

Video uploaded to social media and verified by the BBC showed projectiles in the sky over the city, while residents in some areas reported hearing loud booms.

Shortly after, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it was carrying out “precise” strikes on “military targets” in Iran.

The attacks involved scores of aircraft, including jets and drones. The targets included Iran’s air defences, as well as missile and drone production, and launch facilities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant followed the operation from the IDF’s command and control centre in Tel Aviv.

The strikes came in several waves, over a three-hour period. Just after 06:30 (03:00 GMT), the IDF said the strikes had concluded.

The White House described the strikes as an “exercise of self-defence”. A senior administration official said the US had worked with Israel to encourage a “targeted and proportional” response.

The extent of the attacks – and the damage caused – remains unclear at this stage.

The IDF said it hit around 20 targets, including missile manufacturing facilities, surface-to-air-missiles and other military sites.

The Iranian military confirmed that four soldiers had died, two “while battling projectiles”.

Iranian authorities said sites in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces were targeted. The country’s air defence said it had “successfully intercepted” the attacks, but that “some areas sustained limited damage”.

BBC Verify has identified damage at a defence ministry base to the east of Tehran, and at an air defence base to the south.

A senior US administration official said the attacks did not damage Iranian oil infrastructure or nuclear facilities, targets President Joe Biden had urged Israel not to hit.

Syrian state media also reported strikes on military sites in central and southern Syria, though Israel has not confirmed striking the country.

Iran is the primary backer of a range of groups across the Middle East – often described as proxy groups – that are hostile to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which Israel is currently at war with.

In April, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel, with about 300 missiles and drones, in retaliation for an Israeli air strike on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria that killed several top commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Israel responded with a “limited” strike on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan, which Iran chose not to respond to.

Later, in July, Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an airstrike on Beirut. The next day, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel, though Israel did not comment.

In late September, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Brig-Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, a high-ranking Iranian official, in Beirut.

On October 1, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, which it said was in response to the deaths of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and Nilforoushan.

This latest attack on Iran is Israel’s response to that.

• Read more: Why did Israel attack Iran?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied a report by US outlet Axios that prior to the attacks, Israel sent Iran a message revealing certain details about the strikes, and warning Tehran not to respond.

“Israel did not inform Iran before the attack – not about the time, not about the targets, not about the strength of the attack,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.

Still, early signs indicate this attack was not as serious as some had feared.

The IDF said in a statement that “we are focused on our war objectives in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. It is Iran that continues to push for a wider regional escalation”.

A senior US official said “this should be the end of this direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran”.

Iran’s foreign ministry said it was “entitled and obligated to defend itself” and described the attack as a violation of international law.

But it also said that Tehran recognises its “responsibilities towards regional peace and security”.

Images published by Iranian state media show life continuing in relative normality – with busy streets, people exercising in parks, and fruit and vegetable markets open as usual.

Iran closed its airspace for a few hours overnight, but it later reopened and commercial flights were in the air across the country by late afternoon.

But there are signs the Iranian government are keen to play down the impact of the attacks.

The IRGC has announced that it is a criminal offense to send “images or news” related to the attack to outlets that it deems “Israel-affiliated” or “hostile”. Usually, Iran refers to Western media as hostile.

Iranian media reported today that Tehran’s Prosecutor Office has filed charges against an unnamed website for “covering issues counter to national security”.

US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said Israel’s response “avoided populated areas and focused solely on military targets, contrary to Iran’s attack against Israel that targeted Israel’s most populous city”.

But Washington’s aim, he added, is “to accelerate diplomacy and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Israel had the right to defend itself, but urged all sides to “show restraint” and called for Iran not to respond.

Saudi Arabia condemned the attack, and warned against any action that “threatens the security and the stability” of the region.

Egypt’s foreign ministry echoed those concerns, saying it was “gravely concerned” by the strikes.

Hamas described them as “a flagrant violation of Iranian sovereignty, and an escalation that targets the security of the region and the safety of its peoples”.

There is one image that keeps a Gaza musician going like no other – that of the territory’s only concert grand piano.

Khamis Abu Shaban had finally risked returning to the music school at which he taught – and which owns the piano – a few months into the current conflict.

What he saw, at the Gaza branch of the Palestinian music school, the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, was “a catastrophe”.

“More than half of the Conservatory was burned. All the instruments were broken, thrown outside. You start seeing cases of instruments as soon as you get close to the Conservatory on the streets. Violins, we had more than 50, completely smashed. Cellos, more than 40, completely smashed.”

Altogether, the Gaza branch of the Conservatory used to have more than 400 instruments – both Western classical ones and traditional Arabic instruments such as the oud, qanun and nay, a type of flute. Khamis says he felt “completely destroyed”.

But then he saw something which lifted his spirits.

“The only… instrument that I saw standing was the grand piano. Honestly, I smiled when I saw it. I smiled and I laughed.”

The Yamaha concert grand also withstood bombing in a previous war between Israel and Gaza’s rulers – Hamas – in 2014, and was carefully restored the following year by a French music technician. It became a symbol for many of aspirations that the territory could develop a flourishing musical culture.

“I started talking to the piano,” says Khamis. “I asked: ‘Are you the only survivor of all the instruments? You don’t want to die?’ I really laughed.”

Singing in Gaza

Tim Whewell reported from Gaza in 2015 on the rescue of the territory’s only concert grand piano after a previous war. Now, he finds out how musicians he met then are living and working through this war. He learns about a boy who started playing the violin after he lost his hand in an airstrike. And he finds out about the second near-miraculous survival of the grand piano.

Listen on BBC Sounds

It is too dangerous for the teachers and students to resume lessons at the music school, because of Israeli military operations in the area around it in north-west Gaza. Instead, they have started giving music lessons to tens of thousands of displaced children living in the makeshift camps where many Gazans now reside.

They teach outdoors, under canvas awnings, or in schools and shelters run by UNRWA, the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

“Life goes on, and even with all this death around us, people need anything that can make them… not happy – no-one will be happy in this period – but something that can make them smile, be able to continue with life,” Khamis says.

The teachers – who are using whatever borrowed instruments they can find – include former students of the Conservatory, such as 16-year-old violinist Sama Nijim. One of her students is Mohammed Abu Eideh, a boy who lost his right hand in an airstrike.

He used to play the oud – his favourite instrument – but this requires two hands. So Sama devised a way for him to learn violin instead – by tying a violin bow to his arm with a scarf, so that he could bow without the use of a hand.

Such versatility on the part of the staff can also be seen in teacher Osama Jahjouh’s fashioning of a nay – or traditional flute – out of a plastic pipe, because the Conservatory nays have been lost.

Fuad Khader, who created a children’s choir in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of Gaza, says that at first it was difficult to persuade parents to let their children take part in the activities.

“They asked: ‘People are dying, and you want to teach kids to sing?’” he says. “But I just told them: ‘Everyone has to do something. I’m a musician. And this is my job.’”

Another teacher, Ahmed Abu Amsha, says the music lessons had a transformative effect on the children.

“After a week, the families came to me and told me: ‘You have changed our kids. They are getting better. They are singing, they are laughing.’”

But he adds: “Sometimes we are singing a song – and suddenly there’s a big explosion, that makes us go silent and look at each other. And I say: ‘Don’t worry, let’s continue.’ I have to be strong in front of the children. And in some moments, they forget they are in a war.

“But when they go, I’m not strong,” he says.

“It’s like I’m sucking the bad energy from the kids. And when I try to go to sleep, it’s a horrible feeling… [I will be] thinking of a kid – how he’s seen dead bodies in the street, and his father is dead, and his sister and his uncle… Each child has a story to tell, and I try to heal them.”

As for the grand piano, Khamis Abu Shaban hopes students will one day be able to play it again.

He says that when he last saw it, several months into the war, he lifted the lid and found that some of the strings had been cut and some of the hammers broken.

“I’m familiar with how an instrument can be damaged,” he said. “A hammer cannot be broken just by shock waves, for example. Someone has opened it and started sabotaging the inside.”

But Khamis’ delight at having seen the piano is undiminished.

“Now, I see it still standing in front of me,” he laughs. “It’s telling me: ‘I’m not one to die. I’m still here for you. And I will stay.’”

Pixies frontman Black Francis wouldn’t be your first pick to read the CBeebies Bedtime Story.

Over the course of his band’s wildly influential career, his fractured, often abstract songs have referenced Biblical violence, mutilation, incest, torture and death.

“Sliced up eyeballs” and “goats of lust” aren’t traditionally the sort of images that help your toddler drift off to sleep.

Luckily, he didn’t recite his own lyrics when he popped into CBeebies earlier this month. The book he chose did have a distinct Pixies flavour, though. It’s called There Was A Young Zombie Who Swallowed A Worm

“I usually don’t do things like that, but I enjoyed it,” the 59-year-old says.

“My girlfriend sort of insisted, so I did it with feeling and, you know, I raised five kids, so I’m pretty good at bedtime stories.”

It’s hard to imagine Pixies appearing on children’s television at any other point in their career.

The abrasive riffs and intertwining harmonies of songs like Debaser, Monkey Gone To Heaven, and Where Is My Mind signposted the future of alternative rock in the late 1980s; and they were cited as inspirations by everyone from Nirvana and Radiohead to… er, James Blunt. (“They’d be furious to hear that, wouldn’t they?” he recently said).

Just as the artists they inspired began to hit the mainstream, the band broke up – but their reputation grew in their absence.

In 2003, the NME named their 1989 album Doolittle (recorded for $40,000 in the basement of a hair salon) the second-best record of all time.

Twelve years later, it sold its 300,000th copy in the UK, gaining the band their first ever platinum record, 30 years after they formed.

By that point, they’d reunited for a first-rate second phase. When we speak, they’re about to set off on an Australian stadium tour with Pearl Jam.

“Our audience just seems to get bigger all the time,” Francis says… Hence the cameo on CBeebies.

Pixies formed in 1986, when Francis (born Charles Thompson IV) dropped out of university and persuaded his guitarist room-mate Joey Santiago to do the same. A local newspaper ad brought in bassist Kim Deal and, through her, drummer Dave Lovering.

A buzzy demo tape won them a contract with British label 4AD, and they were quickly embraced by the indie music press, where one writer described their corrosive sound as “a wild new shock”.

But the secret to their success, Francis says, is simplicity.

He describes the first time Pixies headlined Reading festival in 1990. Further down the bill was a group whose show was a “very Vegas kind of affair”.

“They had lights and confetti and balloons,” he recalls. “A lot of schtick going on.

“Their tour manager turned to our manager, Chas Banks, and said, ‘So what do you have prepared for your set?”

“And he replied, ’25 good songs'”.

“I was very proud that that’s how he responded, because that is literally all we had. We had no dance moves, we had no balloons, we literally just had our music.

There’s a tussle in the music, too, which vacillates between blood-curdling punk and what the band called “dust-bowl songs” – country-tinged, heartland folk ballads.

Lovering has said the album is “more traditional” than earlier Pixies records. Francis says those seeds were sown in his 1990s solo work.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and I’ll say something that I’ve not said in an interview before,” he says.

“When the Pixies broke up, I began to allow myself to stand outside of so-called underground music. I even went and made a couple of records at Nashville.

“And when we got back together, there was a lot of reticence from the producers and, quietly, behind-the-scenes, the managers, who were trying to make sure that Charles didn’t turn it into some sort of ‘country thing’.

“I think I deferred to that somewhat, but I didn’t feel like the results were necessarily notable. So I started to allow more of that stuff into the mix.

“And I think everyone around me has, consciously or unconsciously, relaxed and allowed me to do it.”

He warms to the theme, saying it’s unreasonable to expect a band in their fifth decade to re-capture the spittle-flecked anger of youth.

“It gets harder to do those kind of things, because when you’re young, there’s so much naïvete driving the bus. Even if the song compositionally is flimsy, you make up for it with all that energy.

“But what happens is you get better at playing guitar, better at composing, and that naïve energy is gone. It’s very hard to tap into it. It’s much easier to tap into the I-know-what-the-hell-I’m-doing energy.

“And maybe that’s not what people want to hear but, you know what? I can’t be 19 years old again. And the harder you try, the sillier it sounds.”

One of his new songs disproves that theory.

Oyster Beds is two minutes of lean, vigorous riffs coupled with what, on the surface, appear to be some of Francis’s most surreal lyrics to date: “A musketeer and her two deers / A country house in Dadasphere.”

In fact, he wrote the song in his art studio, and the lyrics are “a little laundry list of things I’ve painted in the last few years”.

“I was kind of like, ‘I just need some words here’, and it’s a punky song, so I wasn’t feeling strongly about the message.

What does he get from painting that music doesn’t provide?

“Solace [from] other people,” he laughs. “Not that playing with people is bad, because it gives you companionship, but sometimes it can get laborious.

“With painting, I realised, ‘Oh, I can do this and have all of the debates and fights in my head, and there’s no one to answer to’.”

He proceeds to describe that process at entertaining length.

“So if the brushes are driving the bus, I’ll be like, ‘Don’t forget about your narrative’. But then my inner monologue will go, ‘Screw the narrative, because right now big brush is in charge and big brush is making a big mess’.

“Then it’ll be like, ‘Alright, you’ve ruined the painting enough, it’s time to think about what this painting is about. We’ve got to let figurative take over for a while to bring some order to all this chaos’.

“And so it becomes this argument between the different elements of the painting. They’re all professors at the Black Francis art school, and I really enjoy that.

“It’s crazy, even insane, what’s going on in my head, but I do it for hours.”

Crazy, maybe, but the most compelling art comes from creative chaos – and that’s why, after all these years, Pixies are still a thrill.

When Tegi Pannu reflects on the thousands turning up to watch him perform on tour, he’s reminded of a quote his dad had framed in their house in India.

“Those who dream the most, do the most.”

“I used to dream that one day I’m going to be on the stage,” the Punjabi artist tells BBC Asian Network’s Haroon Rashid in his first ever interview.

“I wanted people to know my music first and then the man behind the music.”

Tegi has been on a sell-out tour of the UK, with songs such as Forever, Schedule and Untouchable regularly charting and being streamed hundreds of millions of times by adoring fans.

He is the latest artist involved in getting Punjabi music to have its global moment, alongside the likes of Diljit Dosanjh, AP Dhillon and Karan Aujla.

But his journey to this moment hasn’t been simple.

Tegi and his family moved to Australia from India when he was in his late teens, and his brother made it clear to him the priority was not music.

“You have to work and then you’ve got your parents to look after,” he says, adding he was “more concerned about my visa conditions”.

At one stage, he felt it might not happen as a career, but says keeping it as a hobby helped.

“You can’t let go of some things. They are in your heart and music was always in my heart.

“I think if you follow something with a true heart, God sees it.”

Pursuing a “very unstable” hobby while the family was trying to earn and make a life in a new country was not easy for Tegi.

“I worked on my residency first. I did whatever my brother said, but then I wanted to do something for myself.”

Before the music took off, Tegi says he tried to have a “low-key life” and was not really into social media – “an introvert kind of a person” is how he describes himself.

“But now I would say a guy who’s really passionate about music who wants to achieve more in his life,” he says.

The change for him came during the coronavirus pandemic, a phase of life he describes as “pre-lockdown Tegi and post-lockdown Tegi”.

It was once strict Covid restrictions were lifted in Australia that he realised the popularity of Schedule and Untouchable.

“People recognising and playing your sound. That was exciting because that’s what as a young kid I dreamed of,” he says.

“After Untouchable, I started going out and people from the road were calling ‘Tegi, Tegi’.

“I didn’t expect that. People now want to take photos with you, they want to know you and it’s exciting.”

He says his parents are also proud, and more popular too.

“Everyone’s calling them more, they’ve got people at their house every few weeks. Now they’re realising that this is big.”

But he dreams of going even bigger – naming Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla, two fellow Punjabi artists, as stars he wants to emulate.

“Diljit’s consistency, he’s been doing what he loves. Every time he comes up with something exciting.

“I haven’t seen someone that good on stage.

“And with Karan, I would say his composition and lyrics, no one can match,” Tegi says.

After a number of hits, you might think there’s pressure on Tegi to replicate his success with future songs, such as the newly released Hold On which he describes as a “dance pop sound”.

“There’s always going to be pressure because there’s going to be new talent coming every few months.

“You have to improve, have to understand a new sound. You have to keep doing things like they matter and work hard.”

But he says his approach is to “keep it very simple”.

“I like to make music, which I like. If I like the music, I think people are going to like it as well.

“If I don’t like it, personally, I don’t think people are going to connect.”

He’s also keen to venture into a more country style, a risk some might say to go against what the audience wants and expects from him now.

But Tegi doesn’t see it like that.

“If you don’t experiment, you won’t know what people think of you.”

Desperate for a break from office drudgery but scared of not making ends meet? France has an idea that might interest you: part-time farming.

A new tribe has been identified that wants the best of both worlds: city and country; laptop and the land; the digital and the manual.

These young mould-breakers use the opportunities of technology and workplace flexibility for a hybrid lifestyle that – they say – fits today’s desire for meaning as well as money.

Working the soil brings the rewards of physical labour, and a sense of purpose too often missing from their spreadsheets and tabulations.

But by edging in gently to farming, they keep the financial assurance of a back-up city salary, as well as the intellectual sustenance of their urban social circle.

“In the corporate world, there are more and more people questioning the meaning of what they are doing. There’s an awful lot of burn-out and anxiety,” says Julien Maudet, data-engineer and cider-maker.

“On the farm, you don’t have to ask. It’s obvious why you’re doing it. It’s to produce food for people. But you’re doing it in conditions that are often very uncertain and risky.

“These two worlds – the farm and the office – are in crisis. And it dawned on me that each is the solution to the other. What we need to do is bring the two worlds together.”

Maudet is one of the founders of Slasheurs-cueilleurs, an organisation that seeks to promote these new cross-over careers.

The name is a wordplay in French, because it sounds like the expression chasseurs-cueilleurs (hunter-gatherers). The slasheur part comes from the slash key on a computer, and denotes someone with more than one job (as in “I’m a chef-slash-football coach).

The idea came to Maudet during the Covid lockdowns, when he went to ground at his grandparents’ farm in Normandy. When he began looking a year ago, he realised that there were already hundreds of people doing what he was advocating. “We invented nothing. We just shone a light,” he says.

A classic example is Matthew Charlton, an English-born teacher at Sorbonne university who now spends more than half his week growing watercress in a smallholding 64km (40 miles) south of Paris.

This part of the Essonne department was once famous for its “green gold”, but many cressonnières were abandoned from the 1970s and are only now being resurrected.

“The beauty of watercress is that you don’t need machinery or massive investment. It’s just you and a pair of gumboots and a knife,” says Charlton, who harvests around 30,000 bunches every year for sale to farm shops and restaurants in Paris.

“Today I am at the university on Mondays and Thursdays. The other days I am here at the farm or else delivering the cress in Paris – which is where I live.

“It’s a lifestyle that suits me perfectly. I get a lot of outdoors, then I can recharge my batteries two days a week in Paris. Eventually I want to do the cress full time, but this way I’ve been able to ease my way in, without taking on too much of a financial gamble.”

Some of those who have become slasheurs have inherited family land; others rent it, or buy it, or have arrangements with farmers to pool resources. Some live in the country for a couple of days a week; some make a reverse commute to fields in the city hinterland; some work seasonally.

In the city they are lawyers, engineers and consultants. In the country they are market-gardeners, winegrowers or labourers. Only a few work with livestock, which demands a more permanent presence.

What seems to unite them is a yearning for spiritual fulfilment, as well as an attachment to the idea of cleaner, organic production. All agree that office-based careers have left them at times feeling redundant and pointless.

Marie Paitier, a cider-maker and human resources consultant, says she and her husband both suffered “burn out” – by which she means emotional breakdowns – because of their city jobs.

“It wasn’t just my employer’s fault. It was me,” she says. “I was working too hard. But now I share my time between Normandy, where we live and the children go to school, and Paris where I work part-time.

“I didn’t want to leave everything behind. I liked my job in Paris – and the money is important. But this way we have the right balance.”

City types have always dreamed of a simpler rural life, and there have been previous waves of emigration to the country – notably in the post-May ‘68 generation. What is different now are the possibilities opened up by technology – remote working, artificial intelligence, flexible careers – as well as the growing importance of ecology as a factor in the choices we make.

“This isn’t about rich people from the city playing at being farmers,” says Maudet. “Our vision is that this will be part of a fundamental change.

“Our farms need more hands if they’re to produce the kind of quality food which we should be eating. If we don’t get people into the fields, then farms will get bigger and bigger and more and more industrial.

“And office workers, under threat from A.I., are looking for new outlets. We would be so much more resilient as a society, if we all went in to something more hybrid.”

Botswana’s governing party – in power for almost six decades – is trying to pull off a trick in Wednesday’s general election by using a phrase normally associated with long-suffering opposition groups.

In its manifesto, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is calling for “change”.

“Let’s change together and build prosperity for all,” President Mokgweetsi Masisi – in charge of the country since 2018 – writes in the introduction.

It is an acknowledgement that things need to be done differently – the opposition argues that the president’s party is not in a position to do that.

Though analysts say the outcome of the election is hard to predict this time, the BDP has won handsome parliamentary majorities at the 11 elections since independence in 1966.

It subsequently secured the presidency every time as MPs elect the head of state.

The BDP has been credited with overseeing a peaceful and dramatic transformation of a poor country, with only a few kilometres of tarred roads at independence, into a place where average living standards are among the highest on the continent.

Underpinning this transformation has been Botswana’s huge diamond reserves – measured by their value, the country is the world’s largest producer of the gemstone.

And yet all is not well.

Botswana is facing big economic challenges – hence Masisi’s talk of change.

More than one in four of the working population is unemployed, with an even higher proportion among younger people, according to the World Bank.

Politics professor at the University of Botswana Zibani Maundeni described it as a “jobless economy”.

“We are producing graduates every year and the economy is not producing enough jobs for them,” he told the BBC’s Africa Daily podcast.

In addition, Botswana’s wealth is not evenly spread around among its 2.3 million people.

By a measure known as the Gini index, researchers say it is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

And the diamond industry appears to be under pressure globally as demand has been falling.

But Masisi and his party continue to project confidence.

At a campaign rally in an opposition stronghold in central Botswana, the president arrived in style in an electric vehicle assembled in the country.

Getting out, the 63-year-old former teacher danced towards the stage greeting supporters in red-and-white party colours.

Laughter rang through the crowd as Masisi’s humour and charisma electrified the audience.

The area – home to the previous President, Ian Khama – elected three opposition MPs in 2019.

This was after Khama defected from the BDP to help form the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), saying he regretted picking Masisi as his successor.

The dramatic fall-out between the two men led to Khama leaving the country, accusing the government of trying to poison him.

Khama was then charged with money laundering, among other crimes, all of which he denies.

It also ended the political dominance of his family – his father, Sir Seretse Khama, was the country’s first president and served for 14 years from 1966.

“I am sorry, please come back home and also call others over,” Masisi told the rally pleading to voters to return to the BDP.

Hair-salon owner, Thandiwe Potso, 32, seemed convinced.

“Masisi truly understands our challenges and brought better programmes to fund our businesses,” she told the BBC, her eyes shining with conviction.

Kabelo Selemo, 45, agreed.

“His policies have helped us grow as you can see we no longer import vegetables. I believe in his vision for our future,” said the small-business owner.

• How friends became foes in Africa’s diamond state

But according to an opinion poll, many others may not be so easy to convince.

Respected non-partisan polling organisation Afrobarometer released a damming report earlier this year.

It said that despite the country ranking highly in good governance on the continent, people in Botswana had a negative view of the government believing there were high levels of corruption.

“Strong majorities express little or no trust in the incumbent and disapprove of the way he has performed his job,” it said.

BDP spokesperson Kagelelo Banks Kentse questioned the credibility of the poll.

He argued that Afrobarometer had in previous elections underestimated support for the BDP and thought it would be no different this time. Though the party is not taking anything for granted.

“I would be very wrong to say that we are over-confident,” Kentse told the BBC.

“I always hear people saying: ‘This is the toughest election we’ve come across’, but we say that in every election year. You never win before the actual vote.”

He admitted that the unemployment rate did not paint a good picture, but argued that every nation on the continent was experiencing similar problems, adding that his party was pledging to create 300,000 more jobs.

Kentse also touted the toughly negotiated deal that Masisi struck with diamond firm De Beers last year for Botswana to benefit more from its natural resources.

Initially the state will get a 30% share of the rough diamonds mined in the country, an increase on the 25% it got previously, rising to 50% within 10 years.

But Dumelang Saleshando, leader of one of the largest opposition parties, argued that the government has just copied others’ ideas.

He said his Botswana Congress Party (BCP) had first set a jobs target, which the BDP had previously rejected saying it was better to leave things to the free market.

One of the slogans Saleshando is deploying is: “Save Botswana”.

“I think people have seen the BDP for what it is,” he told the BBC.

“It certainly cannot argue that it is an agent of change. In the past it has always tried to say it’s about keeping stability – more of the same – and out of panic they are trying to preach what they don’t believe in.”

Supporters of another opposition party – the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), which got the second largest share of the vote in 2019, came out in their numbers in the north of the capital, Gaborone.

Dressed in blue-and-white T-shirts and sun hats, they cheered leader Duma Boko.

Unlike Masisi, Boko generally remained serious, in order to emphasise how much the people were suffering under the BDP.

He alleged that there were attempts to rig the poll.

“I urge you all to be vigilant and after voting out the BDP you remain at the polling station to guard your vote,” he said.

Thapelo Dimpe, a 45-year-old former teacher, has no doubts about why he wants to see the president’s party defeated.

“Masisi has let us down on education reform. The UDC plans to invest in our schools and empower our youth with the education they deserve,” he said.

Although the government has a host of problems that could dent its support, opposition divisions could enable the BDP to stay in power.

Every MP is elected on a first-past-the-post basis, meaning that to win a seat, the BDP only needs the largest number of votes in a constituency rather than more than 50%.

In a seat where the UDC, BCP or BPF – or a number of other parties – are running, it could mean that the opposition vote is split, allowing the BDP to get in.

“These parties seem to have factionalism within themselves, they keep taking internal issues to the media – they are not really united,” political analyst Lesole Machacha told the BBC.

But he also pointed out that the BDP had its own problems.

“The ruling party is not 100% intact – it is also having issues. In some constituencies BDP politicians who were not happy with the primary process are running as independent candidates, which could divide that vote,” Mr Machacha said.

All this makes for a closely fought and unpredictable election, he added.

For one of Africa’s most successful political parties, the question now is whether enough people are convinced that it can oversee the change that the country needs.

• World’s second-largest diamond found in Botswana
• Botswana welcomes Tebogo home with stadium spectacular
• Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Thirty years since the seaside town hosted its first Goth Weekend, Whitby is still a “safe and accepting” place, say regular visitors to the festival.

Held annually in April and October, the gothic gathering began in 1994 and now attracts large crowds to Whitby’s cobbled streets.

Inspired by the town’s association with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, it started out as a one-off meeting of pen-friends in The Elsinore pub.

This year’s celebrations will take place from 1 November and include live music and stalls, with a 30th birthday party planned for 3 November.

Elaine Horton, owner of goth shop Pandemonium, said her business would not exist without the boost in trade from the two weekends.

Her alternative store sells clothing, shoes, babywear, hair accessories, jewellery and gifts and first opened in 1999.

Ms Horton said there was a large variation within the subculture.

“Believe it or not there are probably around 35 types of goth,” she said.

“There are a lot of people who come into Whitby just for the architecture, they come to Goth Weekend because they like the clothing, they like the music, some people like all of it,” she added.

Members of The Sophie Lancaster Foundation charity have been attending Whitby Goth Weekend since the 20-year-old was killed in 2007.

She died after a group of boys attacked her and her boyfriend in a park in Lancashire while they were dressed in gothic clothing. Two of them were convicted of murder.

The foundation has a stall at the festival to raise money for its work, educate people and keep her memory alive.

Elloise Dickinson, education and engagement manager, said the event was a “special place for the foundation”.

“The Whitby goths have always been there for us,” she said.

“We meet people who would see Sophie in Manchester or know people who knew her and even those who don’t come up and say: ‘We resonate with her story.’ ”

Ms Dickinson said the town felt like a “second home” for the foundation.

“Our heart is there,” she said.

“In a place like Whitby there’s so much support.

“The festival gives a chance for alternative people to come out in finery and express themselves and feel safe.

“It’s important for others to see alternative people look so amazing in a way they feel comfortable.

“I’ve seen people as old as 80 or 90 but also children as young as four or five who are just getting into it.

“It’s really important to celebrate difference in culture and celebrate diversity.”

“Dr Crank”, who runs ghost walks, said he had watched the goth festival grow into a “worldwide event”.

“The reason the goths like to come to Whitby, especially this time of the year, is it’s atmospheric,” he said.

Dr Crank, who also holds Halloween walks and a Dracula-themed tour, added: “You get goths from all over the world coming to Whitby, we welcome them all.

“Whitby’s a very accepting town and every year they bring colour – mainly black or purple.”

Merryn Wilderspin, an artist and designer from Malton, has created two Whitby Goth Weekend collections of her made-to-order designer bags.

She said: “I thought Whitby’s goth and steampunk activities could make for interesting themes.”

Despite admitting she “can’t falsely claim to be a die-hard goth”, she said the weekend had a “fun atmosphere” and she loved being part of it.

She said: “Goth is so much to do with fashion and music, which are natural parts of my life.

“With the collections, I thought people would like to have something they can use in an everyday sense that offers a goth flavour without it being too obvious.”

On a summer afternoon in 2019, nurse Charlotte Lay got ready for her night shift as normal but “wasn’t feeling quite right”.

Within a short space of time she had decided to end her own life close to a West Yorkshire railway station.

But thanks to the kindness of the train driver who found her in crisis, she did not go through with it.

Three years later they married each other and went on to have children.

“I’d struggled with my mental health since my teens and I’d been in and out of the system since,” Charlotte, now 33, says.

Her memories of that day five years ago are “quite blurry” but she says she remembers seeing a train pulling up on the tracks where she was, close to Crossflatts Station, near Bradford.

“I remember seeing a man getting off the train and starting to panic and thinking he was going to tell me off,” she recalls.

“He approached me and said ‘hi, my name is Dave, are you having a bad day?’

“I said ‘yeah, just a bit’. He went ‘OK’, we can sit and talk until it feels better.”

Dave, who works for train operator Northern, remembers getting out of his cab, “kneeling down” in front of Charlotte and introducing himself.

He told her they would talk things through “until you feel comfortable enough” to get onto the train, where she could be taken to safety.

The pair talked for half an hour, by which time Charlotte, though still distressed, agreed to get into the cab. She was taken to Skipton Station and left in the care of the police.

The following day, Charlotte was desperate to find the man who had been so kind to her and issued an appeal on a local Facebook group for anyone who worked for Northern who might be able to put her in touch.

“I’d have understood if he didn’t want to hear from me, but I just wanted to say ‘thank you’ for giving me the time and for treating me like I was human being,” she says.

Her plea was successful and after Charlotte was given Dave’s number by one of his colleagues who had seen the appeal, she sent him a text.

Dave, who is now 47, was equally relieved to hear from her.

He says he had “never had the opportunity” to get off the train and talk to someone in crisis before.

“I needed to know she was all right,” he explains. “I’d contacted police to try to find out what happened to her and just wanted to make sure she was safe.

“I felt like I’d had a duty to make sure she was all right. We’d had that rapport built by the side of the track. It was just nice to be able to make that difference to somebody.”

After Dave returned Charlotte’s text telling her he was available whenever she needed to speak to someone, they began exchanging messages on a daily basis.

They then met for a coffee two months later and the rest was history.

In 2022, the couple, who live in nearby Wilsden, got married, with Charlotte 22 weeks pregnant.

But before then, there was one more twist to their story.

In July 2020, Dave was diagnosed with testicular cancer, after he went to his GP with a bad back.

He is adamant that he would never have gone to the doctors were it not for Charlotte’s insistence.

“It’s because I’m a bloke,” he says.

“I’d done 12 or 13 years in the motor trade working on cold floors and out in the elements, lifting and carrying silly things. I just put it down to a bad back.

“Charlotte kept saying ‘go to the doctors’. I said it was just me getting old.”

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Weeks after his diagnosis, Dave was given the all clear.

A consultant at St James’ Hospital in Leeds last year told him he would no longer have been alive had he not had been diagnosed when he was.

“Charlotte may say I saved her life, which I don’t know about really, but she saved my life as well,” Dave says.

The couple say they wanted to share their story in the hope that anyone who is struggling can know better times are around the corner.

“Life does get better,” Charlotte, who is now a mum of three, says. “You just have to be here to see it.”

Charlotte says that it is often too difficult for people who are struggling to “reach out” and ask for help, so suggests people around them “reach in” instead. She continues to receive ongoing support for her mental health.

She believes asking someone if they are OK more than once can help them open up.

“We owe it to each other to be checking in with people around us,” she says.

“You don’t have to offer life-changing advice or say anything profound. Just sitting down with a cuppa can make all the difference.

“Because of what I’ve been through, I had a duty to talk about it and I’m hoping it’s going to be a conversation starter.”

West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds

The Prince of Wales says “inspiration and guidance” from his mother, Diana, has been a driving force behind his personal commitment to tackle homelessness.

In a forthcoming ITV documentary, Prince William talks about the profound impact of visits he made to The Passage homelessness shelter with his mother when he was a child – and how it helped him see “outside the palace walls”.

The prince admits he sometimes feels guilty about not being able to do more – and wants to share with his own children a sense of empathy for those facing hardship.

“When I was very small, my mother started talking about homelessness, much like I do now with my children on the school run,” says the prince.

If passion projects reveal something about what drives someone, then perhaps his support for The Passage charity is key to unlocking Prince William’s character.

The Westminster-based charity provides assistance and friendship for London’s homeless and helps them into secure accommodation.

Forged by childhood memories of visits with his mother, the prince’s longtime support for the charity has provided the foundation for his current Homewards project, set up to tackle homelessness across the UK.

“My mother took me to The Passage. She took Harry and I both there. I must have been about 11, I think, probably, at the time. Maybe 10. I’d never been to anything like that before. And I was a bit anxious as to what to expect,” he says in the ITV documentary, Prince William: We Can End Homelessness.

“My mother went about her usual part of making everyone feel relaxed, and having a laugh and joking with everyone.

“I remember at the time, kind of thinking, well, if everyone’s not got a home, they’re all going to be really sad.

“But it was incredible how happy an environment it was,” recalls Prince William.

The Passage has revealed four previously unseen photos of the prince visiting their London base with his mother, the princess, in June and December 1993.

“I remember having some good conversations – just playing chess and chatting,” says the prince, of his childhood visits to The Passage.

“That’s when it dawned on me that there are other people out there who don’t have the same life as you do.”

Prince William became the charity’s official patron in 2019, but those visits have continued both publicly and privately throughout his life, often for hours longer than scheduled.

In the ITV documentary, the prince is filmed serving food and clearing up at The Passage’s Christmas dinner, hugging some of the regular visitors there. He is even seen being bossed around by the charity’s head chef, Claudette Dawkins, as she organises her royal helper.

He speaks about his concern for some of the homeless he encounters “who are in really bad place… It’s like you want to just protect them”.

Over the years, the prince says he has spent a lot of time gathering information about homelessness – now he wants to do something practical to prevent it.

The prince addresses the question of his own privileged status – and argues that the point of having such a big public platform is to put it to good use, by taking action on issues such as reducing homelessness.

“I feel, with my position and my platform, I should be delivering change,” he says.

“I’ve spent enough time learning and listening to what people have been through that I feel almost guilty every time I leave that I’m not doing more to help.

“I feel compelled to act, because I don’t want to just talk about it. I don’t want to just listen. I actually want to see someone smile because their life has been made better,” says the prince.

“Building a project is the only way I can see, at the moment, to try and alleviate [the problem], and help people who are in a much less fortunate, or in a very difficult, situation.”

Mick Clarke, chief executive of The Passage, says of Prince William’s visits: “I think he feels most at home when he’s just chatting away with our clients and hearing their stories.

“People can get very nervous, but he’s very good at putting people at ease.”

Prince William’s Homewards project, which has six flagship locations across the UK, aims to show homelessness is not inevitable.

“The ultimate ambition is to prove that we can prevent homelessness in these regions, so then others will come along and go, well, if they can do it, why can’t we?” says the prince.

It draws on the experience of Finland, where homelessness was effectively reduced by a policy of providing secure accommodation for people, with wrap-around support for contributory issues such as mental health problems and addiction.

Among those William speaks to over the course of the film is Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, who went from being a rough sleeper to becoming a chief fire officer. She has used her own lived experience to advise the prince’s current project.

Lord John Bird, the forthright founder of the Big Issue, has warned of decades of failed initiatives to tackle homelessness, but has nonetheless backed the prince’s intervention.

“I am very impressed that a young man who has got young children and could go and live the life of Riley, has decided to make a stand for the work that he wants to do, and the work that his mother did.

“Princess Diana was probably the only personality who shone a light on homelessness.

“What she was saying is, these are human beings and I’m going to address myself to it. And I think that her son, William, has said, this is the legacy.”

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.

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

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

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

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

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• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
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• ON THE GROUND: Democrats take fight deep into Trump country
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Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• What is the electoral college?

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

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

In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led 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.

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• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
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• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

A woman who went missing in Australia’s Snowy Mountains region six days ago has been found by emergency services after a massive search and rescue operation.

Police said photographer Lovisa Sjoberg suffered from a snake bite while lost in the remote mountains in New South Wales and had to be treated for her injuries at the scene before being rushed to hospital.

Sjoberg, 48, is a regular visitor to the Kosciuszko National Park where she takes photographs as part of a project documenting wild horses living in the mountains.

Police said she was last spoken to on 8 October.

Fears grew for her safety after a hire car company reported that her car had not been returned and she could not be contacted. Her car was later found unlocked and abandoned.

New South Wales police launched an appeal on 21 October to the public to help find her and began a widescale search using sniffer dogs, firefighters, park rangers and a helicopter with infra-red capabilities.

Concerns increased after rescue teams failed to find her after several days and temperatures in the area surrounding Kosciuszko National Park dropped as low as zero degrees overnight.

Sjoberg was found on Sunday afternoon local time by a National Parks and Wildlife Service officer on the Nungar Creek Trail at Kiandra.

“A woman missing from the Snowy Mountains region since last week has been located, following a wide-scale search by emergency services,” New South Wales police said in a statement.

When an Aboriginal Australian senator heckled King Charles moments after he delivered a speech in the nation’s Parliament House, it caught the world’s attention.

Lidia Thorpe’s cries of “not my King” and “this is not your land” shone a light on a country that is still grappling with its colonial past.

But in the debate that followed on the “appropriateness” of the protest, something else became clear: a split within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community itself.

In the wake of an unsuccessful referendum on their constitutional recognition – which left many feeling silenced – the question Australia’s first inhabitants are now grappling with is how to achieve the self-determination they have fought so long for.

Indigenous Australians are classed as the oldest living culture on earth, and have inhabited the continent for at least 65,000 years.

For more than 200 years though – since the 1770 arrival of Captain James Cook and subsequent British settlement – they have endured long chapters of colonial violence, including the theft of their lands, livelihoods, and even children.

As a result, today, they still face acute disadvantages in terms of health, wealth, education, and life expectancy compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

But, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up less than 4% of the national population, their struggles rarely translate into national voting issues, experts say.

Last year’s Voice to Parliament referendum – which asked whether Australia should recognise its first inhabitants in the constitution and allow them a body to advise the parliament – was a key exception.

The result was a resounding ‘No’, with one major analysis of the data suggesting many voters found the proposal divisive and ineffective.

And while the figures indicate a majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people voted ‘Yes’, support wasn’t unanimous. Thorpe herself was a leading ‘No’ campaigner, having criticised the measure as tokenistic and “an easy way to fake progress”.

But Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, a Widjabul Wia-bal woman and activist, says the ‘No’ outcome left most Indigenous Australians with “a sense of humiliation and rejection”. She adds that the debate itself – which saw countless examples of misinformation and disinformation – unleashed a wave of “racist rhetoric” that their communities are still recovering from.

The big-picture impact of the Voice, Ms Baldwin-Roberts argues, has been a growing sentiment that traditional reconciliation efforts are “dead”. Those approaches have long tried to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through polite dialogue and education.

It was against this backdrop that Thorpe made her protest in parliament.

“You can’t reconcile with a country that doesn’t see you,” Ms Baldwin-Roberts tells the BBC. “You can’t reconcile with a country that doesn’t think that you deserve justice.”

Ms Baldwin-Roberts says “new strategies” are needed to disrupt the status quo. She sees Thorpe’s action as “incredibly brave” and reflective of conversations many First Nations people are having.

“There are Indigenous communities around the country talking about our stolen children, our stolen histories – but she had access to that room. As an Australian senator she knows she’s going to get media, and it’s important to make this a talking point.”

Daniel Williams, who is of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, agrees.

“After the [referendum] last year, what do Indigenous people have left? How can we find [an] audience with the monarch to effect change?” he asked a political panel on the ABC.

“We’re talking about 200 years of pain that is continuing to be unanswered and unresolved.”

Others see it differently though: there is a long history of Indigenous leaders petitioning the Royal Family to recognise their peoples’ struggle, but the independent’s senator’s act – for some – went too far.

Nova Peris, a former senator who was the first Aboriginal woman in parliament, described it as an “embarrassing” move which didn’t “reflect the manners, or approach to reconciliation, of Aboriginal Australians at large”.

Both sides of parliament dismissed it as disrespectful and a failed attempt at grandstanding.

Prof Tom Calma, a Kungarakan and Iwaidja man who was in the room, said it risked alienating “the other 96%” of Australia’s population who may not “see or understand the enduring impacts of colonisation”.

“I don’t think the protest – the way that Senator Thorpe went about it – brings people along with us. And in the spirit of reconciliation, we need allies.”

Mr Calma also felt that Thorpe’s demand that King Charles “give [Indigenous people] a treaty” was misplaced, given that those negotiations would be handled by Australia’s government, not the Crown.

As it stands, Australia is one of the only Commonwealth countries to have never signed a treaty, or treaties, with its first inhabitants, or to have recognised them in its founding document.

And with a general election expected before mid-next year, both sides of politics have sought to move on swiftly from the Voice debate, leaving much uncertainty over future policy.

For Ms Baldwin-Roberts, this week’s juxtaposition between the crowds of royal supporters decked out in regalia, and those engaging in protest nearby, reflects “a large separation and social reality between Australia’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations” that exists today.

And in order to bridge that gap, she believes “there has to be some level of reckoning”.

“We live in different spaces, it’s still a largely separated nation. So where do we go from here?”

A month-long Vatican summit has ended with a call for women to have more leadership roles in the Catholic Church, but not a call for women to be ordained as priests, as some progressives had hoped at the start of the process.

The synod was the end of a four-year consultation aimed at gauging the views of every church-going Catholic globally, and Pope Francis opened up what is usually a bishops conference to some lay people, including nearly 60 women of 368 voting delegates.

All of the synod members voted on each of 151 proposals.

Although all proposals were passed by the required two-thirds majority, the most “no” votes were given to the proposal about women assuming more leadership roles in the Church, which has an all-male clergy.

Advocates for greater roles for women in the Church had hoped the synod might call for women to serve as deacons. The synod did not move forward on this move, but its final document said “there is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church”.

Currently the Catholic Church only allows men to become deacons – ordained ministers who can officiate baptisms, weddings and funerals but not mass, unlike priests.

Although reform groups had also hoped for concrete ways to better welcome gay people in the Church, the final document did not mention the LGBT+ community, except for a passing reference to those who feel “excluded or judged” because of their “marital status, identity or sexuality”.

The Reverend James Martin, a prominent American Jesuit priest who ministers to the LGBT community and was a synod member, said it was “not a surprise” the new text did not specifically mention the group.

Progressives may be disappointed but some conservatives were upset about the whole summit from the beginning.

This has been a massive exercise, and the Pope, 87, has called the final text a “gift” to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, but a lot of traditionalists were opposed to opening up this consultation process – a personal project of his – to lay people and questioned the idea of gauging the views of non-clergy.

But it fits Pope Francis’ view that it is grassroots Catholics that should play a greater role in shaping the future of the Church and not just cardinals and bishops – just one of many reasons traditionalists have given him a hard time.

For him and supporters of the process, it is the mere fact that there was outreach and that people with opposing views came together for discussion that was the success, with hopes that it can be built on in the future.

“We live in a highly fractured world in which there’s ever more war and violence and this polarisation touches the life of the church,” says theologian Fr Timothy Radcliffe, from Oxford, who has served as the summit’s chief spiritual advisor.

“I myself have made friendships here with people from all over the world. Getting to know, for example, African bishops who often have very different views to me on how we should for example, welcome LGBT people, but you build friendships that carry you beyond these disagreements into a new depth of your own faith,” said Fr Timothy, who is due to be made a cardinal in December.

But it is unclear how these discussions will be taken beyond the meeting in any practical sense.

And through so much compromise and avoidance of controversy, observers see little that is bold in its proposals. So an endeavour that was supposed to bring people together may have left many feeling just as much on the margins of the Catholic Church as they felt before.

Commonwealth leaders have agreed the “time has come” for a conversation about reparations for the slave trade, despite the UK’s desire to keep the subject off the agenda at a two-day summit in Samoa.

A document signed by 56 heads of government, including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, acknowledges calls for “discussions on reparatory justice” for the “abhorrent” transatlantic slave trade.

The statement says it is time for a “meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation”.

Sir Keir said there had been no discussions about money at the meeting, and that the UK is “very clear” in its position that it would not pay reparations.

The UK has faced growing calls from Commonwealth leaders to apologise and pay reparations for the country’s historical role in the slave trade.

Reparations for the benefit of those who suffered as a result of slavery could take many forms, from financial to symbolic.

Ahead of the summit, Downing Street had insisted the issue would not be on the agenda.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Sir Keir said Commonwealth leaders had a “positive two days” in Samoa and downplayed the prominence of reparations at the summit.

“The dominant theme of the two days has been resilience and climate,” he said, adding that the section of the joint statement discussing reparations amounts to “one paragraph in 20-something paragraphs”.

“None of the discussions have been about money. Our position is very, very clear in relation to that,” he said.

Last week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BBC the UK would not pay reparations for slavery.

Before the statement was released, the leaders’ conclave – where commonwealth prime ministers and presidents meet without advisers – went on for about six hours.

The prime minister said it was not the conversation about reparations that had caused it to run on for so long.

One Downing Street source told the BBC: “We’ve been clear on our position and it’s not changing.”

And they have and it hasn’t – in fact the direct nature of their remarks about reparations on the way to the summit irritated some of those countries campaigning on it.

Half of the art of diplomacy is to keep things you want to talk about being talked about – keeping the conversation going, even if the prospect of imminent change is unlikely.

For those who think the time has come for countries like the UK to face up to their pasts, the communique allows them to say the conversation continues.

For the UK and others, they can say their position isn’t changing and also point to a range of other topics – trade, climate change and security for instance – that, they argue, the Commonwealth offers a vital forum for.

However, the prime minister did appear to leave the door open for further discussions about some form of reparatory justice, saying the “next opportunity to look at this” would be at the UK-Caribbean forum.

Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas, said leaders hoped to come up with a “comprehensive report” on the issue at that forum, to be held in London next March.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he expected the UK would eventually pay financial reparations to Caribbean countries.

Challenged on whether the wording of the joint statement was too vague, he said: “Behind the language is an attempt to go in a particular direction.”

Diplomats have said they expect reparatory justice to be a central focus of the agenda for the next Commonwealth summit in two years’ time.

Last year, a UN judge said the UK likely owed more than £18tn in reparations for its role in slavery in 14 Caribbean countries.

But reparatory justice could also take the form of a formal apology, educational programmes or public health assistance.

One person who supports reparations is the incoming Commonwealth secretary general, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, who was appointed on Friday.

She is currently serving as Ghana’s foreign minister, and has also backed the drafting of a Commonwealth free trade agreement, according to AFP.

In a statement, Botchwey said she was “truly humbled” but emphasised that “work indeed lies ahead”.

An international search by the FBI has identified more than 400 people from 10 countries who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 or suffered emotional injury in its aftermath.

The US law enforcement agency tried to track down people directly affected by the atrocity in advance of a Libyan suspect’s trial next year.

A federal court in Washington DC is deciding how to allow remote access to the case against alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Masud.

The 417 people who responded to the FBI survey included more than 100 people from Scotland, 32 of them from Lockerbie itself.

A total of 244 respondents came from the US and 164 from the UK.

Others came from the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Canada, Mozambique, Australia and Jamaica.

Pan Am 103 was brought down as it flew from Heathrow to New York four days before Christmas 36 years ago.

The airliner broke apart after a bomb exploded in its hold at 31,000ft, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board.

Another 11 people died in Lockerbie when wreckage from the plane destroyed their homes.

In 2001, after a nine-month trial, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands ruled that the bombing was the work of Libya’s intelligence service.

Abdelbasset al-Megrahi was convicted of playing a key role in the plot and jailed for life, only to be freed on compassionate grounds in 2009 after falling terminally ill with cancer. He died in Libya three years later.

Abu Agila Masud was taken into US custody in 2022 and is due to stand trial in Washington DC next May, accused of making the bomb which destroyed the plane.

In advance of the trial, a group representing American relatives of the victims asked for remote access to the proceedings, saying that many of them were too old and infirm to travel to Washington DC for the case.

US lawmakers subsequently passed legislation to allow the relatives to get remote access “regardless of their location”.

To help the trial judge decide how that should be done, the FBI set out to identify and question two groups of people affected by the bombing.

The first included those who were “present at or near the scene in Lockerbie when the bombing occurred or immediately thereafter” and who suffered “direct or proximate harm (e.g. physical or emotional injury) as a result.”

Many of the Scots who responded to the survey identified themselves as members of that group, including military personnel and rescue workers who took part in the operation to recover the bodies of the victims.

The second group involved “the spouse, legal guardian, parent, child, brother, sister, next of kin or other relative of someone who was killed on Pan Am 103 or killed or harmed on the ground in Scotland or someone who possesses a relationship of a similar significance to someone who was killed or harmed in the attack”.

Most of the respondents told the FBI they would like video access via a weblink or app, allowing them to follow the trial from home. A slightly smaller number would also be content with audio-only access.

Masud’s defence has suggested that people could watch the case at courthouses and embassies, but the US government argued that option was “logistically unreasonable, unfeasible, impractical and unworkable.”

Instead, it is arguing that a “Zoom for Government” platform should be used, with access strictly controlled.

Participants would be told that recording or rebroadcasting the trial would be illegal. The software would include technology to identify anyone breaking the rules.

In a submission to the court, lawyers from the US Attorney’s Office said: “These families have suffered for more than three decades.

“This attack was the largest terror attack on the US before September 11, 2001… it remains the single most deadly terror attack in UK history.

“The law passed by Congress applies only to this case.

“Given the death and destruction left by this bombing, and the palpable trauma and pain of the multiple victims spread globally throughout the world, one can only hope that another law like this one will never be needed again.”

It was a phone call from a 13-year-old girl in Scotland in 2019 that eventually led to the capture of a social media predator described as one of the world’s most prolific child sex abusers.

Alexander McCartney from Northern Ireland pretended to be a teenage girl to befriend, then abuse and blackmail children around the world, often sharing images with other paedophiles.

Some of the children were as young as four. Some had never told anyone what they had been through – until police knocked on their door.

McCartney gradually admitted 185 charges including manslaughter after a 12-year-old girl he was abusing took her own life.

He has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years.

Following contact from police in Scotland, an urgent investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) swung into operation in March 2019.

Detectives identified the home address of Alexander McCartney, arrested and interviewed him.

Sixty-four of McCartney’s devices were seized at his home in the rural Lissummon Road area outside Newry in four separate raids.

Those devices held hundreds of thousands of indecent photos and videos of underage girls performing sexual acts while being blackmailed.

McCartney made and used many fake accounts on online platforms, mainly Snapchat, to entrap and manipulate them.

PSNI Det Ch Supt Eamonn Corrigan said McCartney had been “offending on an industrial scale”.

He groomed victims into thinking they were talking online to a girl of a similar age, before encouraging them to send indecent images or engage in sexual activity via webcam or a mobile phone.

McCartney used the same pattern every time, the detective said, adding: “He threatened to share these images online for the pleasure of other paedophiles and use them to further abuse and harass the already terrified and exploited children.”

In one incident, it took McCartney just nine minutes to groom, sexually abuse and blackmail a girl of only 12 years of age.

As time went on, it became clear that McCartney’s depravity spanned not just across the UK, but across the world. The abuse included involving other people, family pets and objects.

The PSNI worked with colleagues in the United States Department of Homeland Security, the Public Prosecution Service and National Crime Agency, and victims were located in America, New Zealand and at least 28 other countries.

Many of these children were only identified through the evidence detectives located on McCartney’s devices.

According to the police, he “built a paedophile enterprise” and had “stolen childhoods” of his victims.

In the spring of 2019, police called Catherine Kierans, acting head of the Public Prosecution Service’s serious crime unit.

They said something “big was unfolding… it involved catfishing”.

Catfishing is where a person creates a false identity to gain the trust of people and exploit them.

Ms Kierans said little girls “an average age of 10-12 years old [were] being threatened in the most depraved way.”

She said some of the children who had been exploited had previously opened up about their abuse, others had remained silent.

“Some of the children had raised the alarm, which helped police to actually identify him in the first place.

“But some of the children, until police knocked the door, they had never told anyone what they’d been through.”

According to Ms Kierans, McCartney offended “around the clock”.

As the investigation spread across the globe, Ms Kierans said prosecutors realised McCartney had been “very assiduous about saving the images”.

“He would also save the map on Snapchat of where the child was in some cases, and that then enabled police to locate the children.”

His arraignment in 2021 was delayed as police discovered the suicide of a little girl in West Virginia, USA.

“From the beginning, the level of abuse was so horrific that we were fearful that when these children were identified, would they be okay?” Ms Kierans said.

“Unfortunately, our worst fears were realised when we discovered, some way in, that one of the little girls had taken her own life.

“Working closely with the American authorities, we were able to prove that this child took her own life during the abuse, when she was still online with McCartney.

“At that point, the death of the child was so intrinsically linked to the abuse that we felt we had a strong case to say that he killed her.”

That little girl was 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas who, in 2018, shot herself while McCartney was abusing her.

McCartney was charged with her manslaughter.

Ms Kierans said it is believed to be the first time an abuser anywhere in the world has been held accountable for manslaughter where the victim and perpetrator have never met in person.

Such was the magnitude of the case that prosecutors had to be judicious with the charges.

“We couldn’t put 3,000 charges on the indictment,” Ms Kierans said.

“In the end, there were about 200 charges [relating to around 70 victims] which is probably one of the largest indictments that we’ve seen in Northern Ireland.”

McCartney grew up five miles outside of Newry and just off the main road to Armagh city.

It’s about as rural as it gets. Farms, a church and a few businesses.

When he first appeared at Newry Magistrates’ Court in July 2019 he was just 21, with long, fuzzy hair and the wide-eyed look of someone surprised to be sitting where he was.

He has spent more than five years on remand at Maghaberry Prison – leaving only for court appearances and further questioning by the police.

In those hearings, he said little other than to confirm his name and date of birth and to gradually enter softly-spoken guilty pleas.

McCartney attended Newry High School and was into gaming.

One source told BBC News NI: “He was introverted and socially awkward. He didn’t interact with people much outside of his group of friends.

“He was maybe at the edges of things, but he had friends who obviously knew nothing about this.”

He then took a course at the Southern Regional College in Newry where he was described as “quiet and didn’t really get involved with the rest of the class”.

When he was eventually charged in 2019 he was a computer science student at Ulster University.

For those living in and around his home, the case has been harrowing.

“The whole place was stunned,” one resident said.

“It was whispers at the start, then disbelief. I’m sure people talk about it in their own homes but it doesn’t get discussed publicly as people don’t know what to say.”

Another said: “He came across as a pleasant, affable, intelligent young man.

“There is nothing extraordinary about him.”

But what is extraordinary is the enormity of his offending; many of his victims had pleaded for the abuse to stop but prosecutors said he “callously continued, at times forcing the victims to involve younger children, some aged just four”.

According to Catherine Kierans, McCartney’s depravity was such that it was “one of the most distressing and prolific cases of child sexual abuse we have ever seen in the PPS”.

Ms Kierans said some of the victims have still never been identified despite exhaustive efforts by police.

“McCartney’s crimes have harmed thousands of children and left them and their families dealing with the traumatic aftermath,” she said.

“Their courage stands in stark contrast to his cowardice in targeting vulnerable young girls.”

Prominent Kenyan human rights activist Boniface Mwangi has been detained by police on charges of inciting violence after six masked individuals forcibly took him from his home, his wife has told the BBC.

His detention comes after he called for an anti-government protest at a marathon in the capital, Nairobi, on Sunday.

Police spokesperson Resila Onyango confirmed to local media that Mr Mwangi was in custody, but did not provide further details.

Mr Mwangi’s detention has caused outrage among his supporters, who are demanding his release.

Mr Mwangi had been rallying people on X (formerly Twitter) to demand the resignation of President William Ruto, using the hashtags #RutoMustGo and #OccupyStanChart, which refers to Standard Chartered marathon, the official name of the race.

He urged people to dress up in the colours of the national flag, wear bandanas with the message “RutoMustGo” and share protest chants online.

“Stay calm and peaceful and have fun!” he added.

Mr Mwangi has been arrested and released on numerous occasions over his campaigning.

His latest call for a protest was seen as an attempt to keep up pressure on Mr Ruto, who has faced growing public anger over the escalating cost of living and alleged police brutality during demonstrations earlier this year.

The activist’s wife, Njeri Mwangi, told the BBC that he was arrested at dawn on Sunday at his home in Machakos County, about 40km (25 miles) east of Nairobi.

A group of five masked men and one masked woman, all in plain clothes, roughed up her husband before taking him away, she said.

“They allowed him at least to dress up and then they walked him out,” Mrs Mwangi told the BBC.

Hours later, police confirmed that Mr Mwangi was in custody at a police station in downtown Nairobi.

Both Mr Mwangi’s lawyers and his wife say he faces charges of incitement to violence, which he denies.

Ruto was elected president in 2022 after he pledged to champion the interests of what he called the “Hustler Nation”, a reference to poor and unemployed people, especially the youth.

But he faced mass protests in June and July after he announced plans to increase taxes.

He dropped the plans, and brought the main opposition party into the government in an attempt to quell public anger.

Kenya’s parliament also impeached his deputy Rigathi Gachagua more than a week ago with the apparent backing of Ruto.

Gachagua was accused of a raft of crimes – including fuelling ethnic divisions and violating his oath office.

He denied the charges, and described his impeachment as a “political lynching”.

Ruto says he is committed to governing in the interest of all Kenyans, and ensuring that the economy improves.

• The man lined up to be Kenya’s next deputy president
• The ever-shifting alliances that fuelled Kenya’s impeachment drama
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth

A man has died after a migrant boat sank while attempting to cross the English Channel on Sunday morning.

French officials say the man – an Indian national around 40 years old – suffered a cardiac arrest and could not be revived by emergency services.

The boat deflated shortly after it left the coast at Tardinghen, near Calais, at 05:30 local time (04:30 GMT), and those aboard swam back to shore, French authorities said.

This was the third lethal sinking in the past 10 days, in what is already the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings.

On Wednesday, three people died after a small boat bound for the UK carrying dozens of migrants sank in the Channel. A rescue operation recovered 45 people off the French coast.

Prior to that, a four-month-old baby died when an overloaded migrant boat sank on the evening of 18 October. Rescuers saved 65 others.

More than 100 people have been rescued from migrant boats in distress since Thursday, according the French coastguard.

Several attempts to cross the Channel were stopped by police and gendarmes on Sunday morning – including in Equihen-Plage, Calais and Sangatte – according to French authorities.

Officials say attempted crossings have increased in recent days due to favourable weather conditions.

New UK government figures show the number of migrants who arrived in small boats so far this year has already surpassed 2023’s total.

As of Friday, there had been 29,578 in 2024, compared to 29,437 across all of 2023. Last year’s total was lower than the record of 45,774 arrivals in 2022.

The Home Office has pledged to “stop at nothing” to dismantle people-smuggling gangs that organise small boat crossings.

A spokesperson said: “Our new border security command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute these evil criminals.”

An undercover BBC investigation published on Friday exposed a group of people-smugglers in Germany offering a Channel crossing “package” for €15,000 (£12,500).

The package included an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor and 60 life jackets. The smugglers said they stored the boats in multiple secret warehouses to hide them from the German police.

Figures produced by the UN show this year has already been the deadliest for migrant crossings in the Channel.

The latest sinking means at least 57 people have died attempting the journey in 2024.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of charity Refugee Council, said it was “vital” that the government did “everything possible” to ensure refugees no longer had to put their lives in danger.

He added: “We must not forget that those making the perilous journeys across the Channel are desperate men, women and children fleeing persecution and war, in countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan, simply seeking safety and a future free from fear.”

Kim* is a young professional who started using cannabis when family life became messy. Things improved, but her drug habit stuck – and by then, her social circle was primarily made up of people who also used. With a reliable local supplier of weed, Kim’s friends asked her if she would get some for them.

“That’s what I did,” Kim says. “I never marked up the price in any way, because this was friendship… It’s like, I’m helping you to purchase something we both use anyway.”

Singapore, where Kim lives, has some of the harshest drugs laws in the world.

If you sell, give, deliver, administer, transport or distribute narcotics, that’s drug trafficking. And the law also presumes you’re a trafficker if you possess drugs in quantities that cross certain weight thresholds.

Kim’s life unravelled very fast when one of the friends she sourced cannabis for was caught by the state’s Central Narcotics Bureau.

Kim was named as the supplier of the marijuana, and picked up too. After the authorities trawled through her phone, another friend was arrested – and Kim was charged with drug trafficking.

“I was wracked with horror,” she says. “To have charges of trafficking levelled at me? That was just overwhelming. I felt complete and utter fear of what was going to pan out for me.”

Cannabis for recreational use has been decriminalised in many places around the world. In the US, 24 states have legalised it. While cannabis is illegal In the UK, punishments for its possession have plummeted in recent years.

In Singapore, if you’re found with 15g you’re assumed to be trafficking – and with 500g or more, the death penalty is mandatory.

It’s a controversial policy and there have been several recent cases. The most recent execution – of a 64-year-old on a heroin charge – took place on 16 October.

The Singaporean government won’t tell the BBC how many people are currently on death row.

Singapore’s death penalty becomes mandatory in drug cases involving

• 15g diamorphine (heroin)
• 30g cocaine
• 500g cannabis
• 250g methamphetamine

Kim’s not facing execution, but she could be looking at a lengthy prison term.

“The minimum sentence would be five years,” she says. “The worst-case could be up to 20 years.”

While Kim awaits judgement on trafficking charges, her friends have already been dealt with. But they weren’t prosecuted. Classed as drug consumers – not traffickers – they faced very different treatment.

They were sent to the state-run Drug Rehabilitation Centre for six months each.

When anyone’s caught using an illicit substance in Singapore, they’re assessed as low, medium or high risk. Only those deemed at low risk of reoffending are allowed to stay at home, where they are monitored in the community.

Everyone else – even a first-time offender – is sent for compulsory rehabilitation.

There’s no private, residential rehab in Singapore – no mooching around in fluffy bathrobes and then retreating to your own en-suite room.

The Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) is a vast complex run by Singapore’s Prison Service, which makes sense because this is incarceration by any other name. There’s barbed wire, a control room, and CCTV everywhere. Guards patrol the walkways.

In December 2023, 3,981 Singaporeans were inmates – about 1 in 8 of them women.

Institution S1 houses around 500 identically-dressed male inmates, most first or second-time drug offenders.

A cell accommodates seven or eight men. There are two toilets, and a shower behind a waist-high wall. There are no beds. The men sleep on thin, rush mats on the concrete floor. And a detainee will spend at least six months here – even if they’re a casual, rather than addicted, drug user.

“While it is rehabilitation, it’s still a very deterrent regime,” says Supt Ravin Singh. “We don’t want to make your stay too comfortable.”

The men spend up to six hours a day in a classroom on psychology-based courses.

“The aim is to motivate inmates to want to stay away from drugs, to renew their lives without them, and to address negative thinking regarding drugs,” says Lau Kuan Mei, Deputy Director for the Correctional Rehabilitation Service.

“They teach us a lot about how to manage our triggers for using drugs,” says Jon*, who’s in his late 20s and close to the end of a six-month stay.

Jon has a history of using methamphetamine and is one of the inmates prison authorities have selected to talk to the BBC.

Meth (also known as crystal or ice) is a powerful, highly addictive stimulant, and the most commonly abused drug in Singapore and the region.

Earlier this year, on a weekday afternoon, Central Narcotics Bureau officers arrived at Jon’s house where he lives with his parents. Before they took him away, he spoke to his shocked mother.

“She said, ‘learn your lesson, pay your dues, and come back clean,” Jon remembers.

And that’s what he’s aiming to do – but he knows it won’t be easy.

“It’s exciting leaving,” he says. “But I’m also nervous… In here you’re locked up and not faced with drugs.”

Jon’s worried he might be tempted to take meth again. His rehab programme has been obligatory, not voluntary as it might have been if he lived in North America or Europe. Even so, it might not impact his chances of staying drug-free.

“If you look at evidence-based policies in drug addiction… it doesn’t really matter whether the treatment offered is voluntary or non-voluntary,” says Dr Muni Winslow, an addiction psychiatrist who worked in Singapore’s government institutions.

He believes the treatment offered to drug users has improved.

“It’s much better now because the whole criminal justice system has a lot of psychologists and counsellors who are trained in addictions.”

Historically, drugs have been viewed as a criminal justice issue, rather than a health issue in Singapore.

While the state execution of traffickers still sets the tone for how the government and most Singaporeans view narcotics, it hasn’t prevented changes to how drug users are treated. For example, no-one who spends time in the rehab centre gets a criminal record.

“We talked to psychologists and addiction specialists and our thinking evolved,” explains Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam. “If they’re not a threat to society, we don’t need to treat them as criminals.”

Singapore commits huge resources to enabling people to stay clean once they leave the DRC. Most importantly, they’re helped to find work.

But although authorities say the system has changed, critics believe it’s still inhumane.

The Transformative Justice Collective, a group which campaigns against the death penalty, describes the DRC as a form of mandatory detention where prisoners face “humiliation” and “loss of liberties”.

The group says programmes in the centre are superficial and focused on “shame” – failing to tackle the root causes of drug dependence.

“We’ve seen a lot of lives disrupted and a lot of trauma inflicted from being arrested, from being thrown into prison, from having to share a cell,” says Kirsten Han.

“It causes a lot of stress and instability. And these are not harms caused by drugs. These are harms caused by the war on drugs.”

Surveillance remains a critical part of the country’s mission to keep former inmates clean.

At a supervision centre, a neat-looking man in his 50s arrives. He’s been in and out of the Drug Rehabilitation Centre six times, struggling with heroin. But for the last 26 months he’s been drug-free, living at home, monitored by an electronic tag. Now his sentence is over.

When the tag’s snipped off, he’s delighted, and leaves quickly after exchanging a few words with Karen Lee, the director of the Community Corrections Command.

“He looks healthy,” she says. “And that’s what we hope for all our supervisees… While three out of 10 do come back as repeat drug abusers, we shouldn’t forget there are seven supervisees out there, successfully living their lives as reintegrated citizens of Singapore.”

While tagged, the ex-heroin user had another incentive to stay clean: regular urine analysis. Singapore’s state-of-the-art Urine Supervision Cubicles are the first of their kind in the world.

Once a supervisee enters a cubicle, the door locks behind him. After he pees into the urinal the technology tests for drugs including cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin. It takes about seven minutes.

“It’s not so boring – we’ve also prepared videos for him to watch, like Mr Bean!” says Karen Lee.

If the test is negative, a green light goes on, and the man’s free to go. A red light indicates a positive test result – and the supervisee will be re-arrested.

Singapore’s zero-tolerance policy doesn’t distinguish between casual drug users and those with an addiction. And although punishment is no longer front and centre of the system, Singapore retains draconian practices – including a legal requirement for doctors to report patients to the authorities if they disclose use of narcotics. This may well deter people from getting help with problematic drug dependency.

But the harshest treatment is reserved for those convicted of trafficking. Kim – who sourced cannabis for her friends – is trying to keep busy while she waits for the court’s decision about the charges against her.

“Once I heard there was very little possibility of me not serving a sentence, I took some time,” Kim says, “to mourn almost, for the period of my life I would lose. I think I’ve accepted prison on a deeper level. It just never gets easier as the day draws nearer.”

If Kim’s incarcerated – as she expects – she won’t be unusual. In December 2023, around half of the country’s convicted prison population – 2,299 people – were serving time for drug offences.

If you, or someone you know, have been affected by addiction, there are details of organisations who may be able to help at BBC Action Line.

Singapore: Drugs, rehab, execution

The laws against illegal narcotics are notoriously severe in Singapore. Penalties for trafficking include the death penalty, but the government argues its zero-tolerance policy is effective.

If you are caught using any illicit narcotic, including cannabis, you may find yourself in compulsory rehab. The BBC’s Linda Pressly approached Singapore’s authorities and was granted access to the state’s austere Drug Rehabilitation Centre.

She speaks to drug users who have to spend months at the facility before being released back into the community under surveillance.

“Google essentially disappeared us from the internet.”

Launch days. They’re equal parts thrilling and terrifying for many start-up business founders, but they don’t get much worse than the one Shivaun Raff and her husband, Adam, experienced.

It was June 2006 and the couple’s trailblazing price comparison website Foundem – one they had sacrificed well-paid jobs for and built from scratch – had just gone fully live.

They didn’t know it at the time but that day, and those that followed, would mark the beginning of the end for their company.

Foundem had been hit by a Google search penalty, prompted by one of the search engine’s automatic spam filters. It pushed the website way down the lists of search results for relevant queries like “price comparison” and “comparison shopping”.

It meant the couple’s website, which charged a fee when customers clicked on their product listings through to other websites, struggled to make any money.

“We were monitoring our pages and how they were ranking, and then we saw them all plummet almost immediately, ” says Adam.

While the launch day for Foundem didn’t go to plan, it would lead to the start of something else – a 15-year legal battle that culminated in a then record €2.4bn (£2bn) fine for Google, which was deemed to have abused its market dominance.

The case has been hailed as a landmark moment in the global regulation of Big Tech.

Google spent seven years fighting that verdict, issued in June 2017, but in September this year Europe’s top court – the European Court of Justice – rejected its appeals.

Speaking to Radio 4’s The Bottom Line in their first interview since that final verdict, Shivaun and Adam explained that at first, they thought their website’s faltering start had simply been a mistake.

“We initially thought this was collateral damage, that we had been false positive detected as spam,” says Shivaun, 55. “We just assumed we had to escalate to the right place and it would be overturned.”

“If you’re denied traffic, then you have no business,” adds Adam, 58.

The couple sent Google numerous requests to have the restriction lifted but, more than two years later, nothing had changed and they said they received no response.

Meanwhile, their website was “ranking completely normally” on other search engines, but that didn’t really matter, according to Shivaun, as “everyone’s using Google”.

The couple would later discover that their site was not the only one to have been put at a disadvantage by Google – by the time the tech giant was found guilty and fined in 2017 there were around 20 claimants, including Kelkoo, Trivago and Yelp.

Adam, who had built a career in supercomputing, says he had the “eureka moment” for Foundem while smoking a cigarette outside the offices of his previous employer.

Then, price comparison websites were in their infancy, and each specialised in one particular product. But Foundem was different because it let customers compare a large range of products – from clothes to flights.

“No-one else was anywhere close to this,” beams Shivaun, who herself had been a software consultant for several major global brands.

In its 2017 judgement, the European Commission found that Google had illegally promoted its own comparison shopping service in search results, whilst demoting those of competitors.

Ten years before that, though – when Foundem launched – Adam says he had no reason to assume Google was being deliberately anti-competitive over online shopping. “They weren’t really serious players,” he says.

But by the end of 2008, the couple had started to suspect foul play.

It was three weeks before Christmas and the pair received a message warning that their website had suddenly become slow to load. They thought it was a cyber attack, “but actually it was just that everyone had started visiting our website”, Adam laughs.

Channel 5’s The Gadget Show had just named Foundem the best price comparison website in the UK.

“And that was really important,” Shivaun explains, “because we then reached out to Google and said, look, surely it’s not benefiting your users to make it impossible for them to find us.

“And that still got from Google, not a complete ignore, but a basically ‘bog off’.”

“That was the moment we knew, OK, we need to fight,” says Adam.

The couple went to the press, with limited success, and took their case to regulators in the UK, US, and Brussels.

It was in the latter – with the European Commission (EC) – that the case eventually took off, with the launch of an antitrust investigation in November 2010. The couple’s first meeting with the regulators took place in a portable cabin in Brussels.

“One of the things they said was if this is a systemic issue, why are you the first people we’re seeing?” Shivaun recalls. “We said we’re not 100% sure, but we suspect people are afraid, because all businesses on the internet essentially rely on Google for the lifeblood that is their traffic.”

The couple were in a hotel room in Brussels, only a few hundred yards from the commission building, when competition commissioner Margarethe Vestager finally announced the verdict that they, and other shopping websites, had been waiting for.

But there was no popping of champagne corks. Their focus then turned to making sure the EC enforced its decision.

“I guess it was unfortunate for Google that they did it to us,” Shivaun says. “We’ve both been brought up maybe under the delusion that we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies.”

Even Google’s final defeat in the case last month did not spell the end for the couple.

They believe Google’s conduct remains anti-competitive and the EC is looking into it. In March this year, under its new Digital Markets Act, the commission opened an investigation into Google’s parent company, Alphabet, over whether it continues to preference its own goods and services in search results.

A spokesperson for Google said: “The CJEU [European Court of Justice] judgment [in 2024] only relates to how we showed product results from 2008-2017.

“The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.

“For this reason, we continue to strongly contest the claims made by Foundem and will do so when the case is considered by the courts.”

The Raffs are also pursuing a civil damages claim against Google, which is due to begin in the first half of 2026. But when, or if, a final victory comes for the couple it will likely be a Pyrrhic one – they were forced to close Foundem in 2016.

The long fight against Google has been gruelling for them, too. “I think if we had known it was going to be quite as many years as it turned out to be we might not have made the same choice,” Adam admits.

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is set to fall short of a single-party majority after a close-run snap election, exit polls suggest.

The LDP is projected to win from 153 to 219 lower house seats, broadcaster NHK said. The Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) is projected to win from 128 to 191 seats.

A party needs 233 seats to control the house, known as the Diet, meaning the LDP will need to enter a coalition to stay in power.

It was previously in coalition with the smaller Komeito party, though projections suggest their joint vote share may still fall short of a majority, prompting uncertainty about how the world’s fourth-largest economy will be governed.

The election was called by the LDP’s new leader Shigeru Ishiba three days after he was selected as new leader – before he had been officially sworn in as prime minister.

It comes after a tumultuous few years for the LDP which saw a “cascade” of scandals, widespread voter apathy and record-low approval ratings.

The party had seen approval ratings of below 20% earlier in the year, in the wake of a political fundraising corruption scandal.

Yet opposition parties have failed to unite, or convince voters they are a viable option to govern.

The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6% before parliament was dissolved.

“It is so hard to make decisions to choose parties, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a long-time LDP supporter who works in the care-home sector, told the BBC ahead of polls opening.

The LDP, she said, has its problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition also does not stand out at all”.

“They sure complain a lot, but it’s not at all clear on what they want to do,” the 66-year-old said.

For all the apathy, politics in Japan has been moving at a fast pace in recent months.

Shigeru Ishiba took over as prime minister after being voted in by the ruling party following his predecessor Fumio Kishida – who had been in the role since 2021 – making a surprise decision to step down in August.

The move to call the election came at a time when the LDP is desperate to restore its tarnished image among the public. Ishiba – a long-time politician who previously served as defence minister – has described it as the “people’s verdict”.

A series of scandals has tarnished the ruling party’s reputation. Chief among them is the party’s relationship with the controversial Unification Church – described by critics as a “cult” – and the level of influence it had on lawmakers.

Then came the revelations of the political funding corruption scandal. Japan’s prosecutors have been investigating dozens of LDP lawmakers accused of pocketing proceeds from political fundraising events. Those allegations – running into the millions of dollars – led to the dissolution of powerful factions, the backbone of its internal party politics.

“What a wretched state the ruling party is in,” said Michiko Hamada, who had travelled to Urawa station, on the outskirts of Tokyo, for an opposition campaign rally.

“That is what I feel most. It is tax evasion and it’s unforgivable.”

It strikes her as particularly egregious at a time when people in Japan are struggling with high prices. Wages have not changed for three decades – dubbed “the lost 30 years” – but prices have risen at the fastest rate in nearly half a century in the last two years.

This month saw more price hikes on thousands of food products, as well as other day-to-day provisions like mail, pharmaceuticals, electricity and gas.

“I pay 10,000 yen or 20,000 yen ($65 – $130; £50 – £100) more for the food per month (than I used to),” Ms Hamada said.

“And I’m not buying the things I used to buy. I am trying to save up but it still costs more. Things like fruit are very expensive.”

She is not the only one concerned with high prices. Pensioner Chie Shimizu says she now must work part-time to make ends meet.

“Our hourly wage has gone up a bit but it does not match the prices,” she told the BBC as she picked up some food from a stand at Urawa station. “I come to places like this to find something cheaper and good because everything in regular shops is expensive.”

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, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led 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 man has died and at least 30 more have been injured after a truck hit a bus stop near an Israeli military base north of Tel Aviv, in what authorities are investigating as a suspected terror attack.

“A truck hit dozens of people who had disembarked at a bus stop. Eight of the wounded were trapped under the truck and others were lying and walking near it,” a medic for Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said.

Many of the injured were reportedly pensioners on a day trip to a nearby museum.

The driver of the truck, named as Rami Natur, an Arab Israeli from the town of Qalansawe in central Israel, was shot dead by a civilian at the scene.

Emergency services were called to the Glilot Junction around 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Sunday following reports of a truck ramming.

Yechiel Ben Moshe told the Ynet website: “We were a group of retirees going to Glilot to visit a museum and listen to a lecture.”

“The bus parked, and people got off. A truck came from behind and I heard a huge noise from the truck.

“It drove toward us to run us over.

“Around me, everyone was injured and bleeding, and others were in shock. It looked like an accident at first, but then shots were fired at the terrorist.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for the police, called for the family of the suspected attacker to be deported from Israel.

Israel is already fighting its enemies on multiple fronts in Gaza and Lebanon.

But this attack raises a different question: how to keep its people safe from attackers already inside Israel, who use vehicles as weapons.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump‘s three-hour interview with America’s number one podcaster, Joe Rogan, has been released.

In the wide-ranging sit-down, the former president discusses everything from the “biggest mistake” of his White House tenure, what he told North Korea’s leader and whether extraterrestrial life exists.

Two years ago Rogan described Trump as “an existential threat to democracy” and refused to have him on his show. But the pair seemed friendly on Friday as they chatted about their shared interest in Ultimate Fighting Championship and mutual friends like Elon Musk.

The Republican’s campaign hopes the interview will consolidate his influence with male voters, who make up the core of listeners to the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers.

Trump took a major detour to visit Rogan in Austin, Texas, causing him to show up almost three hours late to a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, a crucial swing state where both he and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, have been campaigning hard.

Trump told Rogan the “biggest mistake” of his 2017-21 presidency was “I picked a few people I shouldn’t have picked”.

“Neocons or bad people or disloyal people,” he told Rogan, referring to neoconservatives, policy-makers who champion an interventionist US foreign policy.

“A guy like Kelly, who was a bully but a weak person,” Trump added, mentioning his former White House chief-of-staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times this week that he thought his former boss had “fascist” tendencies.

Trump also described his former US National Security Adviser John Bolton as “an idiot”, but useful at times.

“He was good in a certain way,” said Trump. “He’s a nutjob.

“And everytime I had to deal with a country when they saw this whack job standing behind me they said: ‘Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us.’ He was with Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East.”

Trump said he got to know North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “very well” despite some nuclear sabre-rattling between the two initially when Trump said he told him: “Little Rocket Man, you’re going to burn in hell.”

“By the time I finished we had no problem with North Korea,” Trump said.

Trump said he urged Kim to stop building up his “substantial” weapons stockpile.

“I said: ‘Do you ever do anything else? Why don’t you go take it easy? Go to the beach, relax.

“I said: ‘You’re always building nuclear, you don’t have to do it. Relax!’ I said: ‘Let’s build some condos on your shore.’”

Trump also argued that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president.

“I said, ‘Vladimir, you’re not going in,’” he told Rogan, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I used to talk to him all the time.

“I can’t tell you what I told him, because I think it would be inappropriate, but someday he’ll tell you, but he would have never gone in.”

Trump said Putin invaded Ukraine because “number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all”. The White House has previously accused Trump of cozying up to foreign autocrats.

Asked for proof to back up his false claims that the 2020 presidential was stolen from him by mass voter fraud, Trump told Rogan: “We’ll do it another time.

“I would bring in papers that you would not believe, so many different papers. That election was so crooked, it was the most crooked.”

Rogan pressed him for evidence.

Trump alleged irregularities with the ballots in Wisconsin and that Democrats “used Covid to cheat”.

“Are you going to present this [proof] ever?” asked Rogan.

“Uh…,” said Trump before pivoting to talk about how 51 former intelligence agents aligned with Joe Biden had falsely suggested that stories about his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.

“I lost by, like, I didn’t lose,” said Trump, quickly correcting himself.

Trump lashed out at his political opponents and praised his allies, many of whom are likely to appeal to Rogan’s fanbase.

He called his rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, a “very low IQ person” and described California’s Gavin Newsom as “one of the worst governors in the world”.

Trump said that Elon Musk, who has appeared on Rogan’s podcast in the past, was “the greatest guy”.

He also said he is “completely” committed to bringing Robert F Kennedy Jr into a potential new Trump administration.

The former independent presidential candidate, who has a close friendship with Rogan, dropped out in August and endorsed the Republican nominee.

Trump said he disagrees with Kennedy on environmental policy so would instead ask the vaccine critic to “focus on health, do whatever you want”.

Trump said that he hadn’t ruled out there being life in space.

“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said, referring to discussions he’d had with jet pilots who’d seen “very strange” things in the sky.

“Well, Mars – we’ve had probes there, and rovers, and I don’t think there’s any life there,” Rogan said.

“Maybe it’s life that we don’t know about,” said Trump.

Trump said that some senior figures at NBC had tried to talk him out of running for president to keep his show The Apprentice on air.

”They wanted me to stay,” he said. “All the top people came over to see me, try and talk me out of it, because they wanted to have me extend.”

Trump featured in 14 series of The Apprentice from 2004, but NBC cut ties with him after he launched his 2015 bid for the presidency, citing his “derogatory” comments about immigrants.

Trump has been under pressure from Democrats to release his medical records after Harris released hers earlier this month, which concluded she was in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency.

Trump’s team said at the time that his doctor described him as being in “perfect and excellent health”, without sharing his records.

Trump didn’t address the topic directly on Friday’s podcast.

But he told Rogan that during one physical, for which he didn’t give a date, doctors had described his ability to run on a steep treadmill as “unbelievable”.

“I was never one that could, like, run on a treadmill. When passing a physical, they asked me to run on a treadmill and then they make it steeper and steeper and steeper and the doctors said, it was at Walter Reed [hospital], they said: ‘It’s unbelievable!’ I’m telling you, I felt I could have gone all day.”

But he said treadmills are “really boring” so he prefers to stay healthy by playing golf.

SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose

EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election

GLOBAL: The 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

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.

Israel has carried out what it described as “precise and targeted” airstrikes on Iran in retaliation for the barrage of missile strikes launched by Tehran against Israel earlier this month.

It is the latest in a series of exchanges between the two countries that for months have sparked fears of an all-out regional war.

But while Iran says Saturday’s strikes against military sites killed four soldiers, early indications suggest the attacks were more limited than had been feared.

Here’s what we know.

Around 02:15 local time (22:45 GMT on Friday), Iranian media reported explosions in and around the capital, Tehran.

Video uploaded to social media and verified by the BBC showed projectiles in the sky over the city, while residents in some areas reported hearing loud booms.

Shortly after, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it was carrying out “precise” strikes on “military targets” in Iran.

The attacks involved scores of aircraft, including jets and drones. The targets included Iran’s air defences, as well as missile and drone production, and launch facilities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant followed the operation from the IDF’s command and control centre in Tel Aviv.

The strikes came in several waves, over a three-hour period. Just after 06:30 (03:00 GMT), the IDF said the strikes had concluded.

The White House described the strikes as an “exercise of self-defence”. A senior administration official said the US had worked with Israel to encourage a “targeted and proportional” response.

The extent of the attacks – and the damage caused – remains unclear at this stage.

The IDF said it hit around 20 targets, including missile manufacturing facilities, surface-to-air-missiles and other military sites.

The Iranian military confirmed that four soldiers had died, two “while battling projectiles”.

Iranian authorities said sites in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces were targeted. The country’s air defence said it had “successfully intercepted” the attacks, but that “some areas sustained limited damage”.

BBC Verify has identified damage at a defence ministry base to the east of Tehran, and at an air defence base to the south.

A senior US administration official said the attacks did not damage Iranian oil infrastructure or nuclear facilities, targets President Joe Biden had urged Israel not to hit.

Syrian state media also reported strikes on military sites in central and southern Syria, though Israel has not confirmed striking the country.

Iran is the primary backer of a range of groups across the Middle East – often described as proxy groups – that are hostile to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which Israel is currently at war with.

In April, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel, with about 300 missiles and drones, in retaliation for an Israeli air strike on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria that killed several top commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Israel responded with a “limited” strike on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan, which Iran chose not to respond to.

Later, in July, Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an airstrike on Beirut. The next day, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel, though Israel did not comment.

In late September, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Brig-Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, a high-ranking Iranian official, in Beirut.

On October 1, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, which it said was in response to the deaths of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and Nilforoushan.

This latest attack on Iran is Israel’s response to that.

• Read more: Why did Israel attack Iran?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied a report by US outlet Axios that prior to the attacks, Israel sent Iran a message revealing certain details about the strikes, and warning Tehran not to respond.

“Israel did not inform Iran before the attack – not about the time, not about the targets, not about the strength of the attack,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.

Still, early signs indicate this attack was not as serious as some had feared.

The IDF said in a statement that “we are focused on our war objectives in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. It is Iran that continues to push for a wider regional escalation”.

A senior US official said “this should be the end of this direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran”.

Iran’s foreign ministry said it was “entitled and obligated to defend itself” and described the attack as a violation of international law.

But it also said that Tehran recognises its “responsibilities towards regional peace and security”.

Images published by Iranian state media show life continuing in relative normality – with busy streets, people exercising in parks, and fruit and vegetable markets open as usual.

Iran closed its airspace for a few hours overnight, but it later reopened and commercial flights were in the air across the country by late afternoon.

But there are signs the Iranian government are keen to play down the impact of the attacks.

The IRGC has announced that it is a criminal offense to send “images or news” related to the attack to outlets that it deems “Israel-affiliated” or “hostile”. Usually, Iran refers to Western media as hostile.

Iranian media reported today that Tehran’s Prosecutor Office has filed charges against an unnamed website for “covering issues counter to national security”.

US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said Israel’s response “avoided populated areas and focused solely on military targets, contrary to Iran’s attack against Israel that targeted Israel’s most populous city”.

But Washington’s aim, he added, is “to accelerate diplomacy and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Israel had the right to defend itself, but urged all sides to “show restraint” and called for Iran not to respond.

Saudi Arabia condemned the attack, and warned against any action that “threatens the security and the stability” of the region.

Egypt’s foreign ministry echoed those concerns, saying it was “gravely concerned” by the strikes.

Hamas described them as “a flagrant violation of Iranian sovereignty, and an escalation that targets the security of the region and the safety of its peoples”.

Israel’s attack on Iran deepens the war in the Middle East. Avoiding, or risking, an even worse escalation is at the heart of decisions being taken by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key advisors.

They must decide on the least bad of a series of difficult choices. At one end of the spectrum is hitting back with another wave of ballistic missiles. Israel has already threatened to retaliate again if that happens.

At the other is deciding to draw a line under the destructive exchanges of direct strikes on their respective territories. The risk for Iran if it holds its fire is that looks weak, intimidated and deterred by Israel’s military power and political determination, backed up by the United States.

In the end, the supreme leader and his advisers are likely to take the decision that, in their view, does least harm to the survival of Iran’s Islamic regime.

Iran’s official media in the hours before and after Israel’s attacks carried defiant statements that, at face value, suggest the decision to respond had already been taken. Its language resembles Israel’s, citing its right to defend itself against attack. But the stakes are so high that Iran might decide to walk its threats back.

That is the hope of Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who fell in behind America’s insistence that Israel has acted in self-defence.

“I am clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against Iranian aggression,” he said. “I’m equally clear that we need to avoid further regional escalation and urge all sides to show restraint. Iran should not respond.”

Iran’s own statements have been consistent since its ballistic missile on Israel on 1 October. A week ago, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Turkey’s NTV network that “any attack on Iran will be considered crossing a red line for us. Such an attack will not go unanswered.”

Hours before the Israeli strikes, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baqai said: “Any aggression by the Israeli regime against Iran will be met with full force.” It was, he said, “highly misleading and baseless” to suggest that Iran would not respond to a limited Israeli attack.

As the Israeli aircraft were heading back to base Iran’s foreign ministry invoked its right to self defence “as enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter”. A statement said Iran believed it was both entitled and obligated to respond to foreign acts of aggression.

Israel has set the pace of escalation since the spring. It sees Iran as the crucial backer of the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,200 people – Israelis and more than 70 foreign nationals – on 7 October last year. Fearing that Israel was looking for a chance to strike, Iran signalled repeatedly that it did not want a full-on war with Israel.

That did not mean it was prepared to stop its constant, often deadly, but lower-level pressure on Israel and its allies.

The men in Tehran thought they had a better idea than all-out war. Instead, Iran used the allies and proxies in its so-called “axis of resistance” to attack Israel. The Houthis in Yemen blocked and destroyed shipping in the Red Sea. Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon forced at least 60,000 Israelis from their homes.

Six months into the war, Israel’s retaliation forced perhaps twice as many Lebanese from their homes in the south, but Israel was prepared to do much more. It warned that if Hezbollah did not hold its fire into Israel and move back from the border it would take action.

When that did not happen, Israel decided to break out of a battlefield that had been shaped by Iran’s limited, but attritional war. It landed a series of powerful blows that threw the Islamic regime in Tehran off balance and left its strategy in tatters. That is why, after the latest Israeli strikes, Iranian leaders have only hard choices.

Israel interpreted Iran’s reluctance to fight an all-out war as weakness, and upped the pressure both on Iran and its axis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s commanders could afford to take risks. They had President Joe Biden’s unequivocal support, a safety net that came not just in the shape of massive deliveries of munitions, but with his decision to send significant American sea and air reinforcements to the Middle East to back up the US commitment to defend Israel.

On 1 April an Israeli airstrike destroyed part of Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, the Syrian capital. It killed a top Iranian commander, Brig Gen Mohammed Reza Zahedi, along with other senior officers from the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Americans were furious that they had not been warned and given time to put their own forces on alert. But Joe Biden’s support did not waver as Israel faced the consequences of its actions. On 13 April Iran attacked with drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down by Israel’s defences, with considerable help from armed forces of the US, UK, France and Jordan.

Biden apparently asked Israel to “take the win” hoping that might stop what had become the most dangerous moment in the widening Middle East war. When Israel confined its response to a strike on an air defence site, Biden’s plan seemed to be working.

But since the summer, Israel has repeatedly escalated the war with Iran and its axis of allies and proxies. The biggest blows were landed in a major offensive against Iran’s most important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran had spent years building up Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons as a key part of its forward defence. The idea was an Israeli attack on Iran would be deterred by the knowledge that Hezbollah would hammer Israel from just over the border in Lebanon.

But Israel moved first, implementing plans it had developed since Hezbollah fought it to a standstill in the 2006 war. It blew up booby trapped pagers and walkie talkies it had deceived Hezbollah into buying, invaded south Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, a man who had been a symbol of defiant resistance to Israel for decades. The authorities in Beirut say that Israel’s offensive in Lebanon has so far killed more than 2,500 people, displaced more than 1.2 million and caused enormous damage to a country already on its knees after its economy largely collapsed.

Hezbollah is still fighting and killing Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon and firing large numbers of rockets. But it is reeling after losing its leader and much of its arsenal.

Faced with the near collapse of its strategy, Iran concluded it had to hit back. Allowing its allies to fight and die without responding would destroy its position as the leader of the anti-Israeli and anti-western forces in the region. Its answer was a much bigger ballistic missile attack on Israel on 1 October.

The airstrikes on Friday 25 October were Israel’s response. They took longer to come than many expected. Leaks of Israeli plans could have been a factor.

Israel is also carrying out a major offensive in northern Gaza. The UN human rights chief Volker Turk has called it the darkest moment of Gaza’s war, with the Israeli military subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and the risk of starvation.

It’s impossible for an outsider to know whether the timing of Israel’s attacks on Iran was designed to draw international attention away from northern Gaza. But it might have been part of the calculation.

It is hard to stop successive rounds of strikes and counter strikes when the countries concerned believe they will be seen as weak, and deterred, if they don’t respond. That is how wars spin out of control.

The question now is whether Iran is prepared to give Israel the last word, at least on this stage of the war. President Biden backed Israel’s decision to retaliate after 1 October. But once again he tried to head off an even deadlier escalation, telling Israel publicly not to bomb Iran’s most important assets, its nuclear, oil and gas installations. He augmented Israel’s defences by deploying the THAAD anti-missile system to Israel, and prime minister Netanyahu agreed to take his advice.

The American elections on 5 November are part of both Israel and Iran’s calculations about what happens next. If Donald Trump gets his second term, he might be less concerned than Biden about answering Iranian retaliation, if it happens, with strikes on nuclear, oil and gas facilities.

Once again, the Middle East is waiting. Israel’s decision not to hit Iran’s most valuable assets might, perhaps, give Tehran the chance to postpone a response, at least long enough for diplomats to do their work. At the UN General Assembly last month, the Iranians were suggesting that they were open to a new round of nuclear negotiations.

All this should matter greatly to the world outside the Middle East. Iran has always denied it wants a nuclear bomb. But its nuclear expertise and enrichment of uranium have put a weapon within its reach. Its leaders must be looking for a new way to deter their enemies. Developing a nuclear warhead for their ballistic missiles might be on their agenda.

A woman who went missing in Australia’s Snowy Mountains region six days ago has been found by emergency services after a massive search and rescue operation.

Police said photographer Lovisa Sjoberg suffered from a snake bite while lost in the remote mountains in New South Wales and had to be treated for her injuries at the scene before being rushed to hospital.

Sjoberg, 48, is a regular visitor to the Kosciuszko National Park where she takes photographs as part of a project documenting wild horses living in the mountains.

Police said she was last spoken to on 8 October.

Fears grew for her safety after a hire car company reported that her car had not been returned and she could not be contacted. Her car was later found unlocked and abandoned.

New South Wales police launched an appeal on 21 October to the public to help find her and began a widescale search using sniffer dogs, firefighters, park rangers and a helicopter with infra-red capabilities.

Concerns increased after rescue teams failed to find her after several days and temperatures in the area surrounding Kosciuszko National Park dropped as low as zero degrees overnight.

Sjoberg was found on Sunday afternoon local time by a National Parks and Wildlife Service officer on the Nungar Creek Trail at Kiandra.

“A woman missing from the Snowy Mountains region since last week has been located, following a wide-scale search by emergency services,” New South Wales police said in a statement.

In a federal courtroom in New York, for the first time I’m face to face with Mike Jeffries – the multi-millionaire ex-fashion boss I’ve spent three years investigating for the BBC. He stares at me directly, lips pursed, and chin raised, as he sits before the judge.

As a result of my reporting, he was arrested this week by the FBI and charged with running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business along with his British partner, Matthew Smith, and their middleman James Jacobson.

Authorities acted after hearing my podcast series, The Abercrombie Guys, in which I unearthed evidence that Mr Jeffries, 80, and Mr Smith, 61, had been at the centre of a sophisticated global operation involving a network of recruiters and a middleman scouting young men for sex.

As CEO of teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jeffries was described to me as an eccentric and superstitious genius who, with his highlighted hair and penchant for flip-flops and plastic surgery, personified the youthful All-American brand he created.

But now, his hair white, his fillers dissolved, and wearing an ankle monitor – he seemed a shadow of the mogul said to have used his power and strength while in charge to abuse vulnerable models.

US prosecutors say he and the others accused used force, fraud and coercion to make men engage in violent and exploitative sex acts from at least 2008-2015. If convicted, they face a maximum of life in prison.

Shoulders slouched, Mr Jeffries’ face was blank as his lawyer entered his plea of not guilty. His life partner Matthew Smith – a UK citizen – is yet to appear in court. He’s considered a flight risk by authorities and is currently detained until trial.

When I think back to how my own investigation began, in January 2021, I never imagined it would lead to this moment.

During the pandemic, I was researching the fashion industry when I stumbled across a cryptic Instagram comment written by a former model named Barrett Pall.

He was part of a group discussing how they felt abuse against male models was being ignored. “We’ve seen it happen with #MeToo, how about #UsToo?” one wrote.

We soon got on the phone. After an hour of talking, he said he felt he could trust with me a secret he’d never really shared before.

“It’s probably like the darkest experience I’ve ever dealt with,” he told me. “They had someone come and shave me, like my whole body, because that’s how they like the boys.”

In 2011, then aged 22, Barrett said he’d been referred by an older model, who was a close friend, to meet a mysterious middleman he described as having a missing nose covered with a snakeskin patch.

He said this man – who I later identified through phone and property records as James Jacobson – had made him perform a sex act as a “tryout” before sending him to Mike Jeffries, then CEO and chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch, and his British partner.

Barrett claimed that, for years, the duo had been throwing elaborate sex events at their palatial home in the Hamptons. He said the one he had attended was facilitated by chaperones in Abercrombie polos and flip-flops, carrying silver platters of alcohol, poppers and lube.

What Barrett told me sparked my initial two-year investigation. I travelled across America, from the suburbs of Ohio to the desert of Palm Springs, tracking down men affected and confronting those involved – including the middleman himself.

Usually when I’m investigating, I can find a few loose threads to pull at by searching newspaper archives, court records or social media. But there was absolutely nothing in the public domain about these allegations.

So I took an old-school approach, piecing together my own trail through word of mouth, knocking on doors, and sending handwritten letters to potential sources. I traced and contacted hundreds of people including former Abercrombie & Fitch models and Mr Jeffries’ ex-household staff, earning trust over months.

Then, a massive breakthrough.

Barrett Pall had an old iPad that wouldn’t turn on – but we got it fixed. Through that, I obtained an itinerary and flight ticket corroborating the event he attended in the Hamptons. It was sent by the middleman James Jacobson and contained some first names and numbers of others involved.

I later recovered more than a dozen of these itineraries from different sources, finally giving me concrete leads. But it took me months to figure out their roles, not wanting to tip the wrong person off while I was still in evidence-gathering mode.

Many men were wary of speaking. Two accused me of being a “spy” for Mike Jeffries – initially fearful of his “money and clout”. I, too, became increasingly paranoid after I began facing hundreds of hacking attempts each day from unknown IP addresses.

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We were right to be cautious. In their indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors said Mike Jeffries had employed a full-service security company to oversee non-disclosure agreements (NDA), conduct background checks, and surveil and intimidate anyone who threatened to expose them.

I have since spoken with more than 20 men who attended or helped organise these events for Mr Jeffries and his partner Matthew Smith. Some like Luke, an aspiring model who told me he was recruited under the guise of attending an A&F photoshoot, said they had been misled and not told sex was involved.

How did this operation stay hidden for so long?

The answer I reached was that the shame some men felt talking about same-sex abuse had silenced them as effectively as any NDA. Some told me they had felt suicidal, others completely broken. In many instances, I was the first person they had confided in.

One man, who I’m calling Alex, broke down as he told me he believed he was drugged and raped by an unknown assailant at an opulent event hosted in Marrakesh for which dozens of men had been flown in.

He believed this led to him contracting HIV. “Jeffries was the kingpin,” he told me at the time. “Without him none of this could have happened.”

Ahead of publication, I worked with BBC Panorama to meticulously fact-check my evidence. This involved speaking with those inside the operation – including James Jacobson.

When podcast producer Ruth Evans and I knocked on his door one sweltering day in rural Wisconsin in August 2023, he sank onto his steps, put his head in his hands and swore. He asked me for a deal. “Leave my name out and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.

Mr Jacobson repeated this request dozens of times the following day, when he agreed to meet for coffee. We spoke for two hours.

At times it was bizarre – he admired my shorthand, commented on my British accent and seemed to patronise me – calling me “sweetheart”. He’s a former actor and at one point put on a bunch of accents, and pretended to wear a cloak, trying to convince me he could do an anonymous interview.

But he was charismatic too, and joked about his missing nose, saying the only job he could get these days was as a Bond villain. Eventually, Mr Jacobson said he was just “doing his job” and hadn’t spoken to Mr Jeffries or Mr Smith since 2015.

Ultimately, he didn’t get his deal, and in court, he again sat with his head in his hands as his lawyer entered a plea of not guilty.

After we published in October 2023, some of the men in this story took legal action against Mike Jeffries, Matthew Smith and Abercrombie & Fitch, who they are suing for rape, assault and sex trafficking. All deny wrongdoing. The lawsuit claims it’s likely that more than 100 men were abused during Mr Jeffries’ tenure.

Sources also began contacting me to say they had been approached by law enforcement.

We were not involved in the FBI’s investigation – which was totally independent of mine. Protecting sources is integral to my work. So, it would be the men’s decision to talk.

Looking back, there were moments I considered giving up. I initially faced dead end after dead end. But the more I heard, the more I felt a duty to bring this to light for the first time and hold those involved to account.

More than two years on from our first conversation, I asked Barrett Pall why he decided to speak to me.

He started crying and said: “My gut said trust her. Tell her your story. And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen.”

Announcing the charges, US attorney Breon Peace said: “To anyone who thinks they can exploit and coerce others by using the so-called ‘casting couch’ system, this case should serve as a warning. Prepare to trade that couch for a bed in federal prison.”