When Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, it seemed to be the death knell of his political career.

His first term in office ended in chaos and condemnation – even from members of his own party.

If he wins the election on Tuesday, it will be only the second time anyone has ever returned to the White House after previously losing a presidential re-election bid.

“He gets knocked down and gets up twice as focused,” said Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser for the former president since Trump launched his 2016 campaign. “I don’t think anybody should be surprised about this comeback.”

Such an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the 78-year-old former president would also vault him back into the White House as a man who seems politically bulletproof, with a detailed plan of action and ranks of loyalists behind him.

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Four years ago, Trump appeared a beaten man. His Democratic opponent, Biden, had defeated him by a comfortable electoral margin in the 2020 presidential contest.

Courts had batted away his attempts to contest those results. His last-ditch rally in which he urged his supporters to march on the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results culminated in the crowd launching a violent attack that sent those inside scrambling for safety. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were among a spate of Trump administration officials who quit in protest. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos wrote in her letter of resignation to the president.

Even South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies, broke with the president.

“All I can say is count me out,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “Enough is enough.”

The movement away from Trump extended into the corporate world, as dozens of large companies – including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens – announced they were suspending support for Republicans who had challenged the results of the 2020 election.

On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump broke with 152 years of tradition by declining to attend the ceremony, instead flying back to his private club in Mar-a-Lago earlier that morning, accompanied by a handful of his closest aides and family.

His mood was sullen, according to Meridith McGraw, author of Trump in Exile, an account of the former president’s time after leaving the White House.

“He was angry, frustrated, unsure of how to spend his days and without a plan for his political future,” she said.

The media coverage and political chatter that month reflected this uncertainty over his future. After a clear electoral defeat followed by the chaotic scenes at the Capitol, some were even more definitive, suggesting there was no way back for Trump.

“And just like that, the bold, combustible and sometimes brilliant political career of Donald J. Trump comes to an end,” one opinion piece in The Hill read.

The subheading of a January 2021 opinion piece in The New York Times declared: “The terrible experiment is over.” The headline was even more direct: “President Donald J. Trump: The End.”

But before Trump left for Florida on inauguration day, he hinted at what was to come.

“We love you,” he said in remarks to supporters on a Maryland Air Force base tarmac. “We will be back in some form.”

A week later, it became clear that Trump wouldn’t have to wait long to assert his continued political influence. The party came back to him.

California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, paid the former president a visit at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photo next to a beaming Trump.

In the immediate aftermath of the 6 January attack, McCarthy had said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob violence and recommended that Congress formally censure him for his conduct. Now he was pledging to work with the former president to win a congressional majority in the next year’s mid-term elections.

Even as the Democrat-controlled US Senate was preparing to hold Trump’s impeachment trial, McCarthy’s Palm Beach pilgrimage illustrated that one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress still viewed the former president as a king-maker.

“McCarthy’s visit really opened the door for Trump,” said McGraw.

“It was a permission slip to Republicans who had criticised Trump to forgive him and move on.”

Trump’s Senate trial would end in acquittal, as most Republicans – including some outspoken critics like minority leader Mitch McConnell – voted against a conviction that could have led to the former president being banned from future elective office.

McConnell had said that Trump’s conduct on 6 January was “a disgraceful dereliction of duty”, but he chose not to take the one step that could have conclusively ended the former president’s political career – perhaps out of fear of effectively ending his own.

Republicans also worried that the former president might start a third party that would siphon off support from Republicans – concerns that Trump’s closest aides did little to dispel.

“It’s clearly up to Republicans if this is something that becomes more serious,” Jason Miller, a long-time Trump communications aide, said in an interview with Fox News.

The former president spent the next month mostly within the comfortable confines of his Mar-a-Lago club, venturing out only for a round of golf or a private dinner.

By the end of February, as the furore around 6 January ebbed, he was ready to hold his first public event.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference – the right-wing confab typically held near Washington, DC but relocated to Orlando, Florida, due to Covid restrictions – the former president demonstrated that he still commanded the loyalty of the Republican base.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters in a sprawling hotel conference centre, Trump basked in the glow of their adoration.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together,” he said, “is far from over.”

He also hinted, coyly, that he might beat the Democrats “for a third time” in 2024.

An official straw poll of conference attendees only underlined what by then was obvious. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said Trump should run again. Fifty-five percent said they would vote for him in a contested primary – more then double the second-place candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Trump and his team were pretty nervous about that speech,” McGraw said. “Psychologically it was a really important moment for Trump and his allies when he got such a positive reception.”

After a brief hiatus, Trump reactivated his steady stream of fundraising emails to supporters and resumed holding his carnival-like outdoor rallies.

“Do you miss me?” Trump asked at a June gathering in Ohio. The crowd responded with cheers.

“They miss me,” he concluded.

If 2021 hinted at Trump’s continuing influence within the Republican Party, the 2022 midterm elections confirmed it.

By then, American military forces had haphazardly withdrawn from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of that nation’s US-backed government. Gas prices and inflation were approaching highs not seen in decades. US economic growth, which had been bouncing back from pandemic disruptions, sputtered.

Biden’s approval ratings tumbled into negative territory. The political environment that had seemed so hostile to Trump at the beginning of 2021 was starting to shift.

“Joe Biden failed to address the primary concerns of the voters,” said Lanza. “That gave Donald Trump an opening.”

Mar-a-Lago became an obligatory stopping point for any conservative candidate seeking to become their party’s nominee. The former president’s endorsement was the most coveted prize – a key to unlocking fundraising dollars and grassroots conservative support.

Four of the six Republican House members who voted for Trump’s second impeachment and were running for re-election were defeated by Trump-backed candidates in party primaries. Meanwhile, Senate candidates like JD Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia pulled ahead in crowded primary fields with the help of Trump’s support.

”His endorsement all but guarantees you a primary win,” said Brian Seitchik, who worked as Arizona state director for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and as the western regional director in 2020.

But if the first half of 2022 was unambiguous good news for the former president, November’s elections painted a much different picture.

Of four prominent Trump-endorsed Senate candidates, only one – author turned politician Vance – defeated his Democratic opponent. While Republicans narrowly regained control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy to the speakership, the party largely underperformed and Democrats retained control of the Senate.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis, the distant second-place finisher in that 2021 presidential straw poll, won a surprising double-digit re-election victory, fuelling speculation that he might be the real frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Trump fumed – blaming the Republican shortcomings on the party’s support of unpopular abortion restrictions and insufficient fealty to his own brand of conservative populism. Only a few weeks after the midterms, when pundits were still wondering if the former president’s political moment had passed, Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

The start of his presidential bid seemed shockingly ill-timed. Just a few weeks after the Republican midterm misfire, it put the former president in the headlines when many were still wondering if he had lost his political instincts.

His formal announcement, held within the cozy confines of Mar-a-Lago, made his campaign feel insular and ill-suited to the current political realities.

He would subsequently make news for all the wrong reasons – dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, and posting on social media that rules in the US Constitution should be “terminated”, allowing him to be re-instated as president.

“Thanksgiving through New Year’s was a pretty dark time on the Trump campaign,” McGraw said. Republicans were having their doubts.

“He’s announced that he’s running for president, but are we sure that he’s going to be able to pull this off?” she said, describing the mood at the time. “Does he have the discipline to actually do this?”

Behind the scenes, however, Trump was assembling a campaign staff that – unlike 2016 and even 2020 – was headed by seasoned political operatives. Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles may not be household names, but the former was a bare-knuckled veteran of Republican politics with decades of experience and the latter had helped turn Florida into a conservative stronghold.

The two worked with Trump to formulate a presidential primary strategy.

While DeSantis was bogged down with official duties in Florida, Trump moved early to define the contours of the campaign, Lanza said. And while others deferred to the Florida governor, Trump hit him head-on, demeaning and diminishing him.

“Everybody thought Ron DeSantis was at this powerful apex of politics that could not be torn down,” Lanza said. “Donald Trump tore the guy down.”

The Trump side also received a boost from the unlikeliest of sources – prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

Starting with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive national security documents in August 2022 and culminating in a series of indictments in 2023, the former president’s criminal jeopardy became a central issue in the rapidly unfolding Republican presidential nomination fight. Trump’s mugshot, glaring in a photograph taken at an Atlanta jail in August, was soon plastered on campaign t-shirts and yard signs.

For many on the left, justice was finally being served. But among the kind of conservative voters who choose their party’s nominee in early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it became a moment to rally around their party’s embattled leader.

Conservative pollster Sarah Longwell interviewed a panel of Iowa Republicans for PBS in June 2023, a week after the Justice Department indicted Trump on charges related to mishandling sensitive government documents.

“I think he’s being set up,” said one.

“This is election interference like we have never seen before,” said another.

The indictments, according to Lanza, created a divide within the Republican Party between those who saw the indictment as an abuse of power and those who didn’t.

“Initially, Ron DeSantis took the ‘didn’t’ approach,” he said. “And he became roadkill.”

DeSantis had at first called the March 2023 New York indictment, which he noted was about Trump’s hush-money payments to an adult film star, a “manufactured circus” that wasn’t a “real issue”.

By autumn 2023, Trump had opened a massive lead in most Republican primary polls – a margin he would never relinquish. He skipped the Republican primary debates, depriving them of political oxygen. He focused instead on cementing support among rank-and-file voters through his trademark rallies and grass-roots organising.

Despite raising nearly $200 million in campaign funds, DeSantis was out of the race within days of finishing a distant second in the January 2024 Iowa Caucuses. After Trump easily beat former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, the Republican primary fight was effectively over. For the third straight presidential election, the party’s nomination was his.

The former president’s courtroom drama may have been a boon to his political fortunes, but it also came with very real legal jeopardy. In May 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts involving hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Every judicial setback, however, seemed to be followed by a bigger victory. His sentencing was delayed until after the election, the document indictments in Florida were discarded, and the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have sweeping immunity for official acts.

Outside of court chambers, Trump’s campaign was rolling from his primary victory into the general election faceoff. A halting, confused performance by Biden in his late June debate with the former president left Democrats in a full-blown panic.

Trump’s approval ratings and head-to-head polling numbers were ticking ever higher. And after his brush with an assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in mid-July, he arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee a day later as a conquering hero to his supporters.

“What we saw at the convention was how unified the Republican Party appeared, really for the first time in a long time,” said McGraw. “They were feeling incredibly confident.”

Tesla chief Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, publicly endorsed the former president and began funding a massive organising operation in key battleground states. Republican pride – pride in Trump – was running high.

At that moment, it seemed like Trump’s return to the pinnacles of American power from the depths of 6 January 2021 was all but complete. A campaign that had first vanquished DeSantis and his other Republican rivals was now set to deliver a knock-out punch to Biden and the Democrats.

But three days after Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

In a matter of a few weeks, Harris consolidated her party’s support, injected new enthusiasm into Democrats and even pulled ahead of the former president in some head-to head polls.

Trump’s efforts were not helped by a scattershot debate performance against Harris in September and an apparent difficulty reorienting his campaign to take on his new opponent, whose strengths – and weaknesses – are decidedly different from Biden’s.

“Trump really wasn’t tested until Harris got into the race,” said Seitchik. “Everything up to that point almost felt like an extended preseason for the campaign.”

With election day looming, the season is almost over and the champion is still in doubt.

The race is where it seemed to be headed at the beginning of the year – a photo finish where either candidate could end up on top. And for a campaign that had focused on Biden’s age and frailty, it is now Trump whose stamina and coherence are under the microscope.

“Trump can have an incredibly professional, streamlined operation around him, but at the end of the day, he’s still going to do what he wants and do things the way he wants,” said McGraw.

That includes a continued public insistence that he did not lose the 2020 election, extended rhetorical diversions during rally speeches and last-minute cancellations of media appearances that some have attributed to “exhaustion”.

Trump has been in the whirlwind of presidential politics for nine years now – and in the public spotlight for more than four decades. He has seemed indefatigable. But with another four years in the White House looming on the horizon, are the cracks beginning to show?

While Trump’s victory is far from guaranteed, simply being this close to the prize once again is itself a remarkable achievement. And if his political comeback culminates in another presidential term, he will return to the White House having overcome obstacles – legal, political, many of his own creation – that few presidents have confronted.

With control of the reins of power, and without the burden of having to face the judgement of voters again, Trump will be able to make those legal dangers disappear. And unlike his first term, he will be entering the White House with a team of advisers and potential administration staff who are fully loyal to him.

His intent to dramatically reorganise the federal bureaucracy could replace career civil service employees with political acolytes. And even if he doesn’t win full control of Congress, he could use existing presidential powers to impose new restrictions on immigration, enact his plans for mass deportation of undocumented residents and impose tariffs that are designed to protect US jobs but could significantly increase the cost of imported goods.

Democrats warn that this would be a presidency without “guardrails” to limit what they say are Trump’s more dangerous proposals. Republicans, in a party that has been remade in Trump’s image, hope that he will be able to more effectively enact his agenda without the internal resistance he faced in his first term.

“Donald Trump has converted the party from fiscal issues and social issues being the dominant force to a Trump populism,” Seitchik said. “This is all a fundamental reorientation of the Republican Party.”

And if he wins next week, Trump could fundamentally reshape American government for generations to come.

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

The Duke of York has been cut off financially by his brother King Charles, according to an updated royal biography.

Prince Andrew had been under financial pressure over the cost of running his 30-room home at Royal Lodge in Windsor.

But it’s now claimed by royal author Robert Hardman that the King has decided to stop paying for security at Prince Andrew’s house or to provide a personal allowance. Together, these costs are believed to amount to several million pounds a year.

Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on the book’s claims, which are being serialised by the Daily Mail.

The claim over Prince Andrew’s income being stopped comes in an updated version of a biography of King Charles, written by the royal author Robert Hardman.

It says that the Keeper of the Privy Purse, who looks after the royal finances, has been instructed to end the personal allowance and security payments for Prince Andrew.

It had already been understood by the BBC that the King was not willing to subsidise Prince Andrew indefinitely – but this suggests a final decision has now been taken to cut him off.

The prince, who no longer has an official spokesperson, has so far not responded to the claims over losing this funding.

But it would mean that he would have to find his own way of paying the upkeep and security of Royal Lodge, a 19th Century listed building in Windsor. It is believed that there would be a high cost to maintain the large property, which is leased from the Crown Estate.

This financial pressure on the prince comes after the release of two separate films this year – made by Netflix and Amazon – about his interview on BBC Newsnight in 2019, in which he was questioned about his connections to the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prince stepped down as a working royal and later lost his military titles and royal patronages and withdrew to a private life at Royal Lodge. A commentator described him as being “de-royalled”.

Although it is the King now said to be taking action on funding, sources have previously suggested this has been part of a longer-term question, pre-dating the King’s reign, about settling 64-year-old Prince Andrew’s future accommodation and finances.

Rather than the extensive home at Royal Lodge, previously occupied by the Queen Mother, it has been suggested that the prince could move to the smaller Frogmore Cottage, once occupied by Prince Harry and Meghan, as it would have a much lower maintenance and security cost.

Frogmore Cottage can be used at the discretion of the monarch, while Royal Lodge remains a leased property, owned independently by the Crown Estate, which could be used for other commercial purposes.

But the prince has his own personal lease on Royal Lodge, which lasts until 2078, and if he can pay his own way he can remain at the house, which he has shared with his ex-wife Sarah.

The prince paid considerable amounts up-front when he took on the lease for Royal Lodge in 2003, which has meant lower costs for him in the longer term, making it less of an incentive to leave now.

The house had been in need of renovation and he took on the initial repairs of more than £7.5m. There was also a one-off payment of £2.5m as a way of buying out the annual rental.

He also made a one-off payment of £1m to his landlords, the Crown Estate, according to documents from the National Audit Office.

But there was a clause that if he left the house within 25 years of the start of the lease he would receive compensation for his original payment on repairs – with that amount shrinking each year.

With less than four years left on that arrangement, he would not stand to recoup much of the £7.5m he spent on renovating the house – another incentive not to give up his lease.

But there are still high costs of security and maintenance – and Robert Hardman’s books says the King will no longer be picking up the bills.

He quotes a source as saying: “The duke is no longer a financial burden on the King.”

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Moldovans are going to the polls on Sunday in the second round run-off of a presidential election seen as a choice between a European future or a return to Russian influence.

Pro-European President Maia Sandu faces Alexandr Stoianoglo, a man she fired as chief prosecutor, who has promised to balance foreign policy between the West and Russia and has the backing of the pro-Russian Party of Socialists.

Sandu and Moldova’s authorities have warned that a fugitive oligarch now based in Russia is trying to buy the election for Moscow.

The Kremlin has denied interfering in the vote, much as it did during last weekend’s disputed elections in Georgia, whose president described the vote as a “Russian special operation”.

“We resolutely reject any accusations that we are somehow interfering in this. We are not doing this,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Sandu won the first round of the vote two weeks ago with 42.4%, well ahead of Alexandr Stoianoglo on 26%, but short of the 50% she needed to win outright. His vote is likely to increase because of the votes of candidates who failed to reach the run-off.

Stoianoglo has told Moldovans he would be an “apolitical president” for everyone, with a goal of security, peace and prosperity, and a “truly European model”.

But commentators and politicians have warned that a Stoianoglu victory could radically change the political landscape in the Danube and Black Sea region, not because he is some kind of “Trojan horse”, but rather because Russia has thrown its weight behind him.

Former Moldovan Defence Minister Anatol Salaru said the election would decide whether Moldova would “continue the process of European integration or return to the Russia fold”.

A former Soviet republic flanked by Ukraine and Romania and one of Europe’s poorest countries, Moldova has a population of 2.5 million. It also has a large expat population of 1.2 million, whose votes could prove key to Maia Sandu in the run-off.

Moldova has opened talks on joining the European Union, and on the same day of the first round Moldovans voted by a whisker to back a change to the constitution embracing the commitment to join the EU.

The tiny margin in favour came as a surprise, although Maia Sandu said there was clear evidence of attempts to buy 300,000 votes.

The BBC spoke to one voter who said she and others had sold their votes for up to 1,000 roubles (£8).

Whatever Russia’s role behind the scenes, police said fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor had moved $39m (£30m) over two months from Moscow into Moldovan bank accounts in September and October, benefiting at least 138,000 voters.

Shor denies wrongdoing but did promise cash handouts to people prepared to back his call for a “firm No” to the EU. He faces a lengthy jail sentence in Moldova for money laundering and embezzlement.

Stoianoglo denies links to Ilan Shor but he does have the backing of the opposition pro-Russian Party of Socialists, led by ex-president Igor Dodon.

A populist ex-mayor who came third has refused to back either him or Maia Sandu, criticising both in equal measure.

“Do what you see fit. You must decide on your own,” Renato Usatii told his supporters, blowing the race wide open.

Amidst the shock and trauma in Valencia, the outpouring of solidarity is growing by the day.

At a museum building in the city centre, vast numbers of volunteers were queuing up to receive supplies – buckets, mops, food and water – before boarding buses to the areas worst hit by the catastrophic floods which overwhelmed the region earlier this week, killing more than 200 people with many still missing.

The organisers believe 15,000 people showed up this morning alone for the first coordinated clean-up, filling what many feel is a vacuum left by the authorities.

Sixteen-year-old Pedro Francisco had been waiting in line with his parents for four hours, desperate to help.

He says his friend’s grandfather died in the floods but so far she has been unable to retrieve the body.

“We have to do whatever we can”, Pedro says. “It’s just terrible to see what has happened.”

Also queuing was Oscar Martinez and his wife and son.

“I feel anger”, he says. “This was an avoidable tragedy. All the regional government needed to do was to give us the flood warnings in advance.”

Anger is a reoccurring theme in Valencia and the surrounding area where most of the 211 fatalities took place – with the toll expected to rise further.

Heavy rains began on Monday causing massive flooding in the region, destroying bridges, cutting off communities and leaving them without water, food or electricity.

Thousands of security and emergency services are frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for the dead, taken by what the Spanish government call the second deadliest flood in Europe.

Amparo Esteve spoke to the BBC at a pedestrian bridge crossing the Turia river in Valencia.

She was preparing to walk to her town, Paiporta, as the roads remain closed and she wanted to help her neighbours.

Describing when flash floods struck, she said: “My neighbours told me to run as fast as I can.

“The waters were following me, really, really fast.

“I was at home for three days with no light, no water, no phones, nothing.

“I couldn’t call my mum to tell her that I was okay. We didn’t have food, or water to drink.”

She too voiced anger with the authorities. “No one is helping us.”

Amparo is now staying with her grandparents because she is too afraid to return because of looters.

The Valencian government said looting was increasing insecurity in the region and warned those who are guilty will be brought to justice.

Shop owner Emilia, 74, also said she felt abandoned as she reckons with the destruction in Picanya, a suburb of Valencia.

“We feel abandoned, there are many people who need help,” she told Reuters news agency, adding people are throwing away many, if not all, of their household items.

“We can’t even wash our clothes and we can’t even have a shower.”

In a televised statement, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced an increase in security forces to help relief works.

Sanchez said he was deploying a further 5,000 more troops to help with the searches and the clean-up in addition to the 2,500 already deployed, calling it the biggest operation by the armed forces in Spain in peacetime.

A further deployment of 5,000 police officers and civil guards will also take place.

The government said 4,800 rescues had been made and 30,000 people helped.

But as well as their response, authorities have also come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the flood.

“I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages… towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives… we have to improve,” Sanchez said.

Kemi Badenoch has promised to win back voters who have deserted the Conservatives after securing an historic victory in the party’s leadership contest.

The 44-year-old becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

She defeated fellow right-winger Robert Jenrick, 42, by 12,418 votes after a marathon contest to replace Rishi Sunak, who led the party to the biggest defeat in its history in July’s general election.

In her victory speech, Badenoch promised to “renew” the party and told cheering supporters it was “time to get down to business”.

Badenoch, who is the sixth Tory leader in less than nine years, now faces the task of uniting a fractured party and leading opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The Saffron Walden MP said the Conservatives need to “bring back” voters who abandoned them, adding: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.

“But to be heard, we have to be honest.”

The party must admit it “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the last 14 years in government, she said.

Badenoch chose not to set out detailed policies during her campaign, focusing instead on returning the Conservatives to “first principles”.

All eyes will now turn to who she appoints to her top team as she sets out the future shape of the party over the coming days.

She praised Jenrick despite a sometimes bruising campaign and hinted he may be offered a senior job, telling him “you have a key role in our party for years to come”.

Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 after a career in banking and IT, has said she would offer jobs to all of the Tories who launched leadership bids in July.

But shadow home secretary James Cleverly, who came third in the race, has ruled himself out.

The BBC understands, Badenoch plans to reveal her shadow cabinet by Wednesday, ahead of the critical Budget vote and her debut clash with Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Jenrick did not speak to reporters after the result was announced, but on social media called on his supporters “to unite behind Kemi and take the fight to this disastrous Labour government”.

He also thanked “everyone who supported my vision for a Conservative Party rooted in the common ground of British politics”.

Badenoch got 53,806 votes to Jenrick’s 41,388 – making it the closest Tory leadership race of recent times.

Bob Blackman, who oversaw the election as chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, revealed the party membership had shrunk to 132,000 – the lowest level on record and down 40,000 members since the last vote by members in 2022.

Badenoch was congratulated by several of her predecessors, including Sunak, who posted on social media: “I know that she will be a superb leader of our great party.”

Ex-prime minister Boris Johnson lauded Badenoch’s “courage and clarity” and said she “brings a much needed zing and zap to the Conservative Party”.

In a social media post, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “the first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”.

He added: “I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”

But Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves said the Conservative leadership campaign showed the party had “learned nothing since the British people resoundingly rejected them in July”.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey also congratulated Badenoch, saying “the first Black leader of a major UK political party is a historic moment for the country”.

But Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice called Badenoch “another in a long line of Tory politicians who say one thing and do another”.

In a statement, he said: “Kemi Badenoch was front and centre of a government that failed Britain.”

Over the 14-week campaign, the debate was dominated by immigration, the economy and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with voters.

The party was reduced to a record low of 121 seats in the House of Commons at the general election, with under 24% of the vote.

It lost voters in all directions to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, with thousands of Conservative voters also choosing to stay at home on 4 July poll.

Badenoch’s appointment as Conservative leader comes several days after Labour outlined its first Budget in 14 years.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph ahead of the Budget’s unveiling on Wednesday, Badenoch was critical of the chancellor’s plans, saying: “Rachel Reeves is conjuring up billions of pounds out of thin air to invest infrastructure.”

In response to the new Tory leader, Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the Observer: “If Kemi Badenoch opposes this Budget, then she has to tell the country if she opposes investment to cut waiting lists, investment to recruit teachers and investment to build critical infrastructure. Labour has made its choices, now the Tories need to make theirs.”

Badenoch told the Sunday Telegraph after her election on Saturday: “Labour are going to fail because they are repeating many of our mistakes and are doubling down on this broken system.”

Bitcoin underpins a two trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry, is now traded by the world’s biggest investment houses and is even an official currency in one country.

But despite its meteoric rise, a deep mystery remains at its heart: what is the true identity of its founder, the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto?

Many have tried to answer that question, but so far all have failed. In October, a high-profile HBO documentary suggested that a Canadian bitcoin expert called Peter Todd was he. The only problem: he said he was not, and the crypto world largely shrugged it off.

So, inevitably, ears pricked up across our newsroom – and the crypto world at large – when on Thursday a call went out that the mysterious creator of Bitcoin was to, finally, unmask himself at a press conference.

There is deep interest in who Satoshi Nakamoto is in part because they are considered a revolutionary programmer who helped spawn the crypto industry.

Their voice, opinions and world view would be extremely influential on an industry with such a devoted and zealous fanbase.

But the fascination also stems from the fact that, as the holder of more than one million bitcoins, Satoshi would be a multi-billionaire, not least because the price of the coins is currently close to an all-time high.

Given that vast wealth, it was somewhat unusual to be asked by the organiser of Thursday’s press conference to pay for my seat at his grand unveiling.

A front row seat would be £100. It was another £50 if I wanted unlimited questions. Organiser Charles Anderson even encouraged me to spend £500 in exchange for the privilege of interviewing “Satoshi” on stage.

I declined.

Mr Anderson said I could come along any way but cautioned there might not be a seat for me, such was the level of anticipation.

As it happened, seating wasn’t a problem.

Only around a dozen reporters turned up to the prestigious Frontline Club – which interrupted proceedings at one point to stress it only provided a room, and not any official endorsement.

Very soon it became clear that all attendees were extremely sceptical.

After some digging it emerged both the organiser and the purported Satoshi were currently embroiled in a complex legal fight over fraud allegations – linked to claims to be Satoshi.

It was an unpromising start, and things only got worse from there.

Mr Anderson invited “Satoshi” to come on stage.

A man called Stephen Mollah, who had been sat silently on the side the whole time walked up and resolutely declared: “I am here to make a statement that yes: I am Satoshi Nakamoto and I created the Bitcoin on Blockchain technology.”

Over the following hour, reporters went from amused to irritated as he failed to provide any of the promised evidence for his claims.

Mr Mollah promised that he would make the Hail-Mary move of unlocking and interacting with the first-ever Bitcoins to be created – something that only Satoshi could do.

But he didn’t.

I departed, along with other bemused reporters, taking with us any lingering doubts that this would prove to be yet another dead-end in the quest to unmask Satoshi.

The list of those identified – unsuccessfully – as Satoshi Nakamoto is long.

In 2014, a high-profile article in Newsweek said it was Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American man living in California.

But he denied it and the claim has largely been debunked.

A year later, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright was outed as Satoshi by reporters.

He denied it, before saying it was true – but then failed over many years to produce any evidence.

In the spring the High Court in London ruled that Mr Wright was not the inventor.

Tech billionaire and crypto enthusiast Elon Musk also denied he was behind the cryptocurrency after a former employee at one of his firms, SpaceX, suggested it.

Which brings us to the question: does it really matter?

The crypto market’s current valuation means it is worth more than Google. And it seems inconceivable that the tech giant would play such a big role in our lives without people knowing who founded it, and owned a sizeable chunk of the firm.

Perhaps there’s good reason for the real Satoshi to keep schtum though. That bitcoin stash would make them worth an estimated $69bn and their life and character would no doubt be heavily scrutinised if they were found.

Peter Todd, who was named by the HBO documentary as being Satoshi, said the unwelcome attention he’s received has made him fearful for his safety.

Many in the crypto world enjoy the fact that the mystery remains unsolved.

“No-one knows who Satoshi is and that’s a good thing,” Adam Back, one of its core developers (and another potential Satoshi candidate) posted on X recently.

Natalie Brunell, a Bitcoin podcaster, thinks Satoshi’s anonymity is not only deliberate but essential.

“By concealing his true identity, Satoshi ensured that Bitcoin wouldn’t have a leader or central figure, whose personal agenda could influence the protocol,” she told me.

“This allows people to trust Bitcoin as a system, rather than placing their trust in an individual or company.”

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University – who lectures on the history of Bitcoin – is less sure.

In her view, the circus around who Satoshi Nakamoto is distracts from people looking into – and getting to grips with – the more serious question of how cryptocurrencies might upend the way the economy works.

As I left the Frontline Club it was hard to compute the bizarre press event, beyond one obvious fact.

For now – and perhaps forever – the search for Satoshi continues.

Brat summer might be over as we grapple with how dark it is at 16:00, but the concept of being a brat – “pack of cigs and a Bic lighter”, according to the singer Charli XCX – lives on.

There’s Rosalia gifting Charli XCX a bouquet of cigarettes on her birthday, Addison Rae smoking not one but two at the same time in her music video Aquamarine, and the actor Paul Mescal saying he refused to give up smoking when getting into shape for Gladiator II.

The risks of smoking are well known – it’s still the leading cause of preventable death in the UK and is responsible for nearly 78,000 deaths annually.

GP and cancer specialist Dr Misra-Sharp says even in low quantities, smoking increases the risk of serious diseases like lung cancer, which has a 90% five-year mortality rate.

Despite this, singers, actors and influencers seem to be bringing smoking back into vogue – quite literally, with cigarettes making a return as on the New York Fashion Week runways earlier this year as accessories.

So, why are cigarettes being glamourised again?

Lucy, a 20-year-old university student, says she took up smoking recently because “it’s just what everyone does”.

Almost all her friends also smoke and she says it’s more than just a habit, it’s an aesthetic.

“I definitely think everyone trying to be brat has influenced people to start smoking because Charli herself says you have to have a pack of cigs if you really want to embody the vibe.”

Chari XCX isn’t the only celebrity to inadvertently become a so-called cigfluencer.

There are now Instagram accounts which share snaps of hundreds of celebs like Dua Lipa, Chappell Roan and Anya Taylor-Joy smoking.

The stereotypical image of a smoker may once have been an old, overweight man with rotting teeth, but that’s now been replaced by the young and glamorous celebrities who pout at the camera mysteriously with a Marlboro Gold in hand.

The aesthetic of these smoking celebs is reminiscent of the noughties when the likes of Kate Moss and Jennifer Anniston would step out in low-rise jeans and baby tees with a cigarette perfectly positioned on their lips.

Journalist Olivia Petter says the cigarette has become a symbol that represents our nostalgia towards a bygone era of carefreeness, frivolity and hedonism and it’s making an epic comeback in pop culture.

Emerald Fennell’s seductive and scandalous thriller Saltburn perfectly encapsulated the mid-noughties and reminded us of a time where it was legal to smoke indoors.

Not only were there promo pics for the film of Jacob Elordi’s character smoking topless, but smoking was such an integral part that actor Archie Madekwe (who plays Farleigh) requested cigarette lessons because he had never smoked one before.

According to Truth Initiative, a nonprofit health organisation against smoking, nine out of the 10 films nominated for the Oscars top prize earlier this year featured smoking, which is up from the seven in the year before.

Some of 2024’s biggest songs have also featured tobacco imagery – Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s Die With A Smile shows Gaga smoking as she plays the piano and sings.

Jessica, a 26-year-old who works in marketing, says smoking has “become so normalised again”.

“I didn’t know anyone that smoked a few years ago but now it seems like everyone is doing it and you sort of forget how bad it is for you.”

A recent estimate from Cancer Research suggests that around 350 young people still take up smoking each day in the UK and nearly one in 10 15-year-olds say they sometimes smoke.

But, overall, the number of young people smoking is declining – official estimates show that fewer than one out of every 10 young adults in the UK smoke cigarettes – a steep drop from a quarter of 18-24-year-olds 12 years ago.

Although the number of young people smoking is in decline, vaping has soared in popularity – one out of every seven 18-24-year-olds who never regularly smoked now use e-cigarettes.

Jessica used to vape but says “now everyone does it, it’s just not cool any more” – and it seems the normality of vaping is causing some people to switch to cigarettes.

In a recent video posted on TikTok, singer Addison Rae responded to a question about vaping by saying: “Ew, I hate vaping. Smoke a cigarette!”

US-based doctor James Hook tells the BBC he has seen cases of young people taking up smoking after vaping.

He thinks the way smoking is glamorised by celebrities means cigarettes “give young people a certain credibility those older than them do not have to work as hard for”.

He adds that many of them are “emulating older people that are considered sophisticated, trendy or appealing”.

Dr Hook also says that the government taking a tougher stance on smoking might be encouraging people to rebel.

“There will always be individuals who challenge the status quo so it should come as no surprise a ban on something only adds fuel to the fire of rebellion and a threat to a person’s sense of independence.”

The government is planning one of the toughest smoking laws in the world which would eventually ban the sale of cigarettes in the UK as the new law will effectively raise the legal age people can buy cigarettes by one year every year.

With the government’s intent on stamping out the deadly habit, the resurgence of the cigarette – and the cigfluencers – may be more of a passing trend than a lasting cultural shift, particularly as its appeal is less about the act itself and more about the aesthetic and symbolism it represents.

Two families in the West Midlands are waiting for compensation in the first documented case of babies being switched at birth in NHS history.

It was only taken out of idle curiosity one rainy winter’s day – but the shocking result of a DNA test was to force two women and their families to reassess everything they knew about themselves.

When Tony’s friends bought him a DNA home-testing kit for Christmas in 2021, he left it on his kitchen sideboard and forgot about it for two months.

It did not catch his eye again until one day in February. Tony was at home and bored because his weekly round of golf had been rained off. He spat into the sample tube, sent the kit off, and didn’t think about it for weeks.

The results came on a Sunday evening. Tony was on the phone to his mother, Joan, when the email arrived.

At first, everything looked as he’d expected. The test pinpointed the place in Ireland where his maternal family came from. A cousin was on his family tree. His sister was there too.

But when he looked at his sister’s name, it was wrong. Instead of Jessica, someone called Claire was listed as his full sibling (Jessica and Claire are not their real names – both have been changed, to protect the women’s identity).

Tony is the eldest of Joan’s four children. After three sons, she had longed for a daughter. She finally got her wish when Jessica arrived in 1967.

“It was a wonderful feeling, at long last having a girl,” Joan tells me.

However, she was immediately anxious when she heard there was something unexpected in Tony’s DNA results. He was, too, but he tried not to show it. Ten years after his father’s death, Tony’s mother was in her 80s and living alone. He didn’t want to worry her.

The next morning, he used the DNA testing company’s private messaging facility to contact Claire, the woman it claimed was his sister.

“Hi,” he wrote. “My name’s Tony. I’ve done this DNA test. You’ve come up as a full sibling. I’m thinking it’s a mistake. Can you shed any light on it?”

Claire had been given the same brand of DNA test two years earlier, as a birthday present from her son.

Her results had also been strange – there was no connection to where her parents were born, and she had a genetic link to a first cousin she didn’t know and couldn’t explain.

Then, in 2022, she received a notification – a full sibling had joined her family tree.

It was baffling. But in one way, it made perfect sense. Growing up, Claire had never felt like she belonged.

“I felt like an imposter,” she says. “There were no similarities, in looks or traits,” she tells me. “I thought, ‘yes – I’m adopted.’”

The Gift: Switched

In the first series of The Gift, Jenny Kleeman looked at the extraordinary truths that can unravel when people take at-home DNA tests like Ancestry and 23andMe.

For the second series, Jenny is going deeper into the unintended consequences – the aftershocks – set in motion when people link up to the enormous global DNA database.

Listen on BBC Sounds or on BBC Radio 4 at 09:30, Wednesday 6 November

When Claire and Tony started exchanging messages and biographical details, they discovered that Claire had been born about the same time and in the same hospital as Jessica, the sister Tony had grown up with.

An unavoidable explanation began to emerge – the two baby girls had been switched at birth, 55 years previously, and brought up in different families.

Cases where babies have been accidentally swapped on maternity wards are practically unheard of in the UK. In response to a 2017 Freedom of Information request, the NHS replied that as far as its records showed, there were no documented incidents of babies being sent home with the wrong parents.

Since the 1980s, newborns have been given radio frequency identification (RFID) tags immediately after their birth, which allow their location to be tracked. Before then, maternity wards relied on handwritten tags and cards on cots.

As they tried to absorb the news, Claire and Tony had to decide what to do next.

“The ripples from this will be enormous,” Tony wrote to Claire. “If you want to leave it here, then I’ll absolutely accept that, and we won’t progress this at all.”

Without hesitation, Claire knew that she wanted to meet Tony and the mother they shared.

“I just wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them and embrace them,” she says.”

When Tony finally told Joan what the DNA test had revealed, she was desperate for answers. How could this have happened?

Joan’s memories of the night her daughter was born are vivid. She had been due to give birth at home, but because she had high blood pressure, her labour was induced in a West Midlands hospital.

“They took me in on a Sunday,” she says. “It snowed that day.”

The baby was born at about 22:20. Joan held her much-longed-for daughter for only for a few minutes – she remembers gazing at the newborn’s red face and matted hair.

The baby was then taken away to the nursery for the night so her mother could rest. This was common practice in the 1960s.

A couple of hours later, just after midnight, Jessica was born in the same hospital.

The next morning, Joan was handed Jessica instead of her biological daughter, Claire.

This baby had fair hair – unlike the rest of the family, who were all dark – but Joan thought nothing of it. There were aunts and cousins with similar colouring.

By the time her husband arrived at the hospital to meet baby Jessica, they were too delighted with their new arrival to have any doubts.

Fifty-five years later, Joan was desperate to know what kind of life Claire had had. Had she grown up happy?

But before she could get answers, she and Tony had to break the news to Jessica, who had lived her entire life believing Joan was her mother, and Tony was her brother.

Tony and Joan travelled to Jessica’s home to tell her in person. Joan says she reassured her that they would always be mother and daughter, but ever since, she says their relationship has not been the same.

Jessica did not want to be interviewed in connection with this story.

A day later – and only five days after Tony got his DNA results – Claire travelled the short distance between her home and Joan’s.

For years, she had been driving through Joan’s village on her way to and from work, never knowing that this was where her biological mother lived.

Tony was waiting for her in the driveway. “Hi Sis,” he said. “Come and meet Mum.”

Claire says that from the moment she saw Joan, it felt like they had always known each other: “I looked at her, and I said, ’Oh my God, I’ve got your eyes! We have the same eyes. Oh my God, I look like someone!’”

“It just felt right,” Joan says. “I thought, she looked just like I did in my younger days.”

They spent the afternoon poring over family photographs. Claire told Tony and Joan about her partner, her children and grandchildren. They told her all about the biological father she would never get to meet.

But when it came to questions about whether she had had a happy childhood, Claire was evasive.

“I couldn’t tell the truth then,” she says. “My parents separated when I was very young. I don’t remember them being together. I was raised in absolute poverty, homelessness, often went hungry, and all that entails. It was a very difficult childhood.”

Claire says that breaking the news to the mother who raised her was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

She says she did her best to reassure both the parents she had grown up with, that nothing would change in their relationship. Her mother died earlier this year.

As well as coming to terms with a new genetic identity, there were practical implications for Claire, too. Because she had been born before midnight, she discovered she was a day older than she previously thought: “My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving licence – everything is wrong.”

A couple of weeks after making the discovery, Tony wrote to the NHS trust that oversees the hospital where Claire and Jessica were switched, explaining what the home DNA tests had revealed.

The trust admitted liability – although two-and-a-half years later, the level of compensation has yet to be agreed. Tony and Joan say they were told it would be finalised last year.

We contacted NHS Resolution which handles complaints against the NHS. It said the baby swap was an “appalling error” for which it had accepted legal liability.

However, it said that it was a “unique and complex case” and that it was still working to agree on the amount of compensation that was due.

Claire and Joan have been discovering how much they have in common, such as their tastes in clothes and food, and how they take their tea. They’ve been on holiday, exploring their biological roots in Ireland, and they spent last Christmas together.

“We’re very close,” Claire says of her newly discovered family. “I’d like to spend as much time as I can with them, of course, but that time is gone. It was taken away.”

While Claire now calls her “Mum”, Joan tells me that Jessica no longer does. But Joan feels only that she has gained a daughter.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me that Jessica isn’t my biological daughter,” she says. “She’s still my daughter and she always will be.”

The Israeli military said a senior Hezbollah operative was captured in a naval raid in the northern Lebanese town of Batroun on Friday.

An official said special forces had apprehended the individual and taken them back to Israeli territory, in what was described as a “special operation”.

Lebanon’s state news agency said an “unidentified military force” arrived on the beach at dawn, raided a nearby building, and captured one person before leaving by speedboat.

The raid has prompted anger from Lebanese authorities, with the office for Prime Minister Najib Mikati saying he had instructed the foreign ministry to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council.

It added the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping force Unifil were both investigating the raid – and that Mikati had called for “expedited” results.

Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh suggested the raid may have violated UN Security Council resolution 1701, which is intended to end hostilities following on from the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006.

“If it is proven that the kidnapping took place via a naval landing, where is the implementation of Resolution 1701?” he was quoted as saying by local media.

Hezbollah did not comment on Israel’s allegation that the person captured was a member of the group, while Hamieh told local media the man was a captain of civilian ships.

CCTV footage that emerged online – which the BBC located to Batroun – appeared to show a group of soldiers leading a captive between some buildings.

The Israeli military gave limited details on the operation but said the unit involved was Shayetet 13, a marine commando unit specialising in sea-to-land incursions.

Batroun, a Christian town to the north of Beirut, has been relatively sheltered from Israeli military operations in Lebanon to date, which have focused on the country’s south, the Bekaa valley in its east, and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

More than 2,200 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched a ground invasion of the country on September 30. The Israeli military says 38 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon during that time.

The Prince of Wales has spoken of his deep personal connections with Africa – ahead of his environmental Earthshot Prize awards ceremony in Cape Town in South Africa next week.

“Africa has always held a special place in my heart – as somewhere I found comfort as a teenager, where I proposed to my wife,” said Prince William ahead of his visit.

Prince William’s mother, Diana, had many associations with the continent, including supporting a mine-clearing charity, and his return there as a young man seemed to have left an emotional impact.

It was in Kenya that the prince proposed to Catherine during a romantic trip in 2010.

At the time he said he’d been carrying the engagement ring – which previously belonged to his mother – around in his rucksack for several weeks, building up to the proposal.

Prince William says he is taking his environmental prize back to its African roots – as a visit to Namibia had been the “founding inspiration” and the “birthplace” of the awards.

“It was in Namibia in 2018 that I realised the power of how innovative, positive solutions to environmental problems could drive transformative change for humans and nature,” says Prince William.

The Earthshot Prize, first awarded in 2021, supports sustainable, eco-friendly projects from around the world, with five winners each receiving £1m.

There is a focus on ideas from Africa for this year’s event, with more than 400 African-led projects nominated and another 350 linked to the continent.

Although Africa generates the fewest emissions for global warming, many of its countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

The emphasis of the awards is on tangible results, scaling up good ideas to make a bigger impact. For instance, one of last year’s finalists was a project to reduce air pollution from car tyres and that’s now being developed in a partnership with Uber in the UK and US.

“By the end of the week, I want the Earthshot Prize to have provided a platform to all those innovators bringing about change for their communities, encouraged potential investors to speed African solutions to scale and inspired young people across Africa who are engaged in climate issues,” says Prince William.

In keeping with the green theme, guests will arrive on a green carpet rather than red and South African landmarks will be illuminated in green light.

The prince will attend the awards ceremony on 6 November, which will feature a performance of a song from the Lion King on top of Table Mountain, with the event available on BBC iPlayer.

Scientists say there has been an alarming lack of progress in saving nature as the UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, draws to a close.

The scale of political ambition has not risen to the challenge of reducing the destruction of nature that costs the economy billions, said one leading expert.

Representatives of 196 countries have been meeting in Cali, Colombia, to agree on how to halt nature decline by 2030.

The biodiversity summit is separate from the more well-known COP climate summit, which is set to take place in Baku later this month.

Countries were meant to come to the table with a detailed plan on how they intended to meet biodiversity targets at home, but most missed the deadline.

However, plans were agreed to raise money for conservation through making companies pay for using genetic resources from nature.

The summit comes as one million species face extinction and nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.

We are stuck in a “vicious cycle where economic woes reduce political focus on the environment” while the destruction of nature costs the economy billions, said Tom Oliver, professor of biodiversity at the University of Reading.

“Until we have world leaders with the wisdom and courage to put nature as a top political priority then nature-related risks will continue to escalate,” he told BBC News.

The UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, was the first chance to take stock of progress towards a landmark deal to restore nature agreed in 2022.

However, scientists lamented the pace of progress. Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, said while some meaningful progress was made, the overarching picture was “undoubtedly deeply concerning”.

“Biodiversity still takes a back seat to climate action – even though the science speaks strongly to the need for fully coordinated approaches,” she said.

• An agreement was reached that companies profiting from nature’s genetic data should pay towards its protection through a global fund
• The fund, to be known as the Cali fund after the COP16 host city, will be financed with payments from companies who make use of genetic information from living things
• The role of Indigenous Peoples as vital stewards of nature was officially recognised through the setting up of a permanent body to represent their interests

The next biodiversity summit will take place in 2026, with time running out for solutions. Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said through such gatherings governments, NGOs and scientists could share knowledge and resources.

“This collective spirit is critical as we work to develop and implement effective policies to confront the complex and interconnected crises facing our planet’s ecosystems,” she said.

Commenting on the talks, the renowned scientist, Dr Jane Goodall, said our future is “ultimately doomed” if we don’t address biodiversity loss.

She told BBC News: “We have to take action too. We can’t only blame the government and big corporations, although a huge part of the blame lies on them.”

At least 200 soldiers are being held hostage by armed supporters of Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales, the foreign ministry has said.

On Friday, Bolivia’s military reported that the armed group had taken control of a military facility near the Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

In an update Bolivia’s foreign ministry said the group had “seized weapons and ammunition”, adding that three military units were “assaulted by irregular groups”.

Images of a row of soldiers with their hands behind their backs, surrounded by members of the armed group, were shown on local television.

• Bolivian government denies attempt to kill Evo Morales
• Evo Morales says his car was shot at in assassination attempt
• Street battles in Bolivia as Evo Morales leads march to capital

Cochabamba is in central Bolivia and is home to many supporters of the former president.

Shortly after the facility was taken over by the group, the military announced the evacuation of personnel and their families, local media reported.

One of the soldiers being held in the facility said, in a message to his command centre, that the group were demanding that authorities stop interfering with blockades, Bolivian news agency ANF said.

Morales’ supporters have created blockades around the country for 19 days, demanding an end to an investigation into the former president for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking, which he denies.

On Sunday, Morales shared a video of his car being shot at, in what he called an “assassination attempt” against him.

The Bolivian government rejected Morales’ claims that it ordered a targeted attack on him.

His supporters had clashed with followers of his rival, current President Luis Arce, on several occasions earlier this year. Both men intend to run as candidate for the ruling Mas party in the country’s 2025 presidential elections.

Morales, who was president from 2006 to 2019, was declared the winner of the 2019 election but resigned weeks later after nationwide protests triggered by claims of election fraud.

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

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

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

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers, increase housing supply and raise the minimum wage.

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

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again” and when asked he says more drilling for oil will lower energy costs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Where Kamala Harris stands on 10 issues
• Where Donald Trump stands on 10 issues

Harris has made abortion rights central to her campaign, and she continues to advocate for legislation that would enshrine reproductive rights nationwide.

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion.

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

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

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

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party immigration bill, backed by Harris. She says she would revive that deal if elected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Trump’s legal cases, explained

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

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

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

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

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When is the US election and how does it work?
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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?
• Path to 270: The states Harris and Trump need to win

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

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but 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?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Spain has been coming to terms with devastating floods which have left more than 200 people dead and dozens missing this week.

Thousands of emergency services staff and military personnel have been working on search and rescue operations in flood-hit regions, while locals have started to clean up and assess the level of damage caused.

More rain is expected over the weekend, with a warning in place along the coastline of Huelva in the south-west, where residents are being told to stay at home.

Before and after images show the scale of damage the flash flooding and torrential rain caused. Cars were swept onto streets, train tracks and tunnels across Valencia, the worst-hit region.

A large number of those killed were on the roads, in many cases returning from work when the flash floods struck.

The above tunnel, which connects the Benetusser and Alfafar municipalities in Valencia, was blocked by a large number of cars dragged by the water.

Parts of Valencia, the country’s third-largest city, had a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours on Wednesday.

Dozens of metres of train tracks have been damaged or completely destroyed, with rail services suspended between Madrid and Valencia while tracks are rebuilt.

Some streets and residential areas were wrecked as a result of flash flooding, such as this one in Letur, southwest of Valencia. The street is wholly covered by mud, rocks and debris.

Satellite images give an idea of how violently the water burst into coastal towns, and show just how much the landscape has changed in the last few days.

The number of babies born in England and Wales is now the lowest since the 1970s, official statistics show.

The fertility rate – which measures how many children are born per woman during her child-bearing years – is the lowest on record at 1.44. Scotland’s is even lower at 1.3.

Britain is not unique – most countries are experiencing declining fertility and some are even going to great lengths to create a baby boom.

So what’s causing the fall-off in fertility? There’s the high cost of bringing up children, the pressure to stay in work and the challenge of finding the right partner.

But there’s also evidence that more and more young adults don’t plan on having any children at all.

BBC News has spoken to two women and two men in their early thirties – the average age at which people in England and Wales become parents – to get their thoughts on the issue.

Ellie Lambert, who lives in Sheffield, wants to have children but says she hasn’t found a suitable partner.

Two years ago, she spent £18,000 on two cycles of egg freezing. “I find it really frustrating, it’s a lot of cost for something that may not ever lead to anything,” she says.

She hopes to use them if she meets someone, or if she reaches a financial situation where she can “go it alone” with the aid of a sperm donor.

Ellie says she ‘s concerned about the additional financial pressure on single-parent households.

A report from the Child Poverty Action Group last year found the average cost of raising a child to age 18 was £166,000 for a couple and £220,000 for a lone parent.

Though Ellie thought she would meet someone by her late 20s, “despite proactively being on all of the apps, it just didn’t happen.”

She says dating had become “fruitless”, citing the seemingly endless choice that dating apps offer as a factor, with fewer people wanting to commit.

But going it alone would be “a big decision”, says Ellie, who earns more than £60,000 on a fixed-term contract.

Having already spent her savings on egg freezing, she says it would cost a further £10,000 to use a sperm donor with IVF.

HGV driver Chris Taylor and dog groomer Gemma Wrathmell jointly earn an income of about £60,000 and have been together for 11 years.

The couple, who live in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, considered having children.

“We have had deep conversations where we go through the options and discuss things like school, cost and routine,” Gemma says.

But the conclusion was that the cost was too high.

“After all our bills and essentials there is no room in the budget to accommodate a child,” Chris says. “We don’t see how our finances will get any better within the next few years.”

As a result, they have taken a “definitive decision” – Chris is seeking to have a vasectomy, after years of Gemma having a contraceptive implant.

“Some people have said you’ll change your mind, but they know it’s our decision,” says Gemma.

“I’m also not that maternal,” she adds.

For Dami Olonisakin, a sex and relationships podcaster who lives in London, improvements in fertility treatments – such as egg freezing – are “empowering” and give women “more control than ever”.

Motherhood, she says, is not something to “be taken lightly”.

“Childcare costs are soaring, maternity policies are limited, women basically have to think really hard,” she says.

She also wants to have the “support system” of a long-term partner in place before having children.

But she isn’t in a hurry. “I don’t feel I’m in a rush to settle down and have kids just because it’s expected,” she says.

Instead she is focusing on her career after growing up in a household that “didn’t have anything”.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I am never ever putting a child through this’,” she says.

“[My parents] absolutely did their best, but I’ve always said I will not have a child until I’m… ready.”

Kari Aaron Clark, a senior research fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, earns £53,000 but feels he can’t afford to raise a child in London.

Four years ago, his salary was £22,000 while completing his PhD.

His partner Kaitlyn, who is currently a PhD student, is under similar financial strain.

It means despite Kari’s above-average salary, he has had less time to save for a property – something he thinks is essential before becoming a parent because of the “relatively insecure” nature of renting.

He also cites the costs of childcare. According to a recent report by children’s charity Coram, the average weekly price for a full-time childcare place for children under three in the UK is about £300, compared with nearly £430 in inner London.

Kari says his views are shared by Kaitlyn – and they are both concerned about the effects of the climate crisis.

“I’m quite happy with the idea of adopting. That way I’m helping someone already struggling in the system,” he says.

“I can adopt after they’ve got through the childcare stage.”

But despite his current pessimism about the viability of becoming a biological parent, Kari says he “wouldn’t write it off”.

This all raises the question of what the future holds if fewer children are being born.

Declining fertility rates are not just about people delaying parenthood, but about a growing trend of people not having children, says Brienna Perelli-Harris, professor of demography at the University of Southampton.

Data from the recent UK Generations and Gender Survey suggests that childless adults today are far less confident they will have children, with a quarter of 18 to 25-year-olds saying they would probably or definitely not have a child.

“Gen Z are more likely to want to stay childless,” she says. “Before, it might have been more of a taboo – it’s now more acceptable.

“And it’s down to economic factors like future income, childcare costs and employment.”

“In the long term… the population will start to shrink,” Prof Perelli-Harris adds.

“If it gets to 1.3 [children per woman] – that’s seen as very low and government should start getting concerned.”

Concerns have previously been raised about shrinking fertility rates in countries where there’s long been a downward trend, including the need for more young people to work as carers for an ageing population and pay tax.

But populations can continue to grow for a long time after fertility falls below 2.1 children per woman, known as the replacement level – the number of children required to ensure a population replaces itself from one generation to the next – the ONS says.

This is the case in the UK and other countries like Spain and Italy, where the fertility rate is even lower.

“Immigration can stall population decline or even reverse it,” says Prof Perelli-Harris.

“I do not think we will see the UK population start to decline for the foreseeable future, although the ageing of the population will become even more pronounced.”

Chinese tourists huddle together against the brisk autumn breeze on a 12-storey building, vying for the best spot to photograph the point where their country meets Russia and North Korea.

The three national flags overlap on a map on the wall, which explains that Fangchuan in China’s north-east corner is a unique place for that reason.

“I feel very proud to be standing here… with Russia on my left and North Korea on my right,” declares one woman on a trip with her co-workers. “There are no borders among the people.”

That might be overly optimistic. Like the sliver of sandwiched Chinese territory she has travelled to see, Beijing too is caught between its sanctioned neighbours.

Fears over the budding alliance between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have peaked in recent weeks, with reports of North Korea deploying thousands of troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And that was before Pyongyang fired a banned intercontinental missile on Thursday, on the longest flight recorded yet – after turning up the rhetoric against Seoul for weeks.

“China seeks a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” says Christopher Green, an analyst from the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unable shape the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well remain stuck in the middle as western anger and anxiety grows.

Moscow and Pyongyang deny that North Korean soldiers are headed for Ukraine, widely seen as a significant escalation. But the United States says it has seen evidence of this, following allegations by South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence.

The first reports emerged just before Xi met his Russian counterpart at the Brics summit earlier in October, overshadowing a gathering that was meant to send the West a defiant message.

It increasingly appears as though China’s allies are spiralling out of its control. Beijing, the senior partner in the triad, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order, one that is not led by the US. But that’s difficult to do when one ally has started a war in Europe, and another is accused of aiding the invasion.

“China is unhappy with the way things are going,” Mr Green says, “but they are trying to keep their discontent relatively quiet.”

It’s certainly a sensitive topic for Beijing, judging by the response to our presence in the border town, where it seems tourists are welcome – but journalists are not.

We were in public areas at all times, and yet the team was stopped, repeatedly questioned, followed and our footage deleted.

The hotel demanded to keep my passport for “my safety and the safety of others”. Police visited our hotel rooms, and they also blocked the road to the port at Hunchun, which would have given us a closer view of the current trade between Russia and China.

On the viewing platform in Fangchuan, it’s clear that most tourists have come to see North Korea.

“I saw a person cycling,” says one girl peering through a telescope. Her friend rushes over to see: “Ooooh! It’s such a mysterious country.”

Close by is the Tumen river that gently cuts through all three countries. It is China’s gateway into the Sea of Japan, where it has territorial disputes with Tokyo.

The 1,400km-long (870 mile) Chinese border has some of the only platforms with a clear view into North Korea. South Korea’s frontier with the North is an almost impenetrable barrier, the heavily mined and fortified Demilitarized Zone.

Someone offers me a pair of binoculars. Some people are cycling through the village on ageing bicycles, but there are few other signs of life. One of the largest buildings is a school with a sign calling for children to “learn well for Chosun”, another name for North Korea.

“North Korea has always been our neighbour. It’s no stranger to us,” says a middle-aged man. “To be able to see how they live makes me realise China is prosperous and strong.”

Kim Jong Un’s regime would certainly struggle to survive without its biggest benefactor, China, which accounts for more than 90% of foreign trade, including food and fuel.

That was not always the case. In the early 1960s it was the Chinese who fled famine across the Tumen river. Some even went to school in North Korea because they believed its education system at the time was better.

The North Korean economy crashed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – which had been its main source of aid and cheap oil – sparking severe food shortages and, eventually, famine.

Soon, North Korean refugees began wading through an often freezing river at the risk of being shot dead to escape hunger, poverty and repression. There are now more than 30,000 of them in South Korea and an unknown number still live in China.

“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea hasn’t really had any choice but to maintain good relations with China, which has been its sole benefactor,” Mr Green says.

But now, he adds, Russia “is offering an alternative and the North Koreans are seeking to exploit that”.

Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, had likened the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang to the closeness between “lips and teeth”: “If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold.”

Now, Beijing finds itself smarting from a lack of gratitude as Kim’s lips are “kissing elsewhere”, according to sociologist Aidan Foster-Carter, who has studied North Korea for several decades.

“North Korea has consistently been the comrade from hell to both Russia and China. They take as much money as they can and [then] do what they like.”

Analysts have noted that Kim has consistently flattered Putin over Xi in the last year. While Kim hasn’t met Xi since 2019, he has met Putin twice in the past year or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drawn the two sanctioned leaders closer than ever. Putin seeks more support for his war and Kim wants to bolster his regime with alliances and attention.

From the Chinese border, it’s easy to see the burgeoning relationship between the two sides.

The whistle of a train interrupts the tourist chatter, and a steam engine pulling a long line of freight carriages slowly chugs across the railway bridge from Russia to North Korea. It stops in front of a Korean sign facing China which reads: “Towards a new victory!”

The US estimates that Kim has sold more than a million artillery shells and Grad rockets to Moscow for use in Ukraine, which North Korea denies.

But there is no doubt that the pair have stepped up cooperation after signing a security pact in June to help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

“You have very stiff and formal language to Xi Jinping on the occasion of what is actually an historically important event – the 75th anniversary of relations of the People’s Republic of China,” Mr Foster-Carter says.

“And yet on Putin’s birthday, Kim calls him ‘my closest comrade’. If you are Xi Jinping, what are you thinking?”

It’s hard to know, because China has shown no signs of interfering with the Russia-North Korea alliance.

The US has noticed Beijing’s disquiet and for once the two rivals may have similar goals.

In the last week, State Department officials have raised the issue of North Korean troops in Russia with Chinese diplomats.

Beijing does have options – in the past, they have cut supplies of oil and coal to North Korea, and complied with US-led sanctions to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Already, China is battling US accusations that it is selling components to Russia that aid its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing’s trade with Moscow is also flourishing, even as it tries to cope with Western tariffs.

Xi has kept Russia close because he needs Putin’s help to challenge the US-led world order. But he has not stopped trying to repair ties with Europe, the UK and even the US. China has also been holding talks with Japan and South Korea to ease historic tensions.

But Kim’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Seoul has the South once again debating whether it should have its own nuclear arsenal. North Korean troops on a Ukrainian battlefield would only further unravel Beijing’s plans.

The possibility has already seen South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol discuss “concrete counter-measures” and talk of strengthening security cooperation with Ukraine and Nato.

A nuclear-armed South Korea or an “East Asian Nato” are not ideal in a region where China wants greater sway. An emboldened Kim could also draw a stronger show of support from the US – in the form of warships or even weapons – towards its allies, Seoul and Tokyo.

“For a very long time, China has had a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was a no nuclear North Korea. Obviously that has been a failure,” Mr Green says.

Now Beijing fears that the alliance with Russia could destabilise North Korea, he adds: “That could even benefit Vladimir Putin in a way it really would not benefit Xi Jinping.”

Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.

“Satellites, for sure,” Mr Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”

Experts believe Xi is unlikely to do anything drastic because China needs a stable North Korea – if he cuts off aid, he would likely have a refugee crisis at the border.

But Kim too might have a decision to make.

Although Russia is paying for shells and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says, it is China that “has actually kept North Korea going all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder at what point Beijing will turn on Pyongyang?”.

Kim’s deadly gamble could also have a profound impact closer to home – the 25 million North Koreans who are cut off from the outside world and completely dependent on the regime for their survival.

Across the Tumen river in Fangchuan, a North Korean soldier watches us, while we watch him.

Steam rises from snack stands selling noodles and sizzled octopus on sticks on the Chinese side. And he can probably hear the giggling tourists taking pictures with the latest cameras and phones, which he is forbidden from owning.

The shallow river is a gulf neither the tourists nor the soldier can cross.

An artist said it was “the most surreal moment” of his life to be invited to hand deliver two charcoal drawings of Tom Cruise to the Top Gun actor.

Wilf Elliott, from Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, had previously given artwork to singers, like Sam Ryder and Zara Larsson, but he could not believe his luck when Cruise’s team reached out to him.

“I found out Tom had opened up my artwork on set, and I decided it would be a great idea to draw another one, and then I got a text to say he’d like to meet me in person,” the 21-year-old tattoo artist said.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get someone as big as that ever again.”

Mr Elliott started recreating a scene from Top Gun: Maverick, one of his favourite films, about 18 months ago.

“Actually seeing someone like that and him knowing who I was before I met him was incredibly surreal,” he continued.

He said he started drawing during the coronavirus lockdown to keep himself busy, and his artwork has attracted attention on social media from celebrities, like former Welsh football captain and Real Madrid star Gareth Bale.

Earlier this year, he flew to Sweden to deliver a portrait of the late DJ Avicii to the musician’s father, Klas Bergling.

The rapper Post Malone and actor Jim Carrey were high on his “wish list”, he added.

After more than a decade as a lawyer at high-powered banking firms like Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, Nigerian-British Kelechi Ejikeme left the corporate world to follow her passion for interior design.

Her rug collection is inspired by Nigeria’s diverse terrain – rolling hills, winding rivers, sprawling savannahs and dense forests, and reminds me of the view from planes.

“So, when you interpret that into a rug or a carpet, it’s symbolic,” she said when I met her at her stall at the Decorex interior design show held in London last month.

“It’s like, every minute, this is what we’re actually every day stepping on.”

Made from jute, a durable and eco-friendly material, each rug integrates these natural elements.

Jute is typically cultivated locally for its edible leaves, not for fibre. It comes from the same plant used for ewedu soup, a staple in south-western Nigeria.

To bring her vision to life, Ejikeme has her rugs produced in India and Nepal, where jute is more widely developed into a thriving industry.

Also at the event was Amechi Mandi, a Cameroonian-Nigerian interior designer who won House & Garden magazine’s Rising Star award in 2022.

He was not showcasing any of his work but had just spoken in a side session about his transition from fashion to interior design.

Mandi holds a degree in furniture and product design, but after working in the fashion industry and later at a design firm, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of genuine African-inspired interior textiles.

Too often, he found, they relied on “clichéd”, post-colonial motifs.

This led him to explore his Cameroonian and Nigerian heritage, with a focus on pre-colonial traditions.

Recognising the untapped potential of indigenous textiles fading from memory -especially with the rise of “ankara” wax prints, a European import that has come to symbolise African design – Mandi set out to revive these cultural elements.

He began integrating traditional techniques and patterns into his designs, and his work now includes a popular collection of cushions and throws, as well as a successful wallpaper collaboration.

“People have told me, ‘Oh, your work is not African,’ because they want to see ankara prints. It’s been so impressed in the minds,” Mandi told me.

“I get inspiration from indigenous traditions and cultures, and then, I give it a more contemporary spin,” he added.

Listening to Mandi made me realise how much I, too, had come to associate modern African design with ankara fabrics.

This textile has dominated African fashion and design, making its mark on global stages in recent decades.

And so, as I wandered through the exhibition, it was easy to assume that African designs were absent from this notable gathering.

When she first started, Ejikeme juggled both law and interior design, working in one during the week and the other on weekends. It did not take long for her to realise where her true passion lay.

“In one world, you’re trying to contain your energy or yourself or your expression just so that you don’t ruffle feathers, while in another world your energy, you can’t even extinguish it,” she said.

Since making the leap to full-time design six years ago, she has tackled a variety of projects, from homes and workplaces to movie sets.

Last year, she launched her own rug collection, adding a new dimension to her work from her Swallow and Tea studio.

“It’s a really new thing and I’ve only had two shows but so far I’ve had mostly residential and retail buyers mainly from Europe probably because my first show was in Belgium. Decorex was my first UK show,” Ejikeme said.

Most of Mandi’s customers are Europeans, a trend he attributes to a prevailing preference among many Africans for foreign products.

“Most Africans still prefer to buy a Gucci,” he said.

“I do have a few Africans buying but they are not like everyday Africans. They were all people who were born and bred abroad and are deep into African heritage and culture.”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi concur that interior design in Africa is still in its developmental stages.

In contrast to fashion, which has long been a significant focus for Africans and has recently experienced remarkable growth, the field of African interior design is just starting to establish itself.

Ejikeme reflected on her first independent project in 2013, which coincided with a new wave of Africans in London entering high-paying fields like investment banking.

She aimed to create spaces that not only exuded luxury and comfort but also captured a sense of home for her African clients, reflecting their heritage in a meaningful way.

“I was stumped because I’m somebody who loves antiques. I love old design. When I was in design school in London, my favourite thing was history of design, like learning about all the different periods – Victorian, Edwardian, etc – and what distinguished one from the other.

“But there was no such thing in Africa. There’s nothing like the history of African design because we haven’t really kept that track,” she said.

This realisation motivated her to begin categorising African design periods to better understand and preserve the continent’s design evolution, an ongoing project she began during her past 10 years living in Nigeria before returning to London last year.

Ejikeme visited places like the Bogobiri art gallery in Lagos, which displayed a mixture of old sculpture and modern art.

She also visited sellers in quiet corners of Nigerian markets, where she came across staffs of office used by Igbo elders in precolonial times. She began categorising these objects she came across according to their period in history, whether late 1990s or pre-colonial.

She has not yet finished and wants to devote more time to it to use them in her interior design projects.

Mandi believes that following trends in how we design our homes and other spaces was historically never an African thing, especially with the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade.

“Traditionally, interiors have never been a priority. We have always been into functionality. We were more into decorating our exteriors, like painting the walls, painting the outside,” he said.

“Each civilization has evolved, but we didn’t have the chance to evolve because of the 400 years we were arrested with the transatlantic slave trade.”

He added that Africans were in “constant flight” during the slave trade, so “how can you think, ‘I have this house, I have to make the inside fine, let me put that bench, let me weave this cloth’? Our society didn’t have the chance to evolve like that.”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi noted that many wealthy and prominent Africans, from celebrities to entrepreneurs, often have interiors that lack a distinctly African identity.

However, Ejikeme believes this is changing as more Africans gain disposable income, they are increasingly investing in decorating their homes in a way that tells their personal story and captures their experiences.

“If you have a product that can be made beautiful, and exquisite, and sort of memorable, that tells some kind of story or has some kind of meaning, it will appeal to Africans and other people that are not African,” she says.

• Wax print: Africa’s pride or colonial legacy?
• In pictures: Africa’s cutting-edge fashion
• The fabric business with textiles that tell stories

Hidden away in a church in Hamburg is a plaque dedicated to a relatively unknown Welsh woman, outlining astonishing acts of bravery.

Mabel Wulff from Newport lived in Nazi Germany – surviving years of Gestapo harassment and bravely fighting fires caused by falling bombs.

The plaque says the St Thomas à Becket Anglican Church, known as simply “the English church” for many years, would have been destroyed without her – after she hid its artwork to save it from damage, smothered fires as they started.

She also sheltered people to save their lives.

“She’s a part of history – Newport history and Hamburg history,” says Eddie Wulff, Mabel’s grandson who has spent the past few years trying to learn more about his grandmother’s life.

“But very few in Wales seem to know about it. She was formidable.”

It is a story that begins in Newport in 1909 when seamstress Mabel Phillips married Max Wulff, a German sailor.

They couldn’t have imagined the difficulties ahead, with Max setting up a restaurant on Alexandra Road in the Pill area of the city and the couple welcoming two sons in 1911 and 1913.

But the family were separated, with Max seen as an enemy of the state by the British government and sent to prisoner of war camps in Lancaster and on the Isle of Man.

Life for Mabel and her sons Edward and Leonard became difficult, says Eddie.

“There was a lot of anti German feeling in Newport. They asked Mabel whether she would divorce Max because he was a German – she refused to do that.”

It was a feeling Eddie himself remembers, being in school in Newport at the end of the 1940s, where he recalled being called “Nazi” and “Gestapo”.

“They must have had it even worse” he said.

As soon as the war ended, Max wasn’t allowed to return to Newport but sent back to Germany, where his young family would soon join him.

“They had so much hassle – every stage of their life had been hard,” Eddie said.

That became apparent again in 1930s Hamburg. By then Mabel was the caretaker of “the English church”, a Church of England church originally established because of the trade links between the city and the UK.

Once war broke out, an Anglican church with a British caretaker attracted numerous visits from the Gestapo.

“She said they really were nasty and they were strutting about. They were always looking for the Union flag and the British Legion flag which Mabel had hidden under the altar,” Max said.

“They were bouncing about, asking where these things were – they were actually walking on top of them.”

As a key port city, Hamburg was targeted by sustained bombing raids, most notably during Operation Gomorrah in 1943.

In anticipation of this, Mabel hid and stored some of the beautiful paintings and engravings from the church, meaning they were saved from damage.

It seemed there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect the building during the raids, putting her life at risk.

“She did put fires out, she went around and smothered them and got water and put them out on numerous occasions. She did save the church,” said Eddie.

Mabel Wulff also let families, displaced by the bombings, shelter in the church – again drawing the attention of the Gestapo.

“She was a good person. You didn’t mess with Mabel – she was formidable,” Eddie recalls.

At the end of the war, Mabel brought out the union flag she had hidden under the altar and draped it over the church’s balcony as British Troops entered the city.

Mabel’s bravery was noted by Church of England officials in 1947, thanking her for the “great personal danger” she put herself in.

In 1956 she was awards a British Empire Medal for her actions.

Even though Mabel returned to Newport in her later years and lived with Eddie and his family when he was a child, much of her story was unknown until relatively recently.

“You would have to drag it out of her. I am very proud of her. Most of it passed me by most of my life. I am in my 80s now and I’m just realising how important my grandmother was.”

Three years ago, the DNA-testing firm 23andMe was a massive success, with a share price higher than Apple’s.

But, from those heady days of millions of people rushing to send it saliva samples in return for detailed reports about their ancestry, family connections and genetic make-up, it now finds itself fighting for its survival.

Its share price has plummeted and this week it narrowly avoided being delisted from the stock market.

And of course this is a company that holds the most sensitive data imaginable about its customers, raising troubling questions about what might happen to its huge – and extremely valuable – database of individual human DNA.

When contacted by the BBC, 23andMe was bullish about its prospects – and insistent it remained “committed to protecting customer data and consistently focused on maintaining the privacy of our customers.”

But how did what was once one of the most talked-about tech firms get to the position where it has to answer questions about its very survival?

Not so long ago, 23andMe was in the public eye for all the right reasons.

Its famous customers included Snoop Dogg, Oprah Winfrey, Eva Longoria and Warren Buffet – and millions of users were getting unexpected and life-changing results.

Some people discovered that their parents were not who they thought they were, or that they had a genetic pre-disposition to serious health conditions. Its share price rocketed to $321.

Fast forward three years and that price has slumped to just under $5 – and the company is worth 2% of what it once was.

What went wrong?

According to Professor Dimitris Andriosopoulos, founder of the Responsible Business Unit at Strathclyde University, the problem for 23andMe was twofold.

Firstly, it didn’t really have a continuing business model – once you’d paid for your DNA report, there was very little for you to return for.

Secondly, plans to use an anonymised version of the gathered DNA database for drug research took too long to become profitable, because the drug development process takes so many years.

That leads him to a blunt conclusion: “If I had a crystal ball, I’d say they will maybe last for a bit longer,” he told the BBC.

“But as it currently is, in my view, 23andMe is highly unlikely to survive.”

The problems at 23andMe are reflected in the turmoil in its leadership.

The board resigned in the summer and only the CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki – sister of the late YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergei Brin – remains from the original line-up.

Rumours have swirled that the firm will shortly either fold or be sold – claims that it rejects.

“23andMe’s co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki has publicly shared she intends to take the company private, and is not open to considering third party takeover proposals,” the company said in a statement.

But that hasn’t stopped the speculation, with rival firm Ancestry calling for US competition regulators to get involved if 23andMe does end up for sale.

Companies rising and falling is nothing new – especially in tech. But 23andMe is different.

“It’s worrying because of the sensitivity of the data,” says Carissa Veliz, author of Privacy is Power.

And that is not just for the individuals who have used the firm.

“If you gave your data to 23andMe, you also gave the genetic data of your parents, your siblings, your children, and even distant kin who did not consent to that,” she told the BBC.

David Stillwell, professor of computational social science at Cambridge Judge Business School, agrees the stakes are high.

“DNA data is different. If your bank account details are hacked, it will be disruptive but you can get a new bank account,” he explained.

“If your (non-identical) sibling has used it, they share 50% of your DNA, so their data can still be used to make health predictions about you.”

The company is adamant these kinds of concerns are without foundation.

“Any company that handles consumer information, including the type of data we collect, there are applicable data protections set out in law required to be followed as part of any future ownership change,” it said in its statement.

“The 23andMe terms of service and privacy statement would remain in place unless and until customers are presented with, and agree to, new terms and statements.”

There are also legal protections which apply in the UK under its version of the data protection law, GDPR, whether the firm goes bust or changes hands.

Even so, all companies can be hacked – as 23andMe was 12 months ago.

And Carissa Veliz remains uneasy – and says ultimately a much robust approach is needed if we want to keep our most personal information safe.

“The terms and conditions of these companies are typically incredibly inclusive; when you give out your personal data to them, you allow them to do pretty much anything they want with it,” she said.

“Until we ban the trade in personal data, we are not well protected enough.”

If you have ever written your name in the air with a sparkler on bonfire night then you have experimented with light painting.

Baffled by the “lines of light floating in mid-air”, Scottish photographer David Gilliver knew he had to try capturing them with his camera.

“I thought it was like sorcery, it’s like magic,” he says.

For 15 years, Mr Gilliver has been a pioneer in the technique of light painting.

Now, one of his pictures – which he has called Where Rainbows Sleep – has been shortlisted for this year’s British Photography Awards in its newest category – best low light photograph.

Picture this: Mr Gilliver is stood in a pitch black fishing boat hut, dressed head to toe in dark clothing, holding a “light sabre”.

No, he’s not re-enacting Star Wars – this is just how the process of making the photo begins.

To blend into the low-light background, Mr Gilliver must imitate one of film’s greatest villains.

He channels his inner Darth Vader but instead of “the force” he uses a long exposure photography technique, keeping the shutter open for anything from 30 seconds to 20 minutes.

His camera, which he controls remotely, is at the other end of the room securely fixed to a tripod, because even the slightest movement will cause a blurring of the image.

Mr Gilliver moves towards the camera, swooshing his light sabre before disappearing down the trap door.

The exposure length gives him enough time to fire a flash gun manually to illuminate the boat hut surroundings.

“Simple is often best”, Mr Gilliver says, when it comes to creating his waves of light.

But he also loves to experiment.

In another photo, he uses butterfly keyrings with battery-operated lights to create an image of multiple floating butterflies.

He also created an eerie orb sitting within the ancient Callanish stones on the Isle of Lewis, by swinging a light on the end of a string like a lasso during the long exposure time.

The 45-year-old Glasgow School of Art graduate has always had an artistic eye.

However, making a living as an artist initially proved difficult and he ended up working in finance in the Channel Islands for 14 years.

He became “utterly obsessed” with light painting to capture the “magical” landscapes of Guernsey at night.

When he moved back to Scotland in 2015, he says the “dramatic” and “iconic” backdrops of the country kept his creativity alive.

In 2018, he abandoned his 9 to 5 life to finally take up photography full time.

When he started posting his light paintings online, he says most people would ask him how he did it.

Photographers would ask to come with him while he created his images, he says.

Mr Gilliver, who lives in Gartcosh, North Lanarkshire, now teaches his own workshops across the UK.

He says most people think the technique is hard to understand but actually it is “very accessible” once people start to experiment and play with light.

He says teaching “found” him and he enjoys people’s natural curiosity.

“Watching their eyes light up as they begin to learn what the creative possibilities are of this amazing art form is one of the many joys of teaching,” he says.

Along with light painting, Mr Gilliver has a large portfolio of macro photography.

The technique is a form of extreme close-up photography and can be used to capture small objects, flowers and insects.

Mr Gilliver plays around with imaginative scenarios using small figurines.

His photos range from iconic film scenes to handling more serious topics.

He is no stranger to the British Photography Awards, having already won the best macro photograph category in 2022 by turning a face mask into a swimming pool for a Covid pandemic image.

“Delivering a serious message without trivialising what you’re talking about is the key,” he says.

This year, his recreation of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s famous “I’m flying” scene from the blockbuster movie Titanic has been shortlisted in the macro category.

It depicts a miniature Jack and Rose recreating the famous scene on top of an electric iron.

The photographer says it would be unfair to choose which of photographic forms he prefers.

He says macro photography exercises his imagination but light painting feels more like an experience.

The “experiential” side of light painting is what makes the “incredible process reign supreme”, he says.

Mr Gilliver has been shortlisted for three categories in this year’s British Photography Awards, for best macro, low light and commercial photography.

The awards will take place on 4 November.

Some artists become legends in their lifetime yet remain a mystery years after their death.

Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, born 100 years ago on 2 November 1924, was one such master.

Considered one of South Asia’s greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was part of a rebellious generation of artists who laid the foundation for a new era of Indian art in the mid-20th Century.

He was deeply inspired by the techniques used by Western painters but his work remained rooted in Asian philosophy, infusing light and texture in ways that, admirers say, evokes a profound sense of calmness.

His paintings were meant to be “meditations on the light and universe”, says Yamini Mehta, who worked as the international head of South Asian Art at Sotheby’s.

“The play of light and shadows and texture makes these paintings dynamic.”

In a career that spanned decades, Gaitonde never pursued fame or fortune. But his works continue to grab attention at auctions, years after his death in 2001.

In 2022, an untitled oil painting by him fetched 420m rupees (nearly $5m; £3.9m), setting a new record for Indian art at that time. The bluish shades of the work reminded viewers of large expanses of the sea or sky.

Gaitonde lived as a recluse for most of his life. He was deeply impacted by Japanese Zen philosophy and this meditative mindset was often reflected in his paintings.

“Everything starts from silence. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences… Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create,” he told journalist Pritish Nandy in a rare interview in 1991.

Originally from the western state of Goa, Gaitonde’s family lived in Mumbai city (formerly Bombay) in a small, three-room dwelling in a chawl – an affordable tenement complex for the city’s working class.

A born artist, he joined Mumbai’s famous JJ School of Arts for training in 1946. Despite his father’s disapproval – art was not seen as a viable career in India at the time – Gaitonde funded his own studies and earned a diploma in 1948.

For some time, he was part of a group of influential Indian artists called the Progressive Artists Group, which was set up to encourage new forms of art. Formed in 1947 in Mumbai, the group counted leading artists such as Francis Souza, SH Raza, MF Husain and Bhanu Athaiya – the first Indian to win an Oscar – as its members.

Gaitonde also worked at the city’s Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, another hub frequented by legends such as sitarist Ravi Shankar and theatre artist Ebrahim Alkazi.

“This was an interesting time as Mumbai was a hotbed of creativity,” says artist and writer Satish Naik, who has published an anthology on Gaitonde in the Marathi language.

Indian art at that time was largely dominated by realism, found in the murals of the Ajanta caves and in Mughal art or miniature paintings.

“Gaitonde began with realistic works but soon sought a different path. He was one of the first ones to reject the form and adopt the formless,” Naik said.

“In that sense, he was a rebel. He wanted to paint as it pleased him, not as someone dictated to him.”

Gaitonde’s deep interest in spirituality helped him progress towards his craft.

“My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature,” he once wrote in a 1963 questionnaire for New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In 1963, Morris Graves, a famous abstract painter from the US, saw Gaitonde’s work during a trip to India, and was heavily impressed.

He immediately sent a letter to Dan and Marian Johnson of the Willard Gallery in New York, describing him as “one of the finest” painters he had ever seen.

“He’s as fine – or superb – as Mark Rothko at his best and will be a world-known painter one of these days,” Graves wrote.

“He is an abstract painter with something unspeakably beautiful and clean. They are the most beautiful landscapes of the mind plus light.”

In 1964, Gaitonde moved to New York after getting the Rockefeller Fellowship. The next two years were a formative phase in his career as the young artist got a chance to meet American modern artists and see their works, which further developed his style.

In 1971, Gaitonde received the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, for his outstanding contribution to art.

But despite his growing fame, he became increasingly withdrawn in the coming years.

His disciple and renowned artist Laxman Shreshtha recounts in Naik’s book how MF Husain would often try to visit Gaitonde at his Delhi residence.

“If Gaitonde didn’t want to meet anyone, he would not open the door, not even for Husain who would sketch something on the door and go. That was Husain’s way of saying ‘I had dropped by’.”

Even his work underwent a shift. Usually, the artist would paint anywhere between six and seven canvases in a year. But after a spinal injury in 1984, the numbers went down considerably.

“I still continue to paint; I make paintings in my head. I now have limited energy which I need to conserve and cannot waste putting paint to canvas,” he once told art gallerist Dadiba Pundole.

As Gaitonde’s stature as an artist grew, his paintings became fewer and rarer, all of which added to the charm and mystery surrounding his work.

It is perhaps also one of the reasons why his paintings command such high prices even today.

When Gaitonde died in 2001 at the age of 77, his death went widely unreported as the artist lived his last years in obscurity.

But his thought-provoking canvases continued to make waves around the world.

Cara Manes, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, once said that Gaitonde’s works were an embodiment of what silence might look like. “And yet there’s a certain shimmering effect that emerges out of that silence which is then pitted against these very solid marks, assertive application of colours.”

For the artist, though, art remained a deeply personal form of self-expression.

He often said: “I let the colours flow and watch. That is my painting.”

The world’s largest crocodile in captivity has died at a wildlife sanctuary in Australia.

Cassius was nearly 5.5m (18ft) long, weighed nearly one tonne and was thought to be at least 110 years old – although no one knew for sure.

The huge saltwater crocodile lived in the sanctuary on an island off the coast of Queensland since being caught in Australia’s Northern Territory in the 1980s.

In 2011, he was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest crocodile in captivity.

Marineland Melanesia Crocodile Habitat said in a post on social media that Cassius was “our beloved mate” and “a cherished member of our family”.

Cassius had previously lived in the wild, where he was known for catching and eating cattle, and attacking boat propellers before being captured.

The habitat’s founder, George Craig, bought Cassius in 1987, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Cassius “brought joy and companionship to his best mate George for over 37 years”, the habitat said.

The habitat added that Mr Craig relocated to Cairns last month and Cassius’s health declined soon after.

“He was very old and believed to be living beyond the years of a wild croc,” the post said.

The habitat also thanked “everyone who visited Cassius throughout his life and offered kindness”, adding that the site may be operating “in a limited capacity over the next few days”.

Cyclists using a mobile phone while riding in Japan could face up to six months jail under strict new rules introduced Friday.

Those who breach the revised road traffic law can be punished with a maximum sentence of six months in prison, or a fine of 100,000 yen ($655; £508).

The number of accidents involving cyclists started climbing in 2021, as more people opted to cycle instead of using public transport during the pandemic, according to local media. Authorities are now racing to regulate riders.

Besides cracking down on phone usage, the new rules also target cyclists riding under the influence of alcohol, with a penalty of up to three years in prison or a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,278; £2,541).

Hours after the new laws came into effect, Osaka authorities confirmed on Friday that they had already recorded five violations, including two men who were caught riding bicycles while drunk. One of the men had collided with another cyclist, but no injuries were reported.

Under the new rules, cyclists who cause accidents can be fined up to 300,000 yen ($2,000; £1,500 ) or jailed up to a year.

The total number of traffic accidents across Japan may be declining, but bicycle accidents are on the rise. More than 72,000 bicycle accidents were recorded in Japan in 2023, accounting for over 20% of all traffic accidents in the country, according to local media.

In the first half of 2024 there was one fatality and 17 serious injuries from accidents involving cyclists using their phones — the highest number since the police started recording such statistics in 2007.

Between 2018 and 2022 there were 454 accidents caused by cyclists using phones, according to police — a 50% increase from the previous five-year period.

The latest rules come amid a series of safety regulations aimed at protecting the safety of riders and pedestrians.

Last year, authorities made it compulsory for cyclists to wear helmets. In May, Japan’s parliament passed a bill allowing police to fine cyclists for traffic violations.

Unlike in many other countries, cycling on pavements is legal in Japan, and is a common practice.

A man with cerebral palsy who had given up hope of getting work has landed a modelling job after featuring in a BBC documentary.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Elliot Caswell said he had been “nervous and excited” to get the opportunity.

BBC video journalist Rachel Price spent five years filming Elliot Caswell’s life after meeting him on a plane in 2019.

In the BBC iPlayer documentary A Life of My Own, Elliot, now 25, opened up about his struggles to find work.

However, a senior art director at high street retailer Primark happened to watch BBC Breakfast on the day a segment about Elliot, as well as the documentary, aired.

The art director thought that Elliot would be a perfect model for a new clothing range and got in touch with him on social media through a modelling agency.

On Wednesday, Elliot travelled to Manchester for the two-day shoot.

Video journalist Rachel joined him on set.

“Having watched Elliot for five years from being a shy young lad who looked at his mum to help him talk, it was then amazing to watch him light up the room with his smile and humour,” she said.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Elliot said: “Inclusivity is very important when it comes to the world of work.”

Chris Caswell, Elliot’s mum, said that the skills required for modelling were “perfect” for him because he could use his personality.

She told BBC Breakfast that Elliot’s “whole world has changed” since the documentary was released.

“Elliot has some limitations, but he has so much to give. He’s very person-centred – he likes to do customer service things,” she said.

“He has some fantastic skills, but just needs a little bit of support to get a job.”

Elliot told the programme that while he was open to more modelling work in the future, he was looking for customer-facing work – and his dream job would be something connected to Newcastle United, the football team he supports.

Photographer Esmé Moore, who also has cerebral palsy, said it was surprising that it was Elliot’s first shoot.

“When someone has a lot of character, it’s instantly easy to photograph because that can come across on set,” she said.

Charlie Magadah-Williams, head of diversity and inclusion at Primark, said the company was looking for a variety of models for the shoot, and Elliot “really fit the bill for somebody that we were looking to work with”.

“It’s been fantastic to watch Elliot doing what he’s doing and learning his new job,” she said.

She added that as a business, Primark was “really committed to becoming more accessible”, both for their employees and customers.

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?
• Path to 270: The states Harris and Trump need to win

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

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but 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?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Bitcoin underpins a two trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry, is now traded by the world’s biggest investment houses and is even an official currency in one country.

But despite its meteoric rise, a deep mystery remains at its heart: what is the true identity of its founder, the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto?

Many have tried to answer that question, but so far all have failed. In October, a high-profile HBO documentary suggested that a Canadian bitcoin expert called Peter Todd was he. The only problem: he said he was not, and the crypto world largely shrugged it off.

So, inevitably, ears pricked up across our newsroom – and the crypto world at large – when on Thursday a call went out that the mysterious creator of Bitcoin was to, finally, unmask himself at a press conference.

There is deep interest in who Satoshi Nakamoto is in part because they are considered a revolutionary programmer who helped spawn the crypto industry.

Their voice, opinions and world view would be extremely influential on an industry with such a devoted and zealous fanbase.

But the fascination also stems from the fact that, as the holder of more than one million bitcoins, Satoshi would be a multi-billionaire, not least because the price of the coins is currently close to an all-time high.

Given that vast wealth, it was somewhat unusual to be asked by the organiser of Thursday’s press conference to pay for my seat at his grand unveiling.

A front row seat would be £100. It was another £50 if I wanted unlimited questions. Organiser Charles Anderson even encouraged me to spend £500 in exchange for the privilege of interviewing “Satoshi” on stage.

I declined.

Mr Anderson said I could come along any way but cautioned there might not be a seat for me, such was the level of anticipation.

As it happened, seating wasn’t a problem.

Only around a dozen reporters turned up to the prestigious Frontline Club – which interrupted proceedings at one point to stress it only provided a room, and not any official endorsement.

Very soon it became clear that all attendees were extremely sceptical.

After some digging it emerged both the organiser and the purported Satoshi were currently embroiled in a complex legal fight over fraud allegations – linked to claims to be Satoshi.

It was an unpromising start, and things only got worse from there.

Mr Anderson invited “Satoshi” to come on stage.

A man called Stephen Mollah, who had been sat silently on the side the whole time walked up and resolutely declared: “I am here to make a statement that yes: I am Satoshi Nakamoto and I created the Bitcoin on Blockchain technology.”

Over the following hour, reporters went from amused to irritated as he failed to provide any of the promised evidence for his claims.

Mr Mollah promised that he would make the Hail-Mary move of unlocking and interacting with the first-ever Bitcoins to be created – something that only Satoshi could do.

But he didn’t.

I departed, along with other bemused reporters, taking with us any lingering doubts that this would prove to be yet another dead-end in the quest to unmask Satoshi.

The list of those identified – unsuccessfully – as Satoshi Nakamoto is long.

In 2014, a high-profile article in Newsweek said it was Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American man living in California.

But he denied it and the claim has largely been debunked.

A year later, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright was outed as Satoshi by reporters.

He denied it, before saying it was true – but then failed over many years to produce any evidence.

In the spring the High Court in London ruled that Mr Wright was not the inventor.

Tech billionaire and crypto enthusiast Elon Musk also denied he was behind the cryptocurrency after a former employee at one of his firms, SpaceX, suggested it.

Which brings us to the question: does it really matter?

The crypto market’s current valuation means it is worth more than Google. And it seems inconceivable that the tech giant would play such a big role in our lives without people knowing who founded it, and owned a sizeable chunk of the firm.

Perhaps there’s good reason for the real Satoshi to keep schtum though. That bitcoin stash would make them worth an estimated $69bn and their life and character would no doubt be heavily scrutinised if they were found.

Peter Todd, who was named by the HBO documentary as being Satoshi, said the unwelcome attention he’s received has made him fearful for his safety.

Many in the crypto world enjoy the fact that the mystery remains unsolved.

“No-one knows who Satoshi is and that’s a good thing,” Adam Back, one of its core developers (and another potential Satoshi candidate) posted on X recently.

Natalie Brunell, a Bitcoin podcaster, thinks Satoshi’s anonymity is not only deliberate but essential.

“By concealing his true identity, Satoshi ensured that Bitcoin wouldn’t have a leader or central figure, whose personal agenda could influence the protocol,” she told me.

“This allows people to trust Bitcoin as a system, rather than placing their trust in an individual or company.”

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University – who lectures on the history of Bitcoin – is less sure.

In her view, the circus around who Satoshi Nakamoto is distracts from people looking into – and getting to grips with – the more serious question of how cryptocurrencies might upend the way the economy works.

As I left the Frontline Club it was hard to compute the bizarre press event, beyond one obvious fact.

For now – and perhaps forever – the search for Satoshi continues.

Kemi Badenoch has promised to win back voters who have deserted the Conservatives after securing an historic victory in the party’s leadership contest.

The 44-year-old becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

She defeated fellow right-winger Robert Jenrick, 42, by 12,418 votes after a marathon contest to replace Rishi Sunak, who led the party to the biggest defeat in its history in July’s general election.

In her victory speech, Badenoch promised to “renew” the party and told cheering supporters it was “time to get down to business”.

Badenoch, who is the sixth Tory leader in less than nine years, now faces the task of uniting a fractured party and leading opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The Saffron Walden MP said the Conservatives need to “bring back” voters who abandoned them, adding: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.

“But to be heard, we have to be honest.”

The party must admit it “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the last 14 years in government, she said.

Badenoch chose not to set out detailed policies during her campaign, focusing instead on returning the Conservatives to “first principles”.

All eyes will now turn to who she appoints to her top team as she sets out the future shape of the party over the coming days.

She praised Jenrick despite a sometimes bruising campaign and hinted he may be offered a senior job, telling him “you have a key role in our party for years to come”.

Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 after a career in banking and IT, has said she would offer jobs to all of the Tories who launched leadership bids in July.

But shadow home secretary James Cleverly, who came third in the race, has ruled himself out.

The BBC understands, Badenoch plans to reveal her shadow cabinet by Wednesday, ahead of the critical Budget vote and her debut clash with Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Jenrick did not speak to reporters after the result was announced, but on social media called on his supporters “to unite behind Kemi and take the fight to this disastrous Labour government”.

He also thanked “everyone who supported my vision for a Conservative Party rooted in the common ground of British politics”.

Badenoch got 53,806 votes to Jenrick’s 41,388 – making it the closest Tory leadership race of recent times.

Bob Blackman, who oversaw the election as chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, revealed the party membership had shrunk to 132,000 – the lowest level on record and down 40,000 members since the last vote by members in 2022.

Badenoch was congratulated by several of her predecessors, including Sunak, who posted on social media: “I know that she will be a superb leader of our great party.”

Ex-prime minister Boris Johnson lauded Badenoch’s “courage and clarity” and said she “brings a much needed zing and zap to the Conservative Party”.

In a social media post, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “the first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”.

He added: “I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”

But Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves said the Conservative leadership campaign showed the party had “learned nothing since the British people resoundingly rejected them in July”.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey also congratulated Badenoch, saying “the first Black leader of a major UK political party is a historic moment for the country”.

But Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice called Badenoch “another in a long line of Tory politicians who say one thing and do another”.

In a statement, he said: “Kemi Badenoch was front and centre of a government that failed Britain.”

Over the 14-week campaign, the debate was dominated by immigration, the economy and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with voters.

The party was reduced to a record low of 121 seats in the House of Commons at the general election, with under 24% of the vote.

It lost voters in all directions to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, with thousands of Conservative voters also choosing to stay at home on 4 July poll.

Badenoch’s appointment as Conservative leader comes several days after Labour outlined its first Budget in 14 years.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph ahead of the Budget’s unveiling on Wednesday, Badenoch was critical of the chancellor’s plans, saying: “Rachel Reeves is conjuring up billions of pounds out of thin air to invest infrastructure.”

In response to the new Tory leader, Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the Observer: “If Kemi Badenoch opposes this Budget, then she has to tell the country if she opposes investment to cut waiting lists, investment to recruit teachers and investment to build critical infrastructure. Labour has made its choices, now the Tories need to make theirs.”

Badenoch told the Sunday Telegraph after her election on Saturday: “Labour are going to fail because they are repeating many of our mistakes and are doubling down on this broken system.”

When Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, it seemed to be the death knell of his political career.

His first term in office ended in chaos and condemnation – even from members of his own party.

If he wins the election on Tuesday, it will be only the second time anyone has ever returned to the White House after previously losing a presidential re-election bid.

“He gets knocked down and gets up twice as focused,” said Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser for the former president since Trump launched his 2016 campaign. “I don’t think anybody should be surprised about this comeback.”

Such an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the 78-year-old former president would also vault him back into the White House as a man who seems politically bulletproof, with a detailed plan of action and ranks of loyalists behind him.

• Harris v Trump poll tracker
• What is the electoral college?
• How the election could change the world

Four years ago, Trump appeared a beaten man. His Democratic opponent, Biden, had defeated him by a comfortable electoral margin in the 2020 presidential contest.

Courts had batted away his attempts to contest those results. His last-ditch rally in which he urged his supporters to march on the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results culminated in the crowd launching a violent attack that sent those inside scrambling for safety. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were among a spate of Trump administration officials who quit in protest. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos wrote in her letter of resignation to the president.

Even South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies, broke with the president.

“All I can say is count me out,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “Enough is enough.”

The movement away from Trump extended into the corporate world, as dozens of large companies – including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens – announced they were suspending support for Republicans who had challenged the results of the 2020 election.

On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump broke with 152 years of tradition by declining to attend the ceremony, instead flying back to his private club in Mar-a-Lago earlier that morning, accompanied by a handful of his closest aides and family.

His mood was sullen, according to Meridith McGraw, author of Trump in Exile, an account of the former president’s time after leaving the White House.

“He was angry, frustrated, unsure of how to spend his days and without a plan for his political future,” she said.

The media coverage and political chatter that month reflected this uncertainty over his future. After a clear electoral defeat followed by the chaotic scenes at the Capitol, some were even more definitive, suggesting there was no way back for Trump.

“And just like that, the bold, combustible and sometimes brilliant political career of Donald J. Trump comes to an end,” one opinion piece in The Hill read.

The subheading of a January 2021 opinion piece in The New York Times declared: “The terrible experiment is over.” The headline was even more direct: “President Donald J. Trump: The End.”

But before Trump left for Florida on inauguration day, he hinted at what was to come.

“We love you,” he said in remarks to supporters on a Maryland Air Force base tarmac. “We will be back in some form.”

A week later, it became clear that Trump wouldn’t have to wait long to assert his continued political influence. The party came back to him.

California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, paid the former president a visit at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photo next to a beaming Trump.

In the immediate aftermath of the 6 January attack, McCarthy had said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob violence and recommended that Congress formally censure him for his conduct. Now he was pledging to work with the former president to win a congressional majority in the next year’s mid-term elections.

Even as the Democrat-controlled US Senate was preparing to hold Trump’s impeachment trial, McCarthy’s Palm Beach pilgrimage illustrated that one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress still viewed the former president as a king-maker.

“McCarthy’s visit really opened the door for Trump,” said McGraw.

“It was a permission slip to Republicans who had criticised Trump to forgive him and move on.”

Trump’s Senate trial would end in acquittal, as most Republicans – including some outspoken critics like minority leader Mitch McConnell – voted against a conviction that could have led to the former president being banned from future elective office.

McConnell had said that Trump’s conduct on 6 January was “a disgraceful dereliction of duty”, but he chose not to take the one step that could have conclusively ended the former president’s political career – perhaps out of fear of effectively ending his own.

Republicans also worried that the former president might start a third party that would siphon off support from Republicans – concerns that Trump’s closest aides did little to dispel.

“It’s clearly up to Republicans if this is something that becomes more serious,” Jason Miller, a long-time Trump communications aide, said in an interview with Fox News.

The former president spent the next month mostly within the comfortable confines of his Mar-a-Lago club, venturing out only for a round of golf or a private dinner.

By the end of February, as the furore around 6 January ebbed, he was ready to hold his first public event.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference – the right-wing confab typically held near Washington, DC but relocated to Orlando, Florida, due to Covid restrictions – the former president demonstrated that he still commanded the loyalty of the Republican base.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters in a sprawling hotel conference centre, Trump basked in the glow of their adoration.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together,” he said, “is far from over.”

He also hinted, coyly, that he might beat the Democrats “for a third time” in 2024.

An official straw poll of conference attendees only underlined what by then was obvious. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said Trump should run again. Fifty-five percent said they would vote for him in a contested primary – more then double the second-place candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Trump and his team were pretty nervous about that speech,” McGraw said. “Psychologically it was a really important moment for Trump and his allies when he got such a positive reception.”

After a brief hiatus, Trump reactivated his steady stream of fundraising emails to supporters and resumed holding his carnival-like outdoor rallies.

“Do you miss me?” Trump asked at a June gathering in Ohio. The crowd responded with cheers.

“They miss me,” he concluded.

If 2021 hinted at Trump’s continuing influence within the Republican Party, the 2022 midterm elections confirmed it.

By then, American military forces had haphazardly withdrawn from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of that nation’s US-backed government. Gas prices and inflation were approaching highs not seen in decades. US economic growth, which had been bouncing back from pandemic disruptions, sputtered.

Biden’s approval ratings tumbled into negative territory. The political environment that had seemed so hostile to Trump at the beginning of 2021 was starting to shift.

“Joe Biden failed to address the primary concerns of the voters,” said Lanza. “That gave Donald Trump an opening.”

Mar-a-Lago became an obligatory stopping point for any conservative candidate seeking to become their party’s nominee. The former president’s endorsement was the most coveted prize – a key to unlocking fundraising dollars and grassroots conservative support.

Four of the six Republican House members who voted for Trump’s second impeachment and were running for re-election were defeated by Trump-backed candidates in party primaries. Meanwhile, Senate candidates like JD Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia pulled ahead in crowded primary fields with the help of Trump’s support.

”His endorsement all but guarantees you a primary win,” said Brian Seitchik, who worked as Arizona state director for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and as the western regional director in 2020.

But if the first half of 2022 was unambiguous good news for the former president, November’s elections painted a much different picture.

Of four prominent Trump-endorsed Senate candidates, only one – author turned politician Vance – defeated his Democratic opponent. While Republicans narrowly regained control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy to the speakership, the party largely underperformed and Democrats retained control of the Senate.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis, the distant second-place finisher in that 2021 presidential straw poll, won a surprising double-digit re-election victory, fuelling speculation that he might be the real frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Trump fumed – blaming the Republican shortcomings on the party’s support of unpopular abortion restrictions and insufficient fealty to his own brand of conservative populism. Only a few weeks after the midterms, when pundits were still wondering if the former president’s political moment had passed, Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

The start of his presidential bid seemed shockingly ill-timed. Just a few weeks after the Republican midterm misfire, it put the former president in the headlines when many were still wondering if he had lost his political instincts.

His formal announcement, held within the cozy confines of Mar-a-Lago, made his campaign feel insular and ill-suited to the current political realities.

He would subsequently make news for all the wrong reasons – dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, and posting on social media that rules in the US Constitution should be “terminated”, allowing him to be re-instated as president.

“Thanksgiving through New Year’s was a pretty dark time on the Trump campaign,” McGraw said. Republicans were having their doubts.

“He’s announced that he’s running for president, but are we sure that he’s going to be able to pull this off?” she said, describing the mood at the time. “Does he have the discipline to actually do this?”

Behind the scenes, however, Trump was assembling a campaign staff that – unlike 2016 and even 2020 – was headed by seasoned political operatives. Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles may not be household names, but the former was a bare-knuckled veteran of Republican politics with decades of experience and the latter had helped turn Florida into a conservative stronghold.

The two worked with Trump to formulate a presidential primary strategy.

While DeSantis was bogged down with official duties in Florida, Trump moved early to define the contours of the campaign, Lanza said. And while others deferred to the Florida governor, Trump hit him head-on, demeaning and diminishing him.

“Everybody thought Ron DeSantis was at this powerful apex of politics that could not be torn down,” Lanza said. “Donald Trump tore the guy down.”

The Trump side also received a boost from the unlikeliest of sources – prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

Starting with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive national security documents in August 2022 and culminating in a series of indictments in 2023, the former president’s criminal jeopardy became a central issue in the rapidly unfolding Republican presidential nomination fight. Trump’s mugshot, glaring in a photograph taken at an Atlanta jail in August, was soon plastered on campaign t-shirts and yard signs.

For many on the left, justice was finally being served. But among the kind of conservative voters who choose their party’s nominee in early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it became a moment to rally around their party’s embattled leader.

Conservative pollster Sarah Longwell interviewed a panel of Iowa Republicans for PBS in June 2023, a week after the Justice Department indicted Trump on charges related to mishandling sensitive government documents.

“I think he’s being set up,” said one.

“This is election interference like we have never seen before,” said another.

The indictments, according to Lanza, created a divide within the Republican Party between those who saw the indictment as an abuse of power and those who didn’t.

“Initially, Ron DeSantis took the ‘didn’t’ approach,” he said. “And he became roadkill.”

DeSantis had at first called the March 2023 New York indictment, which he noted was about Trump’s hush-money payments to an adult film star, a “manufactured circus” that wasn’t a “real issue”.

By autumn 2023, Trump had opened a massive lead in most Republican primary polls – a margin he would never relinquish. He skipped the Republican primary debates, depriving them of political oxygen. He focused instead on cementing support among rank-and-file voters through his trademark rallies and grass-roots organising.

Despite raising nearly $200 million in campaign funds, DeSantis was out of the race within days of finishing a distant second in the January 2024 Iowa Caucuses. After Trump easily beat former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, the Republican primary fight was effectively over. For the third straight presidential election, the party’s nomination was his.

The former president’s courtroom drama may have been a boon to his political fortunes, but it also came with very real legal jeopardy. In May 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts involving hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Every judicial setback, however, seemed to be followed by a bigger victory. His sentencing was delayed until after the election, the document indictments in Florida were discarded, and the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have sweeping immunity for official acts.

Outside of court chambers, Trump’s campaign was rolling from his primary victory into the general election faceoff. A halting, confused performance by Biden in his late June debate with the former president left Democrats in a full-blown panic.

Trump’s approval ratings and head-to-head polling numbers were ticking ever higher. And after his brush with an assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in mid-July, he arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee a day later as a conquering hero to his supporters.

“What we saw at the convention was how unified the Republican Party appeared, really for the first time in a long time,” said McGraw. “They were feeling incredibly confident.”

Tesla chief Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, publicly endorsed the former president and began funding a massive organising operation in key battleground states. Republican pride – pride in Trump – was running high.

At that moment, it seemed like Trump’s return to the pinnacles of American power from the depths of 6 January 2021 was all but complete. A campaign that had first vanquished DeSantis and his other Republican rivals was now set to deliver a knock-out punch to Biden and the Democrats.

But three days after Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

In a matter of a few weeks, Harris consolidated her party’s support, injected new enthusiasm into Democrats and even pulled ahead of the former president in some head-to head polls.

Trump’s efforts were not helped by a scattershot debate performance against Harris in September and an apparent difficulty reorienting his campaign to take on his new opponent, whose strengths – and weaknesses – are decidedly different from Biden’s.

“Trump really wasn’t tested until Harris got into the race,” said Seitchik. “Everything up to that point almost felt like an extended preseason for the campaign.”

With election day looming, the season is almost over and the champion is still in doubt.

The race is where it seemed to be headed at the beginning of the year – a photo finish where either candidate could end up on top. And for a campaign that had focused on Biden’s age and frailty, it is now Trump whose stamina and coherence are under the microscope.

“Trump can have an incredibly professional, streamlined operation around him, but at the end of the day, he’s still going to do what he wants and do things the way he wants,” said McGraw.

That includes a continued public insistence that he did not lose the 2020 election, extended rhetorical diversions during rally speeches and last-minute cancellations of media appearances that some have attributed to “exhaustion”.

Trump has been in the whirlwind of presidential politics for nine years now – and in the public spotlight for more than four decades. He has seemed indefatigable. But with another four years in the White House looming on the horizon, are the cracks beginning to show?

While Trump’s victory is far from guaranteed, simply being this close to the prize once again is itself a remarkable achievement. And if his political comeback culminates in another presidential term, he will return to the White House having overcome obstacles – legal, political, many of his own creation – that few presidents have confronted.

With control of the reins of power, and without the burden of having to face the judgement of voters again, Trump will be able to make those legal dangers disappear. And unlike his first term, he will be entering the White House with a team of advisers and potential administration staff who are fully loyal to him.

His intent to dramatically reorganise the federal bureaucracy could replace career civil service employees with political acolytes. And even if he doesn’t win full control of Congress, he could use existing presidential powers to impose new restrictions on immigration, enact his plans for mass deportation of undocumented residents and impose tariffs that are designed to protect US jobs but could significantly increase the cost of imported goods.

Democrats warn that this would be a presidency without “guardrails” to limit what they say are Trump’s more dangerous proposals. Republicans, in a party that has been remade in Trump’s image, hope that he will be able to more effectively enact his agenda without the internal resistance he faced in his first term.

“Donald Trump has converted the party from fiscal issues and social issues being the dominant force to a Trump populism,” Seitchik said. “This is all a fundamental reorientation of the Republican Party.”

And if he wins next week, Trump could fundamentally reshape American government for generations to come.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When is the US election and how does it work?
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

The Duke of York has been cut off financially by his brother King Charles, according to an updated royal biography.

Prince Andrew had been under financial pressure over the cost of running his 30-room home at Royal Lodge in Windsor.

But it’s now claimed by royal author Robert Hardman that the King has decided to stop paying for security at Prince Andrew’s house or to provide a personal allowance. Together, these costs are believed to amount to several million pounds a year.

Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on the book’s claims, which are being serialised by the Daily Mail.

The claim over Prince Andrew’s income being stopped comes in an updated version of a biography of King Charles, written by the royal author Robert Hardman.

It says that the Keeper of the Privy Purse, who looks after the royal finances, has been instructed to end the personal allowance and security payments for Prince Andrew.

It had already been understood by the BBC that the King was not willing to subsidise Prince Andrew indefinitely – but this suggests a final decision has now been taken to cut him off.

The prince, who no longer has an official spokesperson, has so far not responded to the claims over losing this funding.

But it would mean that he would have to find his own way of paying the upkeep and security of Royal Lodge, a 19th Century listed building in Windsor. It is believed that there would be a high cost to maintain the large property, which is leased from the Crown Estate.

This financial pressure on the prince comes after the release of two separate films this year – made by Netflix and Amazon – about his interview on BBC Newsnight in 2019, in which he was questioned about his connections to the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prince stepped down as a working royal and later lost his military titles and royal patronages and withdrew to a private life at Royal Lodge. A commentator described him as being “de-royalled”.

Although it is the King now said to be taking action on funding, sources have previously suggested this has been part of a longer-term question, pre-dating the King’s reign, about settling 64-year-old Prince Andrew’s future accommodation and finances.

Rather than the extensive home at Royal Lodge, previously occupied by the Queen Mother, it has been suggested that the prince could move to the smaller Frogmore Cottage, once occupied by Prince Harry and Meghan, as it would have a much lower maintenance and security cost.

Frogmore Cottage can be used at the discretion of the monarch, while Royal Lodge remains a leased property, owned independently by the Crown Estate, which could be used for other commercial purposes.

But the prince has his own personal lease on Royal Lodge, which lasts until 2078, and if he can pay his own way he can remain at the house, which he has shared with his ex-wife Sarah.

The prince paid considerable amounts up-front when he took on the lease for Royal Lodge in 2003, which has meant lower costs for him in the longer term, making it less of an incentive to leave now.

The house had been in need of renovation and he took on the initial repairs of more than £7.5m. There was also a one-off payment of £2.5m as a way of buying out the annual rental.

He also made a one-off payment of £1m to his landlords, the Crown Estate, according to documents from the National Audit Office.

But there was a clause that if he left the house within 25 years of the start of the lease he would receive compensation for his original payment on repairs – with that amount shrinking each year.

With less than four years left on that arrangement, he would not stand to recoup much of the £7.5m he spent on renovating the house – another incentive not to give up his lease.

But there are still high costs of security and maintenance – and Robert Hardman’s books says the King will no longer be picking up the bills.

He quotes a source as saying: “The duke is no longer a financial burden on the King.”

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Brat summer might be over as we grapple with how dark it is at 16:00, but the concept of being a brat – “pack of cigs and a Bic lighter”, according to the singer Charli XCX – lives on.

There’s Rosalia gifting Charli XCX a bouquet of cigarettes on her birthday, Addison Rae smoking not one but two at the same time in her music video Aquamarine, and the actor Paul Mescal saying he refused to give up smoking when getting into shape for Gladiator II.

The risks of smoking are well known – it’s still the leading cause of preventable death in the UK and is responsible for nearly 78,000 deaths annually.

GP and cancer specialist Dr Misra-Sharp says even in low quantities, smoking increases the risk of serious diseases like lung cancer, which has a 90% five-year mortality rate.

Despite this, singers, actors and influencers seem to be bringing smoking back into vogue – quite literally, with cigarettes making a return as on the New York Fashion Week runways earlier this year as accessories.

So, why are cigarettes being glamourised again?

Lucy, a 20-year-old university student, says she took up smoking recently because “it’s just what everyone does”.

Almost all her friends also smoke and she says it’s more than just a habit, it’s an aesthetic.

“I definitely think everyone trying to be brat has influenced people to start smoking because Charli herself says you have to have a pack of cigs if you really want to embody the vibe.”

Chari XCX isn’t the only celebrity to inadvertently become a so-called cigfluencer.

There are now Instagram accounts which share snaps of hundreds of celebs like Dua Lipa, Chappell Roan and Anya Taylor-Joy smoking.

The stereotypical image of a smoker may once have been an old, overweight man with rotting teeth, but that’s now been replaced by the young and glamorous celebrities who pout at the camera mysteriously with a Marlboro Gold in hand.

The aesthetic of these smoking celebs is reminiscent of the noughties when the likes of Kate Moss and Jennifer Anniston would step out in low-rise jeans and baby tees with a cigarette perfectly positioned on their lips.

Journalist Olivia Petter says the cigarette has become a symbol that represents our nostalgia towards a bygone era of carefreeness, frivolity and hedonism and it’s making an epic comeback in pop culture.

Emerald Fennell’s seductive and scandalous thriller Saltburn perfectly encapsulated the mid-noughties and reminded us of a time where it was legal to smoke indoors.

Not only were there promo pics for the film of Jacob Elordi’s character smoking topless, but smoking was such an integral part that actor Archie Madekwe (who plays Farleigh) requested cigarette lessons because he had never smoked one before.

According to Truth Initiative, a nonprofit health organisation against smoking, nine out of the 10 films nominated for the Oscars top prize earlier this year featured smoking, which is up from the seven in the year before.

Some of 2024’s biggest songs have also featured tobacco imagery – Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s Die With A Smile shows Gaga smoking as she plays the piano and sings.

Jessica, a 26-year-old who works in marketing, says smoking has “become so normalised again”.

“I didn’t know anyone that smoked a few years ago but now it seems like everyone is doing it and you sort of forget how bad it is for you.”

A recent estimate from Cancer Research suggests that around 350 young people still take up smoking each day in the UK and nearly one in 10 15-year-olds say they sometimes smoke.

But, overall, the number of young people smoking is declining – official estimates show that fewer than one out of every 10 young adults in the UK smoke cigarettes – a steep drop from a quarter of 18-24-year-olds 12 years ago.

Although the number of young people smoking is in decline, vaping has soared in popularity – one out of every seven 18-24-year-olds who never regularly smoked now use e-cigarettes.

Jessica used to vape but says “now everyone does it, it’s just not cool any more” – and it seems the normality of vaping is causing some people to switch to cigarettes.

In a recent video posted on TikTok, singer Addison Rae responded to a question about vaping by saying: “Ew, I hate vaping. Smoke a cigarette!”

US-based doctor James Hook tells the BBC he has seen cases of young people taking up smoking after vaping.

He thinks the way smoking is glamorised by celebrities means cigarettes “give young people a certain credibility those older than them do not have to work as hard for”.

He adds that many of them are “emulating older people that are considered sophisticated, trendy or appealing”.

Dr Hook also says that the government taking a tougher stance on smoking might be encouraging people to rebel.

“There will always be individuals who challenge the status quo so it should come as no surprise a ban on something only adds fuel to the fire of rebellion and a threat to a person’s sense of independence.”

The government is planning one of the toughest smoking laws in the world which would eventually ban the sale of cigarettes in the UK as the new law will effectively raise the legal age people can buy cigarettes by one year every year.

With the government’s intent on stamping out the deadly habit, the resurgence of the cigarette – and the cigfluencers – may be more of a passing trend than a lasting cultural shift, particularly as its appeal is less about the act itself and more about the aesthetic and symbolism it represents.

The Israeli military said a senior Hezbollah operative was captured in a naval raid in the northern Lebanese town of Batroun on Friday.

An official said special forces had apprehended the individual and taken them back to Israeli territory, in what was described as a “special operation”.

Lebanon’s state news agency said an “unidentified military force” arrived on the beach at dawn, raided a nearby building, and captured one person before leaving by speedboat.

The raid has prompted anger from Lebanese authorities, with the office for Prime Minister Najib Mikati saying he had instructed the foreign ministry to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council.

It added the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping force Unifil were both investigating the raid – and that Mikati had called for “expedited” results.

Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh suggested the raid may have violated UN Security Council resolution 1701, which is intended to end hostilities following on from the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006.

“If it is proven that the kidnapping took place via a naval landing, where is the implementation of Resolution 1701?” he was quoted as saying by local media.

Hezbollah did not comment on Israel’s allegation that the person captured was a member of the group, while Hamieh told local media the man was a captain of civilian ships.

CCTV footage that emerged online – which the BBC located to Batroun – appeared to show a group of soldiers leading a captive between some buildings.

The Israeli military gave limited details on the operation but said the unit involved was Shayetet 13, a marine commando unit specialising in sea-to-land incursions.

Batroun, a Christian town to the north of Beirut, has been relatively sheltered from Israeli military operations in Lebanon to date, which have focused on the country’s south, the Bekaa valley in its east, and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

More than 2,200 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched a ground invasion of the country on September 30. The Israeli military says 38 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon during that time.

Amidst the shock and trauma in Valencia, the outpouring of solidarity is growing by the day.

At a museum building in the city centre, vast numbers of volunteers were queuing up to receive supplies – buckets, mops, food and water – before boarding buses to the areas worst hit by the catastrophic floods which overwhelmed the region earlier this week, killing more than 200 people with many still missing.

The organisers believe 15,000 people showed up this morning alone for the first coordinated clean-up, filling what many feel is a vacuum left by the authorities.

Sixteen-year-old Pedro Francisco had been waiting in line with his parents for four hours, desperate to help.

He says his friend’s grandfather died in the floods but so far she has been unable to retrieve the body.

“We have to do whatever we can”, Pedro says. “It’s just terrible to see what has happened.”

Also queuing was Oscar Martinez and his wife and son.

“I feel anger”, he says. “This was an avoidable tragedy. All the regional government needed to do was to give us the flood warnings in advance.”

Anger is a reoccurring theme in Valencia and the surrounding area where most of the 211 fatalities took place – with the toll expected to rise further.

Heavy rains began on Monday causing massive flooding in the region, destroying bridges, cutting off communities and leaving them without water, food or electricity.

Thousands of security and emergency services are frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for the dead, taken by what the Spanish government call the second deadliest flood in Europe.

Amparo Esteve spoke to the BBC at a pedestrian bridge crossing the Turia river in Valencia.

She was preparing to walk to her town, Paiporta, as the roads remain closed and she wanted to help her neighbours.

Describing when flash floods struck, she said: “My neighbours told me to run as fast as I can.

“The waters were following me, really, really fast.

“I was at home for three days with no light, no water, no phones, nothing.

“I couldn’t call my mum to tell her that I was okay. We didn’t have food, or water to drink.”

She too voiced anger with the authorities. “No one is helping us.”

Amparo is now staying with her grandparents because she is too afraid to return because of looters.

The Valencian government said looting was increasing insecurity in the region and warned those who are guilty will be brought to justice.

Shop owner Emilia, 74, also said she felt abandoned as she reckons with the destruction in Picanya, a suburb of Valencia.

“We feel abandoned, there are many people who need help,” she told Reuters news agency, adding people are throwing away many, if not all, of their household items.

“We can’t even wash our clothes and we can’t even have a shower.”

In a televised statement, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced an increase in security forces to help relief works.

Sanchez said he was deploying a further 5,000 more troops to help with the searches and the clean-up in addition to the 2,500 already deployed, calling it the biggest operation by the armed forces in Spain in peacetime.

A further deployment of 5,000 police officers and civil guards will also take place.

The government said 4,800 rescues had been made and 30,000 people helped.

But as well as their response, authorities have also come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the flood.

“I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages… towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives… we have to improve,” Sanchez said.

An artist said it was “the most surreal moment” of his life to be invited to hand deliver two charcoal drawings of Tom Cruise to the Top Gun actor.

Wilf Elliott, from Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, had previously given artwork to singers, like Sam Ryder and Zara Larsson, but he could not believe his luck when Cruise’s team reached out to him.

“I found out Tom had opened up my artwork on set, and I decided it would be a great idea to draw another one, and then I got a text to say he’d like to meet me in person,” the 21-year-old tattoo artist said.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get someone as big as that ever again.”

Mr Elliott started recreating a scene from Top Gun: Maverick, one of his favourite films, about 18 months ago.

“Actually seeing someone like that and him knowing who I was before I met him was incredibly surreal,” he continued.

He said he started drawing during the coronavirus lockdown to keep himself busy, and his artwork has attracted attention on social media from celebrities, like former Welsh football captain and Real Madrid star Gareth Bale.

Earlier this year, he flew to Sweden to deliver a portrait of the late DJ Avicii to the musician’s father, Klas Bergling.

The rapper Post Malone and actor Jim Carrey were high on his “wish list”, he added.

The number of babies born in England and Wales is now the lowest since the 1970s, official statistics show.

The fertility rate – which measures how many children are born per woman during her child-bearing years – is the lowest on record at 1.44. Scotland’s is even lower at 1.3.

Britain is not unique – most countries are experiencing declining fertility and some are even going to great lengths to create a baby boom.

So what’s causing the fall-off in fertility? There’s the high cost of bringing up children, the pressure to stay in work and the challenge of finding the right partner.

But there’s also evidence that more and more young adults don’t plan on having any children at all.

BBC News has spoken to two women and two men in their early thirties – the average age at which people in England and Wales become parents – to get their thoughts on the issue.

Ellie Lambert, who lives in Sheffield, wants to have children but says she hasn’t found a suitable partner.

Two years ago, she spent £18,000 on two cycles of egg freezing. “I find it really frustrating, it’s a lot of cost for something that may not ever lead to anything,” she says.

She hopes to use them if she meets someone, or if she reaches a financial situation where she can “go it alone” with the aid of a sperm donor.

Ellie says she ‘s concerned about the additional financial pressure on single-parent households.

A report from the Child Poverty Action Group last year found the average cost of raising a child to age 18 was £166,000 for a couple and £220,000 for a lone parent.

Though Ellie thought she would meet someone by her late 20s, “despite proactively being on all of the apps, it just didn’t happen.”

She says dating had become “fruitless”, citing the seemingly endless choice that dating apps offer as a factor, with fewer people wanting to commit.

But going it alone would be “a big decision”, says Ellie, who earns more than £60,000 on a fixed-term contract.

Having already spent her savings on egg freezing, she says it would cost a further £10,000 to use a sperm donor with IVF.

HGV driver Chris Taylor and dog groomer Gemma Wrathmell jointly earn an income of about £60,000 and have been together for 11 years.

The couple, who live in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, considered having children.

“We have had deep conversations where we go through the options and discuss things like school, cost and routine,” Gemma says.

But the conclusion was that the cost was too high.

“After all our bills and essentials there is no room in the budget to accommodate a child,” Chris says. “We don’t see how our finances will get any better within the next few years.”

As a result, they have taken a “definitive decision” – Chris is seeking to have a vasectomy, after years of Gemma having a contraceptive implant.

“Some people have said you’ll change your mind, but they know it’s our decision,” says Gemma.

“I’m also not that maternal,” she adds.

For Dami Olonisakin, a sex and relationships podcaster who lives in London, improvements in fertility treatments – such as egg freezing – are “empowering” and give women “more control than ever”.

Motherhood, she says, is not something to “be taken lightly”.

“Childcare costs are soaring, maternity policies are limited, women basically have to think really hard,” she says.

She also wants to have the “support system” of a long-term partner in place before having children.

But she isn’t in a hurry. “I don’t feel I’m in a rush to settle down and have kids just because it’s expected,” she says.

Instead she is focusing on her career after growing up in a household that “didn’t have anything”.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I am never ever putting a child through this’,” she says.

“[My parents] absolutely did their best, but I’ve always said I will not have a child until I’m… ready.”

Kari Aaron Clark, a senior research fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, earns £53,000 but feels he can’t afford to raise a child in London.

Four years ago, his salary was £22,000 while completing his PhD.

His partner Kaitlyn, who is currently a PhD student, is under similar financial strain.

It means despite Kari’s above-average salary, he has had less time to save for a property – something he thinks is essential before becoming a parent because of the “relatively insecure” nature of renting.

He also cites the costs of childcare. According to a recent report by children’s charity Coram, the average weekly price for a full-time childcare place for children under three in the UK is about £300, compared with nearly £430 in inner London.

Kari says his views are shared by Kaitlyn – and they are both concerned about the effects of the climate crisis.

“I’m quite happy with the idea of adopting. That way I’m helping someone already struggling in the system,” he says.

“I can adopt after they’ve got through the childcare stage.”

But despite his current pessimism about the viability of becoming a biological parent, Kari says he “wouldn’t write it off”.

This all raises the question of what the future holds if fewer children are being born.

Declining fertility rates are not just about people delaying parenthood, but about a growing trend of people not having children, says Brienna Perelli-Harris, professor of demography at the University of Southampton.

Data from the recent UK Generations and Gender Survey suggests that childless adults today are far less confident they will have children, with a quarter of 18 to 25-year-olds saying they would probably or definitely not have a child.

“Gen Z are more likely to want to stay childless,” she says. “Before, it might have been more of a taboo – it’s now more acceptable.

“And it’s down to economic factors like future income, childcare costs and employment.”

“In the long term… the population will start to shrink,” Prof Perelli-Harris adds.

“If it gets to 1.3 [children per woman] – that’s seen as very low and government should start getting concerned.”

Concerns have previously been raised about shrinking fertility rates in countries where there’s long been a downward trend, including the need for more young people to work as carers for an ageing population and pay tax.

But populations can continue to grow for a long time after fertility falls below 2.1 children per woman, known as the replacement level – the number of children required to ensure a population replaces itself from one generation to the next – the ONS says.

This is the case in the UK and other countries like Spain and Italy, where the fertility rate is even lower.

“Immigration can stall population decline or even reverse it,” says Prof Perelli-Harris.

“I do not think we will see the UK population start to decline for the foreseeable future, although the ageing of the population will become even more pronounced.”