We're unlikely to see Prince Andrew at a royal public event now for at least six months. And then maybe only once or twice a year.

Banned from royal Christmas celebrations at Sandringham he won't be on the annual church walk. It could be April 2026, at the Easter church service, before he reappears on such a family occasion, maybe longer.

But when he resurfaces, how much will his life have really changed, despite the drama of the loss of his titles and honours?

The move against Andrew followed a public outcry for some kind of sanction and there's certainly been a powerful symbolic message of displeasure - but will it really end the accusing headlines and will his daily life be much affected?

Buckingham Palace will hope that this will be seen as a decisive intervention, ending the drip-drip of scandal.

The King was in Scotland when Andrew made his decision on giving up his titles and reportedly spoke to his brother on the phone.

He had consulted Prince William, who has all the warmth of an ice age for his uncle Andrew. When William is eventually on the throne, Andrew's royal appearances might be reduced from rare to never.

It had been William who had already intervened to stop Andrew from walking in the Order of the Garter procession.

There has been a colossal loss of reputation for Prince Andrew and he'll keenly feel no longer being able to use the Duke of York title and to take part in the Order of the Garter. He's become a persona non-garter.

It's a deep blow to his pride. But on a day-to-day basis, he's still a prince and he's still living in a mansion in Windsor. Royal Lodge has got a lease until 2078, so if he leaves it will be his own choice.

Living with him still will be his ex-wife, who is now also an ex-duchess. They've gone back to the position when they first met, Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew.

His downfall has been driven by his links with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But while Andrew has lost his status, if he ever looks at the infamous photo of him and Virginia Giuffre, everyone else in the picture - Ms Giuffre, Ghislaine Maxwell - and the person who was claimed to have taken it - Epstein - are either dead or in prison. The prince is the only one who has walked away.

He can still spend his days watching aviation videos or TV shows. His family life with his daughters, who are still princesses, can continue unchanged.

His statement about not using his titles, more or less a resignation letter, didn't have any flicker of remorse, continuing to assert his sense of duty and honour. So no change there.

When Andrew had to stop being a working royal, in the wake of his Newsnight interview, there was an expectation that he might take the time-worn approach of quiet contrition and some charity work, to gradually regain public respect.

Instead he showed no sense of regret. A royal insider, asked about Andrew's chances of a dignified return to public life, simply said to me: "The grand old Duke of York, he gave 12 million quid, to someone he never met, for something he never did."

It meant he had never really accepted responsibility for what had happened. Several years later, the only thing that's changed is that he's no longer the Duke of York.

The intense pressure applied this week by the Palace to Prince Andrew to accept the loss of titles was driven by two key factors, according to royal sources.

First, the Palace wanted to stop the cacophony of terrible headlines about Andrew that kept drowning out the rest of the Royal Family's work. They wanted a line drawn under the scandals.

And second, there was genuine disquiet at the discovery that Prince Andrew had stayed in touch longer with Epstein than he had previously admitted. If that part of his account was unreliable, what else might emerge?

Getting Prince Andrew to renounce the use of his titles, under the threat of forcibly taking them away, was an attempt to publicly show that the Palace was taking this seriously. They would put an end to his remaining links with royal life.

Although this made headlines around the world, it won't stop the underlying questions about Prince Andrew and Epstein and the accompanying headlines.

This week will see the publication of the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim who claimed to have been forced to have sex with Andrew.

The prince has emphatically denied any wrongdoing, but the questions for Andrew about Ms Giuffre and Epstein seem to be getting louder than fading away. There could also be questions about what the Palace did or didn't know about Andrew and Epstein's circle.

Whether he's called a prince or an ex-duke, he's could still be caught up in the public and political pressure to reveal more documents about Epstein, particularly in the United States.

The press will keep pulling on other threads, like Andrew's business dealings with China. Whatever the Palace hopes, the headlines are unlikely to stop.

At the centre of it all is Prince Andrew, saying nothing now apart from his terse statement, written through gritted teeth, about his titles.

Before his Newsnight interview in 2019 he had been much more open to talking to the media. I remember speaking to him at an event in 2017 encouraging entrepreneurs.

Looking back it seems unintentionally prophetic.

"One of the things that I was taught at school was that the best way of being successful is to fail," he'd said.

"If you can learn about failure, and do it in such a way that it's a safe environment… then you will have learnt something, you will have experienced something.

"How many times did you put your finger in the plug socket as a small child and say 'ow' - and you never did it again.

"If you did it a second time, you'd think that was really stupid. They've failed and then they've learned what not to do next time," said Prince Andrew.

"You're always stronger from failure." Is that a lesson he was ever good at learning?

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Republican governors in several US states have placed National Guard troops on standby in preparation for a nationwide protest to oppose Donald Trump and his policies.

The organisers of the "No Kings" protests say that gatherings will take place at more than 2,500 locations around the US. Trump allies have accused the protesters of being allied with the far-left Antifa movement.

Governors in Texas and Virginia have activated their state's National Guard troops, however it is unclear how visible the military presence will be.

Organisers say that at the last No Kings protest, held in June, more than five million people took to the streets to denounce Trump's political agenda.

The protest organisers say the protest will challenge Trump's "authoritarianism".

"The president thinks his rule is absolute," they say on their website.

"But in America, we don't have kings and we won't back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty."

Some Republicans have dubbed the protests "Hate America" rallies.

"We'll have to get the National Guard out," Kansas Senator Roger Marshall said ahead of the rallies, according to CNN.

"Hopefully it'll be peaceful. I doubt it."

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday activated the state's National Guard ahead of a protest scheduled in Austin, the state's capital.

He said the troops would be needed due to the "planned antifa-linked demonstration".

Democrats denounced the move, including the state's top Democrat Gene Wu, who argued: "Sending armed soldiers to suppress peaceful protests is what kings and dictators do — and Greg Abbott just proved he's one of them."

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin also ordered the state National Guard to be activated.

All 1,287 Betfred shops could disappear from the UK High Street if Chancellor Rachel Reeves hikes taxes on gambling firms, the company's co-founder and chairman has told the BBC.

Fred Done, who set up Betfred in 1967 with his brother, said a closure of that size would put 7,500 jobs at risk.

The billionaire businessman said tax rises were the "biggest threat" to the industry in his 57 years. It echoes similar warnings from other gambling brands.

Increasing taxes on betting firms in the Budget has been suggested to the chancellor. She recently told ITV: "I do think there is a case for gambling firms paying more… they should pay their fair share of taxes and we will make sure that happens."

Reeves has been encouraged by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to increase taxes on the gambling sector and use the revenue from that to reduce child poverty.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank estimated over the summer that additional taxes on the industry, as high as 50%, could raise £3.2bn.

At the time the Betting and Gaming Council, which represents gambling companies, called Brown's plan "economically reckless", saying it would push gamblers into the black market.

Betting companies have resisted calls for taxes to rise. Up to 200 William Hill retail outlets could close if the industry faces higher taxes, its owner Evoke said earlier this month.

Betfred's Mr Done said that if taxes on UK gambling companies increased he would also feel compelled to close his High Street shops.

"It [tax] doesn't even need to go up to 50%. If it went up to anywhere like 40% or even 35% there is no profit in the business. We would have to close it down. I'm talking job losses. We're talking probably 7,500," he said.

He said 300 of his shops were "currently losing money" and claimed a 5% increase on gambling taxes would raise that number to 430.

"Once the [UK] industry is closed down, it's gone. People will still bet, but they'll bet offshore with it. There's plenty of bookmakers offshore who happen to take the bets, who don't pay anything to this country," he said.

Punters' winnings from gambling are not taxed in the UK, nor is VAT charged on bets. However, the gambling industry pays extra taxes, including:

• a tax of 21% on online casino gaming stakes
• duty of 20% on slots and gaming machines
• general betting duty on sports fixtures of 15%
• general betting duty on horseracing of 25%

Mr Done said recent increases in employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and the minimum wage had already added £20m to his company's costs.

He agreed that, like with banking or buying clothes, customers are increasingly going online, making it inevitable to close betting shops.

Rival firm Paddy Power on Thursday said it would close 57 shops across the UK and Republic of Ireland, citing increasing cost pressures and challenging market conditions.

"Slowly it will go online, but we're talking, without tax increases, we've still got probably 20 years of life on the High Street," said Mr Done.

"And you know, the UK High Street is being decimated with closures."

In its most recent annual results, Betfred took in nearly £1bn of revenue, but made an operating profit of just £500,000 after a series of writedowns on its assets.

The family-owned company has bases in the UK, Gibraltar, the US and South Africa, with investment in both online gambling and High Street sports betting.

Critics point to the social and financial harm caused by gambling. Office for Health Improvement and Disparities research from 2023 estimated the excess costs of harmful gambling to be between £1bn and £1.77bn.

Prof Ashwin Kumar, director of research and policy at the IPPR, said higher taxes were needed on the industry, particularly for online betting, to reflect the negative consequences gambling has on some people.

"We know that most of the profits made by gambling companies come from a very small number of gamblers, many of whom are at risk of serious harm. And so we think that the duties should be higher, just like tobacco and alcohol."

But Mr Done argues that UK-based, High Street betting shops provide better safeguards for people with gambling problems, as well as tax revenues, than online and offshore rivals.

As to whether he thinks his appeal to keep taxes as they are will win over the chancellor, Mr Done said "we're 10 to one against", which suggests it's odds on that many betting shops will close.

An HMT spokesperson said: "We do not comment on speculation around future changes to tax policy."

The Spanish town of Terrassa in north-eastern Catalonia has temporarily banned the adoption of black cats from animal shelters to prevent potentially sinister "rituals" during Halloween.

All requests for the fostering or adoption of the felines will be denied from 6 October to 10 November to protect them from being hurt or used as props, said the local animal welfare service.

Deputy Mayor Noel Duque told broadcaster RTVE that adoption requests for black cats usually increase around Halloween.

While black cats are often associated with witchcraft and seen as bad luck in Western culture, many other cultures, including Japan and Egypt, see them as symbols of prosperity and fortune.

Terassa's city council said there had been no record of cruelty towards black cats in the town, however there have been incidents in other areas and the decision was taken after warnings from animal welfare groups.

"We try to prevent people from adopting because it's trendy or impulsively. And in cases like these, which we know exist, to prevent any macabre practices," Duque said.

Terrassa is home to more than 9,800 cats, according to the local authorities, and the adoption centre houses around 100 of them, 12 of which are black.

The city council emphasised that the measure is "temporary and exceptional" and represents an extra precaution for animal welfare, but did not rule out repeating the ban in the future.

Exceptions during the ban period will be assessed individually by the adoption centre and normal fostering requests will resume after Halloween.

Spoiler warning: This article reveals details from the first four episodes of The Celebrity Traitors

"I feel awful. I didn't know what else to do! I've gone and murdered one of my best friends."

That was comedian Alan Carr’s immortal line, delivered to camera after he "killed" singer Paloma Faith in The Celebrity Traitors.

The first murder of the series was all the more brutal because the pair weren’t just on-screen competitors - they are actually friends outside the show.

And they're not the only ones who knew each other before entering the Traitors Castle.

This series is full of people who are connected in different ways, adding a whole new layer of drama.

Even if the stars didn’t know each other, they likely knew of each other - and that makes it much harder to lie.

So there’ll be no Charlotte Church pretending she's not Welsh. And if Tom Daley was actually Sir Stephen Fry's son, we’d already have a pretty good idea.

We've been unpicking the six degrees of separation. Here are some of the connections we’ve found - if we’ve missed any, we’d love to know. Get in touch with your thoughts in the comments below.

Jonathan probably knows the most people

... thanks to his long-running Saturday night chat show.

He's interviewed Paloma Faith, Sir Stephen Fry, Tom Daley and Alan Carr on The Jonathan Ross Show over the years.

Cat Burns performed on his show last year, Charlotte Church, Clare Balding and Lucy Beaumont have all been guests, and how could we forget about the time Joe Marler covered Adele's Somebody Like You on the show.

Having met so many of the contestants beforehand, that could help Ross "hide out as a traitor," said TV reporter Siobhan Synnot. He may make them feel wrongly at ease around him, and it could also make it easy for him to form alliances.

But knowing so many of the stars could also make it harder to wear the traitor’s coat, on a personal level.

Earlier this week, Ross wrote on X that he "did not enjoy the duplicity" as the game progressed. "It's a tougher psychological challenge than I expected," he said.

Followed closely by Alan

Alan Carr has also interviewed a bunch of his fellow contestants in the real world.

His former show Chatty Man featured guests including Sir Stephen Fry and Clare Balding - who were on the same episode - as well as Paloma Faith (more on that relationship below).

Sir Stephen also appeared on Carr's podcast, Life's a Beach, as did actor Mark Bonnar and singer Cat Burns.

Kate Garraway, meanwhile, has interviewed Alan Carr on ITV's Good Morning Britain.

Maybe knowing so many people is behind his sweating, flustering, and giggling. Or maybe that's just Alan Carr being Alan Carr.

Celia, Paloma and Sir Stephen all starred in the same film

Paloma Faith said as much, during the incredibly tense funeral scene earlier in the series.

At one point, a school tie was presented as a clue to who belonged in a coffin. The cast picked up that this was to do with the 2007 film St Trinian's.

The group started pointing fingers at Faith - but she pointed out that Celia Imrie and Stephen Fry had also starred in the hit comedy film.

Faith plays a goth schoolgirl in the film, Imrie plays a school matron, while Sir Stephen plays himself, as the school quiz master.

It’s not the only time Sir Stephen and Imrie crossed paths. The pair also starred together in ITV drama Kingdom.

Clare and Tom go way back

Clare Balding, a staple of British sports, and Olympic diving champion Tom Daley clearly know each other well. Balding has interviewed Daley in the past, including on her show - and she also spoke up to praise him after he came out on YouTube in 2013.

Their connection was clear in episode three, when Balding seemed gutted to see Daley murdered by the Traitors.

"I've known him since he was about 12 years old," she said.

Former England rugby union player Joe Marler is also from the world of sports, and it wouldn't be surprising if he has mingled with Baldwin and Daley at events over the years.

Lucy, Alan, Joe and Nick have all been on the comedy circuit

Sir Stephen Fry, Lucy Beaumont, Alan Carr, Joe Wilkinson, and Nick Mohammed are all comedians, and are likely to have met each other over the years.

In a Guardian interview last year, Beaumont described working with Sir Stephen recently - and she also admitted she made a faux pas when she met him, asking him what it was like being in prison for being gay.

"And thank God someone came in and he didn't hear me say it. I was mixing him up with when he played Oscar Wilde. I could picture him in his cell," she told the newspaper.

Beaumont is also a familiar face from Meet the Richardsons, and Carr appeared in an episode of the sitcom alongside her.

Lucy and Tom were on Bake Off together

Some of the Celebrity Traitors players have also competed against each other before.

Tom Daley and Lucy Beaumont went head to head on The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer in 2023.

The pair tackled a savoury quiche, a technical teatime biscuit and a showstopping day off in cake form - although neither was crowned star baker at the end.

Nick and Celia were both in Bridget Jones's Baby

Beloved veteran British actress Celie Imrie starred in the Bridget Jones film series, as Una Alconbury, Bridget's mother's friend.

She was joined in one of the films - Bridget Jones's Baby - by Ted Lasso star Nick Mohammed.

Perhaps because of this prior connection, Mohammed leapt to Imrie's aid at the graveyard in episode one, helping her find a shield - thereby protecting her from being murdered on the first night.

"My aim was to try and get Celia a shield, because I love her," he explained.

But this aroused suspicion, with Imrie said later: "Nick selflessly came to help me in my grave before even looking for his shield. And I'm thinking, he's absolutely adorable or he is up to something."

By the time the latest episode rolled around, they both seemed to be questioning each other's motives.

Imrie said she's "got her eye" on Mohammed, while he told the group that she'd make a great traitor.

Cat and Paloma share a record label

This was another Paloma Faith revelation, after she was murdered in episode two.

Speaking to the Uncloaked podcast, she said that's why she felt "betrayed" by fellow singer Cat Burns (who's a traitor).

"She's on the same record label as me and should have some loyalty," she said jokingly.

Sadly for her, that's not quite how the game works.

The singer later explained that even though they share a record label, they hadn't really spent time together beforehand - and that she'd enjoyed bonding with Burns during her brief stint on the show.

Alan and Paloma are (or were...) close friends

Paloma Faith may have been miffed at Cat Burns, but it appears her real beef is with Alan Carr, as he is her friend in real life.

"I don't think he should've done that to me, and I'm surprised that he did," Faith told the Uncloaked podcast, of his decision to murder her.

The pair are so close that he has even met her kids - but it turns out they're not best pleased with him now.

Speaking to the One Show, Faith said her four-year-old woke her up and said: "Mama, I don't like Alan anymore. He can't come to our house."

But in a video shared online, Carr poked fun at the row.

It showed him looking at a drinks menu before saying: "I could murder a Paloma."

He captioned the post: "Anyone thirsty? Love you @palomafaith #forgiveme."

Faith also indicated she had been mates with Jonathan Ross - who is also a traitor - before the show.

“I’m happy to lose him as a friend,” she told Uncloaked, after finding out his identity.

"I hope [Carr and Ross] never call me again, and I mean that," she added, in what - we think - was a joke...

Lots of them have done 8 out of 10 Cats... including Claudia

Amusingly, some of the celebrities have also crossed paths with presenter Claudia Winkleman in the outside world.

Ahead of the series starting, she said she knew “some of them”, adding: "They're all equally lovely."

Winkleman previously appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown with Joe Wilkinson and Nick Mohammed.

She also co-hosts Strictly, so would've crossed paths with Tameka Empson when she was a contestant.

“Honestly, the layers to this are fascinating,” said entertainment journalist Natalie Jamieson.

“Whether the celebs know each other, or have worked with each other before appearing on screen here is one thing, but they'll already have made an assumption of the others' personalities, based on their known public personas, like we all do.”

Niko was the least connected

After all that, spare a thought for the ones who went into the castle with no friends at all.

As one of the younger stars, YouTuber Niko Omilana, 27, had fewer connections with the other celebs.

And that seems to have been part of his downfall.

After he was banished on Wednesday, a theory spread on social media that the real reason he was voted out was because the other celebrities didn't know him well.

"Niko has been voted because he's an outsider and he's not in their celebrity world. Nothing to do with the game," wrote one X user.

In a TikTok video posted later, Omilana seemed to address the speculation by showing him being shunned and spat on by groups of friends. He captioned it: "POV: You try and make friends in the Traitors."

Earlier this week, another of the younger celebrities - actress Ruth Codd, 29 - was murdered by the traitors.

She had previously admitted she, too, “didn’t know anyone” in the castle.

So it turns out, moving in the same circles doesn't just mean better fireside chats in the Traitors Castle.

For some, it can be the difference between life and death.

In July this year workers at Build a Rocket Boy, a video game studio in Edinburgh, were called to an all-staff meeting.

Their first ever game, a sci-fi adventure called MindsEye, had been released three weeks earlier - and it had been a total disaster.

Critics and players called it "broken", "buggy", and "the worst game of 2025".

Addressing staff via video link, the company's boss, Leslie Benzies, assured them there was a plan to get things back on track and said the negativity they'd seen was "uncalled for".

Then he pivoted, alleging "internal and external" forces had been working to scupper the MindsEye launch.

He told the assembled workers - who'd been informed they faced redundancy just a week earlier - there would be an effort to root out "saboteurs" within the company.

"I find it disgusting that anyone could sit amongst us, behave like this and continue to work here," he said, according to a transcript of the meeting verified by BBC Newsbeat.

Staff who worked at the studio say they were stunned - and not only by the strength of the language. They simply didn't believe him.

As far as they were concerned, there was no conspiracy - and the reasons for MindsEye's failure were clear.

Mr Benzies is well-known for his work at Rockstar Games where he was a senior figure on the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) action-adventure series, and regarded by many as a key architect of its success.

He left in 2016, three years after the record-breaking launch of GTA 5, sparking a legal row over unpaid royalties that was settled out of court.

In the same year, he set up the company that would become Build a Rocket Boy (Barb). By the end of 2024, it had grown to 448 employees.

Most were based at its main office - a former casino in Leith, Edinburgh - but the company also had studios in Budapest and in the French city of Montpellier.

Former staff say salaries were competitive, the company allowed remote working, and their response to the Covid-19 pandemic was good.

With Mr Benzies at the helm, Barb attracted a lot of interest and, according to documents UK companies are legally required to publish online, had managed to attract more than £233m of investment by 2024.

It had also spent large amounts of money without releasing any products.

Between 2020 and 2024, the company posted losses totalling £202.6m, with its largest for a single year - £59.1m - coming in 2023.

Barb's first project was Everywhere, described by one former employee, Jamie (not their real name), as a multiplayer role-playing game (RPG) based in an open-ended, futuristic city.

"I thought we had something quite special," says Jamie, who left the company in 2022.

To fulfill the vision, Jamie says, Mr Benzies requested new ideas and features be added at breakneck speed - too fast for them to be properly implemented.

The studio's main focus would eventually shift to MindsEye - a game originally intended to be offered as an experience within Everywhere.

"Leslie never decided what game he wanted to make," says Jamie. "There was no coherent direction".

This style of working "plagued the project from the start", they say, and would be a sign of things to come.

An open letter, recently signed by 93 current and former Barb employees, alleges studio management made "radical changes" without properly consulting workers.

Former lead data analyst Ben Newbon says it was common for staff to be caught off-guard by "knee-jerk" decisions from upper management without proper explanation.

The letter further alleges that leadership "repeatedly refused to listen" to its experienced workforce.

Ben, whose team was tasked with collecting feedback and presenting it to management, says there was rarely any response when they flagged issues.

"A lot of the points that we were hammering home on were just ignored and just never actioned," he says.

His former colleague, associate producer Margherita "Marg" Peloso, says the studio's culture also discouraged individuals from speaking out.

Marg, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, says their own attempts to raise concerns were "laughed at" in meetings with bosses.

Staff also accuse Mr Benzies of micro-managing the studio, a process allegedly illustrated in a video uploaded to the official MindsEye YouTube account.

It shows the director instructing an onlooker to make a note of an issue he has noticed as he plays the game.

Developers say this was a regular occurrence, resulting in what Ben and Marg claim were known within the studio as "Leslie tickets".

Jamie says they also heard them referred to as "Leslie bugs" or, simply, "Leslies".

Developers told Newsbeat these could range from minor cosmetic issues to instructions to ditch whole missions from the game, and there was an expectation that these would be given top priority.

"It didn't matter what else you were doing, what else was being worked on," says Ben, "the Leslie ticket had to be taken care of."

Jamie says the practice introduced instability and prevented teams from "taking ownership of their work".

Developers say the decision to launch MindsEye in June 2025 prompted a period of "crunch" - a games industry term for mandatory overtime.

They say this meant an extra eight hours of unpaid overtime a week for the majority of staff - although some employees were excused from it.

Marg says the crunch began in mid-February and continued into May, with workers eventually being promised seven hours of leave per eight hours' overtime, to be taken after MindsEye's release.

"People just felt like they were being commanded to give a lot to the company without too much in return," says Marg.

Ben alleges that some departments, such as the quality assurance team, were particularly affected, with some staff suffering physically and mentally as a result of the "stress and pressure".

Former audio programmer Isaac Hudd says "mistakes started piling up" during crunch, and says "regressions", where one team would fix a bug only for another to unwittingly bring it back to life, became increasingly common.

"And it does mess with you," he says. "You really do start to see the morale go down, the little arguments starting to happen.

"People are burning the candle at both ends and starting to think: 'What's the point?'"

Marg says many at the studio expected MindsEye to receive a negative reception on launch, describing the approach to its release as "everybody holding their breath".

Nevertheless, staff gathered in Barb's Edinburgh studio to celebrate MindsEye's launch on 10 June.

Marg says: "Everybody was drinking champagne, just having a good time, which was quite… heartwarming, I guess.

"At the same time, it really felt like this is the last good thing that's going to happen."

The celebrations were short-lived.

Barb had not shared advance copies of MindsEye with reviewers, but when early impressions of the game began to surface, the mood soured.

Players who bought the game on release day encountered major performance issues and reported various bugs, including pedestrians that appeared to walk on air and, in one heavily-memed example, one character's face appeared to melt due to a graphical glitch.

Twitch streamer CohhCarnage told viewers he was instructed to cancel a sponsored launch day stream at the last-minute, as word of the game's problems spread.

Audio programmer Isaac says he had maintained some optimism in the run-up to the release, but started to lose hope fairly quickly.

"You were just seeing disastrous review after disastrous review, and thinking 'This isn't gonna go well'," he says.

Marg says the team spent the next two weeks working on "hotfixes" - small, targeted updates to address major issues, until management informed them that they were at risk of being laid off.

This month, between 250 and 300 Barb staff lost their jobs, with the bulk of those roles based in Edinburgh, according to The Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union's Game Workers Branch.

The union, which put out the open letter on behalf of 93 employees, said it also planned to take legal action against Barb over what it called "disastrous mishandling" of the redundancy process.

Ben, who is a member of the union, says he took voluntary redundancy, but fellow members Marg and Isaac, who were laid off, say they were unhappy with how their departures were handled.

In a statement, Barb said staff had "poured passion, creativity, and hard work into our games and our studio", adding that it was "deeply saddened" and "didn't anticipate having to make redundancies after launch".

It said it approached the redundancy process with "care and transparency", meeting all of its obligations, and was "committed to learning and growing" from former employees' feedback.

In response to complaints about studio leadership, workplace culture and claims of "internal and external" forces working against the studio, Barb said: "Leslie and the entire senior management team take full responsibility for the initial launch [of MindsEye].

"The version of the game that was released did not reflect the experience our community deserved."

It said it remained committed to "ultimately delivering MindsEye as the game we always envisioned - and the one players are excited to play".

The statement added that the studio had already rolled out updates to address issues, and was working on "enhancements" and "fresh new content".

The ex-workers who spoke to BBC Newsbeat say they are doubtful that MindsEye can recover from its launch.

They are also pessimistic about their own future prospects and those of former colleagues in an industry which has seen tens of thousands of job losses over the past three years.

Ben says the impact will be felt in the Scottish development scene, too.

"It's really sad to see what could have been an amazing opportunity for the industry up here wasted," he says.

Despite the negativity around MindsEye and Barb, Isaac says, some of his colleagues were "incredibly talented" and "some of the best people" he's ever worked with.

Marg says they decided to speak out because of those colleagues - and in the hope something will change.

"We all know each other, and we know how much we're worth," Marg says. "We need to stand together."

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

The day after a body was found in his car in Hollywood, singer D4vd was belting his TikTok hit Romantic Homicide - a brooding breakup song about killing an ex with no regret - to a sold-out crowd in Minneapolis.

The US recording artist had self-launched his music career from his sister's closet while working a part-time gig at Starbucks. It led him to viral fame, millions of followers online, and a global tour.

But all of it came to an abrupt halt last month with the discovery of a severely decomposed body in the front trunk of his Tesla.

The corpse was identified as that of 15-year-old runaway Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

A month later, mystery still surrounds the teen's death, as well as her relationship to the 20-year-old singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke.

Deep dives into his macabre oeuvre - which is peppered with references to death, remembrance, violence and bloody motifs - have led some to question if life was imitating art and vice versa.

The young singer has yet to publicly comment on the case or the grim discovery in his car. His spokesperson has only said that that he is "fully cooperating with authorities" and he has since hired a prominent criminal defence attorney who has represented celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Kanye West and Britney Spears.

Representatives for the singer - including his lawyer Blair Berk, Universal Music Group, Darkroom Records and Sony Music Publishing - did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment.

Rivas Hernandez's cause of death has yet to be determined.

The county's medical examiner has said her body was "severely decomposed" when it was found and has deferred making a ruling on how she died - an investigation they say could take months.

Police have also not named a suspect or person of interest in case, even weeks after discovering her body.

The Los Angeles Police Department has not offered many details in the case or the probe, calling it an open death investigation. The department would not comment on multiple questions posed by the BBC about the case, the investigation and any connections the singer may have to Rivas Hernandez.

"It's just such a strange one," Neama Rahmani, a former prosecutor and Los Angeles attorney, told the BBC. "It keeps getting more bizarre each day that goes on without an arrest."

That lack of information has also seemed to fuel intrigue. Fans, true-crime enthusiasts and internet sleuths have launched their own inquiries, locking in on details that appear to connect the teen girl with the gamer-turned-songwriter, who was once heralded by GQ as a "Mouthpiece for Gen-Z Heartache".

A runaway teen found dead in a Tesla

Rivas Hernandez - who lived about 75 miles away from where her body was discovered - had last been reported missing by her family in April 2024, but it was not the first time she had run away from their Lake Elsinore home.

A first-generation daughter of immigrant parents from El Salvador, neighbours recognised her as a girl who would visit the corner store almost daily to buy candy and soda, according to the Los Angeles Times.

She first went missing on Valentine's Day 2024, and her family filed a missing persons report the next day.

Posters of her face were put up in her neighbourhood and her mother posted pleas on Facebook in Spanish for her return - public overtures that apparently irked the teen.

Over the next two years, her parents would file at least two more missing-persons reports.

Her family and friends told the newspaper that every time Rivas Hernandez ran away, she would eventually return and blend back into her life as a middle schooler.

When the teens' remains were found in a bag in D4vd's Tesla on 8 September, the medical examiner said that she was wearing a tube top, size small black leggings and jewellery, including a yellow metal stud earring and a yellow metal chain bracelet.

She also had a tattoo that read "Shhh…" on her index finger - a marking nearly identical to that on the pop singer's own index finger.

The decomposition of her body indicated that she had already been "deceased for several weeks", investigators said.

Her family, who described her as a beloved daughter, sister, cousin and friend, has said they are "heartbroken and devastated by this tragic loss". They have since solicited money on a crowdfunding website to pay for her funeral, which took place earlier this month.

A singer on the precipice of main-stream fame

D4vd's rise to stardom - fuelled by TikTok and online gaming - is a paradigm for his generation.

Growing up near Houston, Texas, he was home-schooled and said he exclusively listened to gospel music until he was 13. He became an avid Fortnite player in 2017 and launched his music career using pop songs to soundtrack gameplay montages that he posted on YouTube.

He started making his own music when he ran into copyright hurdles, beginning by recording songs on The BandLab app in 2021 and uploading his work on SoundCloud.

Soon, he saw his music breaking through with thousands of listens. He then released what would become his two biggest hits thus far: Romantic Homicide and Here With Me.

The songs went viral on TikTok and led to billions of streams on Spotify, where he has amassed 33 million monthly listeners.

He signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP, Petals and Thorns, in 2023. That same year, he landed on Variety's Young Hollywood list and opened for SZA on her SOS tour.

Last spring, he made his Coachella debut - known as the festival for up-and-coming talent to break into mainstream fame. He was also commissioned by Fortnite - which he has said shaped his story as an artist - to create the game's first official anthem, Locked & Loaded.

A discovery that broke a family and halted a career

But this ascent to fame came to a pause when his Tesla was towed to an impoundment lot and authorities found a bag inside the front trunk that contained Rivas Hernandez's decomposing remains after someone complained about a foul smell.

His world tour was cancelled within days of the discovery, and Sony Music Publishing reportedly suspended promotion of his sophomore album.

Los Angeles police soon raided the posh Hollywood Hills mansion where the singer was living, just blocks from where his Tesla had been towed.

US retailer Hollister and footwear giant Crocs dropped D4vd from marketing campaigns and Telepatía singer Kali Uchis announced she was taking down their collaboration, Crashing.

But while his career ground to a screeching halt, authorities have been silent on the investigation into Rivas Hernandez's death.

Investigators have not released any new information in the case since 29 September.

The agency also said that it is still unclear whether there is any criminal culpability beyond the concealment of her body.

While online sleuths have been quick to speculate, legal experts say that there is still much we don't know.

"You have this connection to David that seems pretty strong," Mr Rahmani, the former prosecutor, told the BBC. "There is a lot of smoke but look, he could be absolutely innocent and it could be someone else who had access to his vehicle."

Mr Rahmani said while there are many questions in this case, the biggest for him is "what is taking the LAPD so long".

"They haven't released any real information," he said. "This isn't a good look for the LAPD and it's a terrible look for D4vd."

He added that a case like this has added pressures: it involves a teen girl's death, it has garnered global headlines, and the investigation involves a celebrity.

Mr Rahmani noted that technology and potential for video footage is likely to be a "treasure trove" for investigators. Telsa vehicles come with advanced technology that tracks vehicles, notifies users when things like the trunk is open and are also outfitted with a slew of cameras as part of its Sentry Mode systems.

On top of this, the Hollywood home where he was living also had cameras. When authorities searched the home last month, investigators took a DVR that stores video and other data from the surveillance system.

Malden Trifunovic, the owner of the Hollywood Hills home D4vd was renting, has told the BBC that he has hired a private investigator to help uncover what might have happened inside his multi-million-dollar abode.

D4vd's manager Josh Marshall, the founder of Mogul Vision, rented the home for D4vd and has distanced himself from the singer. He vehemently denied rumours that he is connected to the death investigation.

The widening mystery

In addition to the mystery surrounding the cause of Rivas Hernandez's death, it is still unclear what relationship the teenager had with the 20-year-old singer.

Rivas Hernandez would have turned 15 the day before her body was found by police.

In California, the age of consent is 18.

Family, friends and those who knew her have told local media that she had been dating someone named David and said he was a music artist.

A former middle-school science teacher blamed her last attempt to run away from home, in the spring of 2024, on her dating a music artist she'd met online.

"She's been missing since I taught her," the teacher said in a viral video after Rivas Hernandez's body was identified.

Online sleuths have also connected her to the singer in a number of ways, from their matching tattoos to photos he posted online that appear to show them together.

But D4vd has not addressed the rumours, nor have police.

Like many who don't follow indie pop music, his landlord Mr Trifunovic said he had never heard of D4vd until news broke about the discovery. He didn't even know it was D4vd who was renting his home because the lease had been signed by the singer's manager, Mr Marshall.

"I share the same anxiety and desire to understand what happened to poor Celeste as everyone else does," Mr Trifunovic told the BBC.

Although he said he trusts the LAPD to conduct a thorough investigation, he too, is anxious for information.

"There is absolutely no question that a crime was committed," he said.

"She did not place herself in the front trunk of the Tesla or move the vehicle to where it was found."

For South Koreans, tteokbokki is more than a snack. It's soul food.

This sweet and spicy dish made with chewy rice cakes is a staple of Korea's street food culture and beloved by people of all ages.

It's the food students turn to after long school days, and as adults, one you seek after a hard day at work.

So when readers came across a book titled I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki in 2018, many were immediately intrigued. Its honest yet playful title sparked curiosity, some wondering just how much you must love tteokbokki to write an entire book about it. Many were soon drawn to its raw honesty.

It became an instant bestseller that was widely discussed and resonated deeply in Korea. This week, Baek Se-hee, the book's South Korean author, died aged 35. The details surrounding her death remain unclear. The fact the Korean Organ Donation Agency said Baek had saved five lives by donating her organs, emphasised her wish to help others.

Her death at such a young age has brought deep sorrow to readers who found comfort and understanding in her words. Social media and blogs have been flooded with tributes and personal stories from those her books have helped, while news outlets around the world reported her passing prominently.

At its heart, the book is a record of Baek's conversations with her psychiatrist as she navigates dysthymia - a mild but long-lasting type of depression - and anxiety disorders. Through these sessions, she opens up about her daily struggles - such as overthinking others' opinions, obsessing over her appearance, and wrestling with self-doubt. Rather than examining clinical depression, she reflects on the gentle melancholy many can relate to.

What makes her story so compelling is its candour. She captures that delicate human contradiction of living wearily with everyday sadness alongside the simultaneous desire to keep going. Just like a comforting dish of tteokbokki on a difficult day, her words offer warmth and understanding, reminding readers that even in vulnerability there is strength.

• A list of organisations in the UK offering support and information with some of the issues in this story is available at BBC Action Line. If you are outside of the UK, you can visit the Befrienders website.

'It's okay not to be perfect'

One of the many young people the book resonated with is Jo Eun Bit, a 25-year-old student at Korea University in Seoul, who found it helped her navigate uncertainty about her future.

"All generations in Korea tend to measure themselves against what others are doing and the achievements they've made, and that only fuels competition," she said. "But I liked this book because it seems to send the message that it's okay not to live according to the standards set by society.

"One of the most memorable passages in her book is that I am a one-of-a-kind being in this world, and that alone makes me special. I am someone I should care for throughout my life. The more I look within myself, the happier I believe I will become.

"To me, this offered comfort that it's okay not to be perfect, and at the same time reminded me that I, too, am someone who needs to be nurtured and cared for."

The relentless competition from school to the workplace, coupled with the pressure to meet family and societal expectations, is leaving many young South Koreans feeling disheartened. In a society still influenced by Confucian values such as righteousness and obedience, mental health issues remain heavily stigmatised and many experience feelings of shame or social judgement.

Baek's book inverted the notion that social success is the ultimate measure of a life well lived, openly addressing the mental health issues many commonly face and, in doing so, showing readers that acknowledging your emotions is the first step towards healing.

Sangeun Lee, an elementary school teacher in Korea, told the BBC the book has held a particularly special meaning to her for that reason.

"With the rise of social media, we're exposed to other people's lives too much, and it makes us increasingly critical of ourselves," the 35-year-old said.

"Being imperfect is natural for everyone, but seeing so much of this kind of information can feel like an attack on yourself, making you wonder if it's even okay to live the way you do. This book encouraged me to accept myself as I am."

Something many people relate to

The book's popularity has had a real-world impact, supporting many struggling with depression to seek professional help. It has also brought mental health issues into public conversation - RM of BTS, the globally renowned K-pop group known for songs promoting self-love, is among those who have shared the book online.

Baek's pages have resonated far beyond South Korea. First published in 2018, it has sold more than a million copies worldwide and been translated into 25 languages. In the UK, it sold 100,000 copies within six months of its release.

It has struck a chord with young women and played a significant role in expanding the reach of Korean literature. Marianna Szucs, a secondary school teacher in London, told the BBC she felt a connection to it and deep sorrow at Baek's death.

"Her book tells you that if you feel depressed or feel like you have problems, you are not the only one. She had all sorts of problems, from tiny little things to quite daunting ones. I think anyone who reads this book can find something they can relate to."

Seunghye Sun, director of the Korean Cultural Centre UK, said "it is highly symbolic that Baek Se-hee's voice has found resonance in the UK where great psychoanalysts like Freud and his daughter explored the human mind", in the process broadening the spectrum of K-literature and K-culture.

Her book tells a story that transcends generations and borders, sending a quiet but warm message to countless nameless readers around the world.

In the end, the paradoxical title "I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki" may, in fact, be another way of saying, "I want to live." Even in moments of deep despair, people often find the strength to carry on through small joys.

For her, that joy was tteokbokki, and it shows even the simplest pleasures in daily life can become a sustaining force.

"I remember just feeling so scared and vulnerable," says actor and TV presenter Joe Swash of becoming a father in his twenties.

Swash found out he was going to be a dad at the age of 24. He says it was a life-changing experience he felt "grossly underprepared" for, adding that "there was no one really for me to talk to".

The presenter says his and his former partner's conversations with midwives were "rightly" centred on the mum-to-be, but he felt lonely and no one had asked him how he was doing. There were no father-and-child support groups and having lost his own father aged 11, Swash felt he had no positive male role models to turn to.

He worried about small things like how to change a nappy or how hot his baby's bottle had to be, and felt everyone was "looking down" at him for being a young dad.

It was this feeling of being "completely unsupported" as a young father that he explores in the BBC documentary Joe Swash: Forgotten Young Dads.

In the film, the former EastEnders star meets four young fathers and explores some of the problems they face, from social stereotypes to a lack of parental support services.

Last year, dads were an average of 34 years old when their child was born, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The fathers in the BBC documentary, meanwhile, are all 18 to 22.

Kevin Stoodley is founder of North East Young Dads and Lads (NEYDL), a charity that provides parenting and community support for young fathers.

Stoodley says that in his 27 years as a community youth worker, he has "never encountered a community as stigmatised" as young dads.

'Absent dads'

Swash says that as a young dad, he "really struggled" with judgement from others and felt that people viewed him as "irresponsible".

He adds that young dads often get a "bad reputation" and are characterised as "absent".

"I'd love to find out how many of them 'absent dads' are absent because they wanted to be, or because they were so vulnerable, scared and frightened that they had nowhere to go and had no support," he explains.

Swash says society needs to "readjust" how it sees young dads. Stoodley agrees, saying that young fathers have historically been wrongfully "perceived as being feckless, disinterested and in some cases, a risk to their children".

He adds that some of the young dads he's met face judgement from their own communities and are "told that they've ruined their life".

'Alpha male'

For Swash, having positive male role models is key in supporting young dads.

After his father died, Swash says he was "craving, as a young man, just to have a male role model put their arm around me and look after me - whether that was a negative role model or a positive role model, I was just desperate to have some role model".

"If all we're seeing is negative role models being put on social media and on TV, you can be mistaken in thinking that's the sort of man you want to be", he adds.

Swash explains: "We can all get in fights down the streets and go on boys' holidays, but not everyone can change a nappy and love and nurture and cherish a child and for me, that's an alpha male".

Stoodley says having positive male role models is "super important" in helping young fathers navigate their new roles.

The founder says NEYDL also looks to address toxic masculinity and steer young men on the path of being a good role model.

Recently, Stephen Graham, who starred in Adolescence, which explored toxic masculinity, announced a new book calling for fathers to have more open conversations with their sons.

'Fall through the net'

Swash says the lack of support available for young dads is "pretty unbelievable".

In the course of making the documentary, Swash notes that he and the team struggled to find support services for young men and he says there should be a service available to all young fathers.

Services that do exist, like NEYDL, provide parenting and community support to young dads. However, Stoodley says there needs to be more national investment.

Swash adds that support can mean simple things like having more nappy-changing stations in men's toilets, or bigger shifts: "Fundamentally, I think society has got to change the way they look at young dads and young families."

"I felt really lonely," Swash adds of his own experiences as a young dad.

Swash, a parent to six children, says he's "proud" to have been a young dad and loves his kids "with a passion".

However, he acknowledges a lot of young men are "not as lucky" as him and encourages young dads to have conversations with each other and to "not suffer in silence".

You can watch Joe Swash: Forgotten Young Dads on Monday 20 October at 20:00 BST on BBC Three, and on BBC iPlayer.

It has been described by prosecutors as one of the largest frauds of its kind in the UK.

A total of 14 people have been convicted for their part in a £28m conspiracy to defraud more than 3,500 timeshare owners.

The victims were desperate to get out of decades-old timeshare contracts and went looking for help.

Most were aged between 60 and 80. More than 500 of them lost over £10,000, and one handed over more than £80,000.

Those targeted were subjected to high-pressure sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, owning useless fake "credits" and still locked into expensive timeshare contracts they often could no longer use.

The company at the centre of the fraud was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took people's money to fund the owners' lavish lifestyle of private schools, millionaire mansions and private jets.

The man at the top of the company, Mark Rowe, was given a seven-and-half year sentence in January for conspiracy to defraud.

On Friday, his wife Nicola was one of the final three to hear their sentences.

She received a two-year suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty to money laundering.

This has been a long time coming and represents a huge win for the people who spoke out, the police and prosecutors.

Nine years ago, I made a programme for the BBC Scotland Investigates strand which exposed through secret filming the way SMT fleeced its victims.

Almost a decade on, the end of the criminal process brings some closure to those who were ripped off. But it's worth knowing how the fraudsters were able to get away with it for so long.

I first heard about SMT in the summer of 2016. I was working in the investigations unit of BBC Scotland News, making current affairs and investigative documentaries.

A friend mentioned that his mum had inherited the use of a timeshare apartment in Spain and, after years of holidays there, had begun looking to get out of the contract.

It's worth mentioning here how popular timeshares had become with British holidaymakers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Timeshares allowed people to access the same accommodation every year, or swap their weeks with other owners who had properties in other resorts. About 600,000 sun-lovers took up that opportunity.

The first timeshare rush was accompanied by a lot of stories about rip-off merchants mis-selling properties. They became a staple of consumer and investigative TV programmes such as Watchdog and The Cook Report.

The typical timeshare contract tied investors in for decades.

By 2016, those owners who had enjoyed their guaranteed place in the sun for 20 or 30 years were ageing, and many were looking to wave goodbye to their timeshares.

Some had declining mobility and couldn't get to their properties. Some just felt they'd got all they wanted from them. And some had died, in many cases leaving their loved ones to inherit the contracts - including their annual payments and maintenance fees.

And that's where my friend's mum had found herself. She searched the web for answers and found SMT, a company whose website promised to get her out of her contract.

But, having paid a fee and booked a meeting with them, her family smelled a rat.

Further research revealed hundreds of people saying they had paid money and got nothing out of it. In fact, they had lost money. A lot of it.

Our team began investigating what was going on. It quickly became clear that there were some shady characters operating in the timeshare resale sector.

One lawyer had hundreds of individual complaints waiting to sue SMT.

We spoke to people who had used the firm and they all told the same story. They thought the company would buy their property off them but when they went to a consultation (for which they paid up front) they were told there was no re-sale value.

Instead, they were encouraged - in fact pressured - to spend more money investing in "Monster Rewards", named after the outfit's parent company, Monster Travel.

What exactly these were was not exactly clear. They sounded like a kind of currency, giving access to discount travel and services and shopping deals

And they were apparently "tradable" with other owners, some time down the line.

Investing money up front now would result in an eventual payoff that would cover SMT's fees and leave the property owner in profit, freed at last from their pesky contract.

Too good to be true? Well, yes.

A 'bait-and-switch' scam

If these accounts were true, this was a massive scam.

It's what is called a "bait-and-switch".

Someone - in this case SMT - "baits" the customer by advertising a particular product or service only to then say that's not available, pushing the client towards another, inferior, product or service.

That's illegal. Armed with all the testimony we had collected, we made the case to secretly film one of the company's meetings.

This takes time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the only way to gather the information needed to prove wrongdoing.

Armed with that permission, our small team set up a meeting with one of the company's representatives in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Posing as a member of the public hoping to get his mum out of her timeshare contract, our presenter, the personal finance journalist Fergus Muirhead, filmed the entire three-hour encounter.

And everything went exactly as we'd been told.

For a start, Fergus was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, designed to stop him revealing anything that was discussed in the meeting.

Any idea the company would be able to sell the (fictional) property was soon dismissed. The only way out of it would be through Monster Rewards - and to get them, he would have to cough up £6,740 on the spot.

In the great traditions of British journalism, we made our excuses and left.

We broadcast the programme on 24 October 2016.

In the run up to transmission we gave SMT a right of reply to our allegations about their illegal business practices.

They denied any wrongdoing and questioned both the transparency and probity of our sources. They said our allegations were defamatory and they reserved the right to pursue legal action against the BBC.

What they didn't know, until the moment we published the online news piece ahead of transmission, was that we had everything on tape.

We never heard from them again.

Within days of broadcast, we were contacted by police who were already investigating SMT. They were looking to get hold of our footage of the recorded meeting.

As journalists, we have to be careful about handing over to the police material which we have collected for our reporting. We must remain independent, and the BBC will not normally hand over unused material in such circumstances without a court order.

So we waited until they were granted a court order for the material, which we then complied with. And that was the last we heard of the matter for the next three-and-half years.

As the nation headed towards the first Covid lockdown in February 2020, we were informed that 19 people connected to the firm had been arrested.

Fergus and I were asked to give witness statements. We spent the next five-and-a-half years never knowing whether we would be called, or knowing what was going on.

It was only with the end of the judicial process this week that we learned there had been four trials over two years at Southwark Crown Court in London. Reporting restrictions were in place until the final guilty pleas were lodged.

In total, there were 14 convictions.

Among those was 60-year-old Josephine Cuthill-Fox, the woman we filmed in 2016. She received 24 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now turn to pursuing the money and assets gained by the defendants through their crimes.

This story isn't over yet.

Republican governors in several US states have placed National Guard troops on standby in preparation for a nationwide protest to oppose Donald Trump and his policies.

The organisers of the "No Kings" protests say that gatherings will take place at more than 2,500 locations around the US. Trump allies have accused the protesters of being allied with the far-left Antifa movement.

Governors in Texas and Virginia have activated their state's National Guard troops, however it is unclear how visible the military presence will be.

Organisers say that at the last No Kings protest, held in June, more than five million people took to the streets to denounce Trump's political agenda.

The protest organisers say the protest will challenge Trump's "authoritarianism".

"The president thinks his rule is absolute," they say on their website.

"But in America, we don't have kings and we won't back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty."

Some Republicans have dubbed the protests "Hate America" rallies.

"We'll have to get the National Guard out," Kansas Senator Roger Marshall said ahead of the rallies, according to CNN.

"Hopefully it'll be peaceful. I doubt it."

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday activated the state's National Guard ahead of a protest scheduled in Austin, the state's capital.

He said the troops would be needed due to the "planned antifa-linked demonstration".

Democrats denounced the move, including the state's top Democrat Gene Wu, who argued: "Sending armed soldiers to suppress peaceful protests is what kings and dictators do — and Greg Abbott just proved he's one of them."

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin also ordered the state National Guard to be activated.

"I rode away on a camel with my grandmother, along a sandy road, and I started to cry." Ayish Younis is describing the worst moment of his life – he still regards it as such, even though it was 77 years ago, and he's lived through many horrors since.

It was 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war was raging, and Ayish was 12. He and his whole extended family were fleeing their homes in the village of Barbara - famed for its grapes, wheat, corn and barley - in what had been British-ruled Palestine.

"We were scared for our lives," Ayish says. "On our own, we had no means to fight the Jews, so we all started to leave."

The camel took Ayish and his grandmother seven miles south from Barbara, to an area held by Egypt that would become known as the Gaza Strip. It was just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and had just become occupied by Egyptian forces.

In all an estimated 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and became refugees as a result of the war of 1948-49; around 200,000 are believed to have crowded into that tiny coastal corridor.

"We had bits of wood which we propped against the walls of a building to make a shelter," Ayish says.

Later, they moved into one of the huge tented camps established by the United Nations.

Today, aged 89, Ayish is again living in a tent in Al-Mawasi near Khan Younis.

In May last year, seven months into the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, Ayish was forced to leave his home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah after an evacuation order from the Israeli military.

The four-storey house, divided into several apartments, that he had shared with his children and their families, was destroyed by what he believes may have been Israeli tank-fire.

Now, home is a small white canvas tent just a few metres across.

Other members of the family are in neighbouring tents. They have all had to cook on an open fire. With no access to running water they wash using canned water, which is scarce and as a result expensive.

"We returned to what we started with, we returned back to tents, and we still don't know how long we will be here," he says, sitting in a plastic chair on the bare sand outside his tent, with clothes drying on a washing line nearby.

A walking frame is propped beside him, as he moves with difficulty. But he still speaks in the crystal-clear, melodious Arabic of one who studied literature, and recited the Quran daily as the imam of a local mosque.

"After we left Barbara and lived in a tent, we eventually succeeded in building a house. But now, the situation is more than a catastrophe. I don't know what the future holds, and whether we will ever be able to rebuild our house again."

"And in the end I just want to go back to Barbara, with my whole extended family, and again taste the fruit that I remember from there."

On 9 October, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The remaining living 20 Hamas-held hostages were returned to Israel and Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners.

Yet despite widespread rejoicing over the ceasefire, Ayish is not optimistic about the long-term prospects for Gaza.

"I hope the peace will spread and it will be calm," he says. "But I believe the Israelis will do whatever they like."

Under the agreement for the first stage of the ceasefire, Israel will retain control of more than half the Gaza Strip, including Rafah.

One question Ayish, his family and all Gazans are pondering is whether their homeland will ever be successfully rebuilt.

My 18 children and 79 grandchildren

Back in 1948, the Egyptian army had been one of five Arab armies that had invaded the British-controlled territory of Mandate Palestine the day after the establishment of a Jewish state, Israel. But they soon withdrew, defeated, from Barbara, prompting Ayish's decision to flee.

Ayish became a teacher when he was 19, and gained a literature degree in Cairo under a scholarship programme.

The best moment of his life, he says, was when he married his wife Khadija. Together they had 18 children. That, according to a newspaper article that once featured him, is a record – the largest number of children from the same mother and father of any Palestinian family.

Today, he has 79 grandchildren, two of them born in the last few months.

The family would move from their first tent to a simple three-room cement house with an asbestos roof in the refugee camp, which they later extended to nine rooms – thanks partly to wages earned in Israel.

When the border between Israel and Gaza opened, and Ayish's eldest son Ahmed was one of many Palestinians who took advantage of that, working in an Israeli restaurant during his holidays, while studying medicine in Egypt.

"During that time, in Israel, people were paid very well. And this is the period of time where the Palestinians made most of their money," he says.

All but one of Ayish's children gained university degrees. They became engineers, nurses, teachers. Several moved abroad. Five are in Gulf countries and Ahmed, a specialist in spinal cord injuries, now lives in London. Many other Gazan families are similarly scattered.

The Younis family, like many Gazans, wanted nothing to do with politics. Ayish became an imam at a Rafah mosque – and a local headman (or mukhtar) responsible for settling disputes, just as his uncle had been years earlier in the village of Barbara.

He was not appointed by the government – but he says that both Hamas and the Fatah political movement, the dominant party in the Palestinian authority, respected him.

That didn't save the family from tragedy, though, during the street battles of 2007, when Fatah and Hamas fought for control of the Strip. Ayish's daughter Fadwa was killed in cross-fire as she sat in a car.

The rest of the family survived through wars between Hamas and Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 – as well as the devastating war triggered by the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Then came that evacuation order by the Israeli military who said they were carrying out operations against Hamas in the area, forcing them to leave their Rafah home and over a year spent living in makeshift tents.

Ayish's life has come full circle since 1948. But his greatest desire is to go even further back in time, to return to the village, now in Israel, which he last saw when he was 12 – even though it no longer exists.

Apart from clothes, cooking pots and a few other essentials, the only possessions he has with him in his tent are the precious title deeds to his ancestral land in Barbara.

'I don't believe Gaza has any future'

Thoughts are now turning to the reconstruction of Gaza.

But Ayish believes the extent of the destruction – of infrastructure, schools and health services – is so great that it cannot be fully repaired, even with the help of the international community.

"I don't believe Gaza has any future," he says.

He believes that his grandchildren could play a role in the reconstruction of Gaza if the ceasefire is fully implemented, but he does not believe they will be able to find jobs in the territory as good as those they have or could get abroad.

His son Haritha, a graduate in Arabic language who has four daughters and a son, is also living in a tent. "An entire generation has been destroyed by this war.

"We are unable to comprehend it," he says.

"We used to hear from our fathers and grandfathers about the 1948 war and how difficult the displacement was, but there is no comparison between 1948 and what happened in this war.

"We hope that our children will have a role in rebuilding, but as Palestinians, do we have the capacity on our own to rebuild the schools? Will donor countries play a role in that?"

"My daughter has gone through two years of war without schooling, and for two years before that schools were closed because of Covid," he continues. "I used to work in a clothing store, but it was destroyed.

"We don't know how things will unfold or how we will have a source of income. There are so many questions we have no answers for. We simply don't know what the future holds."

Another of Ayish's sons, Nizar, a trained nurse, who lives in a tent nearby, agrees. He believes Gaza's problems are so great that the youngest generation of the family will not be able to play much role, despite their high level of education.

"The situation is unbearable," he says. "We hope that life will return to how it was before the war. But the destruction is massive - total destruction of buildings and infrastructure, psychological devastation within the community, and the destruction of universities."

Ayish's eldest son Ahmed, in London, meanwhile reflects on how it took the family more than 30 years to build their former home into what it eventually became - as money was saved over the years it was expanded, he explains.

"Do I have another 30 years to work and try to help and support my family? This is really the situation all the time - every 10 to 15 years, people lose everything and they come back to square one."

And yet he still dreams of living in Rafah again when he retires. "My brothers in the Gulf bought land in Rafah to come back and settle as well. My son, and my nephews and nieces - they want to go back."

With a pause, he adds: "By nature, I'm very optimistic, because I know how determined our Gaza people are. Trust me, they will go back and start to rebuild their lives again.

"The hope is always in the new generation to rebuild."

Top picture credit: AFP via Getty Images

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The day after a body was found in his car in Hollywood, singer D4vd was belting his TikTok hit Romantic Homicide - a brooding breakup song about killing an ex with no regret - to a sold-out crowd in Minneapolis.

The US recording artist had self-launched his music career from his sister's closet while working a part-time gig at Starbucks. It led him to viral fame, millions of followers online, and a global tour.

But all of it came to an abrupt halt last month with the discovery of a severely decomposed body in the front trunk of his Tesla.

The corpse was identified as that of 15-year-old runaway Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

A month later, mystery still surrounds the teen's death, as well as her relationship to the 20-year-old singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke.

Deep dives into his macabre oeuvre - which is peppered with references to death, remembrance, violence and bloody motifs - have led some to question if life was imitating art and vice versa.

The young singer has yet to publicly comment on the case or the grim discovery in his car. His spokesperson has only said that that he is "fully cooperating with authorities" and he has since hired a prominent criminal defence attorney who has represented celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Kanye West and Britney Spears.

Representatives for the singer - including his lawyer Blair Berk, Universal Music Group, Darkroom Records and Sony Music Publishing - did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment.

Rivas Hernandez's cause of death has yet to be determined.

The county's medical examiner has said her body was "severely decomposed" when it was found and has deferred making a ruling on how she died - an investigation they say could take months.

Police have also not named a suspect or person of interest in case, even weeks after discovering her body.

The Los Angeles Police Department has not offered many details in the case or the probe, calling it an open death investigation. The department would not comment on multiple questions posed by the BBC about the case, the investigation and any connections the singer may have to Rivas Hernandez.

"It's just such a strange one," Neama Rahmani, a former prosecutor and Los Angeles attorney, told the BBC. "It keeps getting more bizarre each day that goes on without an arrest."

That lack of information has also seemed to fuel intrigue. Fans, true-crime enthusiasts and internet sleuths have launched their own inquiries, locking in on details that appear to connect the teen girl with the gamer-turned-songwriter, who was once heralded by GQ as a "Mouthpiece for Gen-Z Heartache".

A runaway teen found dead in a Tesla

Rivas Hernandez - who lived about 75 miles away from where her body was discovered - had last been reported missing by her family in April 2024, but it was not the first time she had run away from their Lake Elsinore home.

A first-generation daughter of immigrant parents from El Salvador, neighbours recognised her as a girl who would visit the corner store almost daily to buy candy and soda, according to the Los Angeles Times.

She first went missing on Valentine's Day 2024, and her family filed a missing persons report the next day.

Posters of her face were put up in her neighbourhood and her mother posted pleas on Facebook in Spanish for her return - public overtures that apparently irked the teen.

Over the next two years, her parents would file at least two more missing-persons reports.

Her family and friends told the newspaper that every time Rivas Hernandez ran away, she would eventually return and blend back into her life as a middle schooler.

When the teens' remains were found in a bag in D4vd's Tesla on 8 September, the medical examiner said that she was wearing a tube top, size small black leggings and jewellery, including a yellow metal stud earring and a yellow metal chain bracelet.

She also had a tattoo that read "Shhh…" on her index finger - a marking nearly identical to that on the pop singer's own index finger.

The decomposition of her body indicated that she had already been "deceased for several weeks", investigators said.

Her family, who described her as a beloved daughter, sister, cousin and friend, has said they are "heartbroken and devastated by this tragic loss". They have since solicited money on a crowdfunding website to pay for her funeral, which took place earlier this month.

A singer on the precipice of main-stream fame

D4vd's rise to stardom - fuelled by TikTok and online gaming - is a paradigm for his generation.

Growing up near Houston, Texas, he was home-schooled and said he exclusively listened to gospel music until he was 13. He became an avid Fortnite player in 2017 and launched his music career using pop songs to soundtrack gameplay montages that he posted on YouTube.

He started making his own music when he ran into copyright hurdles, beginning by recording songs on The BandLab app in 2021 and uploading his work on SoundCloud.

Soon, he saw his music breaking through with thousands of listens. He then released what would become his two biggest hits thus far: Romantic Homicide and Here With Me.

The songs went viral on TikTok and led to billions of streams on Spotify, where he has amassed 33 million monthly listeners.

He signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP, Petals and Thorns, in 2023. That same year, he landed on Variety's Young Hollywood list and opened for SZA on her SOS tour.

Last spring, he made his Coachella debut - known as the festival for up-and-coming talent to break into mainstream fame. He was also commissioned by Fortnite - which he has said shaped his story as an artist - to create the game's first official anthem, Locked & Loaded.

A discovery that broke a family and halted a career

But this ascent to fame came to a pause when his Tesla was towed to an impoundment lot and authorities found a bag inside the front trunk that contained Rivas Hernandez's decomposing remains after someone complained about a foul smell.

His world tour was cancelled within days of the discovery, and Sony Music Publishing reportedly suspended promotion of his sophomore album.

Los Angeles police soon raided the posh Hollywood Hills mansion where the singer was living, just blocks from where his Tesla had been towed.

US retailer Hollister and footwear giant Crocs dropped D4vd from marketing campaigns and Telepatía singer Kali Uchis announced she was taking down their collaboration, Crashing.

But while his career ground to a screeching halt, authorities have been silent on the investigation into Rivas Hernandez's death.

Investigators have not released any new information in the case since 29 September.

The agency also said that it is still unclear whether there is any criminal culpability beyond the concealment of her body.

While online sleuths have been quick to speculate, legal experts say that there is still much we don't know.

"You have this connection to David that seems pretty strong," Mr Rahmani, the former prosecutor, told the BBC. "There is a lot of smoke but look, he could be absolutely innocent and it could be someone else who had access to his vehicle."

Mr Rahmani said while there are many questions in this case, the biggest for him is "what is taking the LAPD so long".

"They haven't released any real information," he said. "This isn't a good look for the LAPD and it's a terrible look for D4vd."

He added that a case like this has added pressures: it involves a teen girl's death, it has garnered global headlines, and the investigation involves a celebrity.

Mr Rahmani noted that technology and potential for video footage is likely to be a "treasure trove" for investigators. Telsa vehicles come with advanced technology that tracks vehicles, notifies users when things like the trunk is open and are also outfitted with a slew of cameras as part of its Sentry Mode systems.

On top of this, the Hollywood home where he was living also had cameras. When authorities searched the home last month, investigators took a DVR that stores video and other data from the surveillance system.

Malden Trifunovic, the owner of the Hollywood Hills home D4vd was renting, has told the BBC that he has hired a private investigator to help uncover what might have happened inside his multi-million-dollar abode.

D4vd's manager Josh Marshall, the founder of Mogul Vision, rented the home for D4vd and has distanced himself from the singer. He vehemently denied rumours that he is connected to the death investigation.

The widening mystery

In addition to the mystery surrounding the cause of Rivas Hernandez's death, it is still unclear what relationship the teenager had with the 20-year-old singer.

Rivas Hernandez would have turned 15 the day before her body was found by police.

In California, the age of consent is 18.

Family, friends and those who knew her have told local media that she had been dating someone named David and said he was a music artist.

A former middle-school science teacher blamed her last attempt to run away from home, in the spring of 2024, on her dating a music artist she'd met online.

"She's been missing since I taught her," the teacher said in a viral video after Rivas Hernandez's body was identified.

Online sleuths have also connected her to the singer in a number of ways, from their matching tattoos to photos he posted online that appear to show them together.

But D4vd has not addressed the rumours, nor have police.

Like many who don't follow indie pop music, his landlord Mr Trifunovic said he had never heard of D4vd until news broke about the discovery. He didn't even know it was D4vd who was renting his home because the lease had been signed by the singer's manager, Mr Marshall.

"I share the same anxiety and desire to understand what happened to poor Celeste as everyone else does," Mr Trifunovic told the BBC.

Although he said he trusts the LAPD to conduct a thorough investigation, he too, is anxious for information.

"There is absolutely no question that a crime was committed," he said.

"She did not place herself in the front trunk of the Tesla or move the vehicle to where it was found."

The Spanish town of Terrassa in north-eastern Catalonia has temporarily banned the adoption of black cats from animal shelters to prevent potentially sinister "rituals" during Halloween.

All requests for the fostering or adoption of the felines will be denied from 6 October to 10 November to protect them from being hurt or used as props, said the local animal welfare service.

Deputy Mayor Noel Duque told broadcaster RTVE that adoption requests for black cats usually increase around Halloween.

While black cats are often associated with witchcraft and seen as bad luck in Western culture, many other cultures, including Japan and Egypt, see them as symbols of prosperity and fortune.

Terassa's city council said there had been no record of cruelty towards black cats in the town, however there have been incidents in other areas and the decision was taken after warnings from animal welfare groups.

"We try to prevent people from adopting because it's trendy or impulsively. And in cases like these, which we know exist, to prevent any macabre practices," Duque said.

Terrassa is home to more than 9,800 cats, according to the local authorities, and the adoption centre houses around 100 of them, 12 of which are black.

The city council emphasised that the measure is "temporary and exceptional" and represents an extra precaution for animal welfare, but did not rule out repeating the ban in the future.

Exceptions during the ban period will be assessed individually by the adoption centre and normal fostering requests will resume after Halloween.