A charred lorry, empty tear gas shells and posters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan – it was all that remained of a massive protest led by Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, that had sent the entire capital into lockdown.

Just a day earlier, faith healer Bibi – wrapped in a white shawl, her face covered by a white veil – stood atop a shipping container on the edge of the city as thousands of her husband’s devoted followers waved flags and chanted slogans beneath her.

It was the latest protest to flare since Khan, the 72-year-old cricketing icon-turned-politician, was jailed more than a year ago after falling foul of the country’s influential military which helped catapult him to power.

“My children and my brothers! You have to stand with me,” Bibi cried on Tuesday afternoon, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of the crowd.

“But even if you don’t,” she continued, “I will still stand firm.

“This is not just about my husband. It is about this country and its leader.”

It was, noted some watchers of Pakistani politics, her political debut.

But as the sun rose on Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Bibi, nor the thousands of protesters who had marched through the country to the heart of the capital, demanding the release of their jailed leader.

While other PMs have fallen out with Pakistan’s military in the past, Khan’s refusal to stay quiet behind bars is presenting an extraordinary challenge – escalating the standoff and leaving the country deeply divided.

Exactly what happened to the so-called “final march”, and Bibi, when the city went dark is still unclear.

All eyewitnesses like Samia* can say for certain is that the lights went out suddenly, plunging D Chowk, the square where they had gathered, into blackness.

As loud screams and clouds of tear gas blanketed the square, Samia describes holding her husband on the pavement, bloodied from a gun shot to his shoulder.

“Everyone was running for their lives,” she later told BBC Urdu from a hospital in Islamabad, adding it was “like doomsday or a war”.

“His blood was on my hands and the screams were unending.”

But how did the tide turn so suddenly and decisively?

Just hours earlier, protesters finally reached D Chowk late afternoon on Tuesday. They had overcome days of tear gas shelling and a maze of barricaded roads to get to the city centre.

Many of them were supporters and workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party led by Khan.

He had called for the march from his jail cell, where he has been for more than a year on charges he says are politically motivated.

Now Bibi – his third wife, a woman who had been largely shrouded in mystery and out of public view since their unexpected wedding in 2018 – was leading the charge.

“We won’t go back until we have Khan with us,” she declared as the march reached D Chowk, deep in the heart of Islamabad’s government district.

Insiders say even the choice of destination – a place where her husband had once led a successful sit in – was Bibi’s, made in the face of other party leader’s opposition, and appeals from the government to choose another gathering point.

Her being at the forefront may have come as a surprise. Bibi, only recently released from prison herself, is often described as private and apolitical. Little is known about her early life, apart from the fact she was a spiritual guide long before she met Khan. Her teachings, rooted in Sufi traditions, attracted many followers – including Khan himself.

Was she making her move into politics – or was her sudden appearance in the thick of it a tactical move to keep Imran Khan’s party afloat while he remains behind bars?

For critics, it was a move that clashed with Imran Khan’s oft-stated opposition to dynastic politics.

There wasn’t long to mull the possibilities.

After the lights went out, witnesses say that police started firing fresh rounds of tear gas at around 21:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

The crackdown was in full swing just over an hour later.

At some point, amid the chaos, Bushra Bibi left.

Videos on social media appeared to show her switching cars and leaving the scene. The BBC couldn’t verify the footage.

By the time the dust settled, her container had already been set on fire by unknown individuals.

By 01:00 authorities said all the protesters had fled.

Eyewitnesses have described scenes of chaos, with tear gas fired and police rounding up protesters.

One, Amin Khan, said from behind an oxygen mask that he joined the march knowing that, “either I will bring back Imran Khan or I will be shot”.

The authorities have have denied firing at the protesters. They also said some of the protesters were carrying firearms.

The BBC has seen hospital records recording patients with gunshot injuries.

However, government spokesperson Attaullah Tarar told the BBC that hospitals had denied receiving or treating gunshot wound victims.

He added that “all security personnel deployed on the ground have been forbidden” from having live ammunition during protests.

But one doctor told BBC Urdu that he had never done so many surgeries for gunshot wounds in a single night.

“Some of the injured came in such critical condition that we had to start surgery right away instead of waiting for anaesthesia,” he said.

While there has been no official toll released, the BBC has confirmed with local hospitals that at least five people have died.

Police say at least 500 protesters were arrested that night and are being held in police stations. The PTI claims some people are missing.

And one person in particular hasn’t been seen in days: Bushra Bibi.

“She abandoned us,” said one PTI supporter.

Others defended her. “It wasn’t her fault,” insisted another. “She was forced to leave by the party leaders.”

Political commentators have been more scathing.

“Her exit damaged her political career before it even started,” said Mehmal Sarfraz, a journalist and analyst.

But was that even what she wanted?

Khan has previously dismissed any thought his wife might have her own political ambitions – “she only conveys my messages,” he said in a statement attributed to him on his X account.

Speaking to BBC Urdu, analyst Imtiaz Gul calls her participation “an extraordinary step in extraordinary circumstances”.

Gul believes Bushra Bibi’s role today is only about “keeping the party and its workers active during Imran Khan’s absence”.

It is a feeling echoed by some PTI members, who believe she is “stepping in only because Khan trusts her deeply”.

Insiders, though, had often whispered that she was pulling the strings behind the scenes – advising her husband on political appointments and guiding high-stakes decisions during his tenure.

A more direct intervention came for the first time earlier this month, when she urged a meeting of PTI leaders to back Khan’s call for a rally.

Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif accused her of “opportunism”, claiming she sees “a future for herself as a political leader”.

But Asma Faiz, an associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences, suspects the PTI’s leadership may have simply underestimated Bibi.

“It was assumed that there was an understanding that she is a non-political person, hence she will not be a threat,” she told the AFP news agency.

“However, the events of the last few days have shown a different side of Bushra Bibi.”

But it probably doesn’t matter what analysts and politicians think. Many PTI supporters still see her as their connection to Imran Khan. It was clear her presence was enough to electrify the base.

“She is the one who truly wants to get him out,” says Asim Ali, a resident of Islamabad. “I trust her. Absolutely!”

Airspace around US airbases in Norfolk and Suffolk has been under scrutiny following multiple recent drone incursions. Those responsible for the aircraft have yet to be found and nearby residents have questioned how and why the incidents have been allowed to happen.

Drone incursions were initially reported at three US airbases – RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk – between 20 and 22 November, and the aircraft has since reappeared.

In the village of Beck Row, Suffolk, which is situated next to RAF Mildenhall, residents reported brightly lit aerial vehicles hovering above their houses and over the base itself.

Casseem Campbell, 28, said he had seen objects above his house in Beck Row.

He described seeing a triangle-shaped aerial vehicle, which was “a grey, dark colour”, in one of two evening sightings of drones he had made in the past week.

“They were really noisy and had lights. They looked official to be honest,” he added.

“If they are a threat, why aren’t they being shot down? Why let them fly over if they’re sinister?”

It has since emerged that a drone came within 273.40 yards (250m) of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, as it entered the Port of Hamburg on 22 November.

RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where US B-52 bombers had recently deployed, also reported a recent sighting.

British troops have been deployed to assist US efforts to track down those responsible.

Chrystal Mason, 40, said she had seen two drones in the past week in Beck Row.

The step-daughter of a RAF pilot, she described an orange ball in the sky at night and increased activity at the US airbase.

“In the last 10 days I have seen military jeeps around the village. There has been a much higher police presence than usual – military and UK police,” she said.

Mrs Mason also described what she believed was a drone being intercepted, though the BBC has not been able to verify this.

“There was a big orange light in the sky and all of a sudden it was gone. I heard people shouting ‘wow’,” the mother-of-one added.

Johnny Whitfield, who also lives in Beck Row, described seeing “lots of activity”.

“I’ve seen the drones three or four times,” he said, before confirming the sightings had taken place at night in the past week.

He also described the flying objects being lit up and hovering over the airbase, although he said he could not detect a noise, while he said the objects were large.

“All you see is light, but it’s a big, big light,” he added.

He said he felt the US military was being reticent about what was going on.

“You don’t know if they’re foreign or local. [The US Air Force] don’t give out much information.

“You get more information off Facebook than the base.”

All the residents of Beck Row that the BBC spoke to described increased military activity in the area with an apparent uptick of planes in the skies.

The BBC has also seen evidence that agents from the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations have been in the Suffolk area and have spoken to local people about what they have seen.

Roger Smith, a Suffolk-based military aviation enthusiast, told the BBC that he believed the US Air Force pilots had reverted to more secure communication methods in recent days.

“They’re now using an encrypted data link instead of radios when speaking to the ground,” he said.

This was supported by another member of the local aircraft spotter community who also claimed a US Air Force KC-46A Pegasus air refuelling aircraft was diverted to Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland as it approached RAF Mildenhall because of drone activity.

Neither the Glasgow Prestwick Airport or the US Air Force would comment on the claims.

Defence sources have told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

So far neither the US or UK authorities would be drawn on who might be responsible.

Defence minister Lord Coaker told the House of Lords on Thursday: “The Ministry of Defence is aware of these reports and working closely with the US visiting forces, Home Office police forces and other partners to respond to recent events.

“We take any safety issue seriously and maintain robust measures at Ministry of Defence sites. This includes counter-drone capabilities.”

The minister told Parliament: “It is illegal for drones to be flown or within the vicinity of these military sites and people should be aware of that.”

“This remains a live criminal investigation.”

Previously the Ministry of Defence, which owns the bases, said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites.”

The US Air Force in Europe said: “To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities or assets.

“The Air Force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard the aforementioned installations and their residents”.

Rebel forces launched the largest offensive against the Syrian government in years on Wednesday.

By Saturday, they had taken control of “large parts” of the country’s second-biggest city, Aleppo.

The surprise offensive prompted the first Russian strikes on Aleppo since 2016, and saw Syria’s military withdraw its troops from the city.

The attack was led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which has a long and involved history in the Syrian conflict.

HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda.

The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.

It was regarded as one of the most effective and deadly of the groups ranged against President Assad.

But its jihadist ideology appeared to be its driving force rather than revolutionary zeal – and it was seen at the time as at odds with the main rebel coalition under the banner of Free Syria.

But in 2016, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, publicly broke ranks with Al Qaeda, dissolved Jabhat al-Nusra and set up a new organisation, which took the name Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when it merged with several other similar groups a year later.

The war in Syria has for the past four years felt as if it were effectively over.

President Bashar al-Assad’s rule is essentially uncontested in the country’s major cities, while some other parts of Syria remain out of his direct control.

These include Kurdish majority areas in the east, which have been more or less separate from Syrian state control since the early years of the conflict.

There has been some continued, though relatively muted unrest, in the south where the revolution against Assad’s rule began in 2011.

In the vast Syrian desert, holdouts from the group calling themselves Islamic State still pose a security threat, particularly during the truffle hunting season when people head to the area to find the highly profitable delicacy.

And in the north-west, the province of Idlib has been held by jihadist and rebel groups driven there at the height of the war.

The dominant force in Idlib is the one that has launched the surprise attack on Aleppo, HTS.

For several years, Idlib remained a battleground as Syrian government forces tried to regain control.

But a ceasefire deal in 2020 brokered by Russia, which has long been Assad’s key ally, and Turkey, which has backed the rebels, has largely held.

About four million people live there – most of them displaced from towns and cities that Assad’s forces won back from rebels in a brutal war of attrition.

Aleppo was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds and represented one of the rebels’ biggest defeats.

To achieve victory, Assad relied on Russian airpower and Iranian military help on the ground – mainly through militias sponsored by Iran.

These included Hezbollah.

There is little doubt that the setback Hezbollah has suffered recently from Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, as well as Israeli strikes on Iranian military commanders in Syria, has played a significant part in the decision by jihadist and rebel groups in Idlib to make their sudden, unexpected move on Aleppo.

For some time now, HTS has established its power base in Idlib where it is the de facto local administration, although its efforts towards legitimacy have been tarnished by alleged human rights abuses.

It has also been involved in some bitter infighting with other groups.

Its ambitions beyond Idlib had become unclear.

Since breaking with Al Qaeda, its goal has been limited to trying to establish fundamentalist Islamic rule in Syria rather than a wider caliphate, as IS tried and failed to do.

It had shown little sign of attempting to reignite the Syrian conflict on a major scale and renew its challenge to Assad’s rule over much of the country – until now.

Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers to conceal his crimes, sacking those he could not control, an ex-director has told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, says the late entrepreneur plied him with envelopes full of cash – totalling about $50,000 (£39,000) – to try to compromise and control him.

“He tried to own you. And ultimately, I got fired because I couldn’t be bought,” he says.

Harrods didn’t respond to Mr Brilliant’s claims. It has previously said that it was “utterly appalled” by the abuse allegations, adding that it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed”.

Mr Brilliant says he was “horrified” when he first heard the allegations that Al Fayed had abused hundreds of women and says he “beat himself up” about whether there was anything he should have questioned more.

He told the BBC about surveillance, sackings, and a culture designed to keep top managers from trusting or communicating with one another.

This made it harder for them to do their duty as directors to exercise independent judgement and check Al Fayed’s power – or ask questions which may have revealed more to them about how he was treating women.

“I 100% can see how the management structure and culture was set up to cover it up, mask it from people,” says Mr Brilliant.

Four other former directors have anonymously confirmed elements of this picture.

A US citizen, Mr Brilliant was 36 when he joined the firm in August 2000. He was hired to relaunch the Harrods online business.

He says that shortly before his first business trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, Al Fayed gave him a brown envelope containing $5,000 (£3,993) in $50 notes.

After the trip he tried to return the full amount. He says Al Fayed refused, asking him, “You didn’t need any entertainment?”

Mr Brilliant replied that he did not need it – he had been too busy to visit the cinema or theatre, and someone else had paid for dinner.

Receiving cash ahead of business trips – large-value notes of pounds, francs or dollars depending on his destination – continued over the following six months.

Three senior colleagues suggested to Mr Brilliant at the time that Al Fayed was trying to get him to compromise himself.

Mr Brilliant says they told him: “He was trying to get you to come back and say ‘oh, I spent money on drugs or I spent money frolicking, doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing,’ and that he would then use that information against you if you should ever turn on him.”

He adds: “I am certainly aware of people who… succumbed to the temptation.”

Mr Brilliant continued trying to return the money, until his family arrived in London and he started looking for a home. With Al Fayed’s consent, he put it towards the purchase of a property.

Al Fayed had form for using envelopes of cash as a tool of power and control. It had caused a scandal in the 1990s after he paid MPs to ask questions in the House of Commons – and then exposed those who had accepted his gifts.

Mr Brilliant believes he was not immune to Al Fayed’s extensive use of bugging and surveillance, carried out by the Harrods owner’s large team of security guards.

“Even when I tell this story to you right now, I get kind of goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, realising that my phones were being listened in on,” he says.

Mr Brilliant’s first suspicion that he may have been bugged came in 2002, shortly before he was fired. After a disagreement about the funding of Fulham FC, words from a private phone conversation with someone in the US were quoted back to him in a meeting.

Another former Harrods director, who wanted to remain anonymous, told us he had moved into an Al Fayed-owned property when he started at the store and one of the security team warned him it was bugged.

The director says he and his wife would jokingly say “good morning” to the security guards who might be listening when they woke up.

He noticed that many directors kept a personal mobile phone as well as a work phone, because they feared the Harrods phone might be bugged.

Mr Brilliant, who has returned to the US, says he was “dumbfounded” when he first heard the BBC investigation.

“I do look back and say, ‘should I have seen something? Did I miss something?’ And I’ve gone over it and over it,” he says.

He worked in Al Fayed’s “ring of steel” office suite on the fifth floor of Harrods, protected by two sets of security doors. There was a group of administrative assistants who were all young, blonde and attractive – he says.

Mr Brilliant recalls them as “obedient”. He explains: “There was this notion of ‘do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really being on the ball. Mohamed demanded a lot of people, and they were serving their role.”

He adds that he now questions whether the women acted in that way because of what may had been happening.

When challenged on whether he should have done more to protect the women he says he asks himself whether he could have.

“I wasn’t privy to that amount of information that would otherwise suggest that there was something deeper going on.”

Mr Brilliant says Harrods’ managers were set in opposition to each other and then expected to keep a watchful eye on their rivals.

In addition to his core role, he was given partial oversight of a range of Al Fayed’s interests, including Fulham FC and the Paris Ritz.

“I was asked to oversee people I had no right overseeing,” says Mr Brilliant. In turn, he found that “people were looking over my shoulder”.

Information was treated like a “currency” and people would jockey to share it to “curry favour” with the boss, he says.

This has been corroborated by an anonymous director. “There was no trust between directors,” he told us. “Everyone was on the defensive.”

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” where executives’ survival depended on “utter loyalty” and “a drip of salacious gossip to sow doubts about rivals”.

Senior managers at Harrods were sacked with such regularity that Mr Brilliant says it was a “running joke” in the store.

Managers were sacked or quit so frequently that The Sunday Times began to publish a regular count, which reached 48 in 2005 – before a legal letter put a stop to it.

Many dismissals ended in legal action or employment tribunals. Some were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), although Mr Brilliant was not.

But some managers lasted for more than a decade. And to do that, you had to have a “frontal lobotomy” said Mr Brilliant.

Some, he felt, were compromised and couldn’t speak out. For the others, “I think you had to just do what you were told to do, do it with a smile… No original thought, no willing to challenge the status quo, just willing to accept.”

The BBC has tried to contact as many long-serving former Harrods directors as possible, but none were willing to give an interview.

Although he only worked there for 18 months, Mr Brilliant said he wanted to speak to the BBC for two reasons.

“One, if there’s anything that I’m able to say or do that shows support for these women who have been horrifically treated, traumatised, I want to do whatever I can.

“Secondly, my hope is that by my willingness to speak out, others will come and speak out themselves.”

If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email MAFinvestigation@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

you can contact the BBC Action Line here.

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has suggested that the parts of Ukraine under his control should be taken “under the Nato umbrella” to try and stop the “hot phase” of the war.

He was asked by Sky News whether he would accept Nato membership, but only on the territory that Kyiv currently holds.

Zelensky said he would, but only if Nato membership was offered to the whole of Ukraine, within its internationally recognised borders, first.

Ukraine could then attempt to negotiate the return of territory currently under Russian control “in a diplomatic way”, he said in a wide-ranging interview.

But the suggestion is highly theoretical. Zelensky is not floating any new proposals – this was a television interview, not a diplomatic forum – but he is sending signals.

Whether Nato would ever consider such a move is highly doubtful.

“Ukraine has never considered such a proposal, because no-one has officially offered it to us,” Zelensky said.

Nato would need to offer membership to the whole country, including those parts currently under Russian control, he said.

“You can’t give [an] invitation to just one part of a country,” the president said, according to a translation provided by Sky News. “Why? Because thus, you would recognise that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine, and the other one is Russia.”

Lots of people were proposing ceasefires, he said, but without a mechanism to prevent Russia from attacking again, ceasefires were simply too dangerous.

Only NATO membership, he said, could offer that kind of guarantee.

The Ukrainian president has already said that he thinks the war could end in the coming year if Ukraine’s allies show sufficient resolve.

Reports suggest that discussion of the so-called West German model – Nato membership offered to a divided country – has been going on in Western circles for more than a year.

But no formal proposals have yet been made.

Meanwhile, Zelensky has been keen to sound willing to engage with whatever proposals US President-elect Donald Trump might be considering.

“I want to share with him ideas, and I want to hear from him, his ideas,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader said he would be sending a team in the coming days to meet Trump officials, including the president-elect’s recently appointed special envoy for Ukraine, retired general Keith Kellogg.

In April, Gen Kellogg co-authored a plan, called America First: Russia & Ukraine, which would freeze the front lines in Ukraine and pressure both Kyiv and Moscow to come to the negotiating table.

Future US military assistance to Ukraine would be conditioned on Kyiv’s willingness to enter peace talks.

But in the event of a ceasefire, Washington would continue to provide military assistance and “strengthen [Ukraine’s] defences to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a ceasefire or peace agreement.”

Under the proposals, NATO membership for Ukraine would be put off for an extended period.

For Zelensky, this begs a crucial question: what guarantees of security would the Trump administration be willing to offer?

“Without NATO, it’s not real independence for Ukraine because he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will come back,” Zelensky insisted.

The differences between Zelensky’s peace plan and the nascent Trump policy are still substantial.

But by engaging with the idea of a ceasefire and painful territorial sacrifices (in the short term at least), the Ukrainian leader is doing his utmost to sound constructive, conscious that there are so far no equivalent signs coming from Moscow.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has occupied territory in the country’s east.

But It is also worth noting that so far Putin has given absolutely no indication that he’s abandoned his desire to subjugate Ukraine entirely.

The idea that he would be willing to allow any part of Ukraine to join Nato is, for now, unthinkable.

All the indications so far suggest that any involvement of Nato is a complete non-starter.

A former Chinese state media journalist has been sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, his family has confirmed to the BBC.

Dong Yuyu, 62, who has been detained since 2022, was active in academic and journalism circles in the US and Japan and met regularly with foreign diplomats.

He was having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing when he was arrested by police.

At the time of his detention, Dong had been a senior staff member of the Guangming Daily, one of the five major newspapers linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

In February 2022, Dong was arrested while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat the day after the Winter Olympics ended in Beijing, at a restaurant where he had often met foreign friends.

The diplomat was also detained – then released several hours later amid protests from the Japanese government.

Dong met regularly with other journalists and foreign diplomats as part of his job.

His family said in a statement that according to a court judgement, two other Japanese diplomats Dong met with were named as “agents of an espionage organisation”, which is the Japanese embassy.

“We are shocked that the Chinese authorities would blatantly deem a foreign embassy an ‘espionage organization'”, said his family’s statement.

“Today’s verdict is a grave injustice not only to Yuyu and his family but also to every freethinking Chinese journalist and every ordinary Chinese committed to friendly engagement with the world,” they added.

The Beijing court where Dong was sentenced on Friday had a strong security presence, Reuters reported, as journalists were asked to leave and a diplomat said they were not allowed to attend the hearing.

“In the past, the Chinese court system has selected Western holidays to release news as it is a time when the public is focused on other matters,” the US National Press Club said in a statement on Tuesday, ahead of Dong’s sentencing on Thanksgiving night in the US.

While Dong’s trial had been completed in July 2023, he was held with no verdict and barred from seeing his family, the press club said.

Rights groups and advocates have criticised his conviction and called for him to be released.

“Chinese authorities must reverse this unjust verdict, and protect the right of journalists to work freely and safely in China,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia programme manager at the Committe to Protect Journalists told Reuters.

“Dong Yuyu should be reunited with his family immediately.”

Dong joined the Guangming Daily after graduating from Peking University’s law school in 1987.

In 1989, he was one of tens of thousands of students who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests. He was later sentenced to hard labour, but kept his job at the newspaper, according to a family statement.

He eventually rose to become deputy head of the editorial department, and was among the most pro-reform voices at Guangming Daily, the statement added.

A Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2007, Dong had also written several articles for the New York Times and was previously a visiting fellow and professor at several Japanese universities.

Thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Tbilisi on Friday to protest against the government’s decision to suspend accession talks with the European Union.

Demonstrators were seen shouting “traitors” and holding photographs of journalists who they say were beaten by police in the previous night’s protests.

For the second night running, police deployed tear gas and made heavy use of water cannon against the demonstrators.

President Salome Zourabishvili said “the resistance movement [had] begun” and that she stood “in solidarity with it”.

“We will remain united until Georgia achieves its goals, to return to its European path, secure new elections,” she said in a televised address.

More than 100 arrests were made for disobeying police officers and “petty hooliganism”, Georgia’s interior ministry said in a statement.

Protestors threw pyrotechnics, stones and glass bottles, it added, with 10 officers injured in the unrest.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze thanked police on Saturday, telling a press conference they had “defended Georgia’s constitutional order and safeguarded the nation’s sovereignty,” AFP news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the country’s human rights ombudsman warned of “brutality that has no justification” after visiting some of the arrested protestors.

“One of the detainees had his entire face covered in bruises,” Levan Ioseliani told reporters.

“I once again call on the police not to exceed their authority during detention.”

Earlier on Friday, over 100 diplomats and civil servants in Georgia signed an open letter saying the government’s decision did not align with Georgia’s strategic interests.

Defending his decision, Kobakhidze accused the EU of “blackmail” after EU legislators called for last month’s parliamentary elections in Georgia to be re-run. They cited “significant irregularities”.

Since 2012, Georgia has been governed by Georgian Dream, a party which critics say has tried to move the country away from the EU and closer to Russia.

The party claimed victory in last month’s election but opposition MPs are boycotting the new parliament, alleging fraud, while the country’s President Zourabichvili – who is at loggerheads with the governing party – has called the one-party parliament “unconstitutional”.

On Thursday, the European Parliament backed a resolution describing the election as the latest stage in Georgia’s “worsening democratic crisis” and saying that the ruling party was “fully responsible”.

It expressed particular concern about reports of voter intimidation, vote-buying and manipulation, and harassment of observers.

The European Parliament also urged sanctions against Georgia’s prime minister and other high-level officials including the billionaire founder of the governing party Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Following the resolution, Georgia’s prime minister said his government had “decided not to bring up the issue of joining the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028”.

He said Georgia would still seek EU membership but with “dignity” and on its own terms.

Kobakhidze also lashed out at European politicians for “hurling a cascade of insults” at the Georgian government.

In response, thousands of pro-EU protesters started demonstrating outside Georgian Dream offices in the cities of Tbilisi and Kutaisi on Thursday.

Protesters see the government’s U-turn as a betrayal of a national aspiration.

The goal of European integration is enshrined in Georgia’s constitution.

During the first night of protests, police used batons, tear gas and water cannon after demonstrators barricaded some streets in Tbilisi.

Georgia’s interior ministry said protesters resorted to provocations on many occasions, damaging infrastructure and “badly injuring” 32 police officers.

The precise number of injured protesters is unknown, but a member of the opposition group Coalition for Change said one if its members, Nana Malashkhia, had their nose broken.

“During the crackdown, we took shelter in a pharmacy, but the special forces stormed in after us. If it was not for the presence of the media, they might have beaten us to death,” Giorgi Butikashvili told the BBC.

Footage on social media also showed a journalist from the opposition Formula TV station being severely beaten by the police.

Other media representatives wearing clearly marked press labels were also targeted.

The EU’s ambassador to Georgia called the government’s suspension sad and heartbreaking.

Pawel Herczynski said it contradicted the policy of previous governments and the wishes of the vast majority of the population.

Public polling has shown more than 80% of Georgians see their country’s future as being part of the European Union.

“Georgian Dream didn’t win the elections. It staged a coup,” 20-year-old Shota Sabashvili told AFP news agency.

“There is no legitimate parliament or government in Georgia. We will not let this self-proclaimed prime minister destroy our European future.”

Ana, a student, said Georgian Dream was “going against Georgian people’s will and want to drag us back to USSR”.

“That will never happen because Georgian people will never let this happen,” she told the Associated Press.

Uta, a protester, told the BBC that Georgians want a “better future” as part of the European Union.

“We don’t want to be part of Russia anymore”, he said.

Another protester, Vakho, said the government’s actions were disappointing and not representative of the “Georgian people’s will”.

Georgia has had official EU candidate status since 2023. However Brussels had already halted the accession process earlier this year over a Russia-style law targeting organisations accused of “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”.

Kobakhidze said Georgia would continue to implement the reforms required for accession and that it still planned to join by 2030, but added that it was “crucial for the EU to respect our national interests and traditional values”.

Former Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili told the BBC the country was at an “unprecedented” turning point.

“Since we were independent 30 years ago, we were clearly pro-Western, we were clearly pro-Nato and clearly pro-EU and this was uniting any government that was in place.”

But now, he added, there was an effort “by the bunch of people who are controlling power in Tbilisi and the Kremlin to basically bring Georgia as fast as this is possible to Russian orbit”.

Georgia’s ambassador to Bulgaria also resigned in protest. Otar Berdzenishvili said he had over a two-decade career worked extensiely on progressing Georgia’s EU integration.

“Our tireless efforts must not be shaken or compromised under any circumstances. No, violence against the free will of peaceful protesters, full solidarity with them.”

Shaun Flores was 11 years old when he first started watching porn, after being introduced to it by a friend.

“I was hooked almost immediately,” the now 30-year-old says.

“It was just like, wow, what is this that people are doing where they look like they’re just having the time of their lives.”

Shaun’s curiosity quickly turned into something that he found difficult to stop.

He describes watching porn morning, noon and night, saying it became as “common as brushing your teeth”.

Shaun has shared his story in a new BBC iPlayer series, Sex After.

“I realised there was an issue when I had no energy to do anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to play football, I just wanted to be inside.

“But there was the guilt and the shame that came with it, and no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t stop watching it.

“That’s when I knew there was something up.”

While not everyone who watches porn will develop an unhealthy relationship with it, Shaun isn’t alone in his viewing habits.

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report suggests 29% of UK adults accessed online porn in May 2024. Additionally, new research from addiction treatment centre, UKAT, suggests that millions of Britons are viewing pornography regularly – with 1.8 million watching daily, some multiple times a day.

According to treatment providers, more people are seeking help for problematic porn use.

Dr Paula Hall, a UKCP-accredited sexual and relationship psychotherapist at The Laurel Centre, in London, specialises in helping people affected by sex addiction and porn addiction.

“The numbers of clients seeking help with pornography problems at The Laurel Centre have doubled over recent years, as have our requests from health professionals for further training,” she tells the BBC.

Dr Hall explains that they have also seen a growing number of younger people seeking help.

“Ten years ago the majority of our clients would have been married men in their 40s and 50s who were seeking help because their partner had discovered their use of sex workers,” she says.

“But increasingly, our clients are in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are single, who are recognising the growing toll of porn use on their lives and on their ability to get or maintain a relationship.”

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at the UKAT Group, also says the number of people they treat for problematic porn use has risen “significantly” in recent years.

They now receive multiple enquiries for help from people struggling with their porn use every single day. Prior to 2020, it was one or two enquiries a week

Fernandes explains that advancements in technology and the subsequent easy accessibility of porn is making it easier for people of all ages to access sexual content online. He believes his is contributing to the increase in people seeking help that he has experienced.

“It’s not very hard for someone to pull out their phone, go onto a site and look at porn, whether they’re 12 years old or 60 years old,” he says. “It is quite troubling.”

According to Fernandes, other reasons for people watching porn online include curiosity, boredom, stress relief and lack of sexual satisfaction.

While porn use might start for these reasons, Fernandes describes it as being “very addictive”.

“It fulfils that dopamine reward system,” he explains. “Once you start it’s quite difficult to stop.”

However, while problematic porn use might mimic an addiction, it isn’t diagnostically recognised as such.

Instead, it is categorised as problematic online pornography use (POPU), or compulsive behaviour.

For people who develop this relationship with porn, the effects can be negative.

And for the youngest in society who are growing up with free, hardcore content at their fingertips, the impact of early overexposure can be far reaching.

The Children’s Commissioner for England promotes and protects the rights of children.

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

“Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old,” Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

“Pornography is no longer confined to dedicated adult sites – children tell me they can see violent content, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sexual acts on social media.

“The implications of seeing this kind of material are vast – my research has found that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.”

De Souza adds that it is “vital” for high-quality relationship and sex education to be given parity of importance with other subjects to help young people understand that pornography is unrealistic.

Silva Neves, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of compulsive sexual behaviours, agrees that viewing porn at a young age can have a negative impact.

However, he emphasises that the lack of quality sex education for young people leads to them looking for information elsewhere.

“They’re then going to see hairless vulvas,” he says. “They’re going to see 9in penises.

“They’re going to see hard intercourse lasting for 30 minutes and choking, and all these things, and they’re going to think, ‘ok, so this is sex’.

“But it’s much easier to point the finger at porn and say porn is the problem.”

Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, first started watching porn when she was at primary school.

For her, it was partly driven by the lack of proper sex education available to her. She explains that her classes at school were focussed on the biology of reproduction, rather than the experience of sex.

She says that the taboo that seemed to exist around it made it even more fascinating to try and understand it.

“I ended up searching for sex videos,” she explains. “It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.”

Courtney started off watching sporadically, sometimes on the weekends or occasionally before school. But then, she says, it turned into almost every day.

“That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I’m doing this way too often,” she says.

Courtney lost her virginity when she was 18 – a moment she describes as “terrible”.

“It never felt like real life matched up to the hype…that I got from watching porn or masturbating,” she says.

Courtney eventually realised that she had an unhealthy dependency on porn.

“I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,” she said.

She stopped watching porn in her early 20s and decided to become celibate. Along with her fiancé, they have committed to abstinence until after their wedding.

For Shaun, his excessive porn habit led to him being “exhausted” from masturbating.

“I think the role that it [porn] had to play was that it distorted my sense of self, and gave me a dysmorphia around sex, or my body, or my penis,” he says.

However, experts say it is important to recognise that, for many people, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with porn. For some, there may even be benefits.

For example, research conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) suggests that porn provides a way for young people unsure of their sexuality to understand themselves better.

‘’We must remember that an unhealthy relationship with porn only occurs when the individual has lost the power of choice; they cannot function normally in their day to day lives without watching porn,” concludes Fernandes.

“We would urge anyone who thinks they fall into this category to seek professional help.”

“It’s left me with a lot of unlearning to do,” says Courtney. “I have had to learn what realistic sex was.

“I have had to learn to love my body and not compare it to other women’s bodies.

“I have had to learn to love and not objectify people, men and women. And not just see them as sexual objects, but actually see them as people.

“If I could rewind the clock, I wouldn’t have started it.”

For Shaun, giving up is one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made.

“The addiction made me lose connections and now I’m trying to be connected to people that I generally love and I really care about,” he says.

A woman is being taken to court for £1,906 after she took longer than five minutes to pay for parking.

Rosey Hudson said she was unable to pay while standing in the car park in Derby due to poor signal on her phone.

She walked to where she could get connected and paid the full tariff every time she parked there – but despite this, Excel Parking Ltd sent her 10 Parking Charge Notices (PCNs).

The BBC contacted the car park operator, which said Miss Hudson had breached its terms and conditions and was “the author of her own misfortune”.

Two MPs – Lola McEvoy and Abtisam Mohamed – have previously written to Excel Parking with concerns about people being unfairly fined at other car parks it operates.

Miss Hudson believes the five-minute payment rule is “totally unreasonable”.

“I haven’t got children but I can imagine a busy mum trying to sort her kids out, trying to pay for something when there’s no signal here, and the machine being out of order,” she said.

“This has been going on for over a year now, and I’m just really hoping it can be resolved.

“I desperately don’t want this to happen to anybody else, more than anything, because it gives you a lot of stress.”

Miss Hudson started using the Copeland Street car park in February 2023, when she was working in the Derbion centre nearby.

She said the parking machine was “completely out of order”, so she tried to pay using a phone app.

“I was trying to get reception and wasn’t able to, so I got my wi-fi within the store, and paid online through their app,” she said.

Miss Hudson did the same thing each day, paying the full £3.30 daily rate each time, until she received a PCN letter.

It asked her to pay £100 within 28 days, reduced to £60 if she paid within 14 days.

“I rang the company and explained the situation, and they basically said ‘you have to pay it’,” said Miss Hudson.

“So to keep them off my back I did pay the initial parking fine.”

Miss Hudson then received a further nine PCNs.

Although each of the nine outstanding PCNs was for £100, the amount has increased to £1,905.76 because Excel Parking has since added an extra £70 “debt recovery” charge to each one, interest of 8% per annum, a £115 court fee, and £80 costs for a legal representative.

In a statement, a spokesperson said: “The signage at the car park made it clear that it was ‘Pay on Entry’ and that there was a maximum period of five minutes to purchase the parking tariff.

“This is one of the specific terms and conditions for use of the car park. It is the driver’s responsibility to read and understand the terms.

“It seems that Miss Hudson is the author of her own misfortune.”

The BBC asked Excel Parking why it asks drivers to pay within five minutes, and the company said this was “to mitigate against abuse from motorists who simply use the car park to drop off and pick up passengers from adjacent retailers”.

However, Miss Hudson believes the company cannot justify penalising drivers like herself who pay for a full day’s parking, because they are not using the car park as a drop-off point.

Excel Parking also claimed Miss Hudson took “between 14 and 190 minutes to purchase each parking tariff by phone, an average of almost one hour”.

Miss Hudson said this claim was “absolutely ludicrous”, and if the payments took so long to go through, it was because the app did not process them straight away.

Excel also claims Miss Hudson could have paid using cash at the machine, and said “there was at least one working pay machine on site”.

However, Miss Hudson insists the only machine she saw was out of order, and said it had since been replaced.

Excel said Miss Hudson was given the option to appeal to the Independent Appeals Service (IAS) but chose not to do so.

Miss Hudson said she instead contacted Excel directly, and also a debt recovery service in an attempt to appeal, but was not successful.

Jumpin Fun, a business next to the car park, told the BBC hundreds of its customers had received PCN letters from Excel Parking.

Manager Nikola Slovakova has a folder on her computer which stores emails she has received from customers complaining.

In response to her concerns, Excel Parking said: “Some of the initial problems at Jumpin Fun related to customers who did not purchase the parking tariff until after they dropped off their children.

“Appropriate adjustments for customers were agreed with Jumpin Fun and implemented earlier this year through the introduction of touchscreens at the Jumpin Fun reception which provided them with a period of free parking, funded by Jumpin Fun.”

In relation to the touchscreens, Ms Slovakova said one parking tablet was installed in an attempt to stop customers getting PCNs.

However, she said this “caused more harm than it did good”, because some people still received PCNs after entering their details.

“Now they thought we were cooperating with Excel and we didn’t want to help them so it reflected even worse on us,” she said.

She said the tablet had since been removed, and Jumpin Fun instead warns customers about the car park with signs in reception, as well as on its website and in booking confirmation emails.

Derek Millard-Smith, a specialist lawyer in the UK parking sector, says parking on private land is generally governed by contract law.

“By entering that land and seeing the signage and parking there, you are deemed to have agreed to those terms, and if you then fail to adhere to those terms you can be issued with a Parking Charge Notice,” he said.

Mr Millard-Smith said PCNs were “a contractual debt”, which could ultimately be pursed through the civil courts and result in a County Court Judgement, which can affect your credit rating.

He urged anyone who believes they have wrongly received a PCN to appeal against it, either through POPLA or the Independent Appeals Service (IAS).

POPLA is the appeals service for PCNs which have been issued by car park operators, which are members of the British Parking Association (BPA).

The IAS is for PCNs issued by members of the International Parking Community (IPC), which includes Excel Parking.

Car park operators need to be members of either the BPA or IPC in order to obtain drivers’ details from the DVLA, and therefore issue PCNs by post.

Excel Parking has made a claim through the Civil National Business Centre asking Miss Hudson to pay £1,905.76.

The two parties had telephone mediation on 11 November but a settlement was not reached.

Miss Hudson has now been told there will be a court hearing within six months.

She said she was “very worried” but wanted to stand up for herself.

“I believe I have got a good case and I believe that it will help not just me, but potentially other people that have been in this situation,” she said.

“Hopefully the judge will understand my case and see my point of view.”

Don’t put away your strappy top and bic lighter just yet – Charli XCX’s Brat arena tour has just landed in the UK.

Kicking off in Manchester on Wednesday, the gigs will be hoping to keep the mania of Brat summer alive well into the winter months.

But could the mega tour give the UK’s club scene the boost it desperately needs?

“The clubbing landscape right now, I would say honestly it’s quite terrifying,” London DJ Moxie tells BBC Newsbeat.

More than 100 music venues in the UK stopped putting on live music last year according to the Music Venue’s Trust – with more than half of those fully closing.

“We rely on a lot of students and a lot of students are not going out,” Moxie says.

“They’re prioritising staying in because they can’t quite afford to go out.

“Everything has gone up and that’s had such a knock on effect on venues.”

The venues that are closing or struggling to stay open are the types of places where Charli XCX honed her craft.

Charli’s spoken before about getting her parents to take her to raves when she was a teenager and before she was selling out arenas, she was working warehouse gigs.

“She has been around for such a long time and she used to go out – I would be at raves that she was at when she was like 15,” says Moxie.

“She is opening up the conversation about the sorts of places that have inspired her.”

And as those places start to disappear, Moxi’s hopeful that Charli’s fanbase will discover a love of club music that has been on the wane.

“Especially if someone like Charli XCX is telling them: ‘This is where I’ve come from, the clubs have made me, it’s part of my DNA’.”

It’s not just Charli bringing club music to the mainstream either – Fred Again headlined Reading and Leeds festival over the summer and Peggy Gou’s had a string of sold out shows.

Brat is Charli’s sixth album and it’s up for an armful of awards including three Grammys and the Mercury Prize.

Hot on its heels was the remix album, Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, and an arena tour.

And for top artists headlining arenas, fans are used to paying above the odds.

But at Charli’s show in Manchester on Wednesday, friends Niamh and Freya say they were “really surprised” to only pay £40 each to see Charli XCX.

“We thought it would be more expensive,” they say.

“It wasn’t bad at all – it was really affordable.”

Compare that to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour where, on average, fans spent £206 on a ticket.

Regular standing tickets for Beyoncé Renaissance shows cost up to £410 and tickets for Billie Eilish’s upcoming UK dates could set you back up to £398.

More than half of people in the UK have said high prices have stopped them going to gigs in the last five years.

For people under 34, two thirds of them have said that’s meant they’ve reduced the number they go to.

Tasha and Lucas also spent £40 on their tickets and are hoping Charli XCX will give a boost to the clubbing scene.

They travelled from Chester where Lucas says “there’s not a huge club scene” but they often go to other towns and cities to support artists and venues.

Tasha says they’ve always enjoyed the club scene and are excited Charli’s brought it more into the mainstream.

“She’s the first in our first generation to make that crossover,” she says.

“She’s breaking boundaries,” adds Lucas.

Other fans who spoke to Newsbeat at the gig told us they were new to clubbing and Charli’s music had brought them into the scene.

“Party culture died out a bit,” says fan Amara. “I hope this revives it.”

Music journalist and critic Shaad D’Souza tells Newsbeat he “has to hope and pray” that lots of Charli’s fans are as excited as Amara about getting into clubbing and going out.

He’s particularly excited about what Brat could mean for the future of the genre – as well as people going out dancing and supporting venues.

“It’s refreshing that someone’s going to the underground for new sounds,” he says.

“Because what we see a lot lately is pop musicians’ direct reference points are the history of pop.”

He points to Tate McRae throwing back to Britney Spears as an example, compared to artists like Madonna and Prince taking inspiration from different styles outside of pop in previous decades and bringing them into the mainstream.

“I think that’s what Charli is doing here and I think that’s something that’s been missing,” Shaad says.

“We lose something when pop references itself.”

As for what the Brat tour can do for the clubbing scene, Shaad believes that, while there’s a growing market for big ticket events like festivals and the Eras tour, huge gigs can happily co-exist with a smaller club scene.

“I don’t think the big pop tour is eating the small club landscape,” he says.

“What’s closing clubs near me is property development and council regulations – no one pop star is not responsible for clubs closing.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Betsy, seven, and five-year-old Lacie have a very special friendship.

Despite living less than a mile apart in Bridgend, and attending the same school, they did not meet until April 2023.

This was when they were both diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) just three weeks apart.

Since then both the girls and their parents have become like family.

They’ve supported each through chemotherapy cycles, hair loss and formed a support bubble when both needed to isolate.

“It’s really nice to have a friend that’s always with you in hospital,” said Betsy.

“She’s special to me…. she’s my best friend,” said Lacie.

Their mums said they could not imagine facing the past 18 months without each other, and families they have met at Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales in Cardiff.

“Having someone there who’s going through the same thing, it’s just everything,” explained Lacie’s mother Jess.

“It’s such an important friendship for us and it’s helped us on our journey no end,” added Betsy’s mum Charlotte.

Lacie first became unwell in October 2022 and for about six months had multiple visits to the GP for everything from sickness and high temperatures to colds and chickenpox.

The following April, a large lump appeared on her neck and the family received the diagnosis a week later.

“We just broke down, just there and then,” said her mother Jess.

“I was just looking over at my husband thinking ‘tell me this is a dream’.”

Little did she know that just three weeks earlier, Charlotte, who she had never met despite living so close to, had received the same devastating news about her daughter.

Betsy’s diagnosis followed months of stomach pain, fevers and limb pain.

Following blood tests, she received the same diagnosis.

“It was a hammer blow… my whole world turned upside down,” said Charlotte.

Just weeks later, when Betsy was in the early stages of her chemotherapy, Charlotte received a text message from a friend that would be the catalyst for the girls’ friendship.

“[She] said ‘I hope you don’t mind me messaging but I have a friend who’s in the same school as you who lives local and has just been given the news that her daughter has got the same diagnosis’,” recalled Charlotte.

“It just completely stopped me in my tracks.”

Charlotte decided to text Jess immediately.

“I’m so glad she did,” said Jess.

“She could give me an insight into what was to come because at the beginning, they get given a really heavy dose of steroids.

“And it changes their appearance, it changes their characters, it changes their physical features and I was prepped for that.”

The girls met for the first time at hospital.

“They just hit it off straight away,” said Jess.

“The girls just straight away acted as if they had been best friends for life.

“It was lovely, they were hugging, they were getting to know each other, asking each other questions and it’s just evolved from there.”

Since then both girls have been through gruelling treatment.

Betsy responded well to her chemotherapy.

But for the first six months, Lacie’s parents were told she was not responding to the treatment.

“Every time you hear those words ‘the chemo hasn’t worked as well as we would like it to work’ it breaks your heart again and again,” said Jess.

“There was a lot of guilt for me because Betsy was responding to treatment… things were going well for us and they were not going particularly well for Jess and Lacie at that point,” said Charlotte.

“I hope I was there for her, to support where she has been for me throughout.”

After six months Lacie’s consultant was able to secure funding for a drug that is not available on the NHS.

It is a targeted immunotherapy drug called Blinatumomab, also known as Blina.

For four weeks, Lacie had to wear a backpack containing the drug for 24 hours a day so it could enter her blood intravenously through a picc line in her arm.

“Thankfully, that worked,” said Jess.

Both girls are now in the maintenance phase of their treatment – which is due to be completed next year.

This means they still have to take medication daily and have frequent hospital visits.

But they are back at school.

Each week, Lesley, their paediatric oncology outreach nurse specialist, visits them to check their bloods.

She has witnessed their friendship flourish.

“They both understand what each other are going through and [when] having a blood sample they’re really supportive of each other,” she said.

“I think Lacie found it quite difficult having a blood sample in school the first couple of times but Betsy was really encouraging so it made the whole process easier.”

On a Tuesday morning at school, Betsy was determined to lead by example when getting her thumb pricked so Lesley could squeeze out enough blood to check her blood count.

“I’m going to be good because I know Lacie is younger than me so I’ll show her,” she said.

Lacie quickly responded to her friend’s courage.

“I think I am going to be as brave as Betsy is,” said Lacie.

Their mums get similar strength from one another too.

“I am surrounded by people and surrounded by lovely friends and family who were so supportive,” said Charlotte.

“But to have that person that understands… sometimes you don’t have to speak, it’s just a smile.

“Those friendships are so important.”

“I get so emotional because I genuinely couldn’t do this without you… it’s such a lonely place…. you understand exactly what I’m going through,” said Jess to Charlotte.

“You’ve been my rock.”

In Beatles ’64, the new documentary which charts the impact of the band’s first US tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney makes a suggestion as to why they achieved so much so quickly.

“When we came, it was quite shortly after Kennedy had been assassinated,” he said.

“Maybe America needed something like The Beatles to be lifted out of sorrow.”

Beatles scholars and cultural historians have long remarked upon how much of a lift the band gave to an America in mourning.

But was McCartney right? Was the rise of the world’s most famous band partly down to the murder of the 35th president of the United States?

Did The Beatles crack America because Kennedy was killed?

When The Beatles landed at the recently-renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport on 7 February 1964, it was just 70 days after the the 46-year-old Democrat had been murdered.

Kennedy was shot as his motorcade drove through Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963 and his death threw his country into a period of mourning.

Dr Patrick Andelic, assistant professor of American History at Northumbria University, said it was a moment that shook the nation to its core, partially because of JFK’s own pop culture persona.

“In a sense, Kennedy was the first TV president, which was relatively new at this point,” he said.

“By the beginning of the ’60s, 90% of American families had TVs, so the way news and media was consumed totally changed.”

He said the president was, like The Beatles, “young, handsome, witty and energetic, which translated really well to TV”.

“He embraced television and was well suited to it,” he said.

“And that makes the shock and trauma of his death sharper in the aftermath.

“It was the first killing of a sitting president in 60 years.”

It was, of course, TV which also helped The Beatles become a phenomenon in their homeland.

Settling on their now final line-up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1962, the Liverpool four-piece had already scored two number one albums in 1963 with Please Please Me and With The Beatles.

When that success was coupled with the famous 1963 Royal Variety Performance appearance during which Lennon asked “the people in the cheaper seats to clap their hands” and the rest to just “rattle their jewellery” they became a national sensation.

Senior music industries lecturer Dr Holly Tessler, from the University of Liverpool, said it was that show that “made them stars overnight”.

“At this point, The Beatles were an unstoppable force in the UK,” she said.

The Beatles’ youthful exuberance was central to their success, chiming with the legions of British teenagers that had begun to follow them.

Dr Andelic said in America, JFK had a similar appeal.

“Kennedy projected youth and vitality and in his inaugural address, he spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans,” he said.

“His death cut that short in a shocking way.”

He said in the aftermath, the nation started “to look for more positive things, stability and reassurance”.

“When The Beatles arrive, I think they represented that.

“They were also young, vital, and [in the footage] of them getting off the plane, they were being silly.

“So, for a nation shattered by a trauma, The Beatles represented an opportunity to laugh and have fun again.”

Winning over a portion of America’s youth was one thing, but cracking the national market was another.

Many British acts had tried and failed to mirror the transatlantic appeal of their US counterparts, who had seen great chart success in the UK, and crack the American market.

There had been limited success for those that came before The Beatles.

Lonnie Donegan, the titular “King of Skiffle”, had two top ten hits, while Cliff Richard, then the biggest act in Britain, had only made it into the US top 40 on one occasion.

Spencer Leigh, author of many books on The Beatles, said the trend of British acts failing to “make it” in the United States, had seen Capitol, one of the country’s biggest record companies, even refuse to distribute The Beatles’ music for fear of the same result.

“Artists from the UK didn’t sell well in America and it seemed Capitol looked down its nose at the British work,” he said.

Capitol’s concerns were understandable. The singles Please Please Me, From Me To You and She Loves You had all been released in the US in 1963 and seen limited success, so they were reluctant to put out I Want To Hold Your Hand.

The band’s manager Brian Epstein and Capitol’s parent company EMI managed to change the label’s minds and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy’s assassination, the single hit America’s stores.

Its impact was huge and by the first week of February, it was at the top of the US charts, a position it would hold for seven weeks.

The success meant more than 3,000 fans and a large press pack were at the airport when the band touched down.

For Spencer Leigh, it was what came next, not what had happened before, that led to their global success.

“My view is the people screaming for The Beatles at the airport were young and didn’t know much about politics,” he said.

“For me, the turning point was the Ed Sullivan Show.”

At 20:00 on 9 February 1964, The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the programme, which was one of America’s most popular TV variety shows.

The TV channel CBS reportedly received more than 50,000 requests for seats at its 700-capacity studio ahead of the band’s visit and those who failed to get their hands on any huddled excitedly around TVs at home.

“More than 70 million people watched the first one and they performed so well,” Leigh said.

He said one of the moments that really caught the audience’s attention was when cameras panned to each band member, flashing their names on the screen.

“They put a caption on John Lennon saying ‘sorry girls he’s married’,” he said.

“I’m not sure how much [the band] appreciated that.”

About a month after those first three performances, The Beatles made US chart history by becoming the first act to hold the top five slots simultaneously.

Beatlemania had now gone global and the rest was history.

For Dr Tessler, the notion that America went down with the death of JFK and back up with the arrival of The Beatles is too simplistic.

For her too, it was the Ed Sullivan Show appearances, rather than the assassination aftermath that set The Beatles on the road to pop immortality.

“I really struggle with the idea that The Beatles owe their US success to JFK being shot,” she said.

“Their manager Brian Epstein had already been to America and done the deal to get them on the Sullivan show weeks before Kennedy was killed, and there was so much hype when the band finally landed in the US.

“America might have wanted a distraction from that feeling of ‘what’s next’ after the assassination, but The Beatles became the story so quickly that the connection to Kennedy was only fleeting at best.”

When a sitting vice-president says she has hired assassins to kill the president, and dreams of cutting off his head, you might think that country was in serious trouble.

But then this is the Philippines, where politics and melodrama go hand in hand.

“I have talked to a person,” Vice-president Sara Duterte said on her Facebook page last weekend. “I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM [President Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke. I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”

Last month she told reporters her relationship with President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos had become toxic, and she dreamed of cutting off his head.

She also threatened to dig up the body of the president’s father from the Heroes’ Cemetery in Manila and dump the ashes in the sea.

Behind all this drama is a once powerful political alliance which has spectacularly unravelled.

The decision by the Marcos and Duterte clans to join forces in the 2022 presidential election was a marriage of convenience. Both candidates were the offspring of presidents – Sara Duterte’s father Rodrigo was the incumbent then – and had strong support in different regions of the Philippines. Both had populist appeal.

However, having both run for president risked dividing their supporters and losing to a third candidate.

So she agreed that Marcos would go for president, while she went for vice-president – the two posts are elected separately – but that they would form one team on the campaign trail.

The assumption was that the younger Duterte would then be in prime position to contest the next presidential election in 2028.

It proved a very effective strategy. The UniTeam, as they branded themselves, won by a landslide.

However, as any of her predecessors could have told Duterte, the vice-presidency is largely ceremonial, and has few powers.

The Dutertes had wanted the influential defence portfolio; President Marcos instead gave her Education, an early sign he was wary of letting his vice-president build up her power base.

He also made an abrupt turn away from the politics of his predecessor.

He ordered the Philippines navy and coastguard to stand up to China in disputed areas of the South China Sea. This was a marked contrast to President Rodrigo Duterte who had refused to challenge China’s dominant presence there, and even declared that he loved Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Marcos also toned down President Duterte’s infamous war on drugs, in which thousands of suspected drug dealers were gunned down.

He has hinted at the possibility of rejoining the International Criminal Court, which has issued an indictment for crimes against humanity against Rodrigo Duterte. The former president has also found himself in front of the Philippines Senate being grilled about the extrajudicial killings that happened during his presidency.

Relations between the two camps soured further when Marcos’s allies in the lower house launched an investigation into Sara Duterte’s use of the confidential funds she was allocated when she got the job.

In July, the vice-president resigned as education secretary, and her language became increasingly inflammatory.

Sara Duterte is no stranger to controversy. Thirteen years ago, when she was mayor of Davao City, she was filmed repeatedly punching a court official.

She comes from the same political mould as her outspoken father, both of them known for tough talking. He called the Pope a “son of a whore” and boasted of having killed people.

He describes her as the “alpha” character of the family who always gets her way; she says he is hard to love. Like her father she likes riding big motorbikes.

Her latest threats to her one-time ally President Marcos, though, may prove to be one verbal indiscretion too far.

Marcos has responded by calling Duterte’s comments “reckless” and “troubling”. The Philippines National Bureau of Investigation – its equivalent of the American FBI – has summoned the vice-president to explain her threats on Friday.

She has now walked them back, denying they were real. “This is a plan without flesh,” she explained, accusing Marcos of being a liar who was leading the country to hell.

Perhaps it was inevitable that two such powerful families would become rivals in the maelstrom of Filipino politics, which is still largely about personalities, big families and regions.

Political loyalties are fluid; senators and members of congress constantly shift their party allegiances. Power inevitably concentrates around the president, with his authority to dispense government funds. Former presidents are routinely investigated for corruption or abuses of power once they leave office.

President Marcos wants to rehabilitate the reputation of his family, after his father’s shameful ejection by a popular uprising in 1986, and will be keen to influence the choice of his successor in 2028. The Dutertes have their own dynastic ambitions.

For now Sara Duterte is still vice-president. She could be removed through impeachment by the Senate, but that would be a risky move for President Marcos.

She enjoys strong popular support in the south, and among the millions of overseas Filipino workers, and getting sufficient support in the Senate for impeachment could be difficult.

Mid-term elections are due in May next year, in which the entire lower house and half of the 24 senatorial seats will be contested. They will be seen as a test of the strength for each of the rival camps.

Duterte’s explosive break with the president is an opportunity for her to back her own candidates, and present herself as an alternative to a government which has lost popularity over the lacklustre performance of the economy.

That could give her a better launching pad for the 2028 presidential race than staying shackled to the Marcos administration.

But after her incendiary comments of the past few weeks, Filipinos must be wondering: what will she say next?

A young Palestinian couple in Jerusalem have produced a range of perfumes to embody the heritage of their people. Despite the horror of the war in Gaza, they hope their scents can still summon memories of a better time, as Sebastian Usher reports from Jerusalem.

Out in the fields of the Jordan valley, Palestinian women still sing old folk songs as they harvest the olive groves. One tells the story of how a fabled ship carrying a life-saving cargo of food heads to port during a terrible famine that swept the Levant in the dying days of Ottoman rule. While in the Old City of Jerusalem, the scents of leather, spices and livestock fuse into a fragrance that evokes thousands of years of history.

“We’re trying to send a message to people through our perfumes, revealing our heritage and the scent of our land,” Qassem Abu Khalaf says as he explains the motivation behind the Mejana fragrance line that he’s set up with his wife, Malak Hijazi.

The young couple are Palestinians from the Beit Hanina district in occupied East Jerusalem. He is an advanced materials engineer and she is an English and special needs teacher. Their fragrance line grew from a passion Qassem developed over the years for producing the best quality perfumes. He worked at night on his ideas, building up a library of hundreds of ingredients.

In a restaurant in East Jerusalem amid the ongoing war in Gaza, he says the five scents he’s so far produced are intended to let people hold a piece of Palestinian history in their hands. While for Palestinians themselves, he hopes that it’s a way to reconnect with their roots in a Proustian rush of memory triggered by an aroma.

He and Malak chose the name Mejana, as it’s a word that describes the old songs that Palestinians sing as they are working.

“Mejana has a special rhythm when you sing it,” Malak says. “It means joy and happiness. We chose it, because when you smell a special fragrance, you feel good, you feel happy in the same sort of way.”

Palestinian folk memory also influenced the naming of their first two scents. Zaref Atool is a dark, heavy fragrance – very much what people expect from an oriental style. Qassem says it’s intended to conjure up the feel of the ancient, labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s named after the main character in a popular old song – in which the singer laments that a tall, handsome young man is leaving his Palestinian homeland to travel far away.

The other fragrance is called Rozana, after a ship that was feverishly anticipated by people starving across Palestine, Lebanon and Syria after failed wheat harvests 100 years ago. It was meant to deliver salvation, but only brought further bitter disappointment and loss – as its cargo contained almost nothing to eat. Again, there’s a famous song inspired by the story that’s been sung by many of the great Arab singers, such as Fairouz and Sabah.

“I love our identity, our heritage, our folklore and I’m proud of it,” says Malak.

If the past is their inspiration, then the present has complicated their efforts to create and launch a brand that celebrates Palestinian identity.

“We launched our brand on 27 September last year,” Malak says. “We went to two bazaars in Jerusalem but then the war began and put a stop to everything for many months.”

The souks and shops in the Old City and elsewhere in Israel and the occupied West Bank are denuded of tourists, as shopkeepers try to survive on the still bustling local market.

Qassem and Malak have had some success selling their fragrances to the Palestinian diaspora – in Australia in particular. And they have continued undeterred, producing a second range of three perfumes, beautifully presented in a box painted by a Palestinian artist with local flowers and wildlife.

The perfumes themselves are contained in wooden capsules with a key embossed on one side, which opens up the gold dispenser when turned. A large old key is a symbol of all the Palestinian homes lost when hundreds of thousands were expelled or fled during the war in 1948 that established the State of Israel.

“When we chose the key, it was about our memories,” Malak say. “It’s designed a little bit differently from the traditional Palestinian key, but it is related to it. When you smell a particular scent, it brings back beautiful memories. So, it is the key to our ancestors and our childhood memories.”

The couple have not only just produced their new range of perfumes – with combinations such as tuberose and berry, and coconut and agarwood – but also their first child – a daughter, Sadeel.

Qassem and Malak say it is a difficult time to bring new life into a world in such conflict. Malak says she feels guilty about it but she had to stop watching news about Gaza during her pregnancy as it was causing her so much stress – and she feared it might negatively affect her baby.

“It’s not easy,” Qassem says. “But we hope everything will come to an end and we’ll have peace. A little peace of mind, too.”

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

A rich picture has emerged of the three men who left a message hidden inside the walls of a Scottish lighthouse 132 years ago, thanks to the work of genealogists.

Earlier this month BBC Scotland News revealed a bottle containing the note had been found inside the Corsewall Lighthouse

Written with quill and ink and dated 4 September 1892, it revealed the names of the three workers who installed a new type of light in the 100ft (30m) tower.

Now experts from genealogy firm Findmypast have pored over censuses and newspaper archives to uncover the story of the workers who left the intriguing time capsule.

Queen Victoria was on the throne and Gladstone was leading a Liberal government but the genealogists’ research reveals details of the ordinary working men who travelled from Edinburgh to leave their mark on the remote lighthouse.

The first name on the concealed letter was that of John Westwood, a 28-year-old millwright – a tradesman who works with machinery – from Edinburgh.

He had travelled from the capital to the lighthouse at the most northerly point of the Rhins of Galloway to carry out the project for James Milne & Son.

As a millwright, he was following in the footsteps of his father, David Westwood.

He ran his own millwright business, with John’s eldest two brothers, David, a millwright, and Alexander, a mechanical draughtsman.

Born in St Andrews, Fife, in 1864, John was the youngest of eight siblings.

His two eldest sisters, Mary and Margaret, worked as domestic servants when John and his other three siblings were still at school.

When John reached 16 he too became a millwright.

By 1891, John had moved to Edinburgh and was living as a lodger with a widowed pianoforte maker, Richard Honeyman, 70, and his daughter, Helen, 45.

A year later he was sent on the Corsewall Lighthouse project.

He married Margaret Gow, the 26-year-old daughter of a contractor from Blairgowrie, in 1896.

They went on to have three children – John, Jane and Neil.

And John Sr lived a long life. He died aged 93 in March 1958 at Edinburgh City Hospital.

James Brodie was 48 when the trio of workers concealed the bottle.

He was a James Milne & Sons engineer who had also travelled from Edinburgh.

Born in Renfrewshire in 1844, he was the eldest of James and Margaret’s five children.

Census records show that he was an apprentice engineer when he was 17, and he lived with his parents on George Street in Greenock.

His father was a shawl weaver and his mother was a cotton winder.

In 1868 he married Annie F Scott in Paisley.

By the time he wrote the secret note they had seven children under the age of 14 and were living on Tannahill Place, Paisley.

David Scott was 32 when he left the note in the lighthouse and worked as a labourer for James Milne & Sons.

He was born in 1860, the son of Jane and William Scott, a grain loftman in Edinburgh.

When he wrote the lighthouse note he was still living with his housekeeper mother, his sister Jane Mackay, a millworker, and her two sons David and William at 40 Fox Street in Edinburgh.

Ten years later, 41-year-old David was still single and boarding with the Munro family (James, Jane and their infant son John) at 41 Leith Walk, Edinburgh.

He had become more specialised in his trade and was now working as a lead and metal worker.

All three men worked for James Milne & Son, a business that was founded “prior to 1750” as brassfounders.

In 1821 they fitted the author Sir Walter Scott’s Melrose home, Abbotsford, with an oil-gas plant and by 1837 they were making gas meters.

Around 1885, they moved from their premises in Edinburgh’s High Street to the larger Milton House Works, in Abbeyhill.

Their Glasgow branch opened two years later, where they displayed gasoliers, pumps, light-fittings and the Wenham Patent Gas Lamp.

By the late 1890s, they were making “lamps for lighthouses” and specialised in aluminium.

The bottle containing the note was found by Ross Russell, a Northern Lighthouse Board mechanical engineer, during an inspection.

He spotted it after removing panels in a cupboard but it was well out of arm’s reach. The team retrieved it using a contraption made from a rope and a broom handle.

He said he was blown away to find out about the men who had written the note.

“I’ve touched the note and the bottle but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would find out all this about their lives,” he said.

“It’s just incredible.”

Jen Baldwin, a research specialist at Findmypast, said: “These rare mementoes offer such a wonderful window into the past.

“From just a name, date and location, we’ve been able to trace some of their stories back in time and build up a rich picture of their lives and the world around them.

“This one lighthouse project might appear at first glance simple and remote, but these workers were part of a revolution in technology and engineering during the late 1800s and were enabling ships to safely navigate through a busy sea passage – part of a wider network of trade and travel routes across a global empire.”

Historian Eric Melvin said: “The Carsewell Lighthouse story of the hidden message in a bottle is absolutely fascinating.

“To discover an original contemporary source is always exciting but to find one deliberately hidden away is intriguing.

“Did the three engineers plan this together? What motivated them? Did they tell anyone about the hidden bottle and did they leave any clues?

“Great credit is due to those who have researched their family stories.”

Former Harry Potter star Rupert Grint has been ordered to pay £1.8m in tax after losing a legal battle with HM Revenue & Customs.

Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the films, was originally told to pay the sum in 2019 after an HMRC investigation disputed one of his tax returns.

Lawyers for the 36-year-old appealed, arguing that money he received from a company had been correctly taxed as a capital asset, but HMRC said it should have been taxed as income at a higher rate.

However, Grint’s argument has been dismissed by a tax tribunal judge.

During the 2011-2012 tax year, Grint received £4.5m from a company that managed his business, and of which he was the only shareholder.

This payment was described as being for “likely residual income and bonuses” resulting from the Harry Potter films.

He argued he could pay capital gains tax on it at a rate of 10% rather than income tax and national insurance at a top rate of 52%.

In the ruling, tribunal judge Harriet Morgan dismissed Grint’s appeal and said the money “derived substantially the whole of its value from the activities of Mr Grint”, which was “otherwise realised” as income.

He previously lost another, separate court case in 2019 that involved a £1m tax refund.

Grint appeared in all eight Harry Potter films from 2001 until 2011.

Since then, he has appeared in the films Into the White and Knock at the Cabin, and also appeared on TV and in theatre.

He has starred in Apple TV series Servant for the last four years.

A hitman offered C$100,000 ($71,400; £56,000) for the assassination of a crime reporter at Montreal newspaper La Presse, the outlet has reported.

Convicted killer Frédérick Silva confessed to La Presse that he had offered the contract to anyone willing to carry out the hit on Daniel Renaud, who was covering his trial for three murders and an attempted murder in 2021.

Silva was convicted in 2022 and became a police informant.

Quebec Premier François Legault condemned the plot. “It makes no sense that in Quebec – we are not in a movie – there is a contract placed on the head of a journalist because he does his job,” he said.

“This is not the Quebec we want,” he said, adding that the province’s police must continue to target organised crime.

In order to become an informant for the authorities, Silva had to confess his entire criminal history, La Presse reported. The outlet said it had learned of the plot against Mr Renaud after reviewing the confession Silva had made to police.

Silva admitted to contacting two influential organised crime figures about assassinating Mr Renaud while being held on trial in 2021.

According to Silva, the figures were hesitant, saying it was a bad idea to target a journalist.

The “contract” was in place for roughly two months, but was never carried out, La Presse reported. Silva eventually cancelled the order, he said, because he had “more important issues to deal with”.

Silva is now serving a life sentence in prison.

Mr Renaud told La Presse he was “shaken” by the revelations.

“I don’t censor myself, but I always exercise restraint so I don’t reveal details about the private lives of criminals and avoid putting lives in danger. So I never thought that I could have ended up the subject of a contract like this,” he said.

Vincent Marissal, a former colleague of Mr Renaud’s who is now an elected provincial politician with the left-wing Québec Solidaire, called the journalist a “very rigorous person – not the type of guy who makes a lot of noise in the newsroom but apparently he can cause a lot of bother.

“That means he’s doing his job, but that’s certainly no reason to see a price put on his head.”

Huge flooding caused by heavy rain in Malaysia has forced more than 122,000 people out of their homes across the country.

Three people have also died, according to disaster officials.

There are fears the number could rise, as heavy rain and storm warnings remain in place.

Thousands of emergency services personnel have been deployed to help rescue people stranded and shelters are being provided.

Videos shows cars and houses submerged, and people wading through waist-deep water.

The flooding, which began earlier in the week, is mostly concentrated on the north-eastern state of Kelantan, which borders Thailand.

There, the National Disaster Management Agency says the evacuees count for 63% of the total number.

So far, the number of those displaced surpasses that of 2014, which saw one of the worst floods in the country.

The disaster agency has set up 679 emergency shelters for those affected.

Also affected are Terengganu, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan, Perlis, Selangr, johor, Melaka and Perak.

Provisions for disaster management have been sent to Terengganu and Kelantan State Governments, according to the prime minister’s office.

On Friday, he barred his cabinet members from going on leave so they can focus on the disaster.

In neighbouring Thailand, six provinces have declared a disaster, and floods are affecting over 240,000 households, according to the Interior Ministry.

The army has been deployed to rescue people in need.

Malaysia’s monsoon season begins in November, and flooding isn’t uncommon.

In 2021, it faced some of its worse flooding in decades, which killed at least 14 people.

Terminally ill people are a step closer to being able to choose when they die after MPs voted to support a proposed change to the law.

The right to an assisted death will be granted to people with life expectancies of six months or less provided their request is approved by two doctors and a judge.

It is is one of the most significant and sensitive topics to have been voted on by MPs in recent decades – though it still needs to clear further rounds of voting before it can be implemented.

Two weeks ago BBC News interviewed two terminally ill people about their feelings on the assisted dying bill and we spoke to them again following the vote on Friday afternoon.

“I’m over the moon, I’m so happy,” says Elise Burns, whose cancer means she lives in constant pain.

“The bill is going to save so many unnecessarily painful and horrible deaths – as well as the families and loved ones who would have had to see them go through it.”

She was watching the debate on assisted dying from the public gallery in the House of Commons having joined the campaign in favour a few months ago.

Elise, 50, is terminally ill after breast cancer spread to other parts of her body, including her bones – her femur had to be replaced by a metal rod after it was rotted by cancerous cells.

WATCH: Emotional scenes as MPs debate assisted dying

FIND OUT: How did my MP vote?

EXPLAINED: What is in the proposed law?

LOOK AHEAD: What happens next to the bill on assisted dying?

ANALYSIS: A momentous day in Parliament, whatever happens next

PERSPECTIVE: How assisted dying has spread across the world

“I’m completely and utterly shell-shocked. I was obviously hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” adds Elise, who thought MPs might decide against the bill having witnessed the debate in person.

Nik Ward, who has motor neurone disease and opposes changing the law on assisted dying, told us: “Obviously I’m a bit disappointed.”

He watched the debate and vote at home.

“But, at the same time, the point was made several times [during the debate] that since the last vote nine years ago there has been very little improvement in palliative care.”

Also known as end of life care, this service is for those people in the final months and years of their lives.

It can be received at home or in a care home, hospice or hospital – depending on the needs and preferences of the patient.

Opponents of the assisted dying bill think this service needs to be better funded if terminally ill people are to make a genuine choice between dying naturally or choosing to die earlier.

“There has not been much discussion and maybe, over the coming years before the [assisted dying] bill is implemented, there will be time for a comprehensive review,” adds Nik.

The 53-year-old has been told for the past five years that he is terminally ill and knows he could die tomorrow by choking on food or on his own saliva.

Another concern he has about the bill being passed is that terminally ill people, vulnerable as they face the emotions of dying soon, will choose to end their lives unnecessarily early for what they consider to be noble reasons.

“It’s the good people, the people who are trying to be virtuous, who are dignified and trying to do the right thing – they are the ones I’m worried about and think [this law] could be problematic for,” he tells us.

“It will be the grandmother in the care home that doesn’t want to spend all the money she’s got in her savings account because she wants her grandchildren to get it,” he says. “It will be people like her who seek to end their lives.”

He adds: “This is despite the fact her grandchildren will be likely to value the last of the time they have got with her more than they are an additional £10,000 or £20,000.

“People will make a [life or death] decision based on internal judgements that aren’t necessarily accurate because people don’t have honest conversations about death.”

He says better conversations would help people who are terminally ill make the most of the time they have left with their loved ones, and so choose not to end their lives early.

“Ironically, I think what people say and do at the end of their lives is utterly defining of their life,” says Nik.

For Elise, she knows the end of her life will be one filled with increasing pain and suffering as her body becomes more tolerant of the morphine she uses – making it less effective as a painkiller.

She is terrified of a painful death and is glad the bill will eventually grant people like her a choice.

“It gives them the right to a good death, that’s really important,” she says.

She explains it will also spare people the stress of taking terminally ill loved ones abroad to die – and the fear of prosecution upon their return.

“It’s going to save a lot of pain and trauma.”

One of the things that struck her and Nik during the debate was the way MPs behaved.

“I thought by and large it was conducted very respectfully on both sides,” she says and she hopes that will encourage people at home to talk about the issue in a similar manner.

Nik goes further and says it was “absolutely edifying”.

He adds: “It was very grown up and I wish there would be more of it. It’s the way a democracy should work.”

For Elise and her fellow campaigners, the democratic system has worked in their favour on this occasion.

“I’m just so delighted for everyone,” she says. “[Assisted dying] is something I’ve always felt strongly about, though it didn’t occur to me that one day I might need it.”

For her the bill has likely come too late as she will probably be dead by the time it takes effect.

She is arranging to use the assisted dying service offered by Dignitas in Switzerland before the pain caused by her cancer becomes too much to bear.

Until then she will be making the most of her time with her family and celebrating with fellow campaigners after achieving this latest step in changing the law.

“I’m just incredibly grateful that me and tens of thousands of other people will be given the choice of a good death,” she tells us. “Or to shorten a bad one.”

HARDtalk – The UK’s assisted dying debate

The UK parliament is considering proposals to legalise assisted dying. It would bring it in line with several European countries, Canada and a number of US states. Stephen Sackur speaks to actor and disability rights campaigner Liz Carr on whether the focus on a ‘good death’ is detracting from the right to a good life?

Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has topped one final league table from his time on Merseyside – the sumptuous mansion he made his home has become the most-viewed listing on a leading property website.

Complete with swimming pool complex, bar area and state-of-the-art gymnasium, the sprawling pile in Freshfield, Sefton, has gone on the market for £4.25m.

Klopp, 57, left the football club in May after winning eight trophies in nine years, including the Champions League and the Reds’ first Premier League title.

Property firm Rightmove said the mansion topped its league for the most online visits over the past year.

Charismatic Klopp, who became an adopted Scouser during his time in the UK, left to take a job with Red Bull and went on to buy a villa on the island of Majorca, recently telling a German news podcast how he and his wife wanted to turn it into an “eco-friendly family home”.

The mock Georgian home on the prestigious Victoria Road also features a separate building for entertaining guests and a host of other features, described on the website as “the ultimate relaxation oasis”.

The decor and architecture ranges from luxury hotel chic to the sort of style more common in an upmarket conference centre.

Property agent William Goulden said: “This is an exceptional home in a beautiful part of the country.

“Many will be aware of the property’s recent history, and we look forward to playing a part in its future.”

Other properties on Rightmove attracting the most attention include a former abbey in Oxfordshire on the market for £15m and a refurbished 19th century Grade II-listed Georgian house in Knightsbridge, London, on Britain’s most expensive street, where the average asking price is a cool £9.6m.

Rightmove property expert Tim Bannister said: “From a luxurious former football manager’s residence to a historic Grade I listed abbey, the most viewed homes of the year reflect the wide-ranging dreams of home-hunters this year across Britain.

“Whether it’s a property fit for royalty opposite Buckingham Palace, or a stunning family home, these remarkable listings showcase the unique charm and diversity of the UK housing market.”

A charred lorry, empty tear gas shells and posters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan – it was all that remained of a massive protest led by Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, that had sent the entire capital into lockdown.

Just a day earlier, faith healer Bibi – wrapped in a white shawl, her face covered by a white veil – stood atop a shipping container on the edge of the city as thousands of her husband’s devoted followers waved flags and chanted slogans beneath her.

It was the latest protest to flare since Khan, the 72-year-old cricketing icon-turned-politician, was jailed more than a year ago after falling foul of the country’s influential military which helped catapult him to power.

“My children and my brothers! You have to stand with me,” Bibi cried on Tuesday afternoon, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of the crowd.

“But even if you don’t,” she continued, “I will still stand firm.

“This is not just about my husband. It is about this country and its leader.”

It was, noted some watchers of Pakistani politics, her political debut.

But as the sun rose on Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Bibi, nor the thousands of protesters who had marched through the country to the heart of the capital, demanding the release of their jailed leader.

While other PMs have fallen out with Pakistan’s military in the past, Khan’s refusal to stay quiet behind bars is presenting an extraordinary challenge – escalating the standoff and leaving the country deeply divided.

Exactly what happened to the so-called “final march”, and Bibi, when the city went dark is still unclear.

All eyewitnesses like Samia* can say for certain is that the lights went out suddenly, plunging D Chowk, the square where they had gathered, into blackness.

As loud screams and clouds of tear gas blanketed the square, Samia describes holding her husband on the pavement, bloodied from a gun shot to his shoulder.

“Everyone was running for their lives,” she later told BBC Urdu from a hospital in Islamabad, adding it was “like doomsday or a war”.

“His blood was on my hands and the screams were unending.”

But how did the tide turn so suddenly and decisively?

Just hours earlier, protesters finally reached D Chowk late afternoon on Tuesday. They had overcome days of tear gas shelling and a maze of barricaded roads to get to the city centre.

Many of them were supporters and workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party led by Khan.

He had called for the march from his jail cell, where he has been for more than a year on charges he says are politically motivated.

Now Bibi – his third wife, a woman who had been largely shrouded in mystery and out of public view since their unexpected wedding in 2018 – was leading the charge.

“We won’t go back until we have Khan with us,” she declared as the march reached D Chowk, deep in the heart of Islamabad’s government district.

Insiders say even the choice of destination – a place where her husband had once led a successful sit in – was Bibi’s, made in the face of other party leader’s opposition, and appeals from the government to choose another gathering point.

Her being at the forefront may have come as a surprise. Bibi, only recently released from prison herself, is often described as private and apolitical. Little is known about her early life, apart from the fact she was a spiritual guide long before she met Khan. Her teachings, rooted in Sufi traditions, attracted many followers – including Khan himself.

Was she making her move into politics – or was her sudden appearance in the thick of it a tactical move to keep Imran Khan’s party afloat while he remains behind bars?

For critics, it was a move that clashed with Imran Khan’s oft-stated opposition to dynastic politics.

There wasn’t long to mull the possibilities.

After the lights went out, witnesses say that police started firing fresh rounds of tear gas at around 21:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

The crackdown was in full swing just over an hour later.

At some point, amid the chaos, Bushra Bibi left.

Videos on social media appeared to show her switching cars and leaving the scene. The BBC couldn’t verify the footage.

By the time the dust settled, her container had already been set on fire by unknown individuals.

By 01:00 authorities said all the protesters had fled.

Eyewitnesses have described scenes of chaos, with tear gas fired and police rounding up protesters.

One, Amin Khan, said from behind an oxygen mask that he joined the march knowing that, “either I will bring back Imran Khan or I will be shot”.

The authorities have have denied firing at the protesters. They also said some of the protesters were carrying firearms.

The BBC has seen hospital records recording patients with gunshot injuries.

However, government spokesperson Attaullah Tarar told the BBC that hospitals had denied receiving or treating gunshot wound victims.

He added that “all security personnel deployed on the ground have been forbidden” from having live ammunition during protests.

But one doctor told BBC Urdu that he had never done so many surgeries for gunshot wounds in a single night.

“Some of the injured came in such critical condition that we had to start surgery right away instead of waiting for anaesthesia,” he said.

While there has been no official toll released, the BBC has confirmed with local hospitals that at least five people have died.

Police say at least 500 protesters were arrested that night and are being held in police stations. The PTI claims some people are missing.

And one person in particular hasn’t been seen in days: Bushra Bibi.

“She abandoned us,” said one PTI supporter.

Others defended her. “It wasn’t her fault,” insisted another. “She was forced to leave by the party leaders.”

Political commentators have been more scathing.

“Her exit damaged her political career before it even started,” said Mehmal Sarfraz, a journalist and analyst.

But was that even what she wanted?

Khan has previously dismissed any thought his wife might have her own political ambitions – “she only conveys my messages,” he said in a statement attributed to him on his X account.

Speaking to BBC Urdu, analyst Imtiaz Gul calls her participation “an extraordinary step in extraordinary circumstances”.

Gul believes Bushra Bibi’s role today is only about “keeping the party and its workers active during Imran Khan’s absence”.

It is a feeling echoed by some PTI members, who believe she is “stepping in only because Khan trusts her deeply”.

Insiders, though, had often whispered that she was pulling the strings behind the scenes – advising her husband on political appointments and guiding high-stakes decisions during his tenure.

A more direct intervention came for the first time earlier this month, when she urged a meeting of PTI leaders to back Khan’s call for a rally.

Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif accused her of “opportunism”, claiming she sees “a future for herself as a political leader”.

But Asma Faiz, an associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences, suspects the PTI’s leadership may have simply underestimated Bibi.

“It was assumed that there was an understanding that she is a non-political person, hence she will not be a threat,” she told the AFP news agency.

“However, the events of the last few days have shown a different side of Bushra Bibi.”

But it probably doesn’t matter what analysts and politicians think. Many PTI supporters still see her as their connection to Imran Khan. It was clear her presence was enough to electrify the base.

“She is the one who truly wants to get him out,” says Asim Ali, a resident of Islamabad. “I trust her. Absolutely!”

Shaun Flores was 11 years old when he first started watching porn, after being introduced to it by a friend.

“I was hooked almost immediately,” the now 30-year-old says.

“It was just like, wow, what is this that people are doing where they look like they’re just having the time of their lives.”

Shaun’s curiosity quickly turned into something that he found difficult to stop.

He describes watching porn morning, noon and night, saying it became as “common as brushing your teeth”.

Shaun has shared his story in a new BBC iPlayer series, Sex After.

“I realised there was an issue when I had no energy to do anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to play football, I just wanted to be inside.

“But there was the guilt and the shame that came with it, and no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t stop watching it.

“That’s when I knew there was something up.”

While not everyone who watches porn will develop an unhealthy relationship with it, Shaun isn’t alone in his viewing habits.

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report suggests 29% of UK adults accessed online porn in May 2024. Additionally, new research from addiction treatment centre, UKAT, suggests that millions of Britons are viewing pornography regularly – with 1.8 million watching daily, some multiple times a day.

According to treatment providers, more people are seeking help for problematic porn use.

Dr Paula Hall, a UKCP-accredited sexual and relationship psychotherapist at The Laurel Centre, in London, specialises in helping people affected by sex addiction and porn addiction.

“The numbers of clients seeking help with pornography problems at The Laurel Centre have doubled over recent years, as have our requests from health professionals for further training,” she tells the BBC.

Dr Hall explains that they have also seen a growing number of younger people seeking help.

“Ten years ago the majority of our clients would have been married men in their 40s and 50s who were seeking help because their partner had discovered their use of sex workers,” she says.

“But increasingly, our clients are in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are single, who are recognising the growing toll of porn use on their lives and on their ability to get or maintain a relationship.”

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at the UKAT Group, also says the number of people they treat for problematic porn use has risen “significantly” in recent years.

They now receive multiple enquiries for help from people struggling with their porn use every single day. Prior to 2020, it was one or two enquiries a week

Fernandes explains that advancements in technology and the subsequent easy accessibility of porn is making it easier for people of all ages to access sexual content online. He believes his is contributing to the increase in people seeking help that he has experienced.

“It’s not very hard for someone to pull out their phone, go onto a site and look at porn, whether they’re 12 years old or 60 years old,” he says. “It is quite troubling.”

According to Fernandes, other reasons for people watching porn online include curiosity, boredom, stress relief and lack of sexual satisfaction.

While porn use might start for these reasons, Fernandes describes it as being “very addictive”.

“It fulfils that dopamine reward system,” he explains. “Once you start it’s quite difficult to stop.”

However, while problematic porn use might mimic an addiction, it isn’t diagnostically recognised as such.

Instead, it is categorised as problematic online pornography use (POPU), or compulsive behaviour.

For people who develop this relationship with porn, the effects can be negative.

And for the youngest in society who are growing up with free, hardcore content at their fingertips, the impact of early overexposure can be far reaching.

The Children’s Commissioner for England promotes and protects the rights of children.

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

“Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old,” Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

“Pornography is no longer confined to dedicated adult sites – children tell me they can see violent content, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sexual acts on social media.

“The implications of seeing this kind of material are vast – my research has found that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.”

De Souza adds that it is “vital” for high-quality relationship and sex education to be given parity of importance with other subjects to help young people understand that pornography is unrealistic.

Silva Neves, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of compulsive sexual behaviours, agrees that viewing porn at a young age can have a negative impact.

However, he emphasises that the lack of quality sex education for young people leads to them looking for information elsewhere.

“They’re then going to see hairless vulvas,” he says. “They’re going to see 9in penises.

“They’re going to see hard intercourse lasting for 30 minutes and choking, and all these things, and they’re going to think, ‘ok, so this is sex’.

“But it’s much easier to point the finger at porn and say porn is the problem.”

Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, first started watching porn when she was at primary school.

For her, it was partly driven by the lack of proper sex education available to her. She explains that her classes at school were focussed on the biology of reproduction, rather than the experience of sex.

She says that the taboo that seemed to exist around it made it even more fascinating to try and understand it.

“I ended up searching for sex videos,” she explains. “It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.”

Courtney started off watching sporadically, sometimes on the weekends or occasionally before school. But then, she says, it turned into almost every day.

“That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I’m doing this way too often,” she says.

Courtney lost her virginity when she was 18 – a moment she describes as “terrible”.

“It never felt like real life matched up to the hype…that I got from watching porn or masturbating,” she says.

Courtney eventually realised that she had an unhealthy dependency on porn.

“I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,” she said.

She stopped watching porn in her early 20s and decided to become celibate. Along with her fiancé, they have committed to abstinence until after their wedding.

For Shaun, his excessive porn habit led to him being “exhausted” from masturbating.

“I think the role that it [porn] had to play was that it distorted my sense of self, and gave me a dysmorphia around sex, or my body, or my penis,” he says.

However, experts say it is important to recognise that, for many people, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with porn. For some, there may even be benefits.

For example, research conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) suggests that porn provides a way for young people unsure of their sexuality to understand themselves better.

‘’We must remember that an unhealthy relationship with porn only occurs when the individual has lost the power of choice; they cannot function normally in their day to day lives without watching porn,” concludes Fernandes.

“We would urge anyone who thinks they fall into this category to seek professional help.”

“It’s left me with a lot of unlearning to do,” says Courtney. “I have had to learn what realistic sex was.

“I have had to learn to love my body and not compare it to other women’s bodies.

“I have had to learn to love and not objectify people, men and women. And not just see them as sexual objects, but actually see them as people.

“If I could rewind the clock, I wouldn’t have started it.”

For Shaun, giving up is one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made.

“The addiction made me lose connections and now I’m trying to be connected to people that I generally love and I really care about,” he says.

Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers to conceal his crimes, sacking those he could not control, an ex-director has told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, says the late entrepreneur plied him with envelopes full of cash – totalling about $50,000 (£39,000) – to try to compromise and control him.

“He tried to own you. And ultimately, I got fired because I couldn’t be bought,” he says.

Harrods didn’t respond to Mr Brilliant’s claims. It has previously said that it was “utterly appalled” by the abuse allegations, adding that it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed”.

Mr Brilliant says he was “horrified” when he first heard the allegations that Al Fayed had abused hundreds of women and says he “beat himself up” about whether there was anything he should have questioned more.

He told the BBC about surveillance, sackings, and a culture designed to keep top managers from trusting or communicating with one another.

This made it harder for them to do their duty as directors to exercise independent judgement and check Al Fayed’s power – or ask questions which may have revealed more to them about how he was treating women.

“I 100% can see how the management structure and culture was set up to cover it up, mask it from people,” says Mr Brilliant.

Four other former directors have anonymously confirmed elements of this picture.

A US citizen, Mr Brilliant was 36 when he joined the firm in August 2000. He was hired to relaunch the Harrods online business.

He says that shortly before his first business trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, Al Fayed gave him a brown envelope containing $5,000 (£3,993) in $50 notes.

After the trip he tried to return the full amount. He says Al Fayed refused, asking him, “You didn’t need any entertainment?”

Mr Brilliant replied that he did not need it – he had been too busy to visit the cinema or theatre, and someone else had paid for dinner.

Receiving cash ahead of business trips – large-value notes of pounds, francs or dollars depending on his destination – continued over the following six months.

Three senior colleagues suggested to Mr Brilliant at the time that Al Fayed was trying to get him to compromise himself.

Mr Brilliant says they told him: “He was trying to get you to come back and say ‘oh, I spent money on drugs or I spent money frolicking, doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing,’ and that he would then use that information against you if you should ever turn on him.”

He adds: “I am certainly aware of people who… succumbed to the temptation.”

Mr Brilliant continued trying to return the money, until his family arrived in London and he started looking for a home. With Al Fayed’s consent, he put it towards the purchase of a property.

Al Fayed had form for using envelopes of cash as a tool of power and control. It had caused a scandal in the 1990s after he paid MPs to ask questions in the House of Commons – and then exposed those who had accepted his gifts.

Mr Brilliant believes he was not immune to Al Fayed’s extensive use of bugging and surveillance, carried out by the Harrods owner’s large team of security guards.

“Even when I tell this story to you right now, I get kind of goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, realising that my phones were being listened in on,” he says.

Mr Brilliant’s first suspicion that he may have been bugged came in 2002, shortly before he was fired. After a disagreement about the funding of Fulham FC, words from a private phone conversation with someone in the US were quoted back to him in a meeting.

Another former Harrods director, who wanted to remain anonymous, told us he had moved into an Al Fayed-owned property when he started at the store and one of the security team warned him it was bugged.

The director says he and his wife would jokingly say “good morning” to the security guards who might be listening when they woke up.

He noticed that many directors kept a personal mobile phone as well as a work phone, because they feared the Harrods phone might be bugged.

Mr Brilliant, who has returned to the US, says he was “dumbfounded” when he first heard the BBC investigation.

“I do look back and say, ‘should I have seen something? Did I miss something?’ And I’ve gone over it and over it,” he says.

He worked in Al Fayed’s “ring of steel” office suite on the fifth floor of Harrods, protected by two sets of security doors. There was a group of administrative assistants who were all young, blonde and attractive – he says.

Mr Brilliant recalls them as “obedient”. He explains: “There was this notion of ‘do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really being on the ball. Mohamed demanded a lot of people, and they were serving their role.”

He adds that he now questions whether the women acted in that way because of what may had been happening.

When challenged on whether he should have done more to protect the women he says he asks himself whether he could have.

“I wasn’t privy to that amount of information that would otherwise suggest that there was something deeper going on.”

Mr Brilliant says Harrods’ managers were set in opposition to each other and then expected to keep a watchful eye on their rivals.

In addition to his core role, he was given partial oversight of a range of Al Fayed’s interests, including Fulham FC and the Paris Ritz.

“I was asked to oversee people I had no right overseeing,” says Mr Brilliant. In turn, he found that “people were looking over my shoulder”.

Information was treated like a “currency” and people would jockey to share it to “curry favour” with the boss, he says.

This has been corroborated by an anonymous director. “There was no trust between directors,” he told us. “Everyone was on the defensive.”

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” where executives’ survival depended on “utter loyalty” and “a drip of salacious gossip to sow doubts about rivals”.

Senior managers at Harrods were sacked with such regularity that Mr Brilliant says it was a “running joke” in the store.

Managers were sacked or quit so frequently that The Sunday Times began to publish a regular count, which reached 48 in 2005 – before a legal letter put a stop to it.

Many dismissals ended in legal action or employment tribunals. Some were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), although Mr Brilliant was not.

But some managers lasted for more than a decade. And to do that, you had to have a “frontal lobotomy” said Mr Brilliant.

Some, he felt, were compromised and couldn’t speak out. For the others, “I think you had to just do what you were told to do, do it with a smile… No original thought, no willing to challenge the status quo, just willing to accept.”

The BBC has tried to contact as many long-serving former Harrods directors as possible, but none were willing to give an interview.

Although he only worked there for 18 months, Mr Brilliant said he wanted to speak to the BBC for two reasons.

“One, if there’s anything that I’m able to say or do that shows support for these women who have been horrifically treated, traumatised, I want to do whatever I can.

“Secondly, my hope is that by my willingness to speak out, others will come and speak out themselves.”

If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email MAFinvestigation@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

you can contact the BBC Action Line here.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has suggested that the parts of Ukraine under his control should be taken “under the Nato umbrella” to try and stop the “hot phase” of the war.

He was asked by Sky News whether he would accept Nato membership, but only on the territory that Kyiv currently holds.

Zelensky said he would, but only if Nato membership was offered to the whole of Ukraine, within its internationally recognised borders, first.

Ukraine could then attempt to negotiate the return of territory currently under Russian control “in a diplomatic way”, he said in a wide-ranging interview.

But the suggestion is highly theoretical. Zelensky is not floating any new proposals – this was a television interview, not a diplomatic forum – but he is sending signals.

Whether Nato would ever consider such a move is highly doubtful.

“Ukraine has never considered such a proposal, because no-one has officially offered it to us,” Zelensky said.

Nato would need to offer membership to the whole country, including those parts currently under Russian control, he said.

“You can’t give [an] invitation to just one part of a country,” the president said, according to a translation provided by Sky News. “Why? Because thus, you would recognise that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine, and the other one is Russia.”

Lots of people were proposing ceasefires, he said, but without a mechanism to prevent Russia from attacking again, ceasefires were simply too dangerous.

Only NATO membership, he said, could offer that kind of guarantee.

The Ukrainian president has already said that he thinks the war could end in the coming year if Ukraine’s allies show sufficient resolve.

Reports suggest that discussion of the so-called West German model – Nato membership offered to a divided country – has been going on in Western circles for more than a year.

But no formal proposals have yet been made.

Meanwhile, Zelensky has been keen to sound willing to engage with whatever proposals US President-elect Donald Trump might be considering.

“I want to share with him ideas, and I want to hear from him, his ideas,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader said he would be sending a team in the coming days to meet Trump officials, including the president-elect’s recently appointed special envoy for Ukraine, retired general Keith Kellogg.

In April, Gen Kellogg co-authored a plan, called America First: Russia & Ukraine, which would freeze the front lines in Ukraine and pressure both Kyiv and Moscow to come to the negotiating table.

Future US military assistance to Ukraine would be conditioned on Kyiv’s willingness to enter peace talks.

But in the event of a ceasefire, Washington would continue to provide military assistance and “strengthen [Ukraine’s] defences to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a ceasefire or peace agreement.”

Under the proposals, NATO membership for Ukraine would be put off for an extended period.

For Zelensky, this begs a crucial question: what guarantees of security would the Trump administration be willing to offer?

“Without NATO, it’s not real independence for Ukraine because he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will come back,” Zelensky insisted.

The differences between Zelensky’s peace plan and the nascent Trump policy are still substantial.

But by engaging with the idea of a ceasefire and painful territorial sacrifices (in the short term at least), the Ukrainian leader is doing his utmost to sound constructive, conscious that there are so far no equivalent signs coming from Moscow.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has occupied territory in the country’s east.

But It is also worth noting that so far Putin has given absolutely no indication that he’s abandoned his desire to subjugate Ukraine entirely.

The idea that he would be willing to allow any part of Ukraine to join Nato is, for now, unthinkable.

All the indications so far suggest that any involvement of Nato is a complete non-starter.

Rebel forces launched the largest offensive against the Syrian government in years on Wednesday.

By Saturday, they had taken control of “large parts” of the country’s second-biggest city, Aleppo.

The surprise offensive prompted the first Russian strikes on Aleppo since 2016, and saw Syria’s military withdraw its troops from the city.

The attack was led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which has a long and involved history in the Syrian conflict.

HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda.

The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.

It was regarded as one of the most effective and deadly of the groups ranged against President Assad.

But its jihadist ideology appeared to be its driving force rather than revolutionary zeal – and it was seen at the time as at odds with the main rebel coalition under the banner of Free Syria.

But in 2016, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, publicly broke ranks with Al Qaeda, dissolved Jabhat al-Nusra and set up a new organisation, which took the name Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when it merged with several other similar groups a year later.

The war in Syria has for the past four years felt as if it were effectively over.

President Bashar al-Assad’s rule is essentially uncontested in the country’s major cities, while some other parts of Syria remain out of his direct control.

These include Kurdish majority areas in the east, which have been more or less separate from Syrian state control since the early years of the conflict.

There has been some continued, though relatively muted unrest, in the south where the revolution against Assad’s rule began in 2011.

In the vast Syrian desert, holdouts from the group calling themselves Islamic State still pose a security threat, particularly during the truffle hunting season when people head to the area to find the highly profitable delicacy.

And in the north-west, the province of Idlib has been held by jihadist and rebel groups driven there at the height of the war.

The dominant force in Idlib is the one that has launched the surprise attack on Aleppo, HTS.

For several years, Idlib remained a battleground as Syrian government forces tried to regain control.

But a ceasefire deal in 2020 brokered by Russia, which has long been Assad’s key ally, and Turkey, which has backed the rebels, has largely held.

About four million people live there – most of them displaced from towns and cities that Assad’s forces won back from rebels in a brutal war of attrition.

Aleppo was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds and represented one of the rebels’ biggest defeats.

To achieve victory, Assad relied on Russian airpower and Iranian military help on the ground – mainly through militias sponsored by Iran.

These included Hezbollah.

There is little doubt that the setback Hezbollah has suffered recently from Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, as well as Israeli strikes on Iranian military commanders in Syria, has played a significant part in the decision by jihadist and rebel groups in Idlib to make their sudden, unexpected move on Aleppo.

For some time now, HTS has established its power base in Idlib where it is the de facto local administration, although its efforts towards legitimacy have been tarnished by alleged human rights abuses.

It has also been involved in some bitter infighting with other groups.

Its ambitions beyond Idlib had become unclear.

Since breaking with Al Qaeda, its goal has been limited to trying to establish fundamentalist Islamic rule in Syria rather than a wider caliphate, as IS tried and failed to do.

It had shown little sign of attempting to reignite the Syrian conflict on a major scale and renew its challenge to Assad’s rule over much of the country – until now.

Huge flooding caused by heavy rain in Malaysia has forced more than 122,000 people out of their homes across the country.

Three people have also died, according to disaster officials.

There are fears the number could rise, as heavy rain and storm warnings remain in place.

Thousands of emergency services personnel have been deployed to help rescue people stranded and shelters are being provided.

Videos shows cars and houses submerged, and people wading through waist-deep water.

The flooding, which began earlier in the week, is mostly concentrated on the north-eastern state of Kelantan, which borders Thailand.

There, the National Disaster Management Agency says the evacuees count for 63% of the total number.

So far, the number of those displaced surpasses that of 2014, which saw one of the worst floods in the country.

The disaster agency has set up 679 emergency shelters for those affected.

Also affected are Terengganu, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan, Perlis, Selangr, johor, Melaka and Perak.

Provisions for disaster management have been sent to Terengganu and Kelantan State Governments, according to the prime minister’s office.

On Friday, he barred his cabinet members from going on leave so they can focus on the disaster.

In neighbouring Thailand, six provinces have declared a disaster, and floods are affecting over 240,000 households, according to the Interior Ministry.

The army has been deployed to rescue people in need.

Malaysia’s monsoon season begins in November, and flooding isn’t uncommon.

In 2021, it faced some of its worse flooding in decades, which killed at least 14 people.

A woman is being taken to court for £1,906 after she took longer than five minutes to pay for parking.

Rosey Hudson said she was unable to pay while standing in the car park in Derby due to poor signal on her phone.

She walked to where she could get connected and paid the full tariff every time she parked there – but despite this, Excel Parking Ltd sent her 10 Parking Charge Notices (PCNs).

The BBC contacted the car park operator, which said Miss Hudson had breached its terms and conditions and was “the author of her own misfortune”.

Two MPs – Lola McEvoy and Abtisam Mohamed – have previously written to Excel Parking with concerns about people being unfairly fined at other car parks it operates.

Miss Hudson believes the five-minute payment rule is “totally unreasonable”.

“I haven’t got children but I can imagine a busy mum trying to sort her kids out, trying to pay for something when there’s no signal here, and the machine being out of order,” she said.

“This has been going on for over a year now, and I’m just really hoping it can be resolved.

“I desperately don’t want this to happen to anybody else, more than anything, because it gives you a lot of stress.”

Miss Hudson started using the Copeland Street car park in February 2023, when she was working in the Derbion centre nearby.

She said the parking machine was “completely out of order”, so she tried to pay using a phone app.

“I was trying to get reception and wasn’t able to, so I got my wi-fi within the store, and paid online through their app,” she said.

Miss Hudson did the same thing each day, paying the full £3.30 daily rate each time, until she received a PCN letter.

It asked her to pay £100 within 28 days, reduced to £60 if she paid within 14 days.

“I rang the company and explained the situation, and they basically said ‘you have to pay it’,” said Miss Hudson.

“So to keep them off my back I did pay the initial parking fine.”

Miss Hudson then received a further nine PCNs.

Although each of the nine outstanding PCNs was for £100, the amount has increased to £1,905.76 because Excel Parking has since added an extra £70 “debt recovery” charge to each one, interest of 8% per annum, a £115 court fee, and £80 costs for a legal representative.

In a statement, a spokesperson said: “The signage at the car park made it clear that it was ‘Pay on Entry’ and that there was a maximum period of five minutes to purchase the parking tariff.

“This is one of the specific terms and conditions for use of the car park. It is the driver’s responsibility to read and understand the terms.

“It seems that Miss Hudson is the author of her own misfortune.”

The BBC asked Excel Parking why it asks drivers to pay within five minutes, and the company said this was “to mitigate against abuse from motorists who simply use the car park to drop off and pick up passengers from adjacent retailers”.

However, Miss Hudson believes the company cannot justify penalising drivers like herself who pay for a full day’s parking, because they are not using the car park as a drop-off point.

Excel Parking also claimed Miss Hudson took “between 14 and 190 minutes to purchase each parking tariff by phone, an average of almost one hour”.

Miss Hudson said this claim was “absolutely ludicrous”, and if the payments took so long to go through, it was because the app did not process them straight away.

Excel also claims Miss Hudson could have paid using cash at the machine, and said “there was at least one working pay machine on site”.

However, Miss Hudson insists the only machine she saw was out of order, and said it had since been replaced.

Excel said Miss Hudson was given the option to appeal to the Independent Appeals Service (IAS) but chose not to do so.

Miss Hudson said she instead contacted Excel directly, and also a debt recovery service in an attempt to appeal, but was not successful.

Jumpin Fun, a business next to the car park, told the BBC hundreds of its customers had received PCN letters from Excel Parking.

Manager Nikola Slovakova has a folder on her computer which stores emails she has received from customers complaining.

In response to her concerns, Excel Parking said: “Some of the initial problems at Jumpin Fun related to customers who did not purchase the parking tariff until after they dropped off their children.

“Appropriate adjustments for customers were agreed with Jumpin Fun and implemented earlier this year through the introduction of touchscreens at the Jumpin Fun reception which provided them with a period of free parking, funded by Jumpin Fun.”

In relation to the touchscreens, Ms Slovakova said one parking tablet was installed in an attempt to stop customers getting PCNs.

However, she said this “caused more harm than it did good”, because some people still received PCNs after entering their details.

“Now they thought we were cooperating with Excel and we didn’t want to help them so it reflected even worse on us,” she said.

She said the tablet had since been removed, and Jumpin Fun instead warns customers about the car park with signs in reception, as well as on its website and in booking confirmation emails.

Derek Millard-Smith, a specialist lawyer in the UK parking sector, says parking on private land is generally governed by contract law.

“By entering that land and seeing the signage and parking there, you are deemed to have agreed to those terms, and if you then fail to adhere to those terms you can be issued with a Parking Charge Notice,” he said.

Mr Millard-Smith said PCNs were “a contractual debt”, which could ultimately be pursed through the civil courts and result in a County Court Judgement, which can affect your credit rating.

He urged anyone who believes they have wrongly received a PCN to appeal against it, either through POPLA or the Independent Appeals Service (IAS).

POPLA is the appeals service for PCNs which have been issued by car park operators, which are members of the British Parking Association (BPA).

The IAS is for PCNs issued by members of the International Parking Community (IPC), which includes Excel Parking.

Car park operators need to be members of either the BPA or IPC in order to obtain drivers’ details from the DVLA, and therefore issue PCNs by post.

Excel Parking has made a claim through the Civil National Business Centre asking Miss Hudson to pay £1,905.76.

The two parties had telephone mediation on 11 November but a settlement was not reached.

Miss Hudson has now been told there will be a court hearing within six months.

She said she was “very worried” but wanted to stand up for herself.

“I believe I have got a good case and I believe that it will help not just me, but potentially other people that have been in this situation,” she said.

“Hopefully the judge will understand my case and see my point of view.”

A man who caused an online storm when he found a Mars bar without its signature ripple has received £2 in compensation.

Harry Seager’s picture of the confectionery generated interest from thousands of members on the Dull Men’s Club Facebook page, with one labelling it “hideous”.

The 34-year-old said while Mars Wrigley UK would not give him a reason for the imperfection, group members said the bar had escaped being blown by air.

Mars Wrigley UK said earlier this month the bar “slipped” through its production line and confirmed the swirl was being kept.

Mr Seager, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was on the way to a classic car show in Birmingham with friends and picked up the chocolate bar at a service station in Thame, Oxfordshire.

“The only reason I emailed [Mars] was because I was interested in what might have caused it to happen. That is all I wanted to know and they kept side-lining that question,” he said.

“I think £2 is great, it will be two free Mars bars. Maybe they could have sent me more but I’m not being ungrateful. I think it’s amazing after everything that’s happened that I got the £2 voucher.”

Mars bars were first made by hand in Slough, Berkshire, in 1932, and are still made in the town.

“A few people who used to work at Mars’ factories commented [on Facebook] and they said it goes through a machine called an enrober, which is like the waterfall the bars go through,” Mr Seager said.

“Apparently they get blown with air along the top as it comes out of that waterfall. Apparently there’s meant to be somebody at the end who removes the ones which haven’t been hit by the air.

“I don’t know what happens to them then. I suppose they got put into products that have Mars bars in, like cakes and things.”

With regards to other confectionery, Harry enjoys most chocolate bars but is not a fan of all sweet treats.

“I don’t like the strawberry and orange cremes in a box of Roses or a box of Quality Street but I do like the coffee ones. I remember they took the coffee ones out a very long time ago but as a kid I remember them,” he added.

Those Quality Street Coffee Cremes are only available at John Lewis and Waitrose this Christmas.

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

Airspace around US airbases in Norfolk and Suffolk has been under scrutiny following multiple recent drone incursions. Those responsible for the aircraft have yet to be found and nearby residents have questioned how and why the incidents have been allowed to happen.

Drone incursions were initially reported at three US airbases – RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk – between 20 and 22 November, and the aircraft has since reappeared.

In the village of Beck Row, Suffolk, which is situated next to RAF Mildenhall, residents reported brightly lit aerial vehicles hovering above their houses and over the base itself.

Casseem Campbell, 28, said he had seen objects above his house in Beck Row.

He described seeing a triangle-shaped aerial vehicle, which was “a grey, dark colour”, in one of two evening sightings of drones he had made in the past week.

“They were really noisy and had lights. They looked official to be honest,” he added.

“If they are a threat, why aren’t they being shot down? Why let them fly over if they’re sinister?”

It has since emerged that a drone came within 273.40 yards (250m) of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, as it entered the Port of Hamburg on 22 November.

RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where US B-52 bombers had recently deployed, also reported a recent sighting.

British troops have been deployed to assist US efforts to track down those responsible.

Chrystal Mason, 40, said she had seen two drones in the past week in Beck Row.

The step-daughter of a RAF pilot, she described an orange ball in the sky at night and increased activity at the US airbase.

“In the last 10 days I have seen military jeeps around the village. There has been a much higher police presence than usual – military and UK police,” she said.

Mrs Mason also described what she believed was a drone being intercepted, though the BBC has not been able to verify this.

“There was a big orange light in the sky and all of a sudden it was gone. I heard people shouting ‘wow’,” the mother-of-one added.

Johnny Whitfield, who also lives in Beck Row, described seeing “lots of activity”.

“I’ve seen the drones three or four times,” he said, before confirming the sightings had taken place at night in the past week.

He also described the flying objects being lit up and hovering over the airbase, although he said he could not detect a noise, while he said the objects were large.

“All you see is light, but it’s a big, big light,” he added.

He said he felt the US military was being reticent about what was going on.

“You don’t know if they’re foreign or local. [The US Air Force] don’t give out much information.

“You get more information off Facebook than the base.”

All the residents of Beck Row that the BBC spoke to described increased military activity in the area with an apparent uptick of planes in the skies.

The BBC has also seen evidence that agents from the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations have been in the Suffolk area and have spoken to local people about what they have seen.

Roger Smith, a Suffolk-based military aviation enthusiast, told the BBC that he believed the US Air Force pilots had reverted to more secure communication methods in recent days.

“They’re now using an encrypted data link instead of radios when speaking to the ground,” he said.

This was supported by another member of the local aircraft spotter community who also claimed a US Air Force KC-46A Pegasus air refuelling aircraft was diverted to Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland as it approached RAF Mildenhall because of drone activity.

Neither the Glasgow Prestwick Airport or the US Air Force would comment on the claims.

Defence sources have told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

So far neither the US or UK authorities would be drawn on who might be responsible.

Defence minister Lord Coaker told the House of Lords on Thursday: “The Ministry of Defence is aware of these reports and working closely with the US visiting forces, Home Office police forces and other partners to respond to recent events.

“We take any safety issue seriously and maintain robust measures at Ministry of Defence sites. This includes counter-drone capabilities.”

The minister told Parliament: “It is illegal for drones to be flown or within the vicinity of these military sites and people should be aware of that.”

“This remains a live criminal investigation.”

Previously the Ministry of Defence, which owns the bases, said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites.”

The US Air Force in Europe said: “To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities or assets.

“The Air Force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard the aforementioned installations and their residents”.