Spain is enduring its worst flooding disaster in decades, with at least 95 people dead and dozens more missing, after huge rains swept the eastern province of Valencia and beyond.

Torrential rain on Tuesday triggered flash floods which swept away bridges and buildings and forced people to climb on to roofs or cling to trees to survive.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has declared three days of national mourning as the extreme conditions continue, restricting some rescue efforts.

The death toll is feared to climb as “there are many missing people”, the government says.

• ‘It was like a tsunami’: Spaniards recount horror of deadly floods
• Timing of Spain flood alert under scrutiny as blame game rages
• Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse

At least 92 deaths were recorded in Valencia, with another two in Castilla-La Mancha to Valencia’s west and one in Málaga – a 71-year-old British man who died in hospital after being rescued from his home.

The flooding death toll is the country’s worst since 1973, when at least 150 people were estimated to have died in the nation’s worst-ever floods in the south-east.

In his national address on Wednesday, Sánchez urged citizens to remain vigilant and pledged a full recovery, telling victims: “The whole of Spain weeps with you… we won’t abandon you.”

One of the first towns affected near Valencia, Chiva, reported one year’s worth of rainfall on Tuesday in just a period of eight hours, according to national weather agency Aemet.

As Spanish army and emergency crews rushed to carry out rescues on Wednesday morning – including winching people to safety from balconies and car rooftops – survivors in Valencia recounted the horror of the floods on Tuesday night.

Sudden surges turned streets and roads into rivers, catching many motorists unaware.

Guillermo Serrano Pérez, 21, from Paiporta near Valencia, said the water had rushed down a highway “like a tsunami”, forcing him and his parents to abandon their car and climb on to a bridge to survive.

Another witness recounted a scene when motorway drivers realised a torrent of water was heading towards them and formed a human chain to escape along a raised central reservation.

“Thank goodness no one slipped because if anyone had fallen, the current would have dragged them away,” Patricia Rodriguez, 45, told El País newspaper.

One resident of La Torre told the BBC some of his friends had lost their homes, and on Tuesday night he “saw cars floating in the water” and the tides “breaking through some walls.”

Meanwhile, the mayor of Horno de Alcedo, a town just outside Valencia, told BBC Newshour how the water levels rose by more than a metre in just a matter of minutes.

“The currents were so quick – and we called the emergency services who started rescuing some people who had water up to their necks”, Consuelo Tarazon said.

There are widespread accusations in Spain that in many cases, disaster relief authorities were too slow to act with warnings, meaning people could not get off roads or seek higher ground.

The civil protection agency, deployed during national disasters, did not issue an alert until 20:15 on Tuesday evening local time – but by then, Chiva and several other towns had already been flooded for at least two hours.

Valencia’s regional government has also been forced to defend its decision to scrap the Valencia Emergency Unit, which had been set up by the previous government to tackle natural disasters such as flooding and wildfires.

Spain deployed more than 1,000 troops to help with rescue efforts on Wednesday, but many crews remain cut off from towns by flooded roads and downed communication and power lines.

The European Union’s chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said it had activated its Copernicus satellite system to help co-ordinate Spanish rescue teams. Other European neighbours have also offered to send reinforcements.

Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles had said earlier on Wednesday the flooding across the region was “an unprecedented phenomenon”.

The downpour eased in the country’s central-east on Wednesday, but weather officials warned the rains were moving north-east to the Catalonia region. Weather warnings have also been issued across several other parts of the country, urging people to brace for floods and take shelter.

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.

Weather researchers have identified the likely main cause of the intense rainfall as a “gota fria” – a natural weather event that hits Spain in autumn and winter when cold air descends on warmer waters over the Mediterranean.

However, the increase in global temperatures had led to the clouds carrying more rain, scientists told the BBC.

“With every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier bursts of rainfall,” said Dr Friederike Otto, from Imperial College London, who leads an international group of scientists who try to understand the role that warming plays in these type of events.

“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change.”

The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew for 86 minutes – the longest flight recorded by an ICMB – and over 1,000km (621 miles) before falling into waters off its east coast, South Korea’s military said.

The launch comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two Koreas and Pyongyang’s increasingly aggresive rhetoric towards Seoul.

The ICBM was fired at a sharply raised angle at about 07:10 local time on Thursday (22:10 GMT Wednesday).

South Korea had warned on Wednesday that the North was preparing to fire its ICBM close to the presidential election in the US on 5 November.

North Korea last fired an ICBM in December last year, in defiance of long-standing and crippling UN sanctions.

ICBMs have the range to reach the North American continent.

Neighbouring Japan said that it monitored Thursday’s launch, adding that the missile reached the highest altitude ever of over 7,000km.

South Korean and US officials met after the launch and agreed to “take strong and varied response measures”, the South’s military said in a statement.

“Our military maintains full readiness as we closely share North Korean ballistic information with US and Japanese authorities,” it added.

The US called the launch a “flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions”.

“It only demonstrates that [North Korea] continues to prioritise its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes over the well-being of its people,” the White House’s National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement.

Thursday’s launch comes after South Korea and US accused North Korea of sending troops to Russia to support Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The Pentagon estimates that around 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to train in eastern Russia. A “small number” has been sent to Kursk in Russia’s west, with several thousand more on their way, the US said earlier this week.

The alleged presence of North Korean troops in Russia has added to growing concerns over deepening ties between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pyongyang and Moscow have neither confirmed nor denied these allegations.

“When the water started to rise, it came as a wave,” said Guillermo Serrano Pérez. “It was like a tsunami.”

The 21-year old from Paiporta, near Valencia, is one of the thousands of people who experienced Tuesday night’s flash floods which engulfed the region and killed at least 95 people.

He was driving on the motorway with his parents on Tuesday evening when the water rushed in. They survived by climbing on a bridge and abandoning their car to the fury of the floodwater.

Although heavy rain had been battering the area for hours, many, like Guillermo Serrano Pérez and his family, were caught unawares by the force of the floods.

• LIVE UPDATES – Latest news and analysis on Spain flash floods
• Timing of Spain flood alert under scrutiny as blame game rages
• Spanish region hit by year’s worth of rain in eight hours
• Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse

Yet the signs had been there.

On Tuesday morning at about 07:00 (06:00 GMT), Spain’s meteorological agency Aemet warned that torrential rains were forecast for the region of Valencia.

“Be very careful! The danger is extreme! Do not travel unless absolutely necessary,” it said on X, before issuing a “maximum red alert”.

Throughout the day, more alerts were put out, warning local authorities to prevent people from approaching the river banks.

By 15:20, the regional emergencies co-ordination centre was already publishing images of heavily flooded streets in the La Fuente and Utiel municipalities, west of Valencia.

A few hours later, it said several rivers in the area were swelling up and urged people to move away from the banks.

But in most places, it was already too late.

Chiva – about 20km away – was among the first to experience the full fury of the flash floods.

The deep ravine which traverses the town had reportedly been filling with water since Tuesday afternoon following heavy rains.

By 18:00 the town’s streets had turned into raging rivers, with the force of the water dragging away cars, street lamps and benches.

Emergency services scrambled to bring assistance across the region, but the speed at which the water filled the streets was unprecedented.

“A very strong downpour came from above very suddenly… and the water rose a metre or a metre and a half in a few minutes,” said the mayor of the town of Riba-roja de Túria.

Elsewhere in the region, news that people were missing after being swept away by floodwaters began to emerge.

Yet the civil protection did not send a warning to residents of the Valencia region to warn them not to travel on the roads until more than two hours later, after 20:00.

Many have questioned the timing of that warning, which arrived more than 12 hours after the Spanish meteorological agency had issued its first red alert.

Some say that it arrived too late for people to seek refuge on the higher floors or to get off the roads, which were busy with commuters returning home after work.

Paco had been driving from Valencia to nearby Picassent when he was caught by surprise by the flash floods that swallowed up the roads.

He told El Mundo newspaper “the speed of the water was insane” as it dragged cars away: “The pressure was tremendous. I managed to get out of the car and the water pushed me against a fence that I managed to grab on to, but I couldn’t move.”

“It wouldn’t let me. It ripped my clothes off,” he said.

Patricia Rodríguez, from Sedaví, was also caught by the flooding as she drove home from work.

She told local media that water started to rise as she sat in a line of traffic near Paiporta and the cars started floating.

“We were afraid the river was going to burst its banks because we were right in the line of fire,” she said. She managed to escape on foot with the help of another driver and watched, terrified, as a young man nearby carried a new-born baby to safety.

“It was just as well that nobody slipped, because if we had, the current would have taken us away,” she said.

Social media posts help to paint a picture of the chaos that engulfed the region as night fell.

In one video shared on X, wheelchair-bound residents of a care home in Paiporta could be seen trapped in a dining room with brown floodwater coming up to their knees.

Rut Moyano, a resident of Benetússer, near Valencia, chronicled the increasingly desperate situation in her town on X. Pleading for help, she said she was sheltering with neighbours on the upper floors of her building when one of them suffered a heart attack and died.

“The Civil Guard has arrived on foot but they can’t access the property because there is a car stuck in the entrance,” she wrote in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “Can anyone tell me if someone else can help?”

The morning brought its own set of challenges. Daylight revealed the full extent of the devastation, with dozens of cars piled up on top of one another, destroyed businesses and entire towns covered in mud and debris.

In Valencia, a man called Juliano Sánchez was rescued with symptoms of hypothermia after clinging on to palm trees for seven hours.

“I didn’t want to die,” he told El Periódico. “I grabbed onto some palm trees and held on with all my strength so the river wouldn’t sweep me away.”

But many were less fortunate.

Dozens of people are still missing across the region, while those who survived have described being helpless in the face of horrific destruction.

“We saw two cars being swept away by the current and we don’t know if there were people inside,” a man told Las Provincias. “We’d never seen anything like it.”

Israeli strikes have killed 19 people, including eight women, around Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek, the country’s health ministry has said.

It came hours after tens of thousands of residents fled in response to evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military that covered the entire city and two neighbouring towns.

Mayor Mustafa al-Shell told the BBC more than 20 strikes were reported on Wednesday afternoon in the Baalbek area, with five inside the city itself, where there is a Unesco-listed ancient Roman temple complex.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah command-and-control centres and infrastructure in Baalbek and Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon.

The military also said it had targeted Hezbollah fuel depots in the Bekaa Valley, where Baalbek is located. It gave no details, but Lebanon’s state news agency said diesel tanks were hit in the town of Douris, where Mr Shell said pictures showed a huge column of black smoke rising into the air.

The attacks came as Hezbollah’s new secretary-general said the group would continue its war plan against Israel under his leadership and that it would not “cry out” for a ceasefire.

Speaking a day after his appointment was announced, Naim Qassem said he would follow the agenda of his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut last month.

Qassem made the speech from an undisclosed location amid reports suggesting he had fled to Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main supporter.

After weeks of an air offensive that has brought devastation to large parts of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, the Israeli military appears to be expanding its campaign against Hezbollah in the east of the country – another area where the group has a strong presence and support.

Baalbek is a key population centre in the Bekaa Valley, near the border with Syria. It is a largely rural area and one of Lebanon’s poorest regions.

Hezbollah has established part of its infrastructure and recruited fighters from there.

The area is also strategically important for Hezbollah, as it is part of a route linking the group to its allies in Syria and Iraq and, ultimately, to Iran.

On Wednesday morning, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for the whole of Baalbek and the neighbouring towns of Ain Bourday and Douris, warning that it would “act forcefully against Hezbollah interests”.

Roula Zeaiter, programme manager for the Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering (RDFL), said the orders sparked panic among residents, including displaced families from other parts of the country.

“Minutes after the order to leave came, the streets were filled with people grabbing their things, locking their homes and closing their shops,” she told the charity ActionAid.

“We’re scrambling like scared mice, moving from place to place. Lebanon is becoming like Gaza, with Israeli forces using the same tactics.”

Videos posted online showed huge traffic jams on the main roads out of the city.

Mustafa al-Shell estimated that about 50,000 people fled within two hours, but he added that many others decided to stay behind “for various reasons”.

He said the initial wave of Israeli strikes on Wednesday afternoon hit villas and other residential buildings in Baalbek’s city centre and its outskirts.

“It’s not clear what the Israelis have targeted,” he added. “But I can tell you that there are no ammunition dumps or weapons caches in Baalbek.”

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that the Ras al-Ain Hills, Amshki, al-Asira, al-Kayyal Road areas were hit, and the northern and southern entrances to Baalbek. The strikes also targeted Ain Bourday and Douris, including diesel tanks in its vicinity, it said.

Later, the Lebanese health ministry said 11 people, including three women, were killed in a strike on Salibi Farm in the Baalbek area. Eight others, including five women, were killed in another strike in Bednayel, it added.

The ministry separately said another 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the town of Sohmor, in the southern Bekaa Valley.

Following the strikes on Baalbek, the Israeli military said it had conducted “intelligence-based strikes on fuel depots located inside military compounds belonging to Hezbollah’s Logistical Reinforcement Unit 4400 in the Bekaa Valley”. The unit was responsible for transferring weapons from Iran, it added.

A second statement said aircraft had “struck command-and-control centres and terrorist infrastructure” in the Baalbek area.

It also accused Hezbollah of systematically using civilian infrastructure and areas for military activities, which the group has previously denied.

Mr Shell said none of the strikes hit Baalbek’s Unesco World Heritage site, which comprises the ruins of Roman temples which date back to the 1st Century AD and are among the largest and best-preserved in the world.

However, he warned of what he called “Israeli treachery” and said Lebanese authorities were “pleading… for international bodies to stand fast in defence of Baalbek’s Roman ruins”.

Unesco warned in a post on X on Wednesday that featured a photo of the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, that World Heritage sites across the Middle East, particularly those in Lebanon, were under threat.

“Unesco recalls to all parties their obligation to respect and protect the integrity of these sites. They are the heritage of all humanity and should never be targeted,” it said.

On Monday night, several buildings were levelled around the Gouraud Barracks area of Baalbek, near the Roman ruins, during Israeli strikes that killed more than 60 people across the Bekaa Valley.

When asked by reporters in Washington about the Baalbek strikes, US state department spokesman Matthew Miller called on Israel not to threaten the lives of civilians or damage critical civilian infrastructure and cultural heritage.

He also confirmed that US Middle East envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk were “traveling to Israel to engage on issues including a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon, as well as how we get to an end to the conflict in Gaza”.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Najob Mikati, expressed optimism that a ceasefire might be possible in “the coming hours or days”.

Two sources told Reuters news agency that US mediators were working on a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah which would be used to finalise the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1701.

The resolution ended the last war they fought in 2006 and included a call for southern Lebanon to be free of any armed personnel or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and a UN peacekeeping force.

Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah – which it proscribes as a terrorist organisation – after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.

It says it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of northern Israeli border areas displaced by rocket attacks, which Hezbollah launched in support of Palestinians the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

The Israeli military said about 60 projectiles fired by Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel on Wednesday. No injuries were reported.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 2,100 in the past five weeks, and 1.2 million others displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli authorities say more than 60 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

As diehard baseball fans flock to watch the two biggest US cities battle it out for a World Series title, many are coming from across the globe to this Los Angeles neighbourhood because of one single player.

People here in the Little Tokyo suburb of LA call it the “Ohtani effect”.

Shohei Ohtani – the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star player – looms large over the historic neighbourhood, personified in a 150ft (45m) mural and his name emblazoned across jerseys worn by fans here.

Baseball may be known as “America’s pastime”, but its biggest star is from Japan. The player signed a recording-breaking contract to play this season – a whopping $700m (£540m) over 10 years – and the hype surrounding him has only grown, luring in new fans and new traditions in multicultural Los Angeles.

Business has boomed here. Tourists come from all over – including from the star’s home country.

“When Shohei comes to bat – they know if he hits the home run we start pouring sake shots,” says Don Tahara, the owner of Far Bar where dozens of TVs show Dodgers games. Home runs equal free rice wine – often to hundreds of fans.

That’s a lot of sake. Ohtani has hit 54 home runs during this regular season – although none so far in the World Series against the New York Yankees.

“It’s good for the Dodgers – maybe not so great for my pocketbook. But it’s meaningful, it warms my heart.”

Far Bar has been packed during the World Series.

Mr Tahara passed out mochi, a Japanese rice cake, decorated with the Dodgers’ logo and free margarita shots to honour Fernando Valenzuela, the Dodgers legend who recently died. The Mexico-born, left-handed pitcher is also being immortalised in a mural – across the river from Little Tokyo in Boyle Heights.

Splattered in paint, muralist Robert Vargas took a break from painting Valenzuela to watch the game at Far Bar. It’s hard to imagine Mr Vargas buying his own drink at Far Bar – in Little Tokyo he is possibly as beloved as Ohtani for immortalising the baseball star on the massive wall of the Miyako Hotel.

“I’ve been a Dodger fan my whole life,” says Mr Vargas, who says he painted Ohtani “in the spirit of representation”.

And the mural has become a popular destination for tourists from Japan who come by the busload to pose for photos with the artwork.

Takatani Kiuchi travelled from Japan to attend Game 2 of the series at Dodger Stadium in the heart of Los Angeles and he watched Game 3 from Far Bar with his friends. Dressed head-to-toe in Dodgers gear and Ohtani jerseys, Kiuchi met fans from around Los Angeles and the world.

“We are new Dodgers fans. From Tokyo. For us it’s more about the Yankees versus Dodgers – that means a lot more than the World Series.”

They were excited that the second game of the series also featured the other Japanese star on the team – Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitching six innings, allowing just one hit by the Yankees.

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Kiuchi last came to Los Angeles as a child 50 years ago and says he will definitely return to see the Dodgers play again.

“We came here to see this,” Kiuchi cheered as the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman hit a home run during Game 3 and the bar’s crowd erupted into cheers.

The city’s tourism board is also cheering. In 2023, there were 230,000 visitors from Japan to Los Angeles, a 91.7 percent increase from 2022.

And by year-end, the city is projected to welcome 320,000 visitors, says Bill Karz, the senior vice-president of brand marketing at LA Tourism. It’s still a drop from pre-pandemic levels, but tourism officials are celebrating the rise.

“The Ohtani effect is real,” says Karz. “It impacts our entire economy.”

That, he says, results in boosted hotel occupancy, ticket sales at area theme parks like Universal Studios and tours of Dodger Stadium, which has, in turn, increased the number of Japanese language tours it runs.

Even some devoted Yankee fans have jumped on the Ohtani bandwagon.

In a sea of Dodger blue, Vince Gonzales sported a black and red “Ohtani” shirt from the Japanese national team.

“Shhh, I’m a Yankee fan,” he whispered at the bar while mingling with tourists from Japan. “But more importantly, I’m an Ohtani fan because I have a passion for Japanese baseball.”

Far Bar erupted into cheers and “I love LA” blasted from the sound system when game three ended in a Dodger victory.

Robert Vargas – the muralist – wasn’t able to sneak away. A woman from Japan ran out of the bar to beg him for photos in front of the mural. He obliged and soon, there were dozens of people posing with him for photos and chanting: “Lets Go, Dodgers!”

Millions of Indians are celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights and one of the most important events in the Hindu calendar.

The annual festival tends to fall between October and November, but the exact date varies each year as the Hindu calendar is based on the Moon.

This year, Diwali is being celebrated on Thursday, but some parts of the country will observe the festival on Friday.

People light oil lamps and candles on the day to symbolise the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil.

In the lead up to Diwali, people clean and organise their homes. New clothes are bought and sweets and gifts are exchanged with friends, families and neighbours.

Many draw traditional designs like rangoli – made using colourful powders – outside their doors to welcome luck and positivity.

On this day, families worship Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.

Lamps are lit and windows and doors are left open to help the goddess find her way into people’s homes.

Fireworks are also a big part of the celebrations but in recent years, several state governments have imposed curbs or banned the practice as northern Indian states grapple with severe air pollution.

There is a complete ban on sale and use of firecrackers in the capital, Delhi, during the festival while states like Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka have limited firecracker use to specific hours on Diwali evening.

An Israeli military official has told the BBC that it carried out a deadly strike on a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on Tuesday in response to seeing a “spotter” on the roof with binoculars observing Israeli forces.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said more than 90 Palestinians, including 25 children, were killed or missing beneath the rubble of the building, which collapsed as a result of the strike.

The military official said it was not a planned strike and troops did not know the building was being used as a shelter for displaced people.

They also said there were discrepancies between the number of casualties reported and what the military had observed.

The strike provoked a strong response from Israel’s closest ally, the US, which described it as a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and demanded an explanation.

On Wednesday, after the military official had spoken to reporters, US state department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel was “not doing enough to get us the answers that we have requested”.

“They have said to us what they had said publicly, which is they’re investigating the matter,” he added.

Israel does not allow the BBC and other international media into Gaza to report independently, making it difficult to verify facts on the ground, so we rely on information from video footage and witness testimonies.

Videos posted on social media a few hours after the strike showed multiple bodies wrapped in blankets and people collecting body parts at the scene of the strike.

Umm Malik Abu Nasr later told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme on Tuesday that the strike destroyed her family’s home and that she was among the survivors pulled from the rubble.

“At around 00:30 or 01:00, the Awda family house next to us was bombed,” she said. “We rushed to help and host them but their daughter [died] in our home.”

“At 04:00 the multi-storey house of the Abu Nasr family collapsed on top of us. They [Israel forces] bombed the house, which was housing about 300 displaced people who had fled their homes. These people sought to take refuge in our houses. We hosted them because they were just civilians and had nothing to do with resistance [Palestinian armed groups].”

“My husband and other young men are still under the rubble and have not been pulled out yet,” she added. “My husband’s cousin and her five children are still under the rubble.”

The director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital – which only has two doctors and limited nursing staff following an Israeli raid last week – said in a voice message recorded on Tuesday that it had received the bodies of more than 25 people killed in the strike and that another 77 were trapped under the rubble.

About 45 injured, including children and women, had also been brought to the hospital either by horse-drawn carts or by people carrying them, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya added.

The UN’s Middle East peace envoy, Tor Wennesland, said it was the latest in “a deadly series of recent mass casualty incidents, alongside a massive displacement campaign, in the north of Gaza that raises serious concerns about violations of humanitarian law”.

Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed since the Israeli military launched a ground offensive in Beit Lahia as well as neighbouring Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on 6 October, saying it was acting against regrouping Hamas fighters.

More than 70,000 residents have fled to Gaza City, but the UN estimates that about 100,000 remain in dire conditions, with severe shortages of food, water and medical supplies.

The offensive has also forced the closure of essential services, including medical facilities, firefighting, search and rescue, water wells and bakeries.

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

More than 43,160 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has sacked his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, after the country voted in favour of lifting the US economic embargo on Cuba at the United Nations.

Argentina was one of 187 countries that supported the non-binding UN resolution on Wednesday. Only the US and Israel voted to oppose the resolution.

It was the first time since Milei’s arrival in office that Argentina has not aligned itself with the US and Israeli governments.

Mondino has been replaced by the ambassador to Washington, Gerardo Werthein. Following the move, President Milei’s office said Argentina was “categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship”.

Under the previous left-wing Peronist government, Argentina enjoyed close relations with Cuba, backing the end of the economic embargo, which the US imposed in the 1960s when Cuba adopted communism.

Cuba has, in exchange, consistently supported Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory. Britain and Argentina waged a brief but bitter war over the territory in 1982.

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President Milei’s office later issued a statement intended to outline the political vision behind his foreign policy.

“The country is going through a period of profound changes and this new stage requires that our diplomatic corps reflect in each decision the values ​​of freedom, sovereignty and individual rights that characterise Western democracies,” it said.

The statement went on: “Our country is categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship and will remain firm in promoting a foreign policy that condemns all regimes that perpetrate human rights violations.”

Friction had been growing between the president and the foreign ministry over a range of issues in recent months, observers say.

However, Mondino was seen as important to Argentina’s public image abroad, often stepping in to defuse tensions after confrontational statements made by Milei had upset other nations.

The US trade embargo was first imposed in 1962 in the wake of the revolution in Cuba, which swept Fidel Castro to power.

Washington wanted to force the island to reject Castro’s socialist policies and embrace capitalism and democracy.

However, the embargo has failed to achieve that objective and has become a bone of contention between Washington and its neighbours in the region.

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.

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing.

Several women have taken their lives in Sudan’s central Gezira state after being raped by paramilitary fighters in the brutal civil war raging in the country, rights groups and activists have said.

The reports come after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was accused by the UN of “atrocious crimes”, including mass killings, in the state last week.

With RSF fighters continuing to advance, one rights group has told the BBC it is in contact with six women who are contemplating taking their own lives as they fear being sexually assaulted.

But the RSF has dismissed a recent UN report blaming a rise in sexual violence on its combatants, telling the BBC the accusations “were not based on evidence”.

The vicious struggle for power between the army and RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people from their homes since the conflict began in April 2023.

The head of the UN World Food Programme, Cindy McCain, visited the aid hub of Port Sudan this week, and told the BBC that the country could see the world’s largest-ever humanitarian crisis if a ceasefire is not reached.

She warned that millions of people could die from starvation.

Reports of paramilitary fighters on the rampage in Gezira follow the recent defection to the army of Abu Aqla Kayka, the RSF’s top commander in the state.

“The RSF started a revenge campaign in areas under the control of Abu Kayka. They looted, killed civilians who were resisting and raped women and little girls,” Hala al-Karib, head of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (Siha), told the BBC.

Siha, which has been documenting gender-based violence in Sudan during the war, had confirmed three cases of suicide by women over the last week in Gezira state, she said.

Ms Karib said that two were in the village of Al Seriha and a third in the town of Ruffa.

The sister of a woman who took her own life in the village told Siha it happened after she was raped by RSF soldiers in front of her father and brother. The two men were later killed.

A series of videos have been shared online over the last week that appear to show dozens of bodies wrapped in blankets from an alleged RSF massacre in Al Seriha.

BBC Verify has been able to match the location of this footage to the courtyard of a mosque in Al Seriha.

The evidence of suicides came from only two areas out of the 50 or so villages that have recently come under attack, Ms Karib said, adding that the figure could be higher as mobile communications were patchy.

A female activist from Gezira, who asked to remain anonymous as she feared for her life, told the BBC she had confirmed accounts of women taking their lives after their husbands had been killed by the RSF.

She had seen WhatsApp messages from one woman who described how her sister had taken her own life after being raped by RSF militiamen, who had also killed five of her brothers and some of her uncles also in Al Seriha.

But like Siha, she said it was impossible to verify accounts on social media of reported mass suicides of women fearing rape given the communication problems.

On Tuesday, an 80-page UN report said that since the conflict began, at least 400 survivors of conflict-related sexual violence have been documented up to July 2024, with the actual figure suspected to be much higher.

“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, the UN chair of the panel that compiled the report.

Victims it documented have ranged from between eight and 75 years – with many of them needing medical treatment, but most hospitals and clinics have been destroyed in the fighting, the UN said.

RSF spokesperson Nizar Sayed Ahmed told the BBC: “These accusations are false and not based on evidence.

“To find out the facts on the ground, the UN must send a fact-finding team to Sudan,” he said.

Ms Karib told the BBC Siha was trying to keep in touch with the six women who were fearful of the RSF’s advance and contemplating taking their own lives.

She said Siha was giving them psychological support as activists tried to work out how they could move them to more secure locations.

She also said they were trying to help a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped by RSF fighters in Gezira and was in urgent need of medical care.

The girl was currently on the road from her home village north of Ruffa to the town of New Halfa, and was bleeding profusely, she said.

• Watch: ‘They ransacked my home and left my town in ruins’
• Rape me, not my daughter’ – women tell BBC of sexual violence
• A simple guide to the Sudan war

Scrolling through Zara’s transactions shows she has spent thousands of dollars on TikTok.

Zara, not her real name, is in her 20s, lives in the US and has Somali roots. She became obsessed with the platform’s live battle feature – which sees two influencers verbally spar and sometimes mock each other as they solicit money from their followers to win the bout.

She would later discover there is a much darker side to these games and has shared her story with BBC World Service.

The battles are popular with TikTok users across the world but the premise of the Somali game is different because the influencers on either side often represent a Somali clan and sometimes trade insults that can descend into vitriol.

It is known as the Big Tribal Game and tens of thousands of people regularly tune in as the influencers play rap music that extolls the virtue of their clan, with lyrics that praise the bravery and beauty of their people.

An event we watched on a Saturday night in October was a typical example: there were two influencers on a split screen. About 50,000 people were watching with us.

Doing “battle” largely means encouraging viewers to give the players more gifts, which they need to win each five-minute round.

The winner is the influencer that has received the most gifts – and the loser is then expected to congratulate their opponent by admitting their clan is more powerful on the night.

Sometimes the events have been advertised online for several months in advance.

The influencers, often based in the US and Europe, go live before the game starts, hyping up the crowd.

At kick-off, sometimes the debates continues, but the in-game chatter can be fairly mundane. The action is between the people donating, trying to outspend each other.

There is a whole new language, a digital currency and many obscure rules that are part of the gameplay, adding a surreal quality to the events.

We saw some of the highest value items being gifted, like the “TikTok universe”, which is worth more than $500 (£385) and equates to almost 50,000 TikTok coins. It prompts an animation of people dancing to a catchy song.

Slightly cheaper at $400 (£308) and a fan favourite is the lion, which roars loudly when it runs on the screen. Or there is the gentler whale swimming out of an underwater tunnel.

Some gifts apply filters to the influencer’s face like the cowboy hat and moustache, a red beret or seasonal pumpkin head.

Zara says she started playing because she wanted to defend the pride of her clan.

It was “exciting” and “my side always won”, she recalls.

But Zara spent more than $7,000, meant to pay for her university fees, on the games.

“My parents, if they found out that I spend a lot of money in TikTok, they would be devastated – they would not [be] happy – but somehow it’s kind of like addiction.”

She also questions why she gave away hard-earned cash to influencers who very rarely showed any gratitude.

But as she was pulled deeper into this world, she experienced something much more sinister.

We have seen evidence that a US-based male influencer has been insulting female TikTokers and making threats against them – threatening to post sexualised images of them.

Zara says it happens a lot: “They find who you are, they grab your family photos, your picture, and they say, ‘I’m gonna expose you.'”

She says the US-based male influencer did this to her and she was so scared and worried her family would see a manipulated picture that he threatened to share, she could not sleep at night.

“Imagine your family see your photos in a naked body. They don’t know it was Photoshopped.”

When Zara reported the account to TikTok, she says they did not act.

The influencer goes by the name Hussein Kibray online and has more than 200,000 followers. He frequently takes part in the games.

Zara believes other women have been threatened in this way but we have not seen images Photoshopped of her – or other women – shared by him in the public domain.

We asked him about his behaviour but he did not respond to our message.

After the BBC contacted TikTok about Kibray’s accounts, the social media platform replied to say it had now banned them for violating its policies on adult sexual and physical abuse.

In a statement a TikTok spokesperson said: “We prioritise the safety of our community with some of the industry’s firmest streaming requirements, including specific policies for Match content, customisable safety tools for viewers, and only allowing people over 18 to go live or send gifts.”

• Listen to the BBC Trending podcast: The cost of an addiction to Somali TikTok battles from the BBC World Service.

The TikTok live games feed on confrontation and sometimes at the very least the appearance of aggression – whether staged or authentic. The matches can get heated when the influencers debate the strengths of different clans.

Clan identity is deeply ingrained in Somali society and politics, but it can be a sensitive topic. Clans fought against each other in the Somali civil war that started after the overthrow of long-time ruler Siad Barre in 1991 and the worst of the fighting continued until 2001.

Sometimes the influencers revisit the civil war – who won, what happened – and insult their ancestors and even brag about having killed rivals.

Many people are worried the games are also contributing to a toxic online environment. TikTok told us that live content must abide by their community guidelines, which apply across the platform.

Away from the arena of the Big Tribal Game, there are serious concerns about the level of clannism and hateful speech across social media platforms spread by influential Somali accounts, often based abroad.

Moustafa Ahmad, a security researcher with a focus on the Horn of Africa, says there is a sort of irony in that.

“People who are leaving the country and building their lives in the West because of the conflicts, because of the tensions they left behind, are becoming part of [the] cycle that’s perpetuating violence and intercommunal tensions in the region,” he says.

And the Big Tribal Game is proving popular within Somalia – discussed at many tea stalls in capital, Mogadishu, and in higher echelons of society.

“Sometimes you will see some politicians and elders talking and joking about how their clan won last night’s game. It’s not something we should joke about,” says influencer Bilaal Bulshawi who has almost two million followers and is known for his fun videos and online challenges.

Based in Somalia, unlike many of those who do TikTok battles, he says he took part in a game when they started to become a trend but it was not a clan-based match planned in advance.

He has been watching the spending on these events go up and up and suggests this money could be used to help the country instead.

“It’s really unfortunate, spending that much money, knowing Somalia is suffering and begging the world for help,” he says.

If you do some basic calculations it might look like the influencers are pocketing thousands of dollars during the most high-profile games.

However, the reality is probably less impressive, says Crystal Abidin, the founder of the TikTok Cultures Research network and a professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Australia.

She has not studied the Somali “battles” but says influencers often create the illusion of vast wealth.

“A lot of followers get the impression that all the coins and the glittery graphics flowing through the screen indicate that there’s a lot of cash flow going straight into the pockets of influencers,” says Prof Abidin.

“And really, the exact figure, the volume or the breakdown in percentage is actually quite opaque.”

She says from her research elsewhere there are unseen costs: the platform takes a cut, sometimes there are people who manage the creators, sometimes there is seed money to create the impression the giving is organic.

We know that for many involved in the Big Tribal Game, the sentiment and interest are real.

These events are anticipated for months and they are driving high engagement – but Zara understands why some “gifters” would be desperate for an exit.

• BBC Trending podcast: Addictive Somali TikTok battles
• ‘I wanted my clitoris back’ – FGM survivor fights back
• Somalia’s opioid overdose: Young, female and addicted

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.”

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
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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.

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.

Canada has launched a new drive to get more overseas tourists to visit the country. Yet staffing shortages, wildfires and a spat with China will not make the task easy.

“You can learn about nature, indigenous culture and our history,” says tour guide Jack Rivers.

These are three reasons why he thinks more people should take a chance on holidaying in Canada.

Mr Rivers, who is indigenous, leads organised walks around Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, in Ontario.

It’s an unspoiled area, where dense forests line the shore of Lake Huron.

The walking tours are part of Wiikwemkoong Tourism, an indigenous tourism organisation that teaches visitors about native history and the land.

Mr Rivers says his job is “great”, but he admits that it is not for everyone. “It’s not an 8-4 job,” he says, adding that “it relies on people working weekends and being away from their family”.

Aa a result, Wikwemikong Tourism has struggled to retain staff, a problem that’s reflected across a Canada-wide tourism sector still said to be short of hundreds of thousands of workers.

These staffing shortfalls will have to be addressed if the Canadian government is successful in its new drive to increase visitor numbers to the country.

The push, led by government body Destination Canada, comes as visitor numbers to Canada have failed to recover post-Covid to their 2019 peak of 22 million people. Last year the total was 18.3 million, 17% lower.

The new strategy called A World Of Opportunity, aims to increase revenue from Canada’s tourism sector to $CA160bn ($116bn; £89bn) by 2030, up from $CA109bn last year.

It also wants to see Canada become the world’s seventh most-visited country, up from the current 13th place.

More than 3,000km (1864 miles) west of Manitoulin Island, sits the popular tourist town of Jasper in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.

Back in July, a wildfire dubbed “the biggest in the region for a century” destroyed a third of the town’s buildings.

One of those hit was Maligne Lodge, a hotel that has been welcoming guests since the 1960s. Owner Karyn Decore says the fire was “devastating”.

“There is a lot to do, but I try and focus on what I have to do today, and leave tomorrow to tomorrow,” she says.

Thankfully for Ms Decore, Maligne Lodge was insured, and she hopes to rebuild it before next summer. But how long will it take for all the other hotels in the town to reopen?

“Jasper is an international tourist destination, and the hotels here are booked 100% between 1 June and the middle of October,” she explains. “We’re already sold out for next summer. The challenge is that not as many people will be able to visit Jasper until all the hotels are rebuilt, and we don’t know how long that will take.”

Another big issue for the Canadian tourism sector is a fall in the number of Chinese visitors.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught since a diplomatic row back in 2018.

That year the chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms firm Huawei was arrested in Canada in response to a US warrant. China responded by detaining two Canadian citizens living in China on spying charges.

The trio were not released until 2021.

Some analysts say this row is a main reason why, following the Covid pandemic, China still hasn’t put Canada back on its list of approved countries for Chinese citizens to visit.

James Griffiths, Asia correspondent for Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail, says that “the freeze in bilateral relations [between China and Canada] still hasn’t really recovered”.

He also points to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which means that Western airlines can no longer fly through Russian airspace.

“A lot of North American and European carriers have really struggled with routes to China because they can’t fly through Russia or over Russia, and by avoiding Russia, you add about three hours to the flight time, which is more expensive for the airlines and onerous for passengers.”

Canada’s Minister of Tourism Soraya Martinez Ferrada is the politician in charge of bringing more tourists to the country. She tells the BBC that she also wants them “to stay longer” and “spend more money”.

When asked about the drop in Chinese visitors, she says Canada is focused on its largest markets, Europe and the US. Though “with Chinese visitors, we see that Canada is still of interest to them,” she adds.

Tackling climate change is another of the government’s priorities, which Ms Martinez Ferrada accepts is an “existential threat to Canadian tourism”.

Yet Canada, she says, is a big country, and “it’s not the whole country that’s on fire”. “We have to make sure travellers understand that there might be threats around climate change, but there are so many other places to discover that aren’t impacted.”

As for staffing shortages hampering firms like Wiikwemkoong Tourism, she admits: “I do think that we need to do a better job of promoting the sector and the career opportunities that we have.

“Having the skills and having the training to do that, I think it’s important.”

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.

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.

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 to fund the NHS and other public services.

Here is a summary of the main measures.

• This is not a Budget we want to repeat, says Reeves
• How the Budget will affect you and your money
• NHS, schools, transport: Where Budget pledges are being spent
• Read more Budget coverage here

• 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

• 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

• 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, outside London and Greater Manchester
• Commitment to fund tunnelling work to take HS2 high-speed rail line to Euston station in central London
• Government says it will “secure the delivery” of Transpennine rail upgrade between York and Manchester, after reports ministers were looking to cut costs
• Air Passenger Duty to go up in 2026, by £2 for short-haul economy flights and £12 for long-haul ones, with rates for private jets to go up by 50%
• Extra £500m next year to repair potholes in England
• Vehicle Excise Duty paid by owners of all but the most efficient new petrol cars to double in their first year, to encourage shift to electric vehicles

• New flat-rate tax of £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid introduced from October 2026, as ministers shelve Tory plans to link the levy to nicotine content
• 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

• Day-to-day spending on NHS and education in England to rise by 4.7% in real terms this year, before smaller rises next year
• Defence spending to rise by £2.9bn next year
• Home Office budget to shrink by 3.1% this year and 3.3% next year in real terms, due to assumed savings from asylum system
• £1.3bn extra funding next year for local councils, which will also keep all cash from Right to Buy sales from next month

• Social housing providers to be allowed to increase rents above inflation under multi-year settlement
• Discounts for social housing tenants buying their property under the Right to Buy scheme to be reduced
• Stamp duty surcharge, paid on second home purchases in England and Northern Ireland, to go up from 3% to 5%
• Point at which house buyers start paying stamp duty on a main home to drop from £250,000 to £125,000 in April, reversing a previous tax cut
• Threshold at which first-time buyers pay the tax will also drop back, from £425,000 to £300,000
• Current affordable homes budget, which runs until 2026, boosted by £500m

• Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) 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
• Budget policies will increase UK borrowing by £19.6bn this year and by an average of £32.3bn over the next five years, according to the OBR

• £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
• Extra spending in England will lead to £3.4bn more for Scotland, £1.7bn more for Wales, and £1.5bn more for Northern Ireland in devolution payments

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.

Six days from the White House election, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has been trying to move past an uproar sparked by President Joe Biden appearing to refer to Trump supporters as “garbage”.

The vice-president told reporters when asked about Tuesday’s remark by her boss that she would “strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for”.

As his comment drew backlash, Biden posted on X, formerly Twitter, that it was directed at a comic who made a controversial joke at a Donald Trump rally, not tens of millions of Americans.

Trump, the Republican candidate, seized on the furore by getting into a garbage truck as he campaigned in Wisconsin, saying: “Biden should be ashamed of himself.”

During a fundraising Zoom call with a Latino voters’ group on Tuesday evening, Biden was initially quoted as saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump’s] supporters.”

The White House released a transcript saying that the president was only referring to one supporter – a stand-up comedian who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” during a routine at a Trump rally in New York City on Sunday.

Asked about Biden’s remarks before flying from near Washington DC to campaign in swing states, Harris noted that Biden had already sought to “clarify his comments”.

“But let me be clear,” she added. “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

In response to a question from the BBC, she said that if she won next Tuesday’s election she would be “a president for all Americans, including those that don’t vote for me”.

Harris sought to turn focus back to her rival, Trump, saying that US voters were deciding whether they want to “attempt to unify and break through this era of divisiveness”.

The controversy over Biden’s remarks made headlines in an unwelcome distraction for the Harris campaign as she delivered her final pitch to voters in Washington DC.

At the spot from which Trump spoke shortly before a riot by his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, she urged Americans on Tuesday night to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict” in US politics.

Back at the White House aides were still trying to draw a line under the “garbage” controversy on Wednesday.

At the daily news conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “He [Biden] does not view Trump supporters or anybody who supports Trump, as garbage. That is not what he views.”

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

At his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump said Biden’s words are “worse” than what Clinton said.

He told the crowd: “Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters. He called them ‘garbage.’ And they mean it.”

Later he flew to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he got into a bin lorry with a Trump campaign sticker on the side.

“How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump asked reporters.

Waiting in line for the rally in Green Bay was Anne Driessen, who was carrying a black bin bag in reference to Biden’s comment.

She told the BBC: “We’re accustomed to this from the other side. He’s [Trump has] been called Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini – why don’t they just call him Satan?

“They lump us all together too.”

Harris supporters attending her rally in Madison, Wisconsin, told the BBC they were still upset at the comedian’s Puerto Rico.

“As a Latina, it’s disgusting,” said Mallory Malvitz. “It’s hateful that that’s what people think about people like me.”

Ms Malvitz added that she does not consider those with opposing views “garbage”, saying some of her own family are Trump supporters.

During his campaign, Trump has himself been criticised for calling the United States a “garbage can for the world” and describing political opponents as “the enemy within”.

While Trump has acknowledged that “somebody said some bad things” at his New York City rally on Sunday, he also said he did not think the comedian’s gag was “a big deal”.

He said the Madison Square Garden event was a “lovefest”.

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.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: All you need to know about the vote
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Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

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

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

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

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

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

The 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

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

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.

• US election polls: Who is ahead, Harris or Trump?
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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.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
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• PODCAST: How might Trump or Harris try to tackle immigration?

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.

The surging global popularity of TikTok has seen the co-founder of its parent company, ByteDance, become China’s richest person.

According to a rich list produced by the Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming is now worth $49.3bn (£38bn) – 43% more than in 2023.

The 41-year-old stepped down from his role in charge of the company in 2021, but is understood to own around 20% of the firm.

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, despite deep concerns in some countries about its ties to the Chinese state.

While both companies insist they are independent of the Chinese government, the US intends to ban TikTok in January 2025 unless ByteDance sells it.

Despite facing that intense pressure in the US, ByteDance’s global profit increased by 60% last year, driving up Zhang Yiming’s personal fortune.

“Zhang Yiming is the 18th new Number One we have had in China in just 26 years,” said head of Hurun Rupert Hoogewerf.

“The US, by comparison, has only four Number Ones: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

“This gives an indication of some of the dynamism in the Chinese economy.”

Mr Zhang is not the only representative of China’s huge tech sector on the list.

Pony Ma, boss of the tech conglomerate, Tencent, is third on the list with an estimated personal wealth amounting to £44.4bn.

But their fortunes are not just explained by their companies successes – their rivals have made less in a year in which China’s economy has sputtered.

In fact, only approximately 30% of the people on the list had an increase in their net worth – the rest saw a decline.

• How did Zhang Yiming become one of the richest people on the planet?

“The Hurun China Rich List has shrunk for an unprecedented third year running, as China’s economy and stock markets had a difficult year,” said Mr Hoogewerf.

“The number of individuals on the list was down by 12% in the past year to just under 1100 individuals and 25% from the high point of 2021.”

He said the data showed it had been a good year for smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, while the green energy market had stumbled.

“Solar panel, lithium battery and EV makers have had a challenging year, as competition intensified, leading to a glut, and the threat of tariffs added to uncertainties,” he said.

“Solar panel makers saw their wealth down as much as 80% from the 2021 peak, whilst battery and EV makers were down by half and a quarter respectively.”

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.

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.

• Drought leaves Amazon basin rivers at all-time low
• How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods
• Drought dries up lake to reveal sunken Greek village

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”.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Anna Kendrick has said she donated her fee from hit Netflix true crime film Woman of the Hour to two victims’ charities because she would have felt “gross” profiting from it.

Kendrick directed and stars in the movie, about a serial killer who appeared on a 1970s TV dating show in the midst of his crimes.

The star said she didn’t expect the film to make any money, and didn’t think about the possibility until its premiere.

“I was just making the movie… and then it was like, oh, there’s money going to be exchanging hands. And I asked myself the question of, do you feel gross about this? And I did. And so, yeah, I’m not making money off of the movie.”

As well as directing Woman of the Hour, Kendrick plays Cheryl Bradshaw, who appeared on The Dating Game with Rodney Alcala in 1978.

Alcala was later found guilty of eight murders between 1971 and 1979, but is suspected of killing more than 100 women and girls.

Speaking to Ashley Flowers, host of the Crime Junkie podcast, Kendrick said “we’re both steeped in some really valid ethical questions around true crime”.

The Pitch Perfect and Trolls star continued: “Believe me, this was never a money-making venture for me, because all the resources went to actually just making the movie.

“But it wasn’t until the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF), where the movie premiered, and it’s this big film festival for someone to buy movies… and eventually Netflix bought the movie.

“But it wasn’t until the week before TIFF that I thought, oh, the movie’s going to make money.”

At the time, Netflix was reported to have paid $11m (£8.5m) for the rights.

Kendrick didn’t disclose her fee, which she said she donated to charities Rainn (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and the National Centre for Victims of Crime.

“It’s still a complicated area, but that felt like certainly the least that I should do,” she added.

Woman of the Hour was watched the equivalent of 23 million times in the two weeks after its release earlier this month, Netflix has said.

Kendrick explained: “It is really meant to be the story of the impact that he [Alcala] had on the people that were unfortunate enough to come across him, so the aim was always really to centre the women’s stories.”

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.

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 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?

Spain is enduring its worst flooding disaster in decades, with at least 95 people dead and dozens more missing, after huge rains swept the eastern province of Valencia and beyond.

Torrential rain on Tuesday triggered flash floods which swept away bridges and buildings and forced people to climb on to roofs or cling to trees to survive.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has declared three days of national mourning as the extreme conditions continue, restricting some rescue efforts.

The death toll is feared to climb as “there are many missing people”, the government says.

• ‘It was like a tsunami’: Spaniards recount horror of deadly floods
• Timing of Spain flood alert under scrutiny as blame game rages
• Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse

At least 92 deaths were recorded in Valencia, with another two in Castilla-La Mancha to Valencia’s west and one in Málaga – a 71-year-old British man who died in hospital after being rescued from his home.

The flooding death toll is the country’s worst since 1973, when at least 150 people were estimated to have died in the nation’s worst-ever floods in the south-east.

In his national address on Wednesday, Sánchez urged citizens to remain vigilant and pledged a full recovery, telling victims: “The whole of Spain weeps with you… we won’t abandon you.”

One of the first towns affected near Valencia, Chiva, reported one year’s worth of rainfall on Tuesday in just a period of eight hours, according to national weather agency Aemet.

As Spanish army and emergency crews rushed to carry out rescues on Wednesday morning – including winching people to safety from balconies and car rooftops – survivors in Valencia recounted the horror of the floods on Tuesday night.

Sudden surges turned streets and roads into rivers, catching many motorists unaware.

Guillermo Serrano Pérez, 21, from Paiporta near Valencia, said the water had rushed down a highway “like a tsunami”, forcing him and his parents to abandon their car and climb on to a bridge to survive.

Another witness recounted a scene when motorway drivers realised a torrent of water was heading towards them and formed a human chain to escape along a raised central reservation.

“Thank goodness no one slipped because if anyone had fallen, the current would have dragged them away,” Patricia Rodriguez, 45, told El País newspaper.

One resident of La Torre told the BBC some of his friends had lost their homes, and on Tuesday night he “saw cars floating in the water” and the tides “breaking through some walls.”

Meanwhile, the mayor of Horno de Alcedo, a town just outside Valencia, told BBC Newshour how the water levels rose by more than a metre in just a matter of minutes.

“The currents were so quick – and we called the emergency services who started rescuing some people who had water up to their necks”, Consuelo Tarazon said.

There are widespread accusations in Spain that in many cases, disaster relief authorities were too slow to act with warnings, meaning people could not get off roads or seek higher ground.

The civil protection agency, deployed during national disasters, did not issue an alert until 20:15 on Tuesday evening local time – but by then, Chiva and several other towns had already been flooded for at least two hours.

Valencia’s regional government has also been forced to defend its decision to scrap the Valencia Emergency Unit, which had been set up by the previous government to tackle natural disasters such as flooding and wildfires.

Spain deployed more than 1,000 troops to help with rescue efforts on Wednesday, but many crews remain cut off from towns by flooded roads and downed communication and power lines.

The European Union’s chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said it had activated its Copernicus satellite system to help co-ordinate Spanish rescue teams. Other European neighbours have also offered to send reinforcements.

Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles had said earlier on Wednesday the flooding across the region was “an unprecedented phenomenon”.

The downpour eased in the country’s central-east on Wednesday, but weather officials warned the rains were moving north-east to the Catalonia region. Weather warnings have also been issued across several other parts of the country, urging people to brace for floods and take shelter.

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.

Weather researchers have identified the likely main cause of the intense rainfall as a “gota fria” – a natural weather event that hits Spain in autumn and winter when cold air descends on warmer waters over the Mediterranean.

However, the increase in global temperatures had led to the clouds carrying more rain, scientists told the BBC.

“With every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier bursts of rainfall,” said Dr Friederike Otto, from Imperial College London, who leads an international group of scientists who try to understand the role that warming plays in these type of events.

“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change.”

The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew for 86 minutes – the longest flight recorded by an ICMB – and over 1,000km (621 miles) before falling into waters off its east coast, South Korea’s military said.

The launch comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two Koreas and Pyongyang’s increasingly aggresive rhetoric towards Seoul.

The ICBM was fired at a sharply raised angle at about 07:10 local time on Thursday (22:10 GMT Wednesday).

South Korea had warned on Wednesday that the North was preparing to fire its ICBM close to the presidential election in the US on 5 November.

North Korea last fired an ICBM in December last year, in defiance of long-standing and crippling UN sanctions.

ICBMs have the range to reach the North American continent.

Neighbouring Japan said that it monitored Thursday’s launch, adding that the missile reached the highest altitude ever of over 7,000km.

South Korean and US officials met after the launch and agreed to “take strong and varied response measures”, the South’s military said in a statement.

“Our military maintains full readiness as we closely share North Korean ballistic information with US and Japanese authorities,” it added.

The US called the launch a “flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions”.

“It only demonstrates that [North Korea] continues to prioritise its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes over the well-being of its people,” the White House’s National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement.

Thursday’s launch comes after South Korea and US accused North Korea of sending troops to Russia to support Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The Pentagon estimates that around 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to train in eastern Russia. A “small number” has been sent to Kursk in Russia’s west, with several thousand more on their way, the US said earlier this week.

The alleged presence of North Korean troops in Russia has added to growing concerns over deepening ties between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pyongyang and Moscow have neither confirmed nor denied these allegations.

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

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told the BBC that she hopes Labour’s first Budget since taking power, which includes massive tax increases, would be a one-off.

“This is not the sort of Budget we would want to repeat,” she told the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

“But this is the Budget that is needed to wipe the slate clean and to put our public finances on a firm trajectory.”

Employers will bear the brunt of the £40bn in tax rises unveiled earlier by Reeves – the biggest increase in a generation.

She insists it is needed to plug a £22bn “black hole” in the nation’s finances she inherited from the Conservatives and to invest in the NHS and other public services.

In a marathon 76 minute speech which outlined a change in priorities from Conservative predecessors, the first female chancellor laid out big spending and tax decisions.

Health, education and transport will see spending increases, with the biggest hike in funding for the NHS since 2010 – £22bn extra for the front line and another £3bn for equipment and buildings.

In a surprise move, Reeves decided not to continue a freeze on income tax thresholds beyond 2028, which would have dragged millions of people into the tax system for the first time or pushed them into paying higher rates.

And she announced changes to Labour’s self-imposed borrowing rules to allow the government to pump billions into the UK’s infrastructure.

She said Labour would fulfil its promise to voters in July’s election to “invest, invest, invest” to “drive economic growth”.

But the government’s promise to make the UK the fastest growing economy in the developed world has been undermined by its own financial watchdog.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said the package of economic measures unveiled by Reeves would ultimately “leave GDP largely unchanged in five years”.

Asked about the underwhelming forecasts, she said: “I absolutely accept this is not the summit of my ambitions. I want the economy to grow faster than this.”

She added that the “growth numbers this year and next year are being revised up and that’s good news”.

The OBR says the economy will grow by 2% in 2025, up 0.1% on its previous forecast, but it will drift down in subsequent years to 1.5% in 2028.

In her Budget speech, Reeves said “working people” would not see an increase in income tax, National Insurance or VAT, fulfilling a promise made by Labour at the general election.

Instead, employers will see an increase in National Insurance contributions on their workers’ earnings which will raise up to £25bn a year for the government.

There will also be an increase to capital gains tax on share sales and a freeze on inheritance tax thresholds.

In his response to the Budget, Conservative leader Rishi Sunak accused Reeves of “hobbling” economic growth.

“They’re taxing your job, they’re taxing your business, they’re taxing your savings. You name it, they’ll tax it,” Sunak told MPs in his final Commons appearance as leader of the opposition.

But Reeves claimed any “responsible chancellor” would have been forced to do the same to “fix the foundations” of the economy.

Her Budget – the first Labour economic statement since 2010 – sees the second biggest increase in taxes in UK history.

As measured by amount of tax raised relative to the size of the economy, it is slightly smaller than Conservative Chancellor Norman Lamont’s 1993 Budget.

But she also froze petrol duty for next year – and retained a 5p cut introduced by the Tories that was due to expire in April.

Other measures included:

• Capital gains tax paid on profits from selling shares to increase from up to 20% to up to 24%
• Freeze on inheritance tax thresholds extended beyond 2028 to 2030
• VAT on private school fees from January 2025
• 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%
• The stamp duty land tax surcharge for second homes will increase by two percentage points to 5% from Thursday

In her speech, Reeves told MPs: “This is a moment of fundamental choice for Britain.

“I have made my choices. The responsible choices. To restore stability to our country. To protect working people.

“More teachers in our schools. More appointments in our NHS. More homes being built.

“Fixing the foundations of our economy. Investing in our future. Delivering change. Rebuilding Britain.”

But leading business groups said the Budget was a “tough” one for business, pointing to the National Insurance hike as a blow to the ability of firms to invest.

“At first blush, there is precious little in the government’s first Budget which offers anything other than short-term pain,” said Roger Barker, director of policy at the Institute of Directors.

The Liberal Democrats welcomed the extra money for the NHS “to start repairing all the damage done to local health services by the Conservatives”.

But leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Raising employer’s National Insurance is a tax on jobs and high streets, and it will make the health and care crisis worse by hitting thousands of small care providers.”

Scotland will receive an additional £3.4bn in Treasury funding as a result of the Budget.

First Minister John Swinney has been calling for the UK government to “immediately and significantly” increase funding for Scotland.

The SNP government has already cut £500m from its budget this year, with ministers warning that without extra cash they would need to make difficult choices when they set out their tax and spending plans for next year in December.

Millions of Indians are celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights and one of the most important events in the Hindu calendar.

The annual festival tends to fall between October and November, but the exact date varies each year as the Hindu calendar is based on the Moon.

This year, Diwali is being celebrated on Thursday, but some parts of the country will observe the festival on Friday.

People light oil lamps and candles on the day to symbolise the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil.

In the lead up to Diwali, people clean and organise their homes. New clothes are bought and sweets and gifts are exchanged with friends, families and neighbours.

Many draw traditional designs like rangoli – made using colourful powders – outside their doors to welcome luck and positivity.

On this day, families worship Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.

Lamps are lit and windows and doors are left open to help the goddess find her way into people’s homes.

Fireworks are also a big part of the celebrations but in recent years, several state governments have imposed curbs or banned the practice as northern Indian states grapple with severe air pollution.

There is a complete ban on sale and use of firecrackers in the capital, Delhi, during the festival while states like Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka have limited firecracker use to specific hours on Diwali evening.

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has sacked his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, after the country voted in favour of lifting the US economic embargo on Cuba at the United Nations.

Argentina was one of 187 countries that supported the non-binding UN resolution on Wednesday. Only the US and Israel voted to oppose the resolution.

It was the first time since Milei’s arrival in office that Argentina has not aligned itself with the US and Israeli governments.

Mondino has been replaced by the ambassador to Washington, Gerardo Werthein. Following the move, President Milei’s office said Argentina was “categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship”.

Under the previous left-wing Peronist government, Argentina enjoyed close relations with Cuba, backing the end of the economic embargo, which the US imposed in the 1960s when Cuba adopted communism.

Cuba has, in exchange, consistently supported Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory. Britain and Argentina waged a brief but bitter war over the territory in 1982.

• Have Milei’s first six months improved the Argentine economy?
• Argentina records sharp rise in poverty

President Milei’s office later issued a statement intended to outline the political vision behind his foreign policy.

“The country is going through a period of profound changes and this new stage requires that our diplomatic corps reflect in each decision the values ​​of freedom, sovereignty and individual rights that characterise Western democracies,” it said.

The statement went on: “Our country is categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship and will remain firm in promoting a foreign policy that condemns all regimes that perpetrate human rights violations.”

Friction had been growing between the president and the foreign ministry over a range of issues in recent months, observers say.

However, Mondino was seen as important to Argentina’s public image abroad, often stepping in to defuse tensions after confrontational statements made by Milei had upset other nations.

The US trade embargo was first imposed in 1962 in the wake of the revolution in Cuba, which swept Fidel Castro to power.

Washington wanted to force the island to reject Castro’s socialist policies and embrace capitalism and democracy.

However, the embargo has failed to achieve that objective and has become a bone of contention between Washington and its neighbours in the region.

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 to fund the NHS and other public services.

Here is a summary of the main measures.

• This is not a Budget we want to repeat, says Reeves
• How the Budget will affect you and your money
• NHS, schools, transport: Where Budget pledges are being spent
• Read more Budget coverage here

• 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

• 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

• 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, outside London and Greater Manchester
• Commitment to fund tunnelling work to take HS2 high-speed rail line to Euston station in central London
• Government says it will “secure the delivery” of Transpennine rail upgrade between York and Manchester, after reports ministers were looking to cut costs
• Air Passenger Duty to go up in 2026, by £2 for short-haul economy flights and £12 for long-haul ones, with rates for private jets to go up by 50%
• Extra £500m next year to repair potholes in England
• Vehicle Excise Duty paid by owners of all but the most efficient new petrol cars to double in their first year, to encourage shift to electric vehicles

• New flat-rate tax of £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid introduced from October 2026, as ministers shelve Tory plans to link the levy to nicotine content
• 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

• Day-to-day spending on NHS and education in England to rise by 4.7% in real terms this year, before smaller rises next year
• Defence spending to rise by £2.9bn next year
• Home Office budget to shrink by 3.1% this year and 3.3% next year in real terms, due to assumed savings from asylum system
• £1.3bn extra funding next year for local councils, which will also keep all cash from Right to Buy sales from next month

• Social housing providers to be allowed to increase rents above inflation under multi-year settlement
• Discounts for social housing tenants buying their property under the Right to Buy scheme to be reduced
• Stamp duty surcharge, paid on second home purchases in England and Northern Ireland, to go up from 3% to 5%
• Point at which house buyers start paying stamp duty on a main home to drop from £250,000 to £125,000 in April, reversing a previous tax cut
• Threshold at which first-time buyers pay the tax will also drop back, from £425,000 to £300,000
• Current affordable homes budget, which runs until 2026, boosted by £500m

• Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) 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
• Budget policies will increase UK borrowing by £19.6bn this year and by an average of £32.3bn over the next five years, according to the OBR

• £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
• Extra spending in England will lead to £3.4bn more for Scotland, £1.7bn more for Wales, and £1.5bn more for Northern Ireland in devolution payments

As diehard baseball fans flock to watch the two biggest US cities battle it out for a World Series title, many are coming from across the globe to this Los Angeles neighbourhood because of one single player.

People here in the Little Tokyo suburb of LA call it the “Ohtani effect”.

Shohei Ohtani – the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star player – looms large over the historic neighbourhood, personified in a 150ft (45m) mural and his name emblazoned across jerseys worn by fans here.

Baseball may be known as “America’s pastime”, but its biggest star is from Japan. The player signed a recording-breaking contract to play this season – a whopping $700m (£540m) over 10 years – and the hype surrounding him has only grown, luring in new fans and new traditions in multicultural Los Angeles.

Business has boomed here. Tourists come from all over – including from the star’s home country.

“When Shohei comes to bat – they know if he hits the home run we start pouring sake shots,” says Don Tahara, the owner of Far Bar where dozens of TVs show Dodgers games. Home runs equal free rice wine – often to hundreds of fans.

That’s a lot of sake. Ohtani has hit 54 home runs during this regular season – although none so far in the World Series against the New York Yankees.

“It’s good for the Dodgers – maybe not so great for my pocketbook. But it’s meaningful, it warms my heart.”

Far Bar has been packed during the World Series.

Mr Tahara passed out mochi, a Japanese rice cake, decorated with the Dodgers’ logo and free margarita shots to honour Fernando Valenzuela, the Dodgers legend who recently died. The Mexico-born, left-handed pitcher is also being immortalised in a mural – across the river from Little Tokyo in Boyle Heights.

Splattered in paint, muralist Robert Vargas took a break from painting Valenzuela to watch the game at Far Bar. It’s hard to imagine Mr Vargas buying his own drink at Far Bar – in Little Tokyo he is possibly as beloved as Ohtani for immortalising the baseball star on the massive wall of the Miyako Hotel.

“I’ve been a Dodger fan my whole life,” says Mr Vargas, who says he painted Ohtani “in the spirit of representation”.

And the mural has become a popular destination for tourists from Japan who come by the busload to pose for photos with the artwork.

Takatani Kiuchi travelled from Japan to attend Game 2 of the series at Dodger Stadium in the heart of Los Angeles and he watched Game 3 from Far Bar with his friends. Dressed head-to-toe in Dodgers gear and Ohtani jerseys, Kiuchi met fans from around Los Angeles and the world.

“We are new Dodgers fans. From Tokyo. For us it’s more about the Yankees versus Dodgers – that means a lot more than the World Series.”

They were excited that the second game of the series also featured the other Japanese star on the team – Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitching six innings, allowing just one hit by the Yankees.

• WATCH: Ohtani’s home town celebrates Dodgers victory
• ‘He could go down as best ever’ – Ohtani makes MLB 50-50 history
• Why ‘face of baseball’ is on cusp of global stardom

Kiuchi last came to Los Angeles as a child 50 years ago and says he will definitely return to see the Dodgers play again.

“We came here to see this,” Kiuchi cheered as the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman hit a home run during Game 3 and the bar’s crowd erupted into cheers.

The city’s tourism board is also cheering. In 2023, there were 230,000 visitors from Japan to Los Angeles, a 91.7 percent increase from 2022.

And by year-end, the city is projected to welcome 320,000 visitors, says Bill Karz, the senior vice-president of brand marketing at LA Tourism. It’s still a drop from pre-pandemic levels, but tourism officials are celebrating the rise.

“The Ohtani effect is real,” says Karz. “It impacts our entire economy.”

That, he says, results in boosted hotel occupancy, ticket sales at area theme parks like Universal Studios and tours of Dodger Stadium, which has, in turn, increased the number of Japanese language tours it runs.

Even some devoted Yankee fans have jumped on the Ohtani bandwagon.

In a sea of Dodger blue, Vince Gonzales sported a black and red “Ohtani” shirt from the Japanese national team.

“Shhh, I’m a Yankee fan,” he whispered at the bar while mingling with tourists from Japan. “But more importantly, I’m an Ohtani fan because I have a passion for Japanese baseball.”

Far Bar erupted into cheers and “I love LA” blasted from the sound system when game three ended in a Dodger victory.

Robert Vargas – the muralist – wasn’t able to sneak away. A woman from Japan ran out of the bar to beg him for photos in front of the mural. He obliged and soon, there were dozens of people posing with him for photos and chanting: “Lets Go, Dodgers!”

An Israeli military official has told the BBC that it carried out a deadly strike on a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on Tuesday in response to seeing a “spotter” on the roof with binoculars observing Israeli forces.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said more than 90 Palestinians, including 25 children, were killed or missing beneath the rubble of the building, which collapsed as a result of the strike.

The military official said it was not a planned strike and troops did not know the building was being used as a shelter for displaced people.

They also said there were discrepancies between the number of casualties reported and what the military had observed.

The strike provoked a strong response from Israel’s closest ally, the US, which described it as a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and demanded an explanation.

On Wednesday, after the military official had spoken to reporters, US state department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel was “not doing enough to get us the answers that we have requested”.

“They have said to us what they had said publicly, which is they’re investigating the matter,” he added.

Israel does not allow the BBC and other international media into Gaza to report independently, making it difficult to verify facts on the ground, so we rely on information from video footage and witness testimonies.

Videos posted on social media a few hours after the strike showed multiple bodies wrapped in blankets and people collecting body parts at the scene of the strike.

Umm Malik Abu Nasr later told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme on Tuesday that the strike destroyed her family’s home and that she was among the survivors pulled from the rubble.

“At around 00:30 or 01:00, the Awda family house next to us was bombed,” she said. “We rushed to help and host them but their daughter [died] in our home.”

“At 04:00 the multi-storey house of the Abu Nasr family collapsed on top of us. They [Israel forces] bombed the house, which was housing about 300 displaced people who had fled their homes. These people sought to take refuge in our houses. We hosted them because they were just civilians and had nothing to do with resistance [Palestinian armed groups].”

“My husband and other young men are still under the rubble and have not been pulled out yet,” she added. “My husband’s cousin and her five children are still under the rubble.”

The director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital – which only has two doctors and limited nursing staff following an Israeli raid last week – said in a voice message recorded on Tuesday that it had received the bodies of more than 25 people killed in the strike and that another 77 were trapped under the rubble.

About 45 injured, including children and women, had also been brought to the hospital either by horse-drawn carts or by people carrying them, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya added.

The UN’s Middle East peace envoy, Tor Wennesland, said it was the latest in “a deadly series of recent mass casualty incidents, alongside a massive displacement campaign, in the north of Gaza that raises serious concerns about violations of humanitarian law”.

Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed since the Israeli military launched a ground offensive in Beit Lahia as well as neighbouring Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on 6 October, saying it was acting against regrouping Hamas fighters.

More than 70,000 residents have fled to Gaza City, but the UN estimates that about 100,000 remain in dire conditions, with severe shortages of food, water and medical supplies.

The offensive has also forced the closure of essential services, including medical facilities, firefighting, search and rescue, water wells and bakeries.

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

More than 43,160 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

This was a huge, change-making budget.

Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t much difference between the main parties at Westminster.

This was a Budget with Labour’s instincts and worldview stamped throughout it.

There are the tax rises visible from near-earth orbit, the self imposed borrowing rules shredded and re-written – to allow more borrowing – and big wads of spending for the NHS, just for starters.

I lost track during the election campaign of how often Labour folk insisted they had “no plans” to put up taxes beyond a relatively narrow band of those they said would rise.

Looked at now you don’t have to be wildly uncharitable to conclude that was comprehensive baloney.

Labour, psychologically scarred by losing far more elections than they win, tend to try to hug the Conservatives close when it comes to tax and spending plans before elections where they think they can beat them, fearing anything else will spook swing voters and cost them the contest.

And, pretty much, that is what Labour did back in the summer.

No such caution now.

The books were worse than we thought is Labour’s mitigating plea, garnished with a we-won’t-do-it-again insistence from the chancellor in my interview with her.

“This is not the sort of Budget we would want to repeat,” Rachel Reeves told me.

For the chancellor, we now enter the valley of maximum scrutiny and jeopardy for her prospectus.

Journalists, policy experts, industry, trade unions, you as readers have a chance to properly squirrel away at the detail and ask awkward questions.

You will see the chancellor on BBC television and hear her on the radio.

Senior figures insist they want to embrace this scrutiny.

They point out she didn’t go on TV and radio shows last Sunday, before the Budget, as has become recent infuriating tradition – where journalists ask pertinent questions about the content of the Budget and are repeatedly told to wait until Wednesday.

She will instead be appearing this Sunday, alongside the new Conservative leader elected on Saturday, no doubt.

So where might that scrutiny come? All the big stuff, for sure – the tax rises, the borrowing, the spending.

But I always like to keep an eye on the rows that may appear smaller but have the potential to blow up in a government’s face.

There is already real anger among many farmers about changes to inheritance tax which they fear will mean lots of farming families will no longer be able to pass on their life’s work and business to the next generation.

And a couple of big picture, longer-term thoughts to ponder.

This is a government with a central mission of helping to drive up economic growth.

And yet the projections for growth appear stubbornly anaemic, as our economics editor, Faisal Islam, writes.

And there is a similar observation from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who have crunched the numbers on the forecasts for the money we are each likely to have in our pockets in the coming years, once bills are sorted – per capita disposable income, to use the language of economists.

They conclude its rate of growth, while up a smidgen on where it’s been in recent years, is still pretty piffling.

The government will hope the forecasts are wrong – and they can be.

But, as I have written before, what seems to be a huge contributor to the anti-politics mood as well as wild political volatility is that unshiftable financial reality for many: the brutal truth that things haven’t got much better, if at all better, for ages and ages and ages.

And, in the end, the persistence of that trend, or its marked end, will matter more to millions of people and the likely eventual fate of this government than plenty of the other Budget numbers being picked over right now.