Israel must immediately address the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza, the US envoy to the UN has warned, as the deadline approaches to improve the flow of aid or face cuts to American military assistance.

“Israel’s words must be matched by action on the ground,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. “Right now, that is not happening.”

The US has given its ally until 12 November to “surge” all assistance, with a minimum of 350 lorries entering Gaza daily. But the UN says only 10% of that number have crossed each day on average since then.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said it was going “above and beyond its humanitarian obligations” and blamed Hamas.

Mr Danon also rejected international criticism of the Israeli parliament’s decision to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from working in Israel.

Israel’s allies have warned that Unrwa plays a critical role in delivering humanitarian assistance to Gaza, where it is the largest humanitarian organisation on the ground.

In a briefing to the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday, UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland said he had witnessed a “horrific humanitarian nightmare” during a recent visit to Gaza.

He said the north of the Palestinian territory had received virtually no humanitarian assistance since the start of October, when the Israeli military began a ground offensive in the Jabalia area that it said was aimed at stopping Hamas fighters from regrouping there.

The operation has killed scores of Palestinians, caused mass displacement and led to the closure of essential services, including water wells and medical facilities.

The US ambassador said the reports of children going days without food in Jabalia had made her think about how she had seen a girl die of starvation almost three decades ago.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield said the Biden administration had made clear to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza immediately and that the US “rejects any Israeli efforts to starve Palestinians in Jabalia, or anywhere else”.

“The US has stated clearly that Israel must allow food, medicine and other supplies into all of Gaza – especially the north, and especially as winter sets in – and protect the workers distributing it,” she added.

Mr Danon told the Council that Israel had been “hard at work delivering humanitarian aid”.

“The problem isn’t the flow of aid. It is Hamas, which hijacks supplies, storing or selling them to fuel their terror machine while Gaza’s civilians are neglected. Israel remains committed to working with our partners to deliver aid to those in need,” he added.

On 13 October, the Biden administration told Mr Netanyahu’s government that Israel must act within 30 days on a series of concrete measures to boost aid supplies, citing US laws which can prohibit military assistance to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian aid.

They included enabling a minimum of 350 lorries a day to enter through all Israeli-controlled crossings with Gaza and ending the “isolation” of the north immediately.

According to data published Unrwa, only 852 aid lorries have crossed into Gaza this month, compared with about 3,000 lorries in September. A total of 502 have entered since the letter, with an average of 35 lorries crossing each day between 14 and 29 October.

Israel’s own data, meanwhile, says a total of 1,386 lorries have crossed between 1 and 28 October – a daily average of 49. It says there are also 670 lorry loads of aid awaiting collection from inside Gaza.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield also expressed US concern about the two laws adopted by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, forbidding Israeli state officials from contact with Unrwa and prohibiting Unrwa operations in Israel and annexed East Jerusalem in three months’ time.

“We know that right now, there is no alternative to Unrwa when it comes to delivering food and other life-saving aid in Gaza. Therefore, we have concerns about this legislation being implemented,” she said.

Mr Danon accused Unrwa of being “a terrorist front camouflaged as a humanitarian agency”, citing the involvement of a handful of its thousands of staff in the 7 October attacks on Israel.

Unrwa insists it is impartial and that the laws breach the UN charter and Israel’s obligations under international law.

On Monday, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his Israeli counterpart had floated the possibility of delayed implementation of the legislation during a call at the weekend.

“When I raised this issue with Foreign Minister [Israel] Katz yesterday, he was at pains to explain that, although the Knesset could pass its bill today, that does not mean that it has to be implemented,” Mr Lammy told the UK Parliament.

But in an unusual statement sent to the BBC on Wednesday, the Israeli foreign ministry contradicted Mr Lammy’s account.

“In general, we do not refer to the content of diplomatic talks. Nevertheless, and in order to remove any doubts, it should be clarified that the description of Foreign Minister Katz’s remarks is not true and does not reflect what was said in the conversation,” it said.

“The foreign minister is, of course, committed to the implementation of the Knesset’s legislation as well as to Israel’s international humanitarian obligations.”

Police in Australia say they have recovered around 40,000 limited-edition coins based on the hit children’s television show Bluey.

It was reported in July that 63,000 of the coins – produced by the Australian Mint – had been stolen from a warehouse in Western Sydney, about two months before they were due to enter circulation.

Authorities recovered 40,061 coins on Tuesday after a raid on a property about 10km (6 miles) from the storage facility.

Earlier that day, 27-year-old Christina Vale had been arrested and charged with breaking and entering and disposing of stolen property, police say. She was the third person arrested over the alleged theft.

The coins, which are worth A$1 ($0.65; 50p) a piece, were stolen two months before their planned release. New South Wales Police said they had previously been selling online for 10 times their face value.

Shortly after the theft was reported, Police in the state of New South Wales launched a special investigation into the incident codenamed Strike Force Bandit – after Bluey’s father.

In August, they arrested 44-year-old Steven Nielsen, who was an employee at the warehouse, and Nassar Kanj, also 44, who they say acted as his accomplice in the alleged heist.

Police will now argue in court that Christina Vale was the pair’s getaway driver.

The gold-coloured coins are known as Bluey dollarbucks – which is how money is referred to in the cartoon – and feature images of characters from the show.

The hit series, about the Heeler family of dogs, is made by Brisbane-based animation firm Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bluey has been a huge international success and is now broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, US and China.

It was streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US last year, putting it in the country’s top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.

There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons, and a Bluey-themed “interactive experience” is opening in Brisbane next month.

The stolen coins are different from a collectable set of Bluey currency that caused a frenzy when it went on sale by the Royal Australian Mint in June this year.

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopaedia functions in the country.

The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being “a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of “distributing material from fake news websites” and demanded the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says the content on the website is completely managed by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page – and threatened to shut down the website if it didn’t comply with its orders.

The hearing is still on, but Wikipedia has since agreed to share basic information about the users in a sealed cover to the court, though it’s not clear what that would be.

Experts say the case is an important one as its outcome could impact people’s access to neutral information on the platform.

“It will tell us whether India lives in the era of the internet, where information is truthful and free for everybody to access,” says technology law expert Mishi Choudhary.

The hearing began in July after ANI petitioned the court, saying it had tried to change the allegedly defamatory material on Wikipedia but its edits were not accepted.

The ANI page was put under “extended confirmed protection” – a Wikipedia feature used to stop vandalism or abuse – where only users who have already done a certain number of edits can make changes to a page.

In its lawsuit, ANI demanded that the allegedly defamatory content be taken down. However, it has not sued the news reports that are cited in the Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia, in turn, argued that despite being a community-driven platform, it had a robust fact-checking system.

Wikipedia works on a self-regulation model, where anyone can make edits on a page as long as it is backed by a published authentic source and written from a neutral point of view – this means no-one can add new, unpublished information on Wikipedia.

There are volunteers on the website who edit and verify information, while maintaining their anonymity.

Any debates among volunteers about the edits are visible for everyone to see on the page. In case of disagreements, there are guidelines on how to resolve disputes. The website also uses bots to keep track of the changes.

In court, the Wikimedia Foundation said that it only provided technical infrastructure and had no relationship with the volunteers who manage content on the website.

But this model came under scrutiny after a page on the ongoing court case appeared on Wikipedia.

Last week, the court ordered it to be taken down saying it interfered with court proceedings.

The Foundation has since suspended the page. Observers say this is probably the first time that a Wikipedia page in English language has been taken down after a court order.

Transparency reports published by the Foundation since 2012 show that in about 5,500 content takedown and alteration requests globally, it had complied with less than 10, and none of them were for the English website.

The move was criticised by some digital experts who said it was wrong to take down the page as it collated what the press had been reporting on the case.

Simply put, a lot.

Experts say that the outcome of the case is likely to have significant ramifications for the platform’s operations in India.

Tech journalist and digital rights expert Nikhil Pahwa fears that the case may encourage more people and brands to start controlling their Wikipedia pages.

“Many people do not like how they have been portrayed on Wikipedia. Now anyone can file a case, ask for identification of editors and the court might grant it without any preliminary determination of whether there was defamation,” he says.

Ms Choudhary says the case could have a “chilling effect” on free speech as editors might hesitate to write truthful content.

Any form of self-censorship could also seriously hamper access to neutral information about a subject on the platform, she adds.

Of course, Wikipedia is no stranger to controversy. It has faced various forms of censorship in at least 13 countries. China banned it in 2019 and Myanmar in 2021.

It has also had run-ins with the Russian government and courts. Moscow has blocked several pages critical of the government and courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation for its refusal to remove these articles.

In 2023, Pakistan blocked the website for three days after it did not remove allegedly “blasphemous content”.

Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey in April 2017 after it refused to delete articles critical of the country’s government. Turkey’s top court lifted the ban in 2020.

In India, experts say the platform is one of the few organisations that has pushed back against the federal government’s orders to take down content.

But a ban could seriously derail its operations in the country.

If the verdict is not in Wikipedia’s favour, “we as a society will suffer since we will not have access to impartial information”, Ms Choudhary says.

A Chinese spacecraft with a three-person crew, including the country’s first female space engineer, has docked after a journey of more than six hours.

The crew will use the homegrown space station as a base for six months to conduct experiments and carry out spacewalks as Beijing gathers experience and intelligence for its eventual mission to put someone on the Moon by 2030.

Beijing declared the launch of Shenzhou 19 a “complete success” – it is one of 100 launches China has planned in a record year of space exploration as it tries to outdo its rival, the United States.

The BBC was given rare access to the Jiuquan Satellite launch centre in Gansu and we were just over a kilometre away when the spacecraft blasted off.

Flames shot out of the rocket launcher as it took to the skies, lighting up the Gobi Desert with a deafening roar.

Hundreds of people lined the streets, waving and cheering the names of the taikonauts, China’s word for astronauts, as they were sent off.

At the Tiangong space station, the Shenzhou 19 crew met with three other astronauts who are manning the Shenzhou 18 and will return to Earth on 4 November.

Just two years ago, President Xi Jinping declared that “to explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is our eternal dream”.

But some in Washington see the country’s ambition and fast-paced progress as a real threat.

Earlier this year, Nasa chief Bill Nelson said the US and China were “in effect, in a race” to return to the Moon, where he fears Beijing wants to stake territorial claims.

He told legislators that he believed their civilian space programme was also a military programme.

However, in Dongfeng Space City, a town built to support the launch site, China’s space programme is celebrated.

Every street light is adorned with the national flag.

Cartoon-like astronaut figurines and sculptures sit in the centre of children’s parks and plastic rockets are a centrepiece on most traffic roundabouts.

A huge poster with Xi Jinping on one side and a photo of the Shenzhou spacecraft on the other greets you as you drive into the main compound.

Hundreds have gathered in the dark after midnight to wave flags and brightly coloured lights as the Taikonauts make their last few steps on Earth before heading to the launch site.

The brass band strikes up Ode to the Motherland as young children, kept up late for the occasion, their cheeks adorned with the Chinese flag, all shout in full song.

This is a moment of national pride.

The pilot of this mission, Cai Xuzhe, is a veteran but he’s travelling with a new generation of Chinese-trained taikonauts born in 1990 – including China’s first female space engineer, Wang Haoze.

“Their youthful energy has made me feel younger and even more confident,” he told the gathered media ahead of take-off.

“Inspired by dreams that spark glory, and by glory that ignites new dreams, we assure the party and the people that we will stay true to our mission, with our hearts and minds fully devoted. We will strive to achieve new accomplishments in China’s crewed space programme.”

Standing to his left, beaming, is Song Lingdong.

He recalls watching one of China’s first space station missions as a 13-year-old with “excitement and awe”. He chose to become a pilot in the hope that this is how he could serve his country.

All three convey their deep sense of national pride, and state media has emphasised that this will be its “youngest crew” to date.

The message is clear: this is a new generation of space travellers and an investment in the country’s future.

China has already selected its next group of astronauts and they will train for potential lunar missions as well as to crew the space station.

“I am determined not to let down the trust placed in me,” says Mr Song. “I will strive to make our country’s name shine once again in space.”

China’s name has been “shining brightly” a lot lately when it comes to headlines about its space programme.

Earlier this year, the country achieved a historic first by retrieving rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon.

In 2021, China safely landed a spacecraft on Mars and released its Zhurong rover – becoming just the second nation to do so.

China also has a fleet of satellites in space and has plans for many more.

In August it launched the first 18 of what it hopes will eventually be a constellation of 14,000 satellites providing broadband internet coverage from space, which it hopes will one day rival SpaceX’s Starlink.

Elon Musk, Starlink’s chief executive, admitted on his own platform X that China’s space programme is far more advanced than people realise.

But others in the US are voicing even greater concerns, as they fear this technology can be weaponised.

The head of US Space Command, General Stephen Whiting, told a space symposium in April that China and Russia were both investing heavily in space at a “breath-taking speed”.

He claimed that since 2018, China has tripled the amount of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites it has in orbit, building a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and target United States and allied military capabilities”.

China’s space exploration is a “collective mission for humanity”, says Li Yingliang, director of the general technology bureau of China’s Manned Space Agency, dismissing US concerns as “unnecessary”.

“I don’t think this should be called a competition… China has long upheld the notion of peaceful use of space in its manned space programme. In the future, we will further develop international co-operation in various aspects of manned space technology, all based on sharing and collaboration,” he adds.

But the new space race is no longer about getting to the Moon. It’s about who will control its resources.

The Moon contains minerals, including rare earths, metals like iron and titanium – and helium too, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment.

Estimates for the value of all this vary wildly, from billions to quadrillions. So it’s easy to see why some see the Moon as a place to make lots of money. However, it’s also important to note that this would be a very long-term investment – and the tech needed to extract and return these lunar resources is some way off, writes the BBC’s science editor Rebecca Morelle.

Chinese experts at the launch centre were keen to point out the benefits of Beijing’s space station experiments.

“We study bones, muscles, nerve cells, and the effects of microgravity on them. Through this research, we’ve discovered that osteoporosis on Earth is actually similar to bone loss in space. If we can uncover unique patterns in space, we might be able to develop special medications to counteract bone loss and muscle atrophy,” said Zhang Wei, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Many of these experimental results can be applied on Earth.”

China is, at times, trying to downplay its advances.

At the launch of a roadmap for its space ambitions, which include building a research station on the Moon, returning samples of Venus’s atmosphere to Earth and launching more than 30 space missions by the middle of this century, Ding Chibiao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the country did not have a great number of achievements “compared to developed nations”.

And even here at the launch centre, they admit to “significant challenges” as they try to land a crew on the Moon.

“The technology is complex, there’s a tight schedule, and there are a lot of challenges,” said Lin Xiqiang, spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency.

“We’ll keep up the spirit of ‘two bombs and one star’. We will maintain our self-confidence and commitment to self-improvement, keep working together and keep pushing forward. We’ll make the Chinese people’s dream of landing on the Moon a reality in the near future.”

That’s perhaps why President Xi appears to be prioritising the country’s space programme even as the economy is in a slow decline.

And even though they are bringing along international press to witness their progress – there are key restrictions.

We were kept in a hotel three hours from the launch site and transported back and forth by bus, a total journey of 12 hours, rather than being left on site for a few hours.

A simple trip to a friendly local restaurant was carefully guarded by a line of security personnel.

We also noticed a large sign in town holds a stern warning: “It’s a crime to leak secrets. It’s an honour to keep secrets. You’ll be jailed if you leak secrets. You’ll be happy if you keep secrets. You’ll be shot if you sell secrets.”

China is taking no chances with its new technology, as its rivalry with the United States is no longer just here on Earth.

The world’s two most powerful countries could soon be staking territorial claims well beyond this planet.

The 2024 presidential election is the first since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which protected the national right to an abortion.

The gender divide has been prominent in this election, with polls suggesting Kamala Harris has an advantage among women and former President Donald Trump is enjoying a similar lead among men.

The BBC has been speaking to women voters about how they are considering gender and abortion as they cast their ballots in the final days of the campaign.

I’m concerned about women’s rights and women’s health care. I’m not a one-issue voter, but that is a huge one. I work in the medical sector and I was very personally affected by the overturn of Roe v Wade because I wasn’t able to get access to a lot of the drugs I needed. Nobody was sure of what the legality was… even though they’re used for other things.

The whole Republican stance is smaller government and don’t let government make my personal decisions, so why are they trying to legislate what a woman can do with her body?

[A Harris presidency] would mean that all the things that my parents told me when I was younger were true – that just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean that you are limited.

[Trump] has definitely said things that he probably should have unsaid. I would have to shake my finger at that, especially as a woman, but I have yet to hear anything that would make me change my mind about my vote.

I’m not voting personality. I’m voting policy. I don’t have to marry the man. I don’t have to deal with him. I have to deal with his policies.

On abortion, [Harris] is not giving a gestational parameter of how late somebody can get an abortion. That cannot be-open ended. I was a NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] nurse for 17 years… I care about women’s rights. I care about women. The mother is the first patient. However, that is the turn-off to me that she won’t give an answer to that.

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I am definitely concerned about the direction that reproductive rights are going in parts of the country. I feel that Trump’s attempts to communicate that he understands why [reproductive rights] is an important issue to women has fallen woefully short.

I think Harris has an innate understanding of its importance, just being a woman and a woman of colour. Would I like her to lay out her plans a little bit more to potentially expand reproductive rights? Absolutely. But Trump has set the bar so low that she could really continue to not even mention it and she would still be doing a better job.

[A Harris presidency] brings tears to my eyes just to think about. I have a nine-year-old daughter and she’s old enough to start having aspirations and to start paying attention to the world around her.

This ain’t my first rodeo and I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I can look past the advertising they’re doing for two specific groups.

It’s wonderful that we have Harris as a female seriously running for the presidency and that she has been a vice-president and has some experience. But Trump, when he was in office, I wasn’t too upset with what he was doing.

I wouldn’t mind having a female president but some of Harris’s political doctrine and what I think is right don’t line up.

I really would love this to be a moment of celebration as we elect a woman of colour to our highest office, but unfortunately with how tight the election is against Trump and how disappointing [Harris’s] campaign has been on some of the issues that matter to me, it’s been hard to be as celebratory as I’d like.

Obviously abortion is a huge issue that needs to be addressed, but I’m not necessarily happy, I should say, with either candidate’s approaches in addressing the issue.

I understand Harris has a policy where she wants to codify Roe v Wade, but I think women’s rights and issues extend outside of just abortion access. Trump is very wishy-washy on the issue of women’s rights, so it’s hard to pin him down on any stance.

.

I think [Trump] is really the only possibility because I think Harris is just clueless and incompetent. I think she would be a disaster for this country, just listening to her mumble and evade. I just get a horrible feeling about her.

I am pro-choice, actually, within reason. Not a late-term abortion. I don’t agree with that. But I think Trump by really relegating [legislation] to the states themselves, he’s being sensible.

Harris doesn’t have much to run on so that’s her big selling point with women. She doesn’t have much substance to her, in other words, so she just hammers on and on about the abortion issue.

Reproductive rights for women are huge for me as a woman, especially living in the state of Florida where there is an amendment on the ballot that will guarantee the protection for abortion rights.

I really want to support a party that’s going to support reproductive rights for women and not just women, but for everybody, because what’s to say it’s not going to spread elsewhere? It starts with women, usually, but it goes on and on.

Our government is at least 50 years behind the times for a lot of things – especially other countries throughout the world having better representation. I have a niece that I love dearly. The fact that she could see [a female president], and just for that to be a normal thing for her, will be huge.

I was actually going to vote for Harris, but then she started doubling down on how abortion is reproductive health… I’m a Catholic. I am pro-life.

The problem that I ran into is that I don’t know how any Catholic can vote for somebody who spews the stuff like what we saw [from Trump] at Madison Square Garden recently. I take the injunction to welcome the stranger and to feed and clothe very seriously.

So under those circumstances, I’ve got nobody I can vote for.

I get so scared. We actually can’t go back. It’s very frightening to me. I had more rights than my granddaughter is going to have in her future and that’s not right.

It is so disturbing that it is so close. [Trump] is a felon out on bail. I don’t understand the Republicans. They used to be the law and order [party], supposedly, and it’s now this.

I think a lot [of women] are coming out and saying, ‘Why are you telling us what to do with our bodies?’ Abortion is a personal thing and it’s up to the doctor and the woman. It is none of my business.

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The sound of war is loud at night in Beirut’s eastern Achrafieh neighbourhood.

Residents can hear Israeli air strikes hitting the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, known as Dahieh. Some can even see the explosions lighting up the sky from their balconies.

However, on the streets it is quiet.

Volunteers in uniform are patrolling the predominantly Christian neighbourhood holding walkie-talkies to co-ordinate their operation.

The neighbourhood watch was formed a few years ago following the financial crisis that hit Lebanon to reassure residents worried about crime. But with recent developments, the mission has changed.

“We have concerns with displaced people who are coming in huge numbers to Beirut, and they have a lot of needs, and it is very complicated,” says Nadim Gemayel, who formed the organisation behind the neighbourhood watch.

Communities across Lebanon rallied to help house and feed the hundreds of thousands of families who were displaced when Israel escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah last month before launching a ground invasion of the south.

However, an influx of people from the predominantly Shia Muslim areas where the Iran-backed group has a strong presence – Dahieh, south Lebanon, and the Bekaa Valley in the east – into places which are majority Sunni Muslim and Christian also risk exacerbating sectarian divisions in a country where memories of the 1975-1990 civil war are still vivid.

Recent Israeli attacks on those areas has only served to heighten tensions between residents and the displaced.

A strike on 14 October in the northern town of Aitou, which killed 23 displaced people, shook the Christian community.

Even though the arrival of wealthy Shia families from the south and Dahieh have caused rental prices to skyrocket and boosted the incomes of landlords, many are now concerned that they could be members of Hezbollah and potential Israeli targets.

Some building management firms have sent out forms to residents asking them for identity details, the number of family members who are staying in flats, and vehicles they are using.

In some areas, leaflets have been distributed asking for members of Hezbollah to leave, while individuals known to be affiliated with the group have been told to go.

“There is a feeling of fear. Some citizens are suspicious about who is coming to their region. A lot of people are very afraid that some Hezbollah members live in a building where they are followed by Israel and probably targeted,” Gemayel says.

“This is why we are trying to follow up what’s happening and trying to control this with the army and security forces to secure the refugees and citizens at the same time.”

Although residents may feel reassured by the neighbourhood watch, some worry that such initiative carries echoes of the civil war, when sectarian militias controlled different areas of Beirut.

The civil war, which lasted 15 years and left almost 150,000 people dead, pitted militias linked to Lebanon’s sects against each other.

It began as a conflict between Christian and Palestinian militias, which were allied with Muslim militias. Later, there were conflicts among Christian and Muslim militias. Foreign powers were also drawn in, with Syrian troops moving in and Israel invading twice.

The main Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces, was led by Nadim Gemayel’s father, Bashir, until he was assassinated in Achrafieh in 1982 after being elected the country’s president.

All militias were supposed to be disarmed after the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the civil war, but Hezbollah was exempt because it was fighting Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon.

When Israeli forces finally withdrew in 2000, Hezbollah resisted pressure to give up its weapons and continued to carry out cross-border attacks on Israel. They fought a month-long war in 2006, which left much of the south and Beirut’s southern suburbs in ruins.

Gemayel has long called for Hezbollah to give up its weapons. After Israel escalated its air campaign, he said the group was “reaping what it sowed over the past 20 years” – but also warned that the Lebanese people would “pay a heavy price in destruction and devastation”.

In the mixed neighbourhood of Hamra in western Beirut, the scene is completely different.

Unlike in the predominantly Christian side of Beirut, many schools in Hamra have been turned into shelters for displaced families.

Members of the Syrian Socialist National Party, an ally of Hezbollah which has a presence in Hamra, rushed to open empty buildings, including some newly built apartment blocks, to house displaced families.

The move caused tensions between some buildings’ owners and displaced families who broke into them. Landlords expressed fears that the new arrivals would eventually refuse to leave the free accommodation.

In a six-floor 1960s-style building in the heart of Hamra, a designer who wished to remain anonymous has her studio set on the top floor. She says some families broke into the building and were squatting in the empty flats.

“At beginning, we had 20 people. Now, we have 100 living in the building,” she tells me.

“I have great sympathy for them and don’t want women and children to stay in the street. I won’t ask them to leave until the government finds a solution, but this is not sustainable.”

She is also worried about the potential social impact on the area.

The new arrivals are all from the Shia community and follow strict religious rules, with the women wearing the chador, a full-body cloak that covers everything but their faces.

“I don’t have a problem with any religion, but they also should accept my style of living as an atheist,” she says.

The mood is indeed changing in Hamra, which is home to multiple cultures and faiths.

Thousands of people are believed to have moved there.

It is hard to drive or even walk through the neighbourhood because of the number of cars and motorcycles causing traffic jams.

The night-life has also changed, with the party- and bar-goers replaced by people queueing for fast food and shisha cafes.

Outside shelters, men and women sit on the pavement, smoking shishas and watching news on their mobile phones or even TVs late into the night – something residents have complained about.

But increasing numbers of building owners are emptying people from their properties.

Fatima al-Haj Yousef, who arrived with her husband and three children from the Bekaa Valley, is worried about where to go next. She has stayed in this building for the past three weeks.

“We are happy to sign documents confirming that when the war is over, we will leave, but they sent the police to force us out,” she says. Fatima is mainly worried about her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter who suffers with cancer and needs medication.

“I just need to be somewhere safe and clean for my daughter. The schools are packed full of people, and everyone is smoking indoors.”

Fatima didn’t feel there was any sectarian tension against her as a Shia, but another man who stayed in the building with his five children had a different view.

“If they accept to pay rent, we already can pay rent. But [the landlord] didn’t accept… She wants us to go. It’s not only about the building. It’s something else. I think, and this is my opinion, she wants to kill the [Shia] Muslims here.”

This view was echoed by Daniel, a Hezbollah social worker who was helping finding alternative housing for the families.

“They think that resistance is weakened by the death of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, but we are all Nasrallah,” he says, referring to the Hezbollah leader killed by Israel in Dahieh last month.

He believes that this building is being cleared because the inhabitants are displaced families, who are predominantly Shia and are supporters of what he describes as “the resistance movement” – or Hezbollah.

Many here believe that Israel won’t stop until Hezbollah is completely disarmed.

“Either all Lebanon will be destroyed by Israel which will be catastrophic, or they [Hezbollah] surrender and give up their arms, and we build a Lebanese state that will be based on the Taif agreement, and everyone has equal rights and obligations,” says Nadim Gemayel.

Saoirse Ronan has said the reaction to a viral clip of her talking about women’s safety on The Graham Norton Show has been “wild”.

The Irish actress appeared on the BBC One talk show last week alongside actors Paul Mescal, Eddie Redmayne and Denzel Washington.

Redmayne explained he had been taught how to use a phone as a weapon while training for his role as an assassin in The Day of the Jackal.

In response, Mescal questioned whether anyone would realistically have time to take their phone out when being attacked, before Ronan said: “That’s what girls have to think about all the time. Am I right ladies?”

She was applauded by the audience and the clip has been trending on social media in the days since.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Little Women actress told The Ryan Tubridy Show on Virgin Radio UK that it’s “definitely not something that I had expected, and I didn’t necessarily set out to sort of make a splash”.

Ronan, who stars in the forthcoming Oscar-tipped film Blitz, said the conversation is a reflection of how society treats women’s safety.

“I think there’s something really telling about the society that we’re in right now and about how open women want to be with the men in their lives.”

The 30-year-old added that the conversation “felt very similar to like when I am at dinner with a bunch of my friends and I will always make the point that, well, this is actually an experience that we go through every single day, 100%.”

She said it was “amazing” that this moment is “opening a conversation” and “allowing more women to just be like, well, yeah, actually, let’s talk about our experience”.

The Lady Bird star went on to say she met a woman recently who told her: “‘It’s really interesting, after we watched that interview, myself and a few of my female friends were with my husband and we said, you know, this really reminds me of the fake phone call.’

“And her husband went, ‘What, fake phone call? What do you mean?’.

“And of course, you wouldn’t understand if you’ve not had to go through anything like that. But she somehow, throughout her life as a female, has gained these tools without ever talking to other women about it and understanding that this is sort of a survival tactic.”

The fake phone call refers to someone who suspects they are being followed by a potential attacker, and pretends to take a call on their mobile to protect themselves.

The hope is that the potential attacker will be deterred by the idea they are speaking on the phone to someone who would raise the alarm.

Ronan has been praised for highlighting a reality women face while on the sofa and raising awareness of the “serious, ongoing thoughts women have on an almost daily basis” Elle writer Olivia Petter said.

Guardian columnist Marina Hyde agreed, writing: “Most, if not absolutely all, women have been in a version of that conversation in their time, and almost all of us have not found the precise words to say in the moment it was happening.”

During the exchange, Redmayne had recalled being taught “how you can use the butt of your phone [as a weapon] if someone’s attacking you”.

Mescal replied: “Who’s actually going to think about that, though? If someone attacks me I’m not going to go [reaches into pocket] – phone”.

After Ronan highlighted the concerns woman have about being attacked, there was a moment of silence before the audience applauded, while the men on the couch, and Norton, nodded their agreement and acknowledged her point.

Ronan was on the Graham Norton sofa talking about her new role in Sir Steve McQueen’s Blitz where she plays Rita, a mother searching for her son as the Second World War ravages London.

A single case of mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – linked to the recent outbreak in parts of Africa, has been detected in the UK.

It is part of the Clade 1b outbreak, which appears to spread more easily between people.

Mpox was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization in the summer.

The UK patient had recently been on holiday in Africa and began to feel sick 24 hours after flying home.

The patient developed flu-like symptoms on 22 October and a rash two days later.

An mpox rash of pus-filled lesions can last for up to a month. Other symptoms include fever, headaches and low energy.

Laboratory testing confirmed it was Clade 1b. This form of the virus has been causing mounting concern due to the way it spreads.

Its close relative Clade 1a is largely connected to exposure to infected animals or eating bush meat.

But Clade 1b appears able to spread more easily from person to person through close physical contact, including sex.

The infected UK patient is being treated at the Royal Free Hospital’s specialist high consequence infectious diseases unit in London.

In Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda have all reported cases of Clade 1b mpox this year.

Clade 1b appears to be milder than 1a, although it’s difficult to know for certain because precise figures on the exact numbers of people infected are hard to pin down.

The patient’s close contacts, which include housemates, are being traced. This is thought to be fewer than 10 people.

“This is the first time we have detected this clade of mpox in the UK, though other cases have been confirmed abroad,” said Prof Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

She said: “The risk to the UK population remains low, and we are working rapidly to trace close contacts and reduce the risk of any potential spread.”

Sweden, India and Germany have all detected cases of this strain of mpox linked to travel to affected countries.

This is a different outbreak to the one that primarily affected gay, bisexual and other men-who-have-sex-with-men in 2022, called Clade II. These mpox infections still happen at low levels.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said : “The government is working alongside UKHSA and the NHS to protect the public and prevent transmission.

“This includes securing vaccines and equipping healthcare professionals with the guidance and tools they need to respond to cases safely.”

Ukraine is planning to draft another 160,000 troops into its military as Russia gains ground in the east.

Russia has been advancing in the eastern Donetsk region and on Tuesday said it had fully captured the mining town of Selydove.

It also comes amid reports that a number of North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia.

Ukraine’s military has been under severe pressure of late, in part due to Russia’s greater manpower and deeper resources.

“There are plans to call up more than 160,000 people,” the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, Oleksandr Lytvynenko, told parliament on Tuesday.

The AFP news agency reports the recruitment will take place over three months.

The announcement comes as Ukraine continues to commit personnel for its incursion in the Kursk region of Russia, which started in August.

The Pentagon estimates around 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to train in eastern Russia.

The US said on Tuesday a “small number” of North Korean troops have been sent to Kursk. A couple of thousand more are heading there, it said.

South Korea has claimed the troops are being trained in various locations, with many wearing Russian uniforms in order to disguise themselves.

A high level government official said they believed up to 11,000 soldiers had already been sent to Russia, with at least 3,000 in the west of the country.

Last week, President Vladimir Putin refused to deny that North Korean troops had arrived in Russia, following reports that Pyongyang was preparing to send thousands of troops to aid its ally.

The latest mobilisation comes after Ukraine’s parliament passed legislation in April to help mobilise troops to fight invading Russian forces.

The law requires every man aged between 25 and 60 to log their details on an electronic database so they can be called up. Conscription officers are on the hunt for those avoiding the register, pushing more men who do not want to serve into hiding.

The measure is aimed at boosting numbers in the military, which is under severe pressure as Russia continues to make gains in the east.

Moscow has announced that it now controls all of Selydove in the Donetsk region as well as surrounding villages, as it focuses on the city of Pokrovsk.

This is a strategically significant transport hub, just 18km (10 miles) away.

Israel’s parliament voted on Monday evening to ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) from operating within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem.

Contact between Unrwa employees and Israeli officials will be banned, crippling its ability to operate in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Almost all of Gaza’s population of more than two million people are dependent on aid and services from the agency.

The move has faced widespread condemnation, with Unrwa warning the new law could see aid supply chains “fall apart” in the coming weeks.

Israel has defended the move, repeating its allegation that a number of the agency’s staff were involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks last year, which killed 1,200 people.

However, Israel’s opposition to Unrwa also goes back decades.

Founded in 1949, the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or Unrwa, works in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, initially caring for the 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from or fled their homes after the creation of the state of Israel.

Over the decades, Unrwa has grown to become the biggest UN agency operating in Gaza. It employs some 13,000 people there and is key to humanitarian efforts.

It is funded primarily by voluntary donations by UN member states, with the UN itself providing some direct funds.

It distributes aid and runs shelters and key infrastructure – such as medical facilities, teacher training centres and almost 300 primary schools.

Since the war in Gaza began, the agency says it has distributed food parcels to almost 1.9 million people. It has also offered nearly six million medical consultations across the enclave over the course of the conflict.

More than 200 Unrwa staff have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 in the course of those duties, according to the agency.

Unwra has long been criticised by Israel, with many there objecting to its very existence.

The fate of refugees has been a core issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Palestinians harbouring a dream of returning to homes in historic Palestine, parts of which are now in Israel.

Israel rejects their claim and criticises the set-up of Unrwa for allowing refugee status to be inherited by successive generations.

It says this entrenches Palestinians as refugees, and encourages their hopes of a right of return.

The Israeli government has also long denounced the agency’s teaching and textbooks for, in its view, perpetuating anti-Israel views.

In 2022, an Israeli watchdog said Unrwa educational material taught students that Israel was attempting to “erase Palestinian identity”.

The European Commission identified what it called “anti-Semitic material” in the schoolbooks, “including even incitement to violence”, and the European Parliament has called repeatedly for EU funding to the Palestinian Authority to be conditional on removing such content.

Unrwa has previously said reports about its educational material were “inaccurate and misleading” and that many of the books in question were not used in its schools.

After the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, allegations that some Unrwa staff were involved further amplified calls in Israel for the agency to be banned.

The military claimed that in total, more than 450 Unrwa staff were members of “terrorist organisations”. In the wake of the allegations, some 16 Western countries temporarily suspended funding for the aid agency.

The UN investigated Israel’s claim and fired nine people, but it said Israel had not provided evidence for more allegations and Unrwa denied any wider involvement with Hamas.

Speaking on Monday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the allegations, writing on X that “Unrwa workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable.”

Under the new law – which was approved by 92 MPs and opposed by just 10 – contact between Unrwa employees and Israeli officials will be banned.

While most of Unrwa’s projects take place in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, it relies on agreements with Israel to operate. This includes moving aid through checkpoints between Israel and Gaza.

Along with the Palestinian Red Crescent, Unrwa handles almost all aid distribution in Gaza through 11 centres across the enclave. It also provides services to 19 refugee camps in the West Bank.

Unrwa director William Deere told the BBC that on a practical level, the ban on interacting with Israeli officials meant it would become almost impossible for the agency’s staff to operate in the country.

“We won’t be able to move in Gaza without being subject to possible attack, international staff won’t be able to get visas any longer,” he said.

The executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme said without Unrwa’s presence in Gaza, aid agencies will be unable to distribute essential food and medicine.

“They do all the work on the ground there,” Cindy McCain told the BBC. “We don’t have the contacts. We don’t have the ability to get to know the contacts, because things are so intensely difficulty there.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Monday that “sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza” despite Unrwa’s ban, and that Israel would work with its international partners to ensure this.

But on Monday the US state department said Israel must do “much more” to allow international aid to enter Gaza. The warning came two weeks after it gave Israel 30 days to boost supplies, or risk seeing some military assistance cut.

People in war-torn Gaza are already struggling with a deep humanitarian crisis – but now they fear it will get much more difficult because of Israel’s ban on the biggest UN agency which operates there.

“Unrwa means everything to us: it is our life, our food, our drink and our medical care. When it closes, there will be no flour. If my son gets sick, where will I go?” asks Yasmine el-Ashry in Khan Younis.

“Banning Unrwa is another war for the Palestinian people,” said registered refugee Saeed Awida.

“They want to exterminate the Palestinian people and not provide us with humanitarian services.”

Despite international opposition, in Israel’s parliament there was wide support for the new legislation, which will prevent Israeli officials being in contact with Unrwa – the UN’s relief and works agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East.

The agency is accused of being complicit with Hamas.

“A terrorist organisation has completely taken over it,” claims Sharren Haskel from the opposition National Unity Party – a co-sponsor of the bill.

“If the United Nations is not willing to clean this organisation from terrorism, from Hamas activists, then we have to take measures to make sure they cannot harm our people ever again.”

Unrwa insists on its own neutrality.

It says that if the new Israeli laws against it are implemented as planned in three-months’ time, the effect will be profound, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“It would essentially make it impossible for us to operate in Gaza,” Sam Rose, Unrwa’s Gaza deputy director, has said.

“We wouldn’t be able to bring in supplies, because that has to take place in co-ordination with Israeli officials. It wouldn’t further be able for us to manage our movements safely in and out of Gaza around checkpoints, but just in and around conflict zones.”

He points out that the protected status of Unrwa schools, clinics and other buildings where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering would effectively be lost.

Israeli media suggest that there were warnings from diplomats and the security establishment about the consequences of taking action against Unrwa.

Israel stands accused of being in breach of the UN charter and its obligations under international humanitarian law.

However, ultimately domestic politics outweighed these considerations

Unrwa was set up in 1949 by the UN General Assembly in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war which followed the creation of the state of Israel.

It helped some 700,000 Palestinians who had fled or been forced from their homes.

Seven decades on, with the descendants of those original refugees registered, the number of Palestinians supported by Unrwa has grown to six million across Gaza, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

It helps them with aid, assistance, education and health services.

The agency has long been a lightning rod for Israeli criticism, for example with allegations that the textbooks used in its schools promote hatred of Israel.

However, this has grown dramatically since Hamas’s 7 October attack last year.

Last week, Unrwa confirmed that a Hamas commander killed in an Israeli strike had been an employee since 2022.

He was apparently filmed leading the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im.

The UN launched an investigation after Israel charged that 12 Unrwa staff took part in the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel; seven more cases later came to light.

In August, Unrwa said that nine staff members out of the thousands it employs in Gaza may have been involved in the attacks and had been fired.

“We have taken immediate and strong and direct action against any allegations that we have received,” maintains Sam Rose.

Israel has long complained that the existence of Unrwa perpetuates the problem of Palestinian refugees – a core issue in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

UN officials counter that this can only be solved as part of a negotiated political settlement.

But in Gaza, where most of the 2.3 million population are registered refugees, the new actions against Unrwa are also seen as a troubling attack on their status.

“I am telling you that the word “refugee” will disappear. They do not want the word refugee. Israel is looking for this,” Mohammed Salman from Deir al-Balah told the BBC.

At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, the Lebanese health ministry said.

Two children were among those killed in strikes which targeted 16 areas in the Baalbek region, officials said.

The ministry said 58 people were wounded, adding rescue efforts were still under way in the valley, which is a Hezbollah stronghold.

The Israeli military has not yet commented.

Israel has carried out thousands of air strikes across Lebanon over the past five weeks, targeting what it says are Hezbollah’s operatives, infrastructure and weapons.

Governor Bachie Khodr called the attacks the “most violent” in the area since Israel escalated the conflict against Hezbollah last month.

Unverified video posted on social media showed damage to buildings and forests ablaze, as rescuers searched for the injured.

In the town of Boudai, videos on social media appeared to show residents pleading for heavy equipment to be sent to help rescue people believed to be trapped.

The regional head of Baalbek’s Civil Defence crews told the BBC that the air strikes were like a “ring of fire”.

‘It was a very violent night,” Bilal Raad said.

“It was like a ring of fire has suddenly surrounded the area.”

He added the attacks had targeted “residential quarters where civilians live or near them”, and said a lack of equipment had hampered search and rescue efforts.

The town of Al-Allaq was hardest hit with 16 people killed, all from the same family, he said.

Baalbek is home to the ancient Roman ruins of Heliopolis – a UNESCO World Heritage site – where, in Roman times, thousands of pilgrims went to worship three deities.

A UNESCO spokesperson said that analysis of satellite images had not revealed any damage within the perimeter of the inscribed site of Baalbek.

They added they were “closely following the impact of the ongoing crisis in Lebanon on the cultural heritage sites”.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli air strikes on the coastal city of Tyre left seven dead and 17 injured, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Israel issued a warning for people to leave the centre of the city.

Hezbollah said it clashed with Israeli troops near Lebanon’s southern border on Monday and fired rockets at a naval base inside Israel near Haifa.

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

The Lebanese health ministry says more than 2,700 people have been killed and more than 12,400 wounded in Lebanon since then.

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

Lebanon’s government says up to 1.3 million people have been internally displaced as a result of the conflict.

Hezbollah has announced the group’s deputy secretary general will become its new head.

Naim Qassem replaces long-term leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut last month.

He is one of the few senior Hezbollah leaders who remains alive, after Israel killed most of the group’s leadership in a series of attacks.

The appointment comes as the conflict in Lebanon intensified in recent weeks.

For more than 30 years, Naim Qassem was Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general and one of the group’s most recognised faces.

Hezbollah said he was elected by the Shura Council, in accordance with the group’s rules. His whereabouts are unclear, however some reports suggest he has fled to Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main supporter.

He was born in Beirut in 1953 to a family from Lebanon’s south.

Qassem was one of Hezbollah’s founding members and since Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli air strike he has made three televised addresses.

In one speech, he said a ceasefire was the only way Israel could guarantee the return of its residents to the north.

Announcing Qassem’s promotion, Hezbollah released a statement describing him as “bearing the blessed banner in this march”.

The statement also honoured the late Nasrallah and others killed in the conflict.

The new Hezbollah leadership was expected to be passed to cleric Hashem Safieddine, but on 22 October it was revealed that he had been killed in an Israeli air strike nearly three weeks prior.

Reacting to Qassem’s appointment on social media, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described it as a “temporary appointment” and “not for long”.

• Follow live updates on the conflict
• What we know about Israel’s attack on Iran
• Israel-Hezbollah conflict in maps

Israel has carried out air strikes across Lebanon in recent weeks, targeting what it says are Hezbollah’s operatives, infrastructure and weapons.

On Monday night, the Israeli military carried out air strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, an area where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 60 people were killed and more than 50 wounded.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the attack.

Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah after almost a year of cross-border hostilities sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of residents of border areas displaced by Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks.

Over the past year, more than 2,700 people have been killed and nearly 12,500 injured in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry.

Hezbollah has attacked Israel with thousands of rockets and drones over the same period, and at least 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Satellite images analysed by BBC Verify show damage to a number of military sites in Iran from Israeli air strikes on Saturday.

They include sites experts say were used for missile production and air defence, including one previously linked to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Satellite imagery following the Israeli strikes shows damage to buildings at what experts say is a major weapons development and production facility at Parchin, about 30km (18.5 miles) east of Tehran.

The site has been linked to rocket production according to experts from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Comparing high-resolution satellite imagery taken on 9 September with an image captured on 27 October, it appears that at least four structures have been significantly damaged.

One of these structures, known as Taleghan 2, has been previously linked to Iran’s nuclear programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

In 2016 the IAEA found evidence of uranium particles at the site, raising questions about banned nuclear activity there.

Another site apparently targeted in the Israeli air strikes is at Khojir, about 20km north-west of Parchin.

Fabian Hinz of the ISS says “Khojir is known as the area with the highest concentration of ballistic missile-related infrastructure within Iran.”

It was the site of a mysterious large explosion in 2020.

Satellite photos show at least two buildings in the complex appear to have been severely damaged.

Analysts from Sibylline, a risk intelligence company, concluded that damage to Iranian facilities believed to be linked to rocket fuel production at both Parchin and Khojir will ultimately undermine Iran’s ability to “fire another salvo of the scale necessary to breach Israeli air defences”.

A military site at Shahroud, about 350km to the east of Tehran, has also sustained damage, according to satellite imagery taken after the Israeli strikes.

Located in the northern province of Semnan, this area is significant because it’s been involved in the production of long-range missile components, according to Fabian Hinz of the IISS.

Nearby is the Shahroud Space Centre, controlled by the Revolutionary Guards Corps, from which Iran launched a military satellite into space in 2020.

Israel has claimed that it successfully targeted Iran’s aerial defence systems at number of locations but it’s difficult to confirm this with the satellite imagery available.

We have obtained satellite imagery which appears to show damage to a site described by experts as a radar installation.

It’s located on Shah Nakhjir mountain close to the western city of Ilam, and Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist at Janes, a defence intelligence company, says this may have been a newly updated radar defence system.

The site itself was established decades ago, but satellite pictures analysed by open source experts show it has undergone major renovation in recent years.

We’ve also identified what appears to be damage to a storage unit at the Abadan Oil Refinery based in the south-western province of Khuzestan.

However, we don’t know what caused it and there is likely to be damage in some areas across Iran caused by debris or misfiring defence systems.

The New York Times cited Israeli officials as saying that the Abadan oil refinery was one of the sites targeted in its air strikes on Saturday morning.

Iranian authorities confirmed on Saturday that Khuzestan province had been targeted by Israel.

Abadan oil refinery is the country’s largest, capable of producing 500,000 barrels a day, according to its chief executive.

Satellite imagery isn’t always conclusive in identifying damaged structures.

For example, a photograph we have verified showing smoke rising near Hazrat Amir Brigade Air Defence base suggested it had been successfully targeted. But satellite imagery of the area captured on Sunday has too many shadows to confirm any damage to the site.

Iran launched a missile attack on Israel at the start of October for the second time this year, after firing 300 missiles and drones in April.

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When US President Joe Biden walked through Kyiv in February 2023 on a surprise visit to show solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, air sirens were wailing. “I felt something… more strongly than ever before,” he later recalled. “America is a beacon to the world.”

The world now waits to see who takes charge of this self-styled beacon after Americans make their choice in next week’s presidential election. Will Kamala Harris carry on in Biden’s footsteps with her conviction that in “these unsettled times, it is clear America cannot retreat”? Or will it be Donald Trump with his hope that “Americanism, not globalism” will lead the way?

We live in a world where the value of US global influence is under question. Regional powers are going their own way, autocratic regimes are making their own alliances, and the devastating wars in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere are raising uncomfortable questions about the value of Washington’s role. But America matters by dint of its economic and military strength, and its major role in many alliances. I turned to some informed observers for their reflections on the global consequences of this very consequential election.

“I cannot sugarcoat these warnings,” says Rose Gottemoeller, Nato’s former deputy secretary general. “Donald Trump is Europe’s nightmare, with echoes of his threat to withdraw from Nato in everyone’s ears.”

Washington’s defence spending amounts to two-thirds of the military budgets of Nato’s 31 other members. Beyond Nato, the US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, including China and Russia.

Trump boasts he’s playing hardball to force other Nato countries to meet their spending targets, which is 2% of their GDP – only 23 of the member nations have hit this target in 2024. But his erratic statements still jar.

If Harris wins, Ms Gottemoeller believes “Nato will no doubt be in good Washington hands.” But she has a warning there too. “She will be ready to continue working with Nato and the European Union to achieve victory in Ukraine, but she will not back off on [spending] pressure on Europe.”

But Harris’s team in the White House will have to govern with the Senate or the House, which could both soon be in Republican hands, and will be less inclined to back foreign wars than their Democratic counterparts. There’s a growing sense that no matter who becomes president, pressure will mount on Kyiv to find ways out of this war as US lawmakers become increasingly reluctant to pass huge aid packages.

Whatever happens, Ms Gottemoeller says, “I do not believe that Nato must fall apart.” Europe will need to “step forward to lead.”

The next US president will have to work in a world confronting its greatest risk of major power confrontation since the Cold War.

“The US remains the most consequential international actor in matters of peace and security”, Comfort Ero, president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, tells me. She adds a caveat, “but its power to help resolve conflicts is diminished.”

Wars are becoming ever harder to end. “Deadly conflict is becoming more intractable, with big-power competition accelerating and middle powers on the rise,” is how Ms Ero describes the landscape. Wars like Ukraine pull in multiple powers, and conflagrations such as Sudan pit regional players with competing interests against each other, and some more invested in war than in peace.

America is losing the moral high ground, Ms Ero says. “Global actors notice that it applies one standard to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and another to Israel’s in Gaza. The war in Sudan has seen terrible atrocities but gets treated as a second-tier issue.”

A win by Harris, she says, “represents continuity with the current administration.” If it’s Trump, he “might give Israel an even freer hand in Gaza and elsewhere, and has intimated he could try to cut a Ukraine deal with Moscow over Kyiv’s head.”

On the Middle East, the Democratic candidate has repeatedly echoed Mr Biden’s firm backing of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” But she’s also made a point of emphasising that “the killing of innocent Palestinians has to stop.”

Trump has also declared it’s time to “get back to peace and stop killing people.” But he’s reportedly told the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to “do what you have to do.”

The Republican contender prides himself on being a peacemaker. “I will have peace in the Middle East, and soon,” he vowed in an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya TV on Sunday night.

He’s promised to expand the 2020 Abraham Accords. These bilateral agreements normalised relations between Israel and a few Arab states, but were widely seen to have sidelined the Palestinians and ultimately contributed to the current unprecedented crisis.

On Ukraine, Trump never hides his admiration for strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He’s made it clear he wants to end the war in Ukraine, and with it the US’s hefty military and financial support. “I’ll get out. We gotta get out,” he insisted in a recent rally.

In contrast, Harris has said: “I have been proud to stand with Ukraine. I will continue to stand with Ukraine. And I will work to ensure Ukraine prevails in this war.”

But Ms Ero worries that, no matter who’s elected, things could get worse in the world.

“The biggest shock to the global economy for decades.” That’s the view of leading China scholar Rana Mitter regarding Trump’s proposed 60 percent tariffs on all imported Chinese goods.

Imposing steep costs on China, and many other trading partners, has been one of Trump’s most persistent threats in his “America first” approach. But Trump also lauds what he sees as his own strong personal connection with President Xi Jinping. He told the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board he wouldn’t have to use military force if Beijing moved to blockade Taiwan because the Chinese leader “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy.”

But both leading Republicans and Democrats are hawkish. Both see Beijing as being bent on trying to eclipse America as the most consequential power.

But Mr Mitter, a British historian who holds the ST Lee Chair in US-Asia relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School, sees some differences. With Ms Harris he says, “relations would likely develop in a linear fashion from where they are now.” If Trump wins, it’s a more “fluid scenario.” For example, on Taiwan, Mr Mitter points to Trump’s ambivalence about whether he would come to the defence of an island far from America.

China’s leaders believe both Harris and Trump will be tough. Mr Mitter sees it as “a small group of establishment types favour Harris as ‘better the opponent you know.’ A significant minority see Trump as a businessman whose unpredictability might just mean a grand bargain with China, however unlikely that seems.”

America and… the Middle East

The latest episode of the Global Story looks at what a Trump or Harris presidency could mean for violence in Israel, Gaza and the surrounding region.

Listen now on BBC Sounds. If you are outside the UK, listen wherever you get your podcasts.

“The US election is hugely consequential not just for its citizens but for the whole world because of the pressing imperative of the climate and nature crisis,” says Mary Robinson, chair of the Elders, a group of world leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, and former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“Every fraction of a degree matters to avert the worst impacts of climate change and prevent a future where devastating hurricanes like Milton are the norm,” she added.

But as Hurricanes Milton and Helene raged, Trump derided environmental plans and policies to confront this climate emergency as “one of the greatest scams of all time.” Many expect him to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement as he did in his first term.

However, Ms Robinson believes Trump cannot stop the momentum now gathering steam. “He cannot halt the US energy transition and roll back the billions of dollars in green subsidies… nor can he stop the indefatigable non-federal climate movement.”

She also urged Harris, who still hasn’t fleshed out her own stance, to step up “to show leadership, build on the momentum of recent years, and spur other major emitters to pick up the pace.”

“The outcome of the US election holds immense significance, given the unparalleled influence the United States wields, not just through its military and economic might, but through its potential to lead with moral authority on the global stage,” says Martin Griffiths, a veteran conflict mediator, who, until recently, was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

He sees greater light if Harris wins, and says that “a return to Trump’s presidency marked by isolationism and unilateralism, offers little but a deepening of global instability.”

But he has criticism, too, for the Biden-Harris administration, citing its “hesitancy” over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.

Aid agency bosses have repeatedly condemned Hamas’s murderous October 7th assault on Israeli civilians. But they’ve also repeatedly called on the US to do much more to end the profound suffering of civilians in Gaza as well as in Lebanon.

Biden and his top officials continually called for more aid to flow into Gaza, and did make a difference at times. But critics say the aid, and the pressure, was never enough. A recent warning that some vital military assistance could be cut pushed the decision until after the US elections.

The US is the single largest donor when it comes to the UN system. In 2022, it provided a record $18.1bn (£13.9bn).

But in Trump’s first term, he axed funding for several UN agencies and pulled out of the World Health Organisation. Other donors scrambled to fill the gaps – which is what Trump wanted to happen.

But Griffths still believes America is an indispensable power.

“In a time of global conflict and uncertainty, the world longs for the US to rise to the challenge of responsible, principled leadership… We demand more. We deserve more. And we dare to hope for more.”

Some users on X who spend their days sharing content that includes election misinformation, AI-generated images and unfounded conspiracy theories say they are being paid “thousands of dollars” by the social media site.

The BBC identified networks of dozens of accounts that re-share each other’s content multiple times a day – including a mix of true, unfounded, false and faked material – to boost their reach, and therefore, revenue on the site.

Several say earnings from their own and other accounts range from a couple of hundred to thousands of dollars.

They also say they coordinate sharing each other’s posts on forums and group chats. “It’s a way of trying to help each other out,” one user said.

Some of these networks support Donald Trump, others Kamala Harris, and some are independent. Several of these profiles – which say they are not connected to official campaigns – have been contacted by US politicians, including congressional candidates, looking for supportive posts.

On 9 October, X changed its rules so the payments made to eligible accounts with a significant reach are calculated according to the amount of engagement from premium users – likes, shares and comments – rather than the number of ads under their posts.

Many social media sites allow users to make money from their posts or to share sponsored content. But they often have rules which allow them to de-monetise or suspend profiles that post misinformation. X does not have guidelines on misinformation in the same way.

While X has a smaller user base than some sites, it has a significant impact on political discourse. It raises questions about whether X is incentivising users to post provocative claims, whether they’re true or not, at a highly sensitive moment for US politics.

The BBC compared the approximate earnings reported by some of these X users with the amount they would be expected to earn, based on their number of views, followers and interactions with other profiles, and found them to be credible.

Among the misleading posts shared by some of these networks of profiles were claims about election fraud which had been rebutted by authorities, and extreme, unfounded allegations of paedophilia and sexual abuse against the presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Some misleading and false posts that originated on X have also spilled on to other social media sites with a bigger audience, such as Facebook and TikTok.

In one example, an X user with a small following says he created a doctored image purporting to show Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s as a young woman. Other users then pushed evidence-free claims that the Democratic Party was manipulating images of its candidate.

Unfounded conspiracy theories from X about the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump were also picked up on other social media sites.

X did not respond to questions about whether the site is incentivising users to post like this, nor to requests to interview owner Elon Musk.

Freedom Uncut’s content creation lair – where he streams and makes videos – is decorated with fairy lights in the shape of an American flag. He says he is an independent, but would rather Donald Trump becomes president than Kamala Harris.

Free – as his friends call him – says he can spend up to 16 hours a day in his lair posting on X, interacting with the network of dozens of content creators he’s a part of, and sharing AI-generated pictures. He does not share his full name or real identity because he says his family’s personal information has been exposed online, leading to threats.

He is by no means one of the most extreme posters, and has agreed to meet me and explain how these networks on X operate.

He says he has had 11 million views over the past few months since he began posting regularly about the US election. He brings several up on the screen as we chat at his home in Tampa, Florida.

Some are obviously satire – Donald Trump looking like a character in The Matrix as he brushes aside bullets, or President Joe Biden as a dictator. Other AI images are less fantastical – including an image of someone on the roof of their flooded home as fighter jets pass by, with the comment: “Remember that politicians don’t care about you on November 5th.”

The image echoes Mr Trump’s claim that there were “no helicopters, no rescue” for people in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. The claim has been rebutted by the North Carolina National Guard, which says it rescued hundreds of people in 146 flight missions.

Freedom Uncut says he sees his images as “art” that sparks a conversation. He says he is “not trying to fool anybody” but that he can “do so much more by using AI”.

Since his profile was monetised, he says he can make in the “low thousands” monthly from X: “I think it’s become a lot easier for people to make money.”

He adds that some users he knows have been making more than five figures and claims he could corroborate this by seeing the reach of their posts: “It’s at that point it really does become a job.”

He says it is the “controversial” stuff that tends to get the most views – and compares this to “sensationalist” traditional media.

While he posts “provocative stuff”, he says it is “usually based in some version of reality”. But he suggests that other profiles he sees are happy to share posts they know not to be true. This, he says, is an easy “money-maker”.

Freedom Uncut dismisses concerns about false claims influencing the election, claiming the government “spreads more misinformation than the rest of the internet combined”.

He also says it is “very common” for local politicians to reach out to accounts like his on X for support. He says some of them have chatted to him about appearing on his live streams and spoken to him about creating and sharing memes, AI images and artwork for them.

Could any of these posts – misleading or not – have a tangible impact this election?

“I think that you’re seeing that currently. I think that a lot of the Trump support comes from that,” he says.

In Freedom Uncut’s view, there is “more trust in independent media” – including accounts sharing AI-generated images and misinformation – than in “some traditional media companies”.

Going head-to-head with the pro-Trump accounts Freedom Uncut describes are profiles such as Brown Eyed Susan, who has more than 200,000 followers on X.

She is part of a network of “die-hard” accounts posting content multiple times every hour in support of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. While she uses her first name, she does not share her surname because of threats and abuse she has received online.

Speaking to me from Los Angeles, Susan says she never intended to start making money from her posts – or for her account’s reach to “explode”. Sometimes she posts and re-shares more than 100 messages a day – and her individual posts sometimes reach more than two million users each.

She says she only makes money from her posts because she was awarded a blue tick, which marks paid users on the site and some prominent accounts. “I didn’t ask for it. I can’t hide it, and I can’t return it. So I clicked on monetise,” she tells me, estimating she can make a couple of hundred dollars a month.

Aside from posting about policy, some of her most viral posts – racking up more than three million views – have promoted unfounded and false conspiracy theories suggesting the July assassination attempt was staged by Donald Trump.

She acknowledges that a member of the crowd and the shooter were killed, but says she has genuine questions about Donald Trump’s injury, the security failings, and whether the incident has been properly investigated.

“There’s no way to get to the truth in this. And if they want to call it conspiratorial, they can,” she says.

Susan also shares memes, some of which use AI, taking aim at the Republican contender. Several more convincing examples make him look older or unwell. She says these “illustrate his current condition”.

Others show him looking like a dictator. She maintains that all her images are “obvious” fakes.

Like Freedom Uncut, she says politicians, including congressional candidates, have contacted her for support, and she says she tries to “spread as much awareness” as she can for them.

Following a row over whether Kamala Harris once worked at McDonald’s, a doctored image of her in the fast food chain’s uniform was shared on Facebook by her supporters and went viral.

When some pro-Trump accounts realised it was an edited photo of a different woman in the uniform, it triggered unfounded accusations that the image came from the Democratic Party itself.

An account called “The Infinite Dude” on X appeared to be the first to share the image with the caption: “This is fake”. The person behind the image tells me his name is Blake and that he shared it as part of an experiment. His profile does not have nearly as many followers as the other accounts I have been talking to.

When I ask for evidence that he doctored the image, he told me he has “the original files and creation timestamps”, but he did not share those with me as he says proof does not really matter.

“People share content not because it’s real, but because they want it to be real. Both sides do it equally – they just choose different stories to believe,” he says.

His political allegiance remains unclear and he says this “isn’t about politics”.

X says online that its priority is to protect and defend the user’s voice. The site adds manipulated media labels to some AI-generated and doctored video, audio and images. It also has a feature called Community Notes, which crowdsources fact-checking from users.

During the UK election, X did take action over a network of accounts sharing faked clips that I investigated. In the US election campaign, however, I have received no response to my questions or requests to interview Elon Musk.

That matters – because social media companies like his could affect what unfolds as voters head to the polls.

Marianna Spring investigated this story using her Undercover Voters – five fictional characters based on data from the Pew Research Centre – that allow her to interrogate what some different users are recommended on social media. Their social media accounts are private and do not message real people.

Find out more about them here – and on the BBC Americast podcast on BBC Sounds.

A new study highlights how promoting female entrepreneurship can greatly enhance women’s workforce participation. By creating more opportunities for other women, female-led businesses can drive significant economic growth, it says.

Imagine a world where women, though half the population, own less than a fifth of businesses.

This is the reality the World Bank uncovered in a survey spanning 138 countries from 2006 to 2018.

Even more intriguing is how female-owned businesses empower other women.

In male-owned firms, only 23% of workers were women, but female-owned businesses employ far more women. And while just 6.5% of male-owned businesses have a woman as the top manager, over half of female-owned firms are led by women.

• Why are millions of Indian women dropping out of work?

In India, the situation is even more challenging. Female labour participation and entrepreneurship are low, with the total number of women in the workforce barely changing over the past 30 years.

But the picture looks slightly better when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Women make up about 14% of entrepreneurs and own a significant share of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). They contribute notably to industrial output and employ a substantial portion of the workforce, according to the 2023 State of India’s Livelihoods Report.

Most MSMEs in India are microenterprises, with many women-owned businesses being single-person ventures, according to Niti Aayog, a government think-tank. While some women-owned enterprises employ staff in big numbers, a large majority operate with very few workers.

So Indian women are not really under-represented in entrepreneurship, but they operate much smaller firms than men – especially in the informal sector.

Not surprisingly, women’s contribution to India’s GDP is just 17%, less than half the global average. And India ranks 57th out of 65 countries for women’s entrepreneurship, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report 2021.

A new paper by Gaurav Chiplunkar (University of Virginia) and Pinelopi Goldberg (Yale University) argues that promoting female entrepreneurship could significantly boost women’s workforce participation, as female-led businesses often create more opportunities for other women.

The authors developed a framework to measure the barriers women in India face when entering the labour force and becoming entrepreneurs.

They found substantial obstacles to women’s employment and higher costs for female entrepreneurs when expanding their businesses by hiring workers. Their simulations showed that removing barriers would boost female-owned businesses, increase women’s workforce participation, and drive economic gains through higher wages, profits, and more efficient female-owned firms replacing less productive male-owned ones.

So, policies that support female entrepreneurship are crucial, the authors argue. Policies that boost entrepreneurship and increase labour demand – allowing more women to become entrepreneurs – can be more effective – and quicker – than changing long-standing social norms, says Mr Chiplunkar.

“History tells us that norms are sticky,” says Ashwini Deshpande of Ashoka University.

Women still shoulder most household chores – cooking, cleaning, laundry, childcare, and elder care. There are more barriers, including limited access to safe, efficient transportation and childcare, restricting their ability to work within commuting distance. Even women’s limited ability to travel independently is a key factor restricting their participation in the labour market, as shown in a recent study led by Rolly Kapoor of University of California.

Despite a recent uptick in India’s women’s labour force participation, the picture is not as promising as it seems, as Ms Deshpande notes in a paper.

The increase, she found, reflected an increase in self-employed women, a combination of paid work and disguised unemployment, a situation where more people are employed than actually needed for a task, resulting in low productivity.

“There is an urgent need to increase women’s participation in regular salaried paid work with job contracts and social security benefits. This would be the most important step, albeit not the only one, towards women’s economic empowerment,” says Ms Deshpande.

It’s not going to be easy. For one, many women face obstacles – from families and communities – to working at all, regardless of whether they want to be entrepreneurs. And if more women join the workforce but there aren’t enough jobs – because barriers to starting businesses remain – wages could actually drop.

Research shows that women in India work when opportunities arise, indicating that the declining labour force participation rate is a result of insufficient jobs and reduced demand for women’s labour. A recent Barclays Research report says India can reach 8% GDP growth by ensuring women make up over half of the new workforce by 2030.

Boosting female entrepreneurship could be a way out.

Menka Gomis was born in France but has decided his future lies in Senegal, where his parents were born.

The 39-year-old is part of an increasing number of French Africans who are leaving France, blaming the rise in racism, discrimination and nationalism.

BBC Africa Eye has investigated this phenomenon – being referred to as a “silent exodus” – to find out why people like Mr Gomis are disillusioned with life in France.

The Parisian set up a small travel agency that offers packages, mainly to Africa, aimed at those wanting to reconnect with their ancestral roots, and now has an office in Senegal.

“I was born in France. I grew up in France, and we know certain realities. There’s been a lot of racism. I was six and I was called the N-word at school. Every day,” Mr Gomis, who went to school in the southern port city of Marseille, tells the BBC World Service.

“I may be French, but I also come from elsewhere.”

Mr Gomis’s mother moved to France when she was just a baby and cannot understand his motivation for leaving family and friends to go to Senegal.

“I’m not just leaving for this African dream,” he explains, adding it is a mixture of responsibility he feels towards his parents’ homeland and also opportunity.

“Africa is like the Americas at the time of… the gold rush. I think it’s the continent of the future. It’s where there’s everything left to build, everything left to develop.”

The links between France and Senegal – a mainly Muslim country and former French colony, which was once a key hub in the transatlantic slave trade – are long and complex.

A recent BBC Africa Eye investigation met migrants in Senegal willing to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossings to reach Europe.

Many of them end up in France where, according to the French Office for the Protection of Refugee and Stateless Persons (OFPRA), a record number sought asylum last year.

Around 142,500 people applied in total, and about a third of all requests for protection were accepted.

It is not clear how many are choosing to do the reverse journey to Africa as French law prohibits gathering data on race, religion and ethnicity.

But research suggests that highly qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds, often the children of immigrants, are quietly emigrating.

Those we met told us attitudes towards immigration were hardening in France, with right-wing parties wielding more influence.

Since their appointment last month, Prime Minister Michel Barnier and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have pledged to crack down on immigration, both legal and illegal, by pushing for changes to the law domestically and at the European level.

Fanta Guirassy has lived in France all her life and runs her own nursing practice in Villemomble – an outer-suburb of Paris – but she is also planning a move to Senegal, the birthplace of her mother.

“Unfortunately, for quite a few years now in France, we’ve been feeling less and less safe. It’s a shame to say it, but that’s the reality,” the 34-year-old tells the BBC.

“Being a single mother and having a 15-year-old teenager means you always have this little knot in your stomach. You’re always afraid.”

Her wake-up call came when her son was recently stopped and searched by the police as he was chatting to his friends on the street.

“As a mother it’s quite traumatic. You see what happens on TV and you see it happen to others.”

In June last year, riots erupted across France following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk – a French national of Algerian descent who was shot by police.

The case is still being investigated, but the riots shook the nation and reflected an undercurrent of anger that had been building for years over the way ethnic minorities are treated in France.

Homecoming – BBC Africa Eye investigates the “silent exodus” of French Africans leaving France for good to reconnect with their roots.

Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)

A recent survey of black people in France suggested 91% of those questioned had been victims of racial discrimination.

In the wake of the riots, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on France to address “issues of racial discrimination within its law enforcement agencies”.

The French foreign ministry dismissed the criticism, saying: “Any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by the police in France is totally groundless. France and its police fight resolutely against racism and all forms of discrimination.”

However, according to French interior ministry statistics, racist crimes rose by a third last year, with more than 15,000 recorded incidents based on race, religion or ethnicity.

For schoolteacher Audrey Monzemba, who is of Congolese descent, such societal changes have “become very anxiety-provoking”.

Early one morning, we join her on her commute through a multicultural and working-class community on the outskirts of Paris.

With her young daughter, she makes her way by bus and train, but as she approaches the school where she works, she discreetly removes her headscarf under the hood of her coat.

In secular France, wearing a hijab has become hugely controversial and 20 years ago they were banned in all state schools – it is part of the reason Ms Monzemba wants to leave France looking to move to Senegal where she has connections.

“I’m not saying that France isn’t for me. I’m just saying that what I want is to be able to thrive in an environment that respects my faith and my values. I want to go to work without having to remove my veil,” the 35-year-old says.

A recent survey of more than 1,000 French Muslims who have left France to settle abroad suggests it is a growing trend.

It follows a peak in Islamophobia in the wake of the 2015 attacks when Islamist gunmen killed 130 people in various locations across Paris.

Moral panics around secularism and job discrimination “are at the heart of this silent flight”, Olivier Esteves, one of the authors of the report France, You Love It But You Leave It, tells the BBC.

“Ultimately, this emigration from France constitutes a real brain-drain, as it is primarily highly educated French Muslims who decide to leave,” he says.

Take Fatoumata Sylla, 34, whose parents are from Senegal, as an example.

“When my father left Africa to come here, he was looking for a better quality of life for his family in Africa. He would always tell us: ‘Don’t forget where you come from.'”

The tourism software developer, who is moving to Senegal next moth, says by going to set up a business in West Africa, she is showing she has not forgotten her heritage – though her brother Abdoul, who like her was born in Paris, is not convinced.

“I’m worried about her. I hope she’ll do OK, but I don’t feel the need to reconnect with anything,” he tells the BBC.

“My culture and my family is here. Africa is the continent of our ancestors. But it’s not really ours because we weren’t there.

“I don’t think you’re going to find some ancestral culture, or an imaginary Wakanda,” he says, referring to the technologically advanced society featured in the Black Panther movies and comic books.

In Dakar, we met Salamata Konte, who founded the travel agency with Mr Gomis, to find out what awaits French Africans like her who are choosing to settle in Senegal.

Ms Konte swapped a high-paying banking job in Paris for the Senegalese capital.

“When I arrived in Senegal three years ago I was shocked to hear them call me ‘Frenchie’,” the 35-year-old says.

“I said to myself: ‘OK, yes, indeed, I was born in France, but I’m Senegalese like you.’ So at first, we have this feeling where we say to ourselves: ‘Damn, I was rejected in France, and now I’m coming here and I’m also rejected here.'”

But her advice is: “You have to come here with humility and that’s what I did.”

As for her experience as a businesswoman, she says it has been “really difficult”.

“I often tell people that Senegalese men are misogynistic. They don’t like to hear that, but I think it’s true.

“They have a hard time accepting that a woman can be a CEO of a company, that a woman can sometimes give ‘orders’ to certain people, that I, as a woman, can tell a driver who was late: ‘No, it’s not normal that you’re late.’

“I think we have to prove ourselves a little more.”

Nonetheless, Mr Gomis is excited as he awaits his Senegalese citizenship.

The travel agency is going well and he says he is already working on his next venture – a dating app for Senegal.

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• How sailors say they were tricked into smuggling cocaine by a British man
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• ‘Terrible things happened’ – inside TB Joshua’s church of horrors

For the growing number of African asylum seekers and economic migrants in the US, the upcoming presidential election could reshape their entire future.

“We deserve safety,” says Dr Yves Kaduli, a 38-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo who lives in the US.

“I have a dream that I will defend those that are persecuted,” he adds in a BBC interview.

Dr Kaduli says that in 2014, he fled eastern DR Congo – which has been wracked by conflict for almost three decades – after being kidnapped and tortured.

He had been working as a doctor at Cifunzi Hospital in Kalonge town and saw the effects of the conflict up-close.

“Women were raped. I saw it. I felt it in my body,” he tells the BBC.

Dr Kaduli says that horrified at the civilian casualties, he and many of his colleagues, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Denis Mukwege, participated in protests against the killings and rapes by armed groups, criticising then-President Joseph Kabila’s government for its failure to guarantee the safety of people.

The medic says this led to him being targeted by unknown men.

“They came, they took me and another colleague by force during our night shift,” Dr Kaduli recalls, adding that they were then taken to a makeshift camp in a nearby forest where they were beaten, tortured and threatened with death.

Dr Kaduli says that after being held for a day he managed to escape and decided he had to get out.

Leaving his mother and young son behind, Dr Kaduli says he began what would be a five-year journey, passing first through neighbouring Rwanda, then flying to Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and finally arriving at the US-Mexico border in 2019.

“I remained on the border for at least a month, we were living in small tents in inhumane conditions.”

Dr Kaduli says he then succeeded in crossing into the US and was detained for 15 months, before being released.

He now lives in Virginia working as a medical technician, awaiting a decision on his asylum case.

Dr Kaduli is one of thousands of African migrants who against all odds complete the long journey to reach the US-Mexico border each year. It is a number that is rising.

But with many Americans saying immigration is a top concern in this election, and both candidates promising to crack down at the border, African asylum seekers are worried the public may turn against them.

“We see our politicians criminalise our status, demonise our community and being a president, they can decide our future,” Dr Kaduli tells the BBC.

In 2022, around 13,000 African migrants were recorded at the US-Mexico border, according to US Customs and Border protection data. By 2023, this figure had quadrupled to 58,000.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports a sharp increase in asylum applications from West African countries such as Senegal, Mauritania and Guinea since 2022 at the same border.

New asylum applications from Senegalese nationals alone jumped from 773 in 2022, to 13,224 in 2024.

Although relatively stable, more than one third of the population in Senegal live in poverty, according to the World Bank.

• ‘I found out on social media that my son had died’

A growing number of young Senegalese choose to migrate to the US rather than face the more dangerous route to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

They are opting for an increasingly popular route – which is being shared through social media, including TikTok – through visa-friendly Nicaragua.

In September 2023, more than 140 Senegalese people were deported back home after crossing the Mexico-US border.

People are coming to the US for mixed reasons, says Kathleen Bush-Joseph from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think-tank funded by research grants and foundations.

“People can be fleeing persecution and fleeing economic circumstances that make it difficult to feed their children. There are incentives to apply for asylum because they can get a work permit while they wait and that can really create a draw for people seeking to improve their lives,” she says.

Successfully claiming asylum in the US is particularly challenging for African migrants.

Language barriers, a lack of community upon arrival and a lack of awareness of African conflicts make the stringent process even harder for Africans, says Ms Bush-Joseph.

“Judges and attorneys are often not familiar with the situations in some of the African countries that people are fleeing,” she tells the BBC.

There are also risks for those who are deported.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report alleging that dozens of asylum seekers from Cameroon were imprisoned, tortured and raped after being sent back from the US border.

“People were deported directly back to harm and persecution and in contexts where there are ongoing conflicts and wide-spread human rights violations,” HRW researcher Lauren Seigbert tells the BBC.

“It’s just a huge risk to send people back,” she adds.

Nils Kinuani, a federal policy manager at African Communities Together, an organisation that supports African asylum seekers and refugees in the US, says rhetoric around immigration in the election campaign has caused “great fear” among his community.

“People are fearful. There are concerns that refugee programmes could come under attack,” Mr Kinuani says.

His organisation and others are calling for more legal routes to help African migrants who are terrified of deportation.

One option is humanitarian parole status, a legal protection for foreign nationals from countries facing crises such as conflicts or natural disasters.

It can be issued by the US government to allow people at risk to live and work in the US temporarily – current programmes include Ukraine, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela and Afghanistan.

There are no official humanitarian parole programmes in place between the US and any African country.

Mr Kinuani adds that there is some resentment over the way that refugees from Ukraine have been treated, compared to other nationalities.

Just a few weeks after the war broke out in Ukraine, nationals fleeing the conflict were eligible to apply for humanitarian parole, he says.

“Ukrainian communities didn’t even need to ask or advocate for humanitarian parole. For a country like Sudan, we have to push.”

Since April 2023, the ongoing war in Sudan has forced nine million people from their homes.

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have put controlling immigration and solving the US-Mexico border crisis high up on their list of campaign promises.

If elected, Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump would carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” and reinstate border policies reminiscent of his first term in office, according to the official Republican National Committee’s 2024 Platform.

Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate and Vice-President Kamala Harris has promised to revive a bipartisan border security bill that failed in Congress earlier this year.

The bill would “increase asylum staffing” and ensure a “faster and fairer” asylum process, according to the White House.

But it has received criticism from human rights groups and the UN.

The outgoing administration of President Joe Biden – of which Harris is a part – has already moved to crack down on migrants at the border.

Under an executive order issued in June, officials can quickly remove migrants entering the US illegally without processing their asylum requests once a daily threshold is met and the border is “overwhelmed”.

This has led to a sharp decline in the number of people trying to enter the US through the border, according to US officials.

For the first time in almost two decades more than half of Americans want immigration levels to the US cut, rather than kept at their present level or increased, recent polling from global analytics and advisory firm Gallup suggests.

“In the US there is an increasing awareness that the asylum system is so overwhelmed and people are making claims because there aren’t other ways to come to the United States,” says Ms Bush-Joseph.

“Frustration that people have about the dysfunction of the US immigration system does mean that there is concern about the number of people claiming asylum.”

For now, Dr Kaduli is stuck in limbo and could be left waiting four to 10 years for a decision on his asylum application.

He says that a couple of years ago, his father passed away, but his current status does not allow him to leave the country to see his family.

“I feel uncomfortable when my case is still pending and I see on the television the speech of politicians, but I know if I’m here it’s for a reason,” he says.

His ultimate hope is that one day his son and mother will join him in the US.

“I believe that America will give me the same values, to work for myself, to help my family, to participate in the economy of this country, so I’m between doubt and hope.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• ECONOMY: Harris and Trump should listen to this mum of seven
• KATTY KAY: What’s really behind this men v women election
• CONGRESS: Democrats bet big on Texas and target Ted Cruz
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

The area of land surface affected by extreme drought has trebled since the 1980s, a new report into the effects of climate change has revealed.

Forty-eight per cent of the Earth’s land surface had at least one month of extreme drought last year, according to analysis by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change – up from an average of 15% during the 1980s.

Almost a third of the world – 30% – experienced extreme drought for three months or longer in 2023. In the 1980s, the average was 5%.

The new study offers some of the most up-to-date global data on drought, marking just how fast it is accelerating.

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The threshold for extreme drought is reached after six months of very low rainfall or very high levels of evaporation from plants and soil – or both.

It poses an immediate risk to water and sanitation, food security and public health, and can affect energy supplies, transportation networks and the economy.

The causes of individual droughts are complicated, because there are lots of different factors that affect the availability of water, from natural weather events to the way humans use land.

But climate change is shifting global rainfall patterns, making some regions more prone to drought.

The increase in drought has been particularly severe in South America, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

In South America’s Amazon, drought is threatening to change weather patterns.

It kills trees that have a role to play in stimulating rainclouds to form, which disrupts delicately balanced rainfall cycles – creating a feedback loop leading to further drought.

Yet, at the same time as large sections of the land mass have been drying out, extreme rainfall has also increased.

In the past 10 years, 61% of the world saw an increase in extreme rainfall, when compared with a baseline average from 1961-1990.

The link between droughts, floods and global warming is complex. Hot weather increases the evaporation of water from soil which makes periods when there is no rain even drier.

But climate change is also changing rainfall patterns. As the oceans warm, more water evaporates into the air. The air is warming too, which means it can hold more moisture. When that moisture moves over land or converges into a storm, it leads to more intense rain.

The Lancet Countdown report found the health impacts of climate change were reaching record-breaking levels.

Drought exposed 151 million more people to food insecurity last year, compared with the 1990s, which has contributed to malnutrition. Heat-related deaths for over 65s also increased by 167% compared to the 1990s.

Meanwhile, rising temperatures and more rain are causing an increase in mosquito-related viruses. Cases of dengue fever are at an all-time high and dengue, malaria and West Nile virus have spread to places they were never found before.

An increase in dust storms has left millions more people exposed to dangerous air pollution.

“The climate is changing fast,” says Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.

“It is changing to conditions that we are not used to and that we did not design our systems to work around.”

For the series Life at 50 degrees, BBC World Service visited some of the hottest parts of the world, where demand for water was already high. We found that extreme drought and rainfall had further squeezed access to water.

Since 2020, an extreme and exceptional agricultural drought has gripped northeast Syria and parts of Iraq.

In the past few years, Hasakah, a city of one million people, has run out of clean water.

“Twenty years ago, water used to flow into the Khabor River but this river has been dried for many years because there is no rain,” says Osman Gaddo, the Head of Water Testing, Hasakah City Water Board. “People have no access to fresh water.”

When they can’t get water, people make their own wells by digging into the ground but the groundwater can be polluted, making people ill.

The drinking water in Hasakah comes from a system of wells 25 kilometres away, but these are also drying and the fuel needed to extract water is in short supply.

Clothes go unwashed and families can’t bathe their children properly, meaning skin diseases and diarrhoea are widespread.

“People are ready to kill their neighbour for water,” one resident tells the BBC. “People are going thirsty every day.”

In South Sudan, 77% of the country had at least one month of drought last year and half the country was in extreme drought for at least six months. At the same time, more than 700,000 people have been affected by flooding.

“Things are deteriorating,” says village elder, Nyakuma. “When we go in the water, we get sick. And the food we eat isn’t nutritious enough”.

Nyakuma has caught malaria twice in a matter of months.

Her family lost their entire cattle herd after flooding last year and now survive on government aid along with anything they can forage.

“Eating this is like eating mud,” says Sunday, Nyakuma’s husband, as he searches floodwater for the roots of waterlillies.

During a drought, rivers and lakes dry up and the soil gets scorched, meaning it hardens and loses plant cover. If heavy rain follows, water cannot soak into the ground and instead runs off, causing flash flooding.

“Plants can adapt to extreme drought, to an extent anyway, but flooding really disrupts their physiology,” adds Romanello. “It is really bad for food security and the agricultural sector.”

Unless we can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and stop the global temperature from rising further, we can expect more drought and more intense rain. 2023 was the hottest year on record.

“At the moment, we are still in a position to just about adapt to the changes in the climate. But it is going to get to a point where we will reach the limit of our capacity. Then we will see a lot of unavoidable impacts,” says Romanello.

“The higher we allow the global temperature to go, the worse things are going to be”.

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The Vietnamese people smuggler emerged, briefly and hesitantly, from the shadows of a scraggly forest close to the northern French coastline.

“Move away from the others. Come this way, fast,” he said, gesturing across a disused railway line to a member of our team, who had spent weeks posing undercover as a potential customer.

Moments later, the smuggler – a tall figure with bright dyed blonde hair – turned away sharply, like a startled fox, and vanished down a narrow path into the woods.

Earlier this year, Vietnam emerged – abruptly – as the biggest single source of new migrants seeking to cross the Channel to the UK illegally in small boats. Arrivals surged from 1,306 in the whole of 2023, to 2,248 in the first half of 2024.

Our investigation – including interviews with Vietnamese smugglers and clients, French police, prosecutors and charities – reveals how Vietnamese migrants are paying double the usual rate for an “elite” small boat smuggling experience that is faster and more streamlined. As the death toll in the Channel hits a record level this year, there are some indications that it might be safer too.

As part of our work to penetrate the Vietnamese operations, we met an experienced smuggler who is operating in the UK and forging documents for migrants seeking to reach Europe. Separately, our undercover reporter – posing as a Vietnamese migrant – arranged, by phone and text, to meet a smuggling gang operating in the woods near Dunkirk in order to find out how the process works.

“A small boat service is £2,600. Payment to be made after you arrive in the UK,” the smuggler, who called himself Bac, texted back. We heard similar figures from other sources. We believe Bac may be a senior figure in a UK-based gang and the boss of Tony, the blonde man in the woods.

He had given us instructions about the journey from Europe to the UK, explaining how many migrants first flew from Vietnam to Hungary – where we understand it is currently relatively easy for them to get a legitimate work visa, often obtained using forged documents. Bac said that the migrants then travelled on to Paris and then to Dunkirk.

“Tony can pick you up at the [Dunkirk] station,” he offered, in a later text.

Vietnamese migrants are widely considered to be vulnerable to networks of trafficking groups. These groups may seek to trap them in debt and force them to pay off those debts by working in cannabis farms or other businesses in the UK.

It is clear, from several recent visits to the camps around Dunkirk and Calais, that the Vietnamese gangs and their clients operate separately from other groups.

“They keep to themselves and are much more discreet than the others. We see them very little,” says Claire Millot, a volunteer for Salam, an NGO that supports migrants in Dunkirk.

A volunteer with another charity tells us of recently catching a rare glimpse of roughly 30 Vietnamese buying life jackets at a Dunkirk branch of the sports gear chain Decathlon.

As well as keeping their distance, the streamlined service offered by the Vietnamese gangs involves far less waiting around in the camps. Many African and Middle Eastern migrants spend weeks, even months, in grim conditions on the French coast. Some don’t have enough cash to pay for a place on a small boat, and try to earn their fare by working for the smuggling gangs. Many are intercepted on the beaches by French police and have to make several attempts before they successfully cross the Channel.

On a recent visit we saw dozens of tired families – from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Eritrea and elsewhere – gathering in the drizzle at a muddy spot where humanitarian groups provide daily meals and medical assistance. A group of children played Connect 4 at a picnic table, while a man sought treatment for a wound to his arm. Several parents told us that they had heard about a four-month-old Kurdish boy who had drowned the previous night after the boat he was travelling in capsized during an attempted Channel crossing. None of them said the death would discourage them from making their own attempt.

There were no Vietnamese in sight. It seems clear that Vietnamese smugglers tend to bring their clients to the camps in northern France when the weather is already looking promising and a crossing is imminent.

We had first encountered the new influx of Vietnamese migrants earlier this year, stumbling on one of their camps near Dunkirk. It appeared to be significantly neater and more organised than other migrant camps, with matching tents pitched in straight lines and a group cooking a tantalising and elaborate meal involving fried garlic, onions and Vietnamese spices.

“They’re very organised and united and stay together in the camps. They’re quite something. When they arrive at the coast, we know that a crossing will be done very quickly. These are most likely people with more money than others,” says Mathilde Potel, the French police chief heading the fight against illegal migration in the region.

The Vietnamese do not control the small boat crossings themselves, which are largely overseen by a handful of Iraqi Kurdish gangs. Instead they negotiate access and timings.

“The Vietnamese are not allowed to touch that part of the process [the crossing]. We just deliver clients to [the Kurdish gangs],” says another Vietnamese smuggler, who we are calling Thanh, currently living in the UK. He tells us the extra cash secures priority access to the small boats for their Vietnamese clients.

While the relative costs are clear, the issue of safety is murkier. It is a fact – and perhaps a telling one – that during the first nine months of 2024, not a single Vietnamese was among the dozens of migrants confirmed to have died while trying to cross the Channel. But in October, a Vietnamese migrant did die in one incident, in what has now become the deadliest year on record for small boat crossings.

It is possible that by paying extra, the Vietnamese are able to secure access to less crowded boats, which are therefore less likely to sink. But we’ve not been able to confirm this.

What does seem clearer is that the Vietnamese smugglers are cautious about sending their clients out on boats in bad weather. Texts from Bac to our undercover reporter included specific suggestions regarding travel to the camp, and the best day to arrive.

“Running a small boat service depends on the weather. You need small waves. And it must be safe… We had good weather earlier this week and lots of boats left… It would be good if you can be here [in Dunkirk] tomorrow. I’m planning a [cross-Channel] move on Thursday morning,” Bac texted.

Sitting outside their tents in two separate camps in the woods near Dunkirk earlier this month, two young men told us almost identical stories about the events which had prompted them to leave Vietnam in order to seek new lives. How they had borrowed money to start small businesses in Vietnam, how those businesses had failed, and how they had then borrowed more money from relatives and loan sharks, to pay smugglers to bring them to the UK.

“Life in Vietnam is difficult. I couldn’t find a proper job. I tried to open a shop, but it failed. I was unable to pay back the loan, so I must find a way to earn money. I know this [is illegal] but I have no other option. I owe [the Vietnamese equivalent of] £50,000. I sold my house, but it wasn’t enough to pay off the debt,” said Tu, 26, reaching down to stroke a kitten that strolled past.

Two chickens emerged from behind another tent. A mirror hung from a nearby tree. Plug sockets were available under a separate awning for charging phones.

The second migrant, aged 27, described how he had reached Europe via China, sometimes on foot or in trucks.

“I heard from my friends in the UK that life is much better there, and I can find a way to make some money,” said the man, who did not want to give his name.

Are these people victims of human trafficking? It is unclear. All the Vietnamese migrants we spoke to said they were in debt. If they ended up working for the smuggling gangs in the UK in order to pay for their journey and to pay off their debts then they would, indeed, have been trafficked.

We had sought to draw the blonde Vietnamese smuggler, Tony, out of a nearby forest and onto more neutral territory, where his gang – possibly armed, as other gangs certainly are – might pose less of a threat to us. We intended to confront him about his involvement in a lucrative and often deadly criminal industry. But Tony remained wary of leaving his own “turf” and grew impatient and angry when our colleague, still posing as a potential migrant, declined to follow him into the forest.

“Why are you staying there? Follow that path. Move quickly! Now,” Tony ordered.

There was a brief pause. The sound of birdsong drifted across the clearing.

“What an idiot… Do you just want to stand there and get caught by the police?” the smuggler asked, with rising exasperation.

Then he turned away and retreated into the woods.

Had our colleague been a genuine migrant, she would probably have followed Tony. We were told by other sources that once in the camps, migrants were not allowed to leave unless they paid hundreds of dollars to the smugglers.

The Vietnamese gangs may be promising a quick, safe, “elite” route to the UK, but the reality is much darker – a criminal industry, backed by threats, involving deadly risks and no guarantee of success.

The night before Kamala Harris sets off on a final multi-day swing through the key battleground states that will decide the 2024 presidential election, she gave one last speech, practically in the shadow of the White House.

The venue choice was no accident. Donald Trump held his rally on 6 January 2021 in the same place, speaking to supporters just hours before thousands of them stormed the Capitol and disrupted certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

On a mild October night, Harris stood before what her campaign estimated was 70,000 cheering supporters at an event they may hope is a counterpoint to that cold, violent January day.

And in the unlikely chance the symbolism was missed by anyone watching, Harris made it explicit early in her speech.

“We know who Donald Trump is,” she said on Tuesday. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election.”

Harris didn’t dwell on the 6 January riot, however. The venue did most of the heavy lifting, providing the subtext to the speech and the point from which Harris could pivot.

While she opened by darkly warning of an “unstable” and “unhinged” Trump “obsessed with revenge”, she turned to focus on what she called her “different path”.

Acknowledging that many undecided American voters “are still getting to know” her after her abbreviated presidential campaign, Harris touched on the highlights of her biography and upbringing.

She went on to hit some of her top policy proposals, including lowering the cost of housing, expanding the child tax credit and adding homecare coverage to government-provided health insurance for the elderly.

She spent even more time talking about abortion and the need to enact legislation that provides national abortion rights – a particularly strong area for Democrats over Republican opponents.

It was, in effect, a trimmed-down version of her Democratic National Convention address – a bookend to the late August speech that the campaign billed as an introduction to Americans.

Democrats were riding high back then, enthusiastic about their new nominee after weeks of despondency and infighting that led to Biden’s decision to abandon his re-election bid.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: All you need to know about the vote
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• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Since then, Harris’s campaign has had ups and downs, and is now locked in what is shaping up to be a photo finish next week.

If the polls are accurate, Harris still has work to be done to win over undecided Americans – and this speech was her last, biggest effort to do so on a prominent stage, with the White House looming over her shoulder.

Setting aside her biographical highlights and policy details, the message her campaign seems to want voters to have in mind on election day is one of contrasts – of division versus unity; bitterness versus hope; partisanship versus co-operation; past versus future.

“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better,” Harris said. “I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress.”

As she was delivering her speech, however, the current resident of the building behind her made comments that illustrated how difficult her task might be.

Biden, speaking of a derisive joke about Puerto Rico that a comedian made at a Trump rally on Sunday, appeared to refer to Trump supporters as “garbage”.

The president later claimed he was referring only to the comments made by the rally speaker. But the video of his remarks are unclear – and the episode was already distracting from Harris’ event on Tuesday evening.

It’s just one more obstacle Harris will have to overcome, along with assuaging Americans’ concerns about the economy and immigration – where polls indicate Trump has the advantage.

She tried to address those in her speech as well, even if they seemed to take a back seat to more lofty language and pointed attacks.

Her speech framed the election in a way that is to her advantage. Next Tuesday will reveal whether a majority of the American public – or at least a plurality in enough key battleground states – agrees.

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.

President Joe Biden has tried to clarify comments that triggered a fresh row, after he was accused of calling supporters of Donald Trump “garbage”.

He was responding to comic Tony Hinchcliffe who sparked controversy by calling Puerto Rico, a US territory, an “island of garbage” during a Trump rally on Sunday.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden was initially quoted as saying on Tuesday, prompting an angry Republican backlash.

The White House later released a transcript which included an apostrophe, and said the president was talking about the words of Hinchcliffe, and not all Trump supporters.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is (Trump’s) supporter’s… his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the transcript reads.

Biden himself later addressed his video call with non-profit organisation Voto Latino, writing on X: “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage – which is the only word I can think of to describe it.

“His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

But Trump’s backers have seized upon the comments, making comparisons with a controversial remark by Hillary Clinton in 2016 during Trump’s first run for office, when she said half of Trump’s supporters were from a “basket of deplorables”.

As the war of words escalated, Trump himself suggested Kamala Harris – his rival for the White House – was running a “campaign of hate”.

During his campaign, Trump has repeatedly referred to his opponents as “the enemy from within” – rhetoric that Harris described as divisive.

Referring to the Biden comments, Trump said: “You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American people.”

Asked about the comments on Wednesday, Harris said Biden had “clarified his comments”, adding: “Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

• Follow live coverage of the US election
• Harris or Trump: Who’s leading the polls?
• Listen: Americast on the Puerto Rico “garbage” row
• Puerto Ricans in swing state say Trump rally joke won’t be forgotten

The Madison Square Garden rally referenced by Biden – during which Hinchcliffe and others sparked offence with a range of comments – has now been defended by Trump as a “love fest”.

He acknowledged that “somebody said some bad things” but said he did not think it was “a big deal”.

He stopped short of issuing an apology demanded by prominent figures from the island itself, which is a US territory. A number of Republicans – including from neighbourhoods with strong Latino populations – were outraged.

In Philadelphia, in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, members of the 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population told the BBC they would not forget the joke.

Residents of Puerto Rico – a US island territory in the Caribbean – are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Hinchcliffe himself has defended his material, saying his critics “have no sense of humour”.

Biden’s comments on the furore threatened to overshadow a rally on Tuesday evening by Kamala Harris, who is running for the White House as the Democratic nominee after Biden pulled out earlier in the contest.

Harris delivered what her campaign has called her “closing argument” in Washington DC – at the spot from which Trump spoke shortly before a riot by his supporters at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.

She urged voters to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict” in American politics.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• ECONOMY: Harris and Trump should listen to this mum of seven
• KATTY KAY: What’s really behind this men v women election
• CONGRESS: Democrats bet big on Texas and target Ted Cruz
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

Donald Trump has said his rally in New York City on Sunday was an “absolute lovefest”, ignoring bipartisan calls that he personally apologise after a comedian’s joke at the event caused widespread offence.

The Republican White House nominee said it was “an honour to be involved” in the Madison Square Garden rally, though he distanced himself from the stand-up comic who described Puerto Rico during a routine as “an island of garbage”.

Opinion polls suggest Trump and his Democratic rival, US Vice-President Kamala Harris, are neck-and-neck with just one week to go until the 5 November election.

Both are scrambling to woo Latino voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, home to more than 470,000 Puerto Ricans.

On Tuesday night, Trump is campaigning in the heavily Latino town of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Some members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the US have expressed outrage at Tony Hinchliffe’s routine. A number of prominent Puerto Ricans – including Trump allies – have urged the Republican candidate to publicly disavow the joke.

Among them was Angel Cintron, president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party, who was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying it was “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible”.

In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Trump distanced himself from Hinchcliffe.

“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” he said.

Speaking at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Trump insisted the rally was an “absolute lovefest”.

“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he added.

Trump’s allies have hit back at Democrats, accusing actor George Lopez of making an insensitive joke about Mexicans as he spoke at a Kamala Harris rally in Arizona over the weekend.

Also over the weekend, Harris unveiled a new policy platform for Puerto Rico, promising economic development and improved disaster relief.

She accused Trump of having “abandoned and insulted” the island during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

The Trump campaign retorted that his administration rebuilt the US territory’s infrastructure after the storm, awarding billions of dollars in grant funding to the island.

At another event in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Trump told a Puerto Rican voter that his administration “helped you through a lot of bad storms”.

“I think no president’s done more for Puerto Rico than I have,” he said.

Seeking to put the controversy behind him, the Republican assailed Harris on the border and inflation, arguing that “on issue after issue, she broke it” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very fast”.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• ECONOMY: Harris and Trump should listen to this mum of seven
• KATTY KAY: What’s really behind this men v women election
• CONGRESS: Democrats bet big on Texas and target Ted Cruz

In the North Philadelphia neighbourhood of Fairhill, signs of Puerto Rico are never far off.

The US island territory’s red, white and blue flag adorns homes and businesses, and the sounds of salsa and reggaetón boom from passing cars and restaurants selling fried plantains and spit-roasted pork.

The area is the beating heart of Philadelphia’s more than 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population and forms a key part of Pennsylvania’s Latino community, which both the Democrats and Republicans have sought to woo ahead of the 5 November election.

But on Monday morning, many locals were left seething at a joke made at Donald Trump’s rally the night before in New York, in which comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”.

The joke, some said, could come back to haunt the Republicans in a key swing state that Democrats won by a narrow margin of 1.17% – about 82,000 votes – in 2020.

“The campaign just hurt itself, so much. It’s crazy to me,” said Ivonne Torres Miranda, a local resident who said she remains disillusioned by both candidates – Republican Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris – with just eight days to go in the campaign.

“Even if he [Mr Hinchcliffe ] was joking – you don’t joke like that.

“We’re Puerto Ricans. We have dignity, and we have pride,” she told the BBC, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish with a strong Puerto Rican accent.

“You’ve got to think before saying things.”

• US election polls: Who is ahead – Harris or Trump?
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In the aftermath, the Trump campaign was quick to distance itself from Mr Hinchcliffe’s joke, with a spokesman saying the remark “does not reflect the views” of Trump or his campaign.

The Harris campaign pounced on the joke, with the vice-president pointing to the comment as a sign that Trump is “fanning the fuel of trying to divide” Americans.

Her views were echoed by Puerto Rican celebrities Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, who both endorsed Harris on Sunday.

A campaign official told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that the controversy was a political gift to the Democrats.

Some Puerto Rican residents agree with that assessment.

“[The joke] just put it in the bag for us. He literally just gave us the win,” said Jessie Ramos, a Harris supporter. “He has no idea how hard the Latino community is going to come out and support Kamala Harris.”

Residents of Puerto Rico – a US island territory in the Caribbean – are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Across Pennsylvania, about 600,000 eligible voters are Latino.

More than 470,000 of them are Puerto Ricans – one of the largest concentrations in the country and a potential deciding factor in a state where polls show Harris and Trump in an extremely tight race.

North Philadelphia in particular has been a target for Harris, who on Sunday made a campaign stop at Freddy & Tony’s, a Puerto Rican restaurant and community hub in Fairhill.

The same day, Harris unveiled a new policy platform for Puerto Rico, promising economic development and improved disaster relief and accusing Trump of having “abandoned and insulted” the island during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Whether or not this will sway Puerto Rican voters remains to be seen.

Freddy & Tony’s owner, Dalma Santiago, told the BBC that she is not sure whether the joke will make a difference but that she believed that it was heard “loud and clear” in Fairhill and other Puerto Rican communities.

“Everybody has their own opinion,” she told the BBC. “But nobody will be forgetting that one.”

Similarly, Moses Santana, a 13-year US Army veteran who works at a harm reduction facility in Fairhill, said he is unsure of the joke’s impact.

In an interview with the BBC on a Fairhill street corner, Mr Santana said the area is traditionally weary of politicians of all kinds, with many believing that both parties have failed to address socio-economic issues, crime and drug abuse there.

“Folks around here tend not to get what they ask for,” he added. “Even when they vote.”

On Tuesday, Trump will campaign in Allentown, a town of about 125,000 in Pennsylvania where about 33,000 people identify as Puerto Rican.

But even among Trump supporters in Pennsylvania’s wider Latino community, the joke was poorly received.

That included Republican voter Jessenia Anderson, a Puerto Rican resident from the town of Johnstown about 240 miles (386 km) west of Philadelphia.

Ms Anderson, a military veteran who was born in New York’s heavily Puerto Rican Lower East Side, is a frequent attendee of Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.

She described the joke as “deeply offensive” and said the routine felt “wildly out of place” – and implored her fellow Republicans to engage in “thoughtful and respectful conversations”.

But Ms Anderson has no plan to switch her vote.

“My belief in the party’s potential to make a positive impact remains strong,” she said.

“I hope they will approach Latino voters with the respect they deserve.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• ECONOMY: Harris and Trump should listen to this mum of seven
• KATTY KAY: What’s really behind this men v women election
• CONGRESS: Democrats bet big on Texas and target Ted Cruz
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

“To everyone’s astonishment, the vulgar insurgent has won!”

So wrote a British foreign minister in his diaries on 9 November 2016 after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the White House.

“This looked remarkably like an abuse of power.”

So wrote the then-prime minister in her memoirs after waking up to realise that a Trump-led Washington had said US troops would be pulled out of the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria “without any reference to the UK and other nations whose troops were operating alongside them”.

Sir Alan Duncan and Theresa May are the authors of these remarks, which the present prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, would do well to note as he ponders what difference a Trump or Kamala Harris presidency could make to the so-called special relationship between the UK and the US.

“Dealing with Donald Trump and his administration was like dealing with no other world leader,” writes the now Lady May in a book reflecting on her career.

“He was an American president like no other.”

There will be challenges, too, if the Democratic vice-president wins. She has yet to meet Sir Keir and has shown limited affinity for Europe – but she will be a vastly more conventional president than her rival.

On the off-chance that Sir Keir thought things might be different this time if Trump wins next week, the last few days showed him otherwise.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump winning?

The accusation of election interference made by the Trump campaign – courtesy of an, at best, foolishly written LinkedIn post – blew up into a transatlantic spat.

“This needs to be seen for what it is. It’s happened every election, every political party does it,” Sir Keir told me, in reference to people volunteering to work for one side or the other in American elections.

But the difference was obvious. On previous occasions it hasn’t caused an almighty row.

It was a reminder that Team Trump can be brash, unpredictable and have a long memory for perceived slights – and don’t appear to really give a stuff about its relationship with the British government.

What on earth might happen to the UK’s most cherished overseas partnership if Trump wins?

Until the row in the past week, things had, on the face of it, been going well for the new prime minister and US relations.

A few weeks ago, Sir Keir and Foreign Secretary David Lammy were in New York to meet the former president, with me accompanying them.

Teetering on a pavement on Fifth Avenue with the 58-storey Trump Tower behind me, we were trying to perfect the angle for broadcast so the garish gold lettering spelling out “TRUMP TOWER” was visible to viewers, even if a giant lorry barrelled down the road as I started talking.

I think we managed it. But a similar balancing act faced the two men. They were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly – but much of the chat on the trip was not about them meeting one of the world leaders present, but whether they could get time with a candidate hoping to become one: Donald Trump.

And they did get that meeting – which tells you rather a lot about the work British diplomats in America and London have been putting in, and the determination of Sir Keir and Mr Lammy to build bridges with the man who may be president again before long.

The prime minister later told me on BBC’s Newscast that “we both wanted to ensure we have a good relationship”. He added: “It’s up to me as prime minister to make sure I have a good relationship with whoever the president is.”

“I believe strongly in personal relations. Have the ability to, as necessary, pick up the phone to them to sort out issues or talk about issues. So it was a good dinner and I’m really glad that we managed to do it.”

Glad, no doubt, in part because of the buckets full of disobliging quotes there are about Trump, not least from David Lammy, who once described his host as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” and a “tyrant in a toupee”.

There are no shortage of verbal skeletons in Labour’s cupboard about the man who could soon be back in the Oval Office.

In policy terms, a Trump presidency would likely bring rapid change – on climate change, on international trade (whacking up import taxes, tariffs) and on Ukraine.

Unlike a Harris administration, they would likely offer the UK a free trade deal, but it seems unlikely the terms of it would tempt London to sign up.

So what of Trump’s Democratic rival, the vice-president Kamala Harris?

Diplomatic niceties suggest if you meet one candidate in a foreign election contest, you meet the other one too.

But that isn’t likely to happen with Harris, despite Sir Keir visiting America three times since July.

No 10 blames the pressures on the vice-president’s diary in an election campaign.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When will we know who’s won?
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• POLLS: Is Harris or Trump winning?
• ANALYSIS: What’s really behind America’s men v women election
• ON THE GROUND: ‘It’s rough out here’: Why Trump and Harris should listen to this mum of seven

It is worth stating the obvious too – while Sir Keir and Harris have never met, she is a vastly more known quantity and far more likely to be conventional in her approach to high office than her rival.

And Sir Keir has gone out of his way to spend a lot of time with President Biden in the last four months, including two trips to the White House and a recent meeting in Berlin.

An imperfect way of getting a sense of how his vice-president might govern – and with no opportunity to build a personal relationship – but not entirely useless at getting something of a handle on it.

Oh and it is worth making a very big picture point too – whoever wins. Increasingly, America’s focus is on the rise of the east and in particular China. Europe matters less to Washington than it did and that holds true whatever the result.

And so Westminster and the world awaits.

Whatever happens, expect the conversation to quickly turn to if and when the prime minister gets an early invite to Washington in the new year.

There will be a queue of leaders heading to the White House.

And what about a state visit to the UK – as Donald Trump revelled in, in 2019 – for a returning president like no other or for America’s first woman president?

Let’s see.

• Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• What the world thought of Harris-Trump debate
• Moscow had high hopes for Trump in 2016. It’s more cautious this time

Lisa Kudrow has led the tributes to Oscar-nominated actress Teri Garr, who played her estranged birth mother in Friends.

Garr, who was also known for movies including Young Frankenstein, Tootsie and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, died at the age of 79 in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

In a statement, Kudrow said she was “a comedic acting genius who was and is a huge influence on me and I know I’m not alone in that”.

She added that she felt “so lucky and grateful” she got to work with her.

Young Frankenstein director and writer Mel Brooks also paid tribute to the actress, saying she was “so talented and so funny”.

“Her humour and lively spirit made the Young Frankenstein set a pleasure to work on. Her ‘German’ accent had us all in stitches!”

The 1974 horror comedy, in which she spoke with a German accent as Gene Wilder’s lab assistant, was a career breakthrough for Garr.

Her other films included 1983 comedy Mr Mom opposite Michael Keaton, who praised her work and called her a “wonderful woman, not just great to work with but great to be around”.

Garr was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 20 years ago and first publicly talked about the chronic autoimmune disease in 2002 to raise awareness for others living with it.

The actress faced other health problems and had an operation to repair an aneurysm in 2007, the BBC’s US news partner CBS reported.

Garr got her start as a background dancer in Elvis Presley movies.

Her mother, also a former dancer, put her in dance classes at the age of six.

Her first gig was joining the road company for West Side Story in Los Angeles.

She then began dancing in movies before starring in television shows like Batman and Dr Kildare.

Garr’s big break came in 1974 when she played a supporting role in the thriller The Conversation.

Garr later established herself as a comedy actress, earning an Oscar nomination for 1982’s Tootsie, and making frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman.

Garr also played dramatic roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Black Stallion, and appeared in television shows such as Star Trek and That Girl.

Police in Australia say they have recovered around 40,000 limited-edition coins based on the hit children’s television show Bluey.

It was reported in July that 63,000 of the coins – produced by the Australian Mint – had been stolen from a warehouse in Western Sydney, about two months before they were due to enter circulation.

Authorities recovered 40,061 coins on Tuesday after a raid on a property about 10km (6 miles) from the storage facility.

Earlier that day, 27-year-old Christina Vale had been arrested and charged with breaking and entering and disposing of stolen property, police say. She was the third person arrested over the alleged theft.

The coins, which are worth A$1 ($0.65; 50p) a piece, were stolen two months before their planned release. New South Wales Police said they had previously been selling online for 10 times their face value.

Shortly after the theft was reported, Police in the state of New South Wales launched a special investigation into the incident codenamed Strike Force Bandit – after Bluey’s father.

In August, they arrested 44-year-old Steven Nielsen, who was an employee at the warehouse, and Nassar Kanj, also 44, who they say acted as his accomplice in the alleged heist.

Police will now argue in court that Christina Vale was the pair’s getaway driver.

The gold-coloured coins are known as Bluey dollarbucks – which is how money is referred to in the cartoon – and feature images of characters from the show.

The hit series, about the Heeler family of dogs, is made by Brisbane-based animation firm Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bluey has been a huge international success and is now broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, US and China.

It was streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US last year, putting it in the country’s top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.

There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons, and a Bluey-themed “interactive experience” is opening in Brisbane next month.

The stolen coins are different from a collectable set of Bluey currency that caused a frenzy when it went on sale by the Royal Australian Mint in June this year.

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has defended his newspaper’s decision to stop making presidential endorsements, saying the move could help improve credibility.

Mr Bezos, who is also the Amazon founder, argued in an article on the Post’s website on Monday that presidential endorsements created the “perception of bias” and did not “tip the scales” of an election.

The comments follow public scrutiny, as well as the newspaper’s reported loss of thousands of subscribers and the resignation of some editorial staff members.

The decision to stop endorsing a presidential candidate – which was announced just days before the election – broke with a custom the Post had generally followed for decades.

“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement’. None,” Mr Bezos wrote in his defence of the move.

“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

The paper has endorsed a candidate in most presidential elections since the 1970s, though when it announced the move, CEO William Lewis described the decision as a return “to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates”.

• Who’s ahead in the polls – Harris or Trump?

The Washington Post Guild’s leadership – which represents workers at the paper – said it was “deeply concerned” by the decision.

“We are already seeing cancellations from once-loyal readers,” the Guild said in its statement. “This decision undercuts the work of our of members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it.”

The paper has lost as many as 200,000 digital subscribers, and several editorial staff including board members have stepped down, according to a report by NPR. The Post itself declined to comment, and Mr Bezos has not addressed the report.

In its own news article on the decision, The Washington Post reported – citing two sources briefed on the sequence of events who were not authorised to speak publicly – that editorial staffers had planned to endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris, but the article was never published.

Mr Bezos denied the timing of the decision was a “intentional strategy” and chalked it up to “inadequate planning”.

“I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it,” Mr Bezos wrote.

But he said the paper would need to “exercise new muscles” to stay competitive and current.

The Washington Post owner also denied the decision was a “quid pro quo of any kind” with Harris or her Republican rival for the presidency, Donald Trump.

In addition to The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today have also announced they will not endorse a presidential candidate this time.

Meanwhile, the New York Times and New York Post have made endorsements for Harris and Trump respectively.

• 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
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been accused of asking for free personal flight upgrades directly from the former CEO of national carrier Qantas.

A new book by Australian journalist Joe Aston claims Albanese made several calls to ex-CEO Alan Joyce, and received upgrades on 22 flights taken between 2009 and 2019.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Albanese did not say whether he had spoken to Joyce about personal upgrades, but said he followed the rules and had been “completely transparent” with his disclosures.

“There is no accusations being made with any specifics at all about any of this, none,” he added.

Albanese, who previously served as federal transport minister, also criticised former opposition party staffer Aston of “trying to sell a book”.

In his book – The Chairman’s Lounge: The Inside Story of How Qantas Sold Us Out – Aston, reportedly cites Qantas insiders as saying Albanese spoke to Joyce about his personal travel plans.

Albanese said he did recall having two conversations with Joyce about flights that did not involve personal travel.

“Of the 22 flights, 10 of them were… [in 2013] over a one-month period where both Qantas and Virgin provided upgrades for flights that were paid for by the Australian Labor party to make sure there was not any cost to taxpayers for what was internal business.

“In my time in public life, I have acted with integrity, I have acted in a way that is entirely appropriate and I have declared in accordance with the rules,” he said.

While it is not unheard of for Australian politicians to get free flight upgrades, they are required to declare such gifts.

Australia’s shadow transport minister Senator Bridget McKenzie has called for an inquiry to investigate the allegations.

“There are serious questions which only Mr Joyce and the Prime Minister can answer,” she told reporters.

Speaking on Today, a popular breakfast news show, she said she too had received a free flight updgrade in the past but added: “There’s a difference to receive a gift and declare it on your register to actually getting on the blower and saying, listen, mate, the missus and I are going overseas on a holiday. How about upgrading those economy tickets?”

Last year, the Albanese government faced questions for denying a request by Qatar Airways to increase flights to Australia – a move that aviation analysts said favoured Qantas.

Criticism over that decision has now resurfaced as some opposition leaders questioned Albanese’s personal relationship with Joyce.

Joyce was chief executive of Qantas for 15 years and led the company through the 2008 global financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and record fuel prices.

However, by the time he stepped down in 2023, Qantas was facing growing public anger over high fares, andured mass delays and cancellations. It also laid off 1,700 ground staff during the pandemic – a move that an Australian high court later ruled illegal.

Mount Fuji is still without snow, making it the latest time in the year the mountain has remained bare since records began 130 years ago.

The peaks of Japan’s highest mountain typically get a sprinkling of snow by early October, but unusually warm weather has meant no snowfall has been reported so far this year.

In 2023 snow was first seen on the summit on 5 October, according to AFP news agency.

Japan had its joint hottest summer on record this year with temperatures between June and August being 1.76C (3.1F) higher than an average.

In September, temperatures continued to be warmer than expected as the sub-tropical jet stream’s more northerly position allowed a warmer southerly flow of air over Japan.

A jet stream is a fast-flowing current of air that travels around the planet. It occurs when warmer air from the south meets cooler air from the north.

Nearly 1,500 areas had what Japan’s Meteorological Society classed as “extremely hot” days – when temperatures reach or exceed 35C (95F) last month.

The temperature has to be around freezing for rain to turn into snow.

October has seen the heat ease slightly, but it has still been a warmer than average month.

However, approaching November without snowfall marks the longest wait in the year for a snowcap on the summit since data was first collected in 1894.

The previous record of 26 October has been seen twice before in 1955 and 2016, Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office told AFP.

While a single event cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, the observed lack of snowfall on Mount Fuji is consistent with what climate experts predict in a warming world.

Mount Fuji, south-west of Tokyo, is Japan’s highest mountain at 3,776m (12,460 ft).

The volcano, which last erupted just over 300 years ago, is visible from the Japanese capital on a clear day.

It is featured prominently in historic Japanese artwork, including wood blocks prints.

Last year, more than 220,000 people made the ascent to the peak between July and September.

Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has admitted that he kept a “death squad” to crack down on crime while mayor of one of the country’s largest cities.

In his first testimony before an official investigation on his so-called war on drugs, the 79-year-old said the squad was made of gangsters, adding that he would tell them “kill this person, because if you do not, I will kill you now”.

Duterte won the presidency by a landslide in 2016 on the promise of replicating his anti-crime campaign in Davao city on a national scale.

The nationwide drug war saw thousands of suspects killed in controversial police operations and is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

During the senate hearing on Monday, Duterte also said he told police officers to “encourage” suspects to fight back so officers could justify the killings.

“Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it… I did it for my country,” said Duterte in his opening statement.

“I hate drugs, make no mistake about it.”

However, he denied that he gave his police chiefs permission to kill suspects, adding that his “death squad” was made of “gangsters… not policemen”.

“I can make the confession now if you want. I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters.”

Duterte also remained defiant, claiming that many criminals had resumed their illegal activities after he stepped down as president.

“If given another chance, I’ll wipe all of you,” he said.

His appearance on Monday was the first time he had showed up at an inquiry into his anti-drug campaign since his term ended in 2022.

It was also the first time he directly faced some of his accusers, including families of victims of the drug war and former senator Leila de Lima, a Duterte critic who was jailed for seven years on a drug-dealing charge that was eventually dropped.

The Philippine government estimates that more than 6,252 people have been gunned down by the police and “unknown assailants” in Duterte’s “war on drugs”. Rights groups say the numbers could actually run into the tens of thousands.

An earlier report by the UN’s High Commisioner for Human Rights found that Duterte’s drugs crackdown had been marked by high-level rhetoric that could be seen as giving police officers “permission to kill”.

Police said many of their victims, who they claimed were drug lords or peddlers, were often killed in “self defence” during shoot-outs. But many families claim their sons, brothers or husbands were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The war on drugs campaign was controversial and drew huge international criticism, but it also had its share of supporters in a country where millions use drugs, mostly methamphetamine, known locally as “shabu”.

A bear, famed for his love of beer, cigarettes and boxing and who was by the side of Allied troops in World War Two, has been made the subject of a play.

Wojtek was adopted by the 2nd Polish Corps in 1943, after his mother was shot by hunters.

The Syrian brown bear travelled with them from the Middle East as they were deployed to Italy. Allied soldiers described their shock at seeing Wojtek carrying artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The story of friendship and courage has been adapted for a production at Coventry’s Albany Theatre by writer Alan Pollock from his children’s book The Bear Who Went To War.

Sue Butler’s father was one of the soldiers in the war alongside Wojtek.

“Dad said he was a symbol that united the soldiers. He was much more than a bear, he thought he was one of them,” she said.

Like many veterans, Cpl Andrzej Gasior did not talk much about his experiences of war as she was growing up, said Mrs Butler, from Solihull.

“When he started to tell me stories about this soldier who was actually a bear, I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was winding me up.

“But it was in a local Polish club that a friend of his brought a picture to show me of Wojtek.”

Mrs Butler’s father had been put in a Siberian labour camp aged 16 after being caught crossing the Polish border to trade boots and food.

He became ill and said the war had saved his life as the invasion of Poland prompted the Soviet Union to let the Poles go.

It was then that he joined the Polish Free Army, as he called it, and met Wojtek while in the Middle East.

Wojtek was famed as a bear who liked beer and cigarettes but the truth may have been a little more prosaic.

The bear was especially partial to dates, which her father would carry in his top pocket as a treat, Mrs Butler said.

“If dad pretended to walk past Wojtek he knew that he’d got something and would make a beeline for him,” she said.

“He told me other soldiers wrestled with the bear, and although he is sometimes seen drinking bottles of beer, my dad said the beer was sometimes too precious and often it was just water.”

He would also ask for cigarettes, which he would eat.

Mrs Butler said the soldiers were very protective of their colleague, who served as a great morale booster.

“He was a displaced bear and they were displaced people, and they were both without their families,” she said.

The animal was “very funny and quite mischievous,” she added, but ultimately “thought he was one of them”.

She said: “They had all come out [of Siberia] emaciated, and been downtrodden by the Russian state for such a long time, and this bear suddenly comes into their lives who hasn’t got his mom.”

When the Polish forces were deployed to Europe, the only way to take the bear with them was to “enlist” him.

So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.

In one interview, a British veteran told how taken aback he was to see the 1.82m (6ft) bear carrying shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The company emblem became a picture of Wojtek carrying a shell.

Mrs Butler said her father had told her, “I’m sure he kept us going” during that battle.

“He absolutely showed that he was scared by the explosions but he got used to it and was carting artillery around the place in big boxes,” she said.

When the Polish soldiers were demobilised, Wojtek lived in Berwickshire in Scotland before being taken to Edinburgh Zoo where he eventually died in 1963.

Cpl Gasior travelled to England, first working at a colliery in Preston before joining a circus and ending up in the West Midlands.

He married Johanna O’Connel, a canteen worker he met at Gaydon Airfield in Warwickshire, before the couple settled in Birmingham.

Mrs Butler said her father had gone to visit Wojtek in Edinburgh before moving south.

“Polish men of his era were taught not to cry as it was seen as a sign of weakness,” she said.

“But he told me when he saw Wojtek at the zoo, he sobbed like a baby”.

Playwright Mr Pollock said he had been alerted to the tale by a 90-year-old woman while carrying out research at Coventry’s Polish Club.

He said: “I had to stop her and say, ‘I’m sorry can you repeat that? A bear was a private in the Polish army?’

“She told me the story and from that moment I was gripped. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story that I so instantly knew I wanted to tell.”

Many of the soldiers ended up settling in the UK, he said.

“They think when the battle is won they can go home, but of course Poland is occupied by the Soviet Union and they can never go back,” he said.

“Most of them left home in 1939 or 1940 and many of them never saw their homes or their families ever again.”

Mrs Butler said she had only recently heard of the production through her daughter-in-law who works at the theatre.

“I think Julia mentioned it to my son, Tom, and he said, ‘I’m absolutely positive my grandad met that bear,’ but I don’t think she believed him at first.”

She added: “It’s a small world and sometimes things just all align, don’t they?”

Her father lived to the age of 92 and died in 2014.

Mrs Butler said: “He’s my hero, my dad is. He was an amazing man, and I’m just so proud to be his daughter.”

The Bear Who Went to War by Alan Pollack is published by Old Barn Books and the play runs at the Albany Theatre Coventry until 2 November.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has delivered Labour’s first Budget since 2010, after the party’s return to power in July’s general election.

She announced tax rises worth £40bn, which she argued would rebuild public services and stabilise the public finances.

Here is a summary of the main measures.

• Budget 2024: Follow the announcements live

• Rates of income tax and National Insurance (NI) paid by employees, and of VAT, to remain unchanged
• Income tax band thresholds to rise in line with inflation after 2028, preventing more people being dragged into higher bands as wages rise
• Basic rate capital gains tax on profits from selling shares to increase from from 10% to 18%, with the higher rate rising from 20% to 24%
• Rates on profits from selling additional property unchanged
• Inheritance tax threshold freeze extended by further two years to 2030, with unspent pension pots also subject to the tax from 2027
• Exemptions when inheriting farmland to be made less generous from 2026

• Companies to pay NI at 15% on salaries above £5,000 from April, up from 13.8% on salaries above £9,100, raising an additional £25bn a year
• Employment allowance – which allows smaller companies to reduce their NI liability – to increase from £5,000 to £10,500
• Tax paid by private equity managers on share of profits from successful deals to rise from up to 28% to up to 32% from April
• Main rate of corporation tax, paid by businesses on taxable profits over £250,000, to stay at 25% until next election

• 5p cut in fuel duty on petrol and diesel brought in by the Conservatives, due to end in April 2025, kept for another year
• £2 cap on single bus fares in England to rise to £3 from January
• Commitment to fund tunnelling work to take HS2 high-speed rail line to Euston station in central London
• Commitment to deliver upgrade to trans-Pennine rail line between York and Manchester, running via Leeds and Huddersfield
• Air Passenger Duty on flights by private jet to go up by 50%

• New tax of £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid introduced from October 2026
• Tax on tobacco to increase by 2% above inflation, and 10% above inflation for hand-rolling tobacco
• Tax on non-draught alcoholic drinks to increase by the higher RPI measure of inflation, but tax on draught drinks cut by 1.7%
• Government to review thresholds for sugar tax on soft drinks, and consider extending it to “milk-based” beverages

• Legal minimum wage for over-21s to rise from £11.44 to £12.21 per hour from April
• Rate for 18 to 20-year-olds to go up from £8.60 to £10, as part of a long-term plan to move towards a “single adult rate”
• Basic and new state pension payments to go up by 4.1% next year due to the “triple lock”, more than working age benefits
• Eligibility widened for the allowance paid to full-time carers, by increasing the maximum earnings threshold from £151 to £195 a week

• Current affordable homes budget, which runs until 2026, boosted by £500m
• Social housing providers to be allowed to increase rents above inflation under multi-year settlement
• Stamp duty surcharge, paid on second home purchases in England and Northern Ireland, to go up from 3% to 5%

• Office for Budget Responsibility predicts the UK economy will grow by 1.1% this year, 2% next year, and 1.8% in 2026
• Inflation predicted to average 2.5% this year, 2.6% next year, before falling to 2.3% in 2026
• Official definition of UK government debt loosened by including a wider range of financial assets, such as future student loan repayments

• Extra £22.6bn for day-to-day spending on the NHS in England, and a £3.1bn boost to budget for investment
• £6.7bn allocated for education investment next year, with £1.4bn earmarked for rebuilding over 500 schools
• Defence spending to rise by £2.9bn next year

• £11.8bn allocated to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal, with £1.8bn set aside for wrongly prosecuted Post Office sub-postmasters
• Government to stop receiving surplus cash from pension scheme for mineworkers
• An extra £6.6bn for the devolved nations – £3.4bn for Scotland, £1.7 billion for Wales and £1.5bn for Northern Ireland

A Budget packed with announcements ranging from tax and spending to pay and pensions has been revealed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Much of what she said could affect you and your finances directly, so here’s what it means for you.

Minimum wages, paid by employers, will rise across the UK in April. It means:

• The National Living Wage, for employees aged 21 and over, will rise from £11.44 an hour, to £12.21
• If you are aged 18, 19 or 20, the National Minimum Wage will go up from £8.60 an hour, to £10
• For those aged 16 or 17, the minimum wage will rise from £6.40 an hour, to £7.55

The separate apprentice rate which applies to eligible people under 19 – or those over 19 in the first year of an apprenticeship – will also increase from £6.40 an hour, to £7.55.

The increases are smaller, in percentage terms, than the previous two years. However, prices are rising at a slower rate now.

On top of the extra cost of paying staff on the minimum wage, many employers will have to make a bigger contribution to National Insurance (NI) covering more of the people they employ.

NI paid by employees will not change.

But businesses say the chances of you getting a job or a pay rise may be hit as a result of the extra financial burden employers face.

Some could raise prices to cover the cost.

The single bus fare cap applied to many routes in England will be raised to £3 in 2025, up from £2.

Single bus fares in London with Transport for London will remain at £1.75 and those in Greater Manchester at £2, owing to a different funding system in those cities.

Fuel duty has been frozen since 2011, and that will continue. A 5p-a-litre fuel duty cut has also been extended.

Inheritance tax (IHT), which is currently 40%, is usually paid on the value of a deceased person’s assets above a threshold of £325,000. That threshold has been prolonged to 2030.

At present, any money saved in a pension does not count towards this but, from April 2027, inherited pensions will be included.

This is likely to bring more estates into the inheritance tax net, owing to pension savings that have not been spent before somebody dies. The government says this could affect 8% of estates.

Until now, various exemptions have allowed certain types of property, such as farms and family business assets, to be disregarded in terms of inheritance. However, from April 2026, the rules will ensure some tax will be paid on assets of more than £1m.

Capital gains tax (CGT) is charged on the profit made from the sale of assets that have increased in value, such as second homes or investments.

The chancellor has announced the rate at which CGT is charged will go up, from 10% to 18% for basic rate taxpayers, and 20% to 24% for those who pay at the higher rate. This will match the existing rates for property which will stay the same.

Tax on tobacco will increase by 2% above inflation, and 10% above inflation for hand-rolling tobacco.

A flat rate of duty will be applied on all vaping liquid from October 2026, at £2.20 per 10ml vaping liquid.

Tax on non-draught alcoholic drinks will increase by the higher RPI measure of inflation, but tax on draught drinks will be cut by 1.7%.

Stamp duty on the purchases of second homes, buy-to-let residential properties, and companies purchasing residential property in England and Northern Ireland, will rise from 3% to 5% on Thursday.

Analysts say this could affect landlords’ willingness to buy more properties. If the supply of rental properties is squeezed, that could mean rents rise for tenants in the remaining homes.

A much-discussed Labour policy has been formally announced, which means that VAT at the standard rate of 20% will be added to private school fees from 1 January, 2025.

How much extra that means parents of privately-educated children will have to pay depends on the decision of individual schools. It is also highly unlikely they will now be able to avoid the extra fees by paying in advance.

The chancellor confirmed the amount received in benefits will rise by 1.7% in April, in line with inflation.

The most common benefit, claimed by seven million people (38% of whom are working), is universal credit. The rise would mean the standard allowance, for a single person aged under 25, is expected go up by £5.30 a month to about £317. For a couple aged over 25, the rise is likely to be £10.50 to £628 a month.

The total amount received in universal credit depends significantly on your circumstances.

The chancellor said there would be a widespread review of health and disability benefits.

Carers will be able to earn more before losing their allowance. The maximum earnings threshold will rise from £151 to £195 a week.

The state pension will rise in line with average earnings, going up by 4.1% in April. It means

• The full, new flat-rate state pension (for those who reached state pension age after April 2016) is expected to increase to £230.30 a week. That will take it to £11,975 a year, a rise of £473 compared with now
• The full, old basic state pension (for those who reached state pension age before April 2016) is expected to go up to £176.45 a week. That will take it to £9,175 a year, a rise of £361 compared with now.

But the chancellor has previously announced that millions of pensioners will lose their winter fuel payment, worth up to £300, as a result of a government cut.

A freeze in the income thresholds at which different rates of income tax are paid continues as planned.

There had been speculation this would be prolonged, but the chancellor ruled this out, saying thresholds will rise in line with prices from 2028.

Until then, any kind of pay rise could drag you into a higher tax bracket, or see a greater proportion of your income taxed than would otherwise be expected.

Scotland has its own income tax rates.

You may not earn enough to pay income tax, so VAT, paid when buying goods and services, may hit you harder and that’s been left unchanged.

Anyone who dodges paying tax faces a higher interest rate when paying it back.

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 polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.

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

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 leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.

It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.

In Arizona, Georgia 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. It’s a similar story in Nevada but with Harris the candidate who is slightly ahead.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but 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.

The polls have underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections and the national polling error in 2020 was the highest in 40 years according to a post-mortem by polling experts – so there’s good reason to be cautious about them going into this year’s election.

The polling miss in 2016 was put down to voters changing their minds in the final days of the campaign and because college-educated voters – who were more likely to support Hillary Clinton – had been over-represented in polling samples.

In 2020, the experts pointed to problems with getting Trump supporters to take part in polls, but said it was “impossible” to know exactly what had caused the polling error, especially as the election was held during a pandemic and had a record turnout.

Pollsters have made lots of changes since then and the polling industry “had one of its most successful election cycles in US history” in the 2022 midterm elections, according to analysts at 538.

But Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the midterms and we won’t know until after election day whether these changes can deal with the influx of irregular voters he tends to attract.

• 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

Lisa Kudrow has led the tributes to Oscar-nominated actress Teri Garr, who played her estranged birth mother in Friends.

Garr, who was also known for movies including Young Frankenstein, Tootsie and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, died at the age of 79 in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

In a statement, Kudrow said she was “a comedic acting genius who was and is a huge influence on me and I know I’m not alone in that”.

She added that she felt “so lucky and grateful” she got to work with her.

Young Frankenstein director and writer Mel Brooks also paid tribute to the actress, saying she was “so talented and so funny”.

“Her humour and lively spirit made the Young Frankenstein set a pleasure to work on. Her ‘German’ accent had us all in stitches!”

The 1974 horror comedy, in which she spoke with a German accent as Gene Wilder’s lab assistant, was a career breakthrough for Garr.

Her other films included 1983 comedy Mr Mom opposite Michael Keaton, who praised her work and called her a “wonderful woman, not just great to work with but great to be around”.

Garr was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 20 years ago and first publicly talked about the chronic autoimmune disease in 2002 to raise awareness for others living with it.

The actress faced other health problems and had an operation to repair an aneurysm in 2007, the BBC’s US news partner CBS reported.

Garr got her start as a background dancer in Elvis Presley movies.

Her mother, also a former dancer, put her in dance classes at the age of six.

Her first gig was joining the road company for West Side Story in Los Angeles.

She then began dancing in movies before starring in television shows like Batman and Dr Kildare.

Garr’s big break came in 1974 when she played a supporting role in the thriller The Conversation.

Garr later established herself as a comedy actress, earning an Oscar nomination for 1982’s Tootsie, and making frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman.

Garr also played dramatic roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Black Stallion, and appeared in television shows such as Star Trek and That Girl.

A single case of mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – linked to the recent outbreak in parts of Africa, has been detected in the UK.

It is part of the Clade 1b outbreak, which appears to spread more easily between people.

Mpox was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization in the summer.

The UK patient had recently been on holiday in Africa and began to feel sick 24 hours after flying home.

The patient developed flu-like symptoms on 22 October and a rash two days later.

An mpox rash of pus-filled lesions can last for up to a month. Other symptoms include fever, headaches and low energy.

Laboratory testing confirmed it was Clade 1b. This form of the virus has been causing mounting concern due to the way it spreads.

Its close relative Clade 1a is largely connected to exposure to infected animals or eating bush meat.

But Clade 1b appears able to spread more easily from person to person through close physical contact, including sex.

The infected UK patient is being treated at the Royal Free Hospital’s specialist high consequence infectious diseases unit in London.

In Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda have all reported cases of Clade 1b mpox this year.

Clade 1b appears to be milder than 1a, although it’s difficult to know for certain because precise figures on the exact numbers of people infected are hard to pin down.

The patient’s close contacts, which include housemates, are being traced. This is thought to be fewer than 10 people.

“This is the first time we have detected this clade of mpox in the UK, though other cases have been confirmed abroad,” said Prof Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

She said: “The risk to the UK population remains low, and we are working rapidly to trace close contacts and reduce the risk of any potential spread.”

Sweden, India and Germany have all detected cases of this strain of mpox linked to travel to affected countries.

This is a different outbreak to the one that primarily affected gay, bisexual and other men-who-have-sex-with-men in 2022, called Clade II. These mpox infections still happen at low levels.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said : “The government is working alongside UKHSA and the NHS to protect the public and prevent transmission.

“This includes securing vaccines and equipping healthcare professionals with the guidance and tools they need to respond to cases safely.”

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopaedia functions in the country.

The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being “a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of “distributing material from fake news websites” and demanded the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says the content on the website is completely managed by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page – and threatened to shut down the website if it didn’t comply with its orders.

The hearing is still on, but Wikipedia has since agreed to share basic information about the users in a sealed cover to the court, though it’s not clear what that would be.

Experts say the case is an important one as its outcome could impact people’s access to neutral information on the platform.

“It will tell us whether India lives in the era of the internet, where information is truthful and free for everybody to access,” says technology law expert Mishi Choudhary.

The hearing began in July after ANI petitioned the court, saying it had tried to change the allegedly defamatory material on Wikipedia but its edits were not accepted.

The ANI page was put under “extended confirmed protection” – a Wikipedia feature used to stop vandalism or abuse – where only users who have already done a certain number of edits can make changes to a page.

In its lawsuit, ANI demanded that the allegedly defamatory content be taken down. However, it has not sued the news reports that are cited in the Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia, in turn, argued that despite being a community-driven platform, it had a robust fact-checking system.

Wikipedia works on a self-regulation model, where anyone can make edits on a page as long as it is backed by a published authentic source and written from a neutral point of view – this means no-one can add new, unpublished information on Wikipedia.

There are volunteers on the website who edit and verify information, while maintaining their anonymity.

Any debates among volunteers about the edits are visible for everyone to see on the page. In case of disagreements, there are guidelines on how to resolve disputes. The website also uses bots to keep track of the changes.

In court, the Wikimedia Foundation said that it only provided technical infrastructure and had no relationship with the volunteers who manage content on the website.

But this model came under scrutiny after a page on the ongoing court case appeared on Wikipedia.

Last week, the court ordered it to be taken down saying it interfered with court proceedings.

The Foundation has since suspended the page. Observers say this is probably the first time that a Wikipedia page in English language has been taken down after a court order.

Transparency reports published by the Foundation since 2012 show that in about 5,500 content takedown and alteration requests globally, it had complied with less than 10, and none of them were for the English website.

The move was criticised by some digital experts who said it was wrong to take down the page as it collated what the press had been reporting on the case.

Simply put, a lot.

Experts say that the outcome of the case is likely to have significant ramifications for the platform’s operations in India.

Tech journalist and digital rights expert Nikhil Pahwa fears that the case may encourage more people and brands to start controlling their Wikipedia pages.

“Many people do not like how they have been portrayed on Wikipedia. Now anyone can file a case, ask for identification of editors and the court might grant it without any preliminary determination of whether there was defamation,” he says.

Ms Choudhary says the case could have a “chilling effect” on free speech as editors might hesitate to write truthful content.

Any form of self-censorship could also seriously hamper access to neutral information about a subject on the platform, she adds.

Of course, Wikipedia is no stranger to controversy. It has faced various forms of censorship in at least 13 countries. China banned it in 2019 and Myanmar in 2021.

It has also had run-ins with the Russian government and courts. Moscow has blocked several pages critical of the government and courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation for its refusal to remove these articles.

In 2023, Pakistan blocked the website for three days after it did not remove allegedly “blasphemous content”.

Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey in April 2017 after it refused to delete articles critical of the country’s government. Turkey’s top court lifted the ban in 2020.

In India, experts say the platform is one of the few organisations that has pushed back against the federal government’s orders to take down content.

But a ban could seriously derail its operations in the country.

If the verdict is not in Wikipedia’s favour, “we as a society will suffer since we will not have access to impartial information”, Ms Choudhary says.

The night before Kamala Harris sets off on a final multi-day swing through the key battleground states that will decide the 2024 presidential election, she gave one last speech, practically in the shadow of the White House.

The venue choice was no accident. Donald Trump held his rally on 6 January 2021 in the same place, speaking to supporters just hours before thousands of them stormed the Capitol and disrupted certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

On a mild October night, Harris stood before what her campaign estimated was 70,000 cheering supporters at an event they may hope is a counterpoint to that cold, violent January day.

And in the unlikely chance the symbolism was missed by anyone watching, Harris made it explicit early in her speech.

“We know who Donald Trump is,” she said on Tuesday. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election.”

Harris didn’t dwell on the 6 January riot, however. The venue did most of the heavy lifting, providing the subtext to the speech and the point from which Harris could pivot.

While she opened by darkly warning of an “unstable” and “unhinged” Trump “obsessed with revenge”, she turned to focus on what she called her “different path”.

Acknowledging that many undecided American voters “are still getting to know” her after her abbreviated presidential campaign, Harris touched on the highlights of her biography and upbringing.

She went on to hit some of her top policy proposals, including lowering the cost of housing, expanding the child tax credit and adding homecare coverage to government-provided health insurance for the elderly.

She spent even more time talking about abortion and the need to enact legislation that provides national abortion rights – a particularly strong area for Democrats over Republican opponents.

It was, in effect, a trimmed-down version of her Democratic National Convention address – a bookend to the late August speech that the campaign billed as an introduction to Americans.

Democrats were riding high back then, enthusiastic about their new nominee after weeks of despondency and infighting that led to Biden’s decision to abandon his re-election bid.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: All you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Where UK stands on its most valued relationship
• ECONOMY: Tariffs hurt his business. He’s backing Trump anyway
• FACT-CHECK: Would Harris inflation-busting plan work?
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Since then, Harris’s campaign has had ups and downs, and is now locked in what is shaping up to be a photo finish next week.

If the polls are accurate, Harris still has work to be done to win over undecided Americans – and this speech was her last, biggest effort to do so on a prominent stage, with the White House looming over her shoulder.

Setting aside her biographical highlights and policy details, the message her campaign seems to want voters to have in mind on election day is one of contrasts – of division versus unity; bitterness versus hope; partisanship versus co-operation; past versus future.

“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better,” Harris said. “I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress.”

As she was delivering her speech, however, the current resident of the building behind her made comments that illustrated how difficult her task might be.

Biden, speaking of a derisive joke about Puerto Rico that a comedian made at a Trump rally on Sunday, appeared to refer to Trump supporters as “garbage”.

The president later claimed he was referring only to the comments made by the rally speaker. But the video of his remarks are unclear – and the episode was already distracting from Harris’ event on Tuesday evening.

It’s just one more obstacle Harris will have to overcome, along with assuaging Americans’ concerns about the economy and immigration – where polls indicate Trump has the advantage.

She tried to address those in her speech as well, even if they seemed to take a back seat to more lofty language and pointed attacks.

Her speech framed the election in a way that is to her advantage. Next Tuesday will reveal whether a majority of the American public – or at least a plurality in enough key battleground states – agrees.

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

A Chinese spacecraft with a three-person crew, including the country’s first female space engineer, has docked after a journey of more than six hours.

The crew will use the homegrown space station as a base for six months to conduct experiments and carry out spacewalks as Beijing gathers experience and intelligence for its eventual mission to put someone on the Moon by 2030.

Beijing declared the launch of Shenzhou 19 a “complete success” – it is one of 100 launches China has planned in a record year of space exploration as it tries to outdo its rival, the United States.

The BBC was given rare access to the Jiuquan Satellite launch centre in Gansu and we were just over a kilometre away when the spacecraft blasted off.

Flames shot out of the rocket launcher as it took to the skies, lighting up the Gobi Desert with a deafening roar.

Hundreds of people lined the streets, waving and cheering the names of the taikonauts, China’s word for astronauts, as they were sent off.

At the Tiangong space station, the Shenzhou 19 crew met with three other astronauts who are manning the Shenzhou 18 and will return to Earth on 4 November.

Just two years ago, President Xi Jinping declared that “to explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is our eternal dream”.

But some in Washington see the country’s ambition and fast-paced progress as a real threat.

Earlier this year, Nasa chief Bill Nelson said the US and China were “in effect, in a race” to return to the Moon, where he fears Beijing wants to stake territorial claims.

He told legislators that he believed their civilian space programme was also a military programme.

However, in Dongfeng Space City, a town built to support the launch site, China’s space programme is celebrated.

Every street light is adorned with the national flag.

Cartoon-like astronaut figurines and sculptures sit in the centre of children’s parks and plastic rockets are a centrepiece on most traffic roundabouts.

A huge poster with Xi Jinping on one side and a photo of the Shenzhou spacecraft on the other greets you as you drive into the main compound.

Hundreds have gathered in the dark after midnight to wave flags and brightly coloured lights as the Taikonauts make their last few steps on Earth before heading to the launch site.

The brass band strikes up Ode to the Motherland as young children, kept up late for the occasion, their cheeks adorned with the Chinese flag, all shout in full song.

This is a moment of national pride.

The pilot of this mission, Cai Xuzhe, is a veteran but he’s travelling with a new generation of Chinese-trained taikonauts born in 1990 – including China’s first female space engineer, Wang Haoze.

“Their youthful energy has made me feel younger and even more confident,” he told the gathered media ahead of take-off.

“Inspired by dreams that spark glory, and by glory that ignites new dreams, we assure the party and the people that we will stay true to our mission, with our hearts and minds fully devoted. We will strive to achieve new accomplishments in China’s crewed space programme.”

Standing to his left, beaming, is Song Lingdong.

He recalls watching one of China’s first space station missions as a 13-year-old with “excitement and awe”. He chose to become a pilot in the hope that this is how he could serve his country.

All three convey their deep sense of national pride, and state media has emphasised that this will be its “youngest crew” to date.

The message is clear: this is a new generation of space travellers and an investment in the country’s future.

China has already selected its next group of astronauts and they will train for potential lunar missions as well as to crew the space station.

“I am determined not to let down the trust placed in me,” says Mr Song. “I will strive to make our country’s name shine once again in space.”

China’s name has been “shining brightly” a lot lately when it comes to headlines about its space programme.

Earlier this year, the country achieved a historic first by retrieving rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon.

In 2021, China safely landed a spacecraft on Mars and released its Zhurong rover – becoming just the second nation to do so.

China also has a fleet of satellites in space and has plans for many more.

In August it launched the first 18 of what it hopes will eventually be a constellation of 14,000 satellites providing broadband internet coverage from space, which it hopes will one day rival SpaceX’s Starlink.

Elon Musk, Starlink’s chief executive, admitted on his own platform X that China’s space programme is far more advanced than people realise.

But others in the US are voicing even greater concerns, as they fear this technology can be weaponised.

The head of US Space Command, General Stephen Whiting, told a space symposium in April that China and Russia were both investing heavily in space at a “breath-taking speed”.

He claimed that since 2018, China has tripled the amount of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites it has in orbit, building a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and target United States and allied military capabilities”.

China’s space exploration is a “collective mission for humanity”, says Li Yingliang, director of the general technology bureau of China’s Manned Space Agency, dismissing US concerns as “unnecessary”.

“I don’t think this should be called a competition… China has long upheld the notion of peaceful use of space in its manned space programme. In the future, we will further develop international co-operation in various aspects of manned space technology, all based on sharing and collaboration,” he adds.

But the new space race is no longer about getting to the Moon. It’s about who will control its resources.

The Moon contains minerals, including rare earths, metals like iron and titanium – and helium too, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment.

Estimates for the value of all this vary wildly, from billions to quadrillions. So it’s easy to see why some see the Moon as a place to make lots of money. However, it’s also important to note that this would be a very long-term investment – and the tech needed to extract and return these lunar resources is some way off, writes the BBC’s science editor Rebecca Morelle.

Chinese experts at the launch centre were keen to point out the benefits of Beijing’s space station experiments.

“We study bones, muscles, nerve cells, and the effects of microgravity on them. Through this research, we’ve discovered that osteoporosis on Earth is actually similar to bone loss in space. If we can uncover unique patterns in space, we might be able to develop special medications to counteract bone loss and muscle atrophy,” said Zhang Wei, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Many of these experimental results can be applied on Earth.”

China is, at times, trying to downplay its advances.

At the launch of a roadmap for its space ambitions, which include building a research station on the Moon, returning samples of Venus’s atmosphere to Earth and launching more than 30 space missions by the middle of this century, Ding Chibiao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the country did not have a great number of achievements “compared to developed nations”.

And even here at the launch centre, they admit to “significant challenges” as they try to land a crew on the Moon.

“The technology is complex, there’s a tight schedule, and there are a lot of challenges,” said Lin Xiqiang, spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency.

“We’ll keep up the spirit of ‘two bombs and one star’. We will maintain our self-confidence and commitment to self-improvement, keep working together and keep pushing forward. We’ll make the Chinese people’s dream of landing on the Moon a reality in the near future.”

That’s perhaps why President Xi appears to be prioritising the country’s space programme even as the economy is in a slow decline.

And even though they are bringing along international press to witness their progress – there are key restrictions.

We were kept in a hotel three hours from the launch site and transported back and forth by bus, a total journey of 12 hours, rather than being left on site for a few hours.

A simple trip to a friendly local restaurant was carefully guarded by a line of security personnel.

We also noticed a large sign in town holds a stern warning: “It’s a crime to leak secrets. It’s an honour to keep secrets. You’ll be jailed if you leak secrets. You’ll be happy if you keep secrets. You’ll be shot if you sell secrets.”

China is taking no chances with its new technology, as its rivalry with the United States is no longer just here on Earth.

The world’s two most powerful countries could soon be staking territorial claims well beyond this planet.

President Joe Biden has tried to clarify comments that triggered a fresh row, after he was accused of calling supporters of Donald Trump “garbage”.

He was responding to comic Tony Hinchcliffe who sparked controversy by calling Puerto Rico, a US territory, an “island of garbage” during a Trump rally on Sunday.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden was initially quoted as saying on Tuesday, prompting an angry Republican backlash.

The White House later released a transcript which included an apostrophe, and said the president was talking about the words of Hinchcliffe, and not all Trump supporters.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is (Trump’s) supporter’s… his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the transcript reads.

Biden himself later addressed his video call with non-profit organisation Voto Latino, writing on X: “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage – which is the only word I can think of to describe it.

“His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

But Trump’s backers have seized upon the comments, making comparisons with a controversial remark by Hillary Clinton in 2016 during Trump’s first run for office, when she said half of Trump’s supporters were from a “basket of deplorables”.

As the war of words escalated, Trump himself suggested Kamala Harris – his rival for the White House – was running a “campaign of hate”.

During his campaign, Trump has repeatedly referred to his opponents as “the enemy from within” – rhetoric that Harris described as divisive.

Referring to the Biden comments, Trump said: “You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American people.”

Asked about the comments on Wednesday, Harris said Biden had “clarified his comments”, adding: “Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

• Follow live coverage of the US election
• Harris or Trump: Who’s leading the polls?
• Listen: Americast on the Puerto Rico “garbage” row
• Puerto Ricans in swing state say Trump rally joke won’t be forgotten

The Madison Square Garden rally referenced by Biden – during which Hinchcliffe and others sparked offence with a range of comments – has now been defended by Trump as a “love fest”.

He acknowledged that “somebody said some bad things” but said he did not think it was “a big deal”.

He stopped short of issuing an apology demanded by prominent figures from the island itself, which is a US territory. A number of Republicans – including from neighbourhoods with strong Latino populations – were outraged.

In Philadelphia, in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, members of the 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population told the BBC they would not forget the joke.

Residents of Puerto Rico – a US island territory in the Caribbean – are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Hinchcliffe himself has defended his material, saying his critics “have no sense of humour”.

Biden’s comments on the furore threatened to overshadow a rally on Tuesday evening by Kamala Harris, who is running for the White House as the Democratic nominee after Biden pulled out earlier in the contest.

Harris delivered what her campaign has called her “closing argument” in Washington DC – at the spot from which Trump spoke shortly before a riot by his supporters at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.

She urged voters to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict” in American politics.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
• EXPLAINER: The seven states that will decide the election
• ECONOMY: Harris and Trump should listen to this mum of seven
• KATTY KAY: What’s really behind this men v women election
• CONGRESS: Democrats bet big on Texas and target Ted Cruz
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

Police in Australia say they have recovered around 40,000 limited-edition coins based on the hit children’s television show Bluey.

It was reported in July that 63,000 of the coins – produced by the Australian Mint – had been stolen from a warehouse in Western Sydney, about two months before they were due to enter circulation.

Authorities recovered 40,061 coins on Tuesday after a raid on a property about 10km (6 miles) from the storage facility.

Earlier that day, 27-year-old Christina Vale had been arrested and charged with breaking and entering and disposing of stolen property, police say. She was the third person arrested over the alleged theft.

The coins, which are worth A$1 ($0.65; 50p) a piece, were stolen two months before their planned release. New South Wales Police said they had previously been selling online for 10 times their face value.

Shortly after the theft was reported, Police in the state of New South Wales launched a special investigation into the incident codenamed Strike Force Bandit – after Bluey’s father.

In August, they arrested 44-year-old Steven Nielsen, who was an employee at the warehouse, and Nassar Kanj, also 44, who they say acted as his accomplice in the alleged heist.

Police will now argue in court that Christina Vale was the pair’s getaway driver.

The gold-coloured coins are known as Bluey dollarbucks – which is how money is referred to in the cartoon – and feature images of characters from the show.

The hit series, about the Heeler family of dogs, is made by Brisbane-based animation firm Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bluey has been a huge international success and is now broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, US and China.

It was streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US last year, putting it in the country’s top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.

There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons, and a Bluey-themed “interactive experience” is opening in Brisbane next month.

The stolen coins are different from a collectable set of Bluey currency that caused a frenzy when it went on sale by the Royal Australian Mint in June this year.