After the fortnight the prime minister has had, a spot of rarefied pageantry is just the ticket.

The government weathered a three-hour monsoon of questions in the Commons on Tuesday, which amounted to MP after MP asking why on earth Lord Mandelson was appointed as our man in Washington in the first place, and then why it took so long for Sir Keir Starmer to realise his position was untenable.

Today they can hope, if only briefly, the questions of who knew what and when and the questions about Sir Keir's abilities to do his job can be dislodged from our screens.

After all, President Trump craves the best pictures and pictures are what any state visit are (pretty much) all about.

The next few days amount to the UK offering a vital ally the full works of what he loves: royalty, military bands, a flypast, a banquet and plenty more besides.

It is the latest point in the arc of the unlikely friendship between Sir Keir and the president, almost exactly a year after they first met at Trump Tower in New York, before the American election.

The rhetoric is already flying higher than the planes that will zoom over Windsor Castle later.

The British embassy in Washington may not currently have an ambassador, but it is still in possession of superlatives.

"The UK-US relationship is the strongest in the world, built on 250 years of history," it claims.

The prime minister's official spokesman added that the next 48 hours would see an "unbreakable friendship reach new heights".

Many, including his political opponents, acknowledge that the prime minister can chalk up as a triumph his relationship with President Trump.

But it is also true that the relationship remains a rollercoaster and will always be one.

Sir Keir wants to lean into the economic wins the UK-US relationship can bring.

The latest announcement from Microsoft is a case in point.

But the news about tariffs on UK steel remaining in place is a case in point about that unpredictability.

Officials say the state visit created an impetus for both sides in recent months to chivvy commercial deals along so both sides had wins they could announce to their domestic audiences during the visit.

Thursday will be the more explicitly political day.

The news conference will be another wild ride of uncertainty for the prime minister, because as senior government figures frequently acknowledge, it is impossible to be certain what the president might end up saying.

And beyond the likely warm words, there are disagreements or at least different emphases on a wide range of issues: the UK's imminent recognition of a Palestinian state, the war in Ukraine and, yes, Jeffrey Epstein.

Questions about the convicted paedophile, who died six years ago, look likely to follow the president over the Atlantic, courtesy of the made-in-Britain-row about Epstein and Lord Mandelson.

As the president enjoys 48 hours in the land of his mother and is the guest of royalty, the noise of controversy from back home may yet greet him – all thanks to the row that has been happening here.

Microsoft says its new $30bn (£22bn) investment in the UK's AI sector – its largest outside of the US - should significantly boost Britain's economy in the next few years.

Its package forms a major part of a $31billion agreement made between the UK government and various other US tech giants, including Nvidia and Google, to invest in British-based infrastructure to support AI technology, largely in the form of data centres.

Microsoft will also now be involved in the creation of a powerful new supercomputer in Loughton, Essex.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC of the tech's potential impact on economic growth."

"It may happen faster, so our hope is not ten years but maybe five".

"Whenever anyone gets excited about AI, I want to see it ultimately in the economic growth and the GDP growth."

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the US-UK deal marked "a generational step change in our relationship with the US".

He added that the agreement was "creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people's pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom."

The UK economy has remained stubbornly sluggish in recent months.

Nadella compared the economic benefits of the meteoric rise of AI with the impact of the personal computer when it became common in the workplace, about ten years after it first started scaling in the 1990s.

But there are also growing mutterings that AI is a very lucrative bubble that is about to burst. Nadella conceded that "all tech things are about booms and busts and bubbles" and warned that AI should not be over-hyped or under-hyped but also said the newborn tech would still bring about new products, new systems and new infrastructure.

He acknowledged that its energy consumption remains "very high" but argued that its potential benefits, especially in the fields of healthcare, public services, and business productivity, were worthwhile. He added that investing in data centres was "effectively" also investing in modernising the power grid but did not say that money would be shared directly with the UK's power supplier, the National Grid.

The campaign group Foxglove has warned that the UK could end up "footing the bill for the colossal amounts of power the giants need".

The supercomputer, to be built in Loughton, Essex, was already announced by the government in January, but Microsoft has now come on board to the project.

Big tech comes to town

Mr Nadella, revealed the investment as Donald Trump has arrived in the UK on a three-day state visit

The UK and US have signed a "Tech Prosperity Deal" as part of the visit, with an aim of strengthening ties on AI, quantum computing and nuclear power.

Google has promised £5bn for AI research and infrastructure over the next two years.

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves opened a £735m data centre as part of the investment on Tuesday in Hertfordshire.

There are some concerns that accepting so much money from US investors will mean the UK relies too much on foreign technology.

In July, Trump made clear his intentions were for the US to win global the AI race.

One of the ways it stated it would do this was to "export American AI to allies and partners."

The UK government has signed number of deals with US technology companies, including an agreement to use OpenAI services in the public sector and a £400m contract to use Google Cloud services in the Ministry of Defence.

Satya Nadella said he thought the agreement defined "the next phase of globalisation" and argued that having access to foreign tech services leveraged digital sovereignty rather than threatened it.

On the growing issue of AI taking over jobs, Nadella said Microsoft also had to "change with the changes in technology", having laid off thousands of staff this year despite record sales and profits. He described it as "the hard process of renewal".

AI growth zone in north-east England

The government also said there was "potential for more than 5,000 jobs and billions in private investment" in north-east England, which has been designated as a new "AI growth zone".

Last year, the government announced a £10bn investment into a data centre to be built near Blyth, Northumberland.

It has now announced another data centre project dubbed Stargate UK from OpenAI, chipmaker Nvidia, semiconductor company Arm and AI infrastructure firm Nscale.

That will be based at Cobalt Park in Northumberland.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman said Stargate UK would "help accelerate scientific breakthroughs, improve productivity, and drive economic growth."

However the UK version is a fraction of the firm's US-based Stargate project, which OpenAI launched in January with a commitment to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for itself.

So far, reaction to the agreement has been broadly positive, but its clear that there are many challenges ahead for the UK if it is to fulfil its intended potential.

The Tony Blair Institute described the news as a "breakthrough moment" but added that Britain had some work to do: "reforming planning rules, accelerating the delivery of clean energy projects, and building the necessary digital infrastructure for powering the country's tech-enabled growth agenda," said Dr Keegan McBride, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's emerging tech and geopolitics expert.

Matthew Sinclair, UK director of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, hailed the agreement as "a powerful demonstration of the scale of the AI opportunity for the UK economy."

But the Conservative Party highlighted that other big international companies such as the pharmaceutical giant Merck have recently cancelled or delayed their UK expansion plans.

Satya Nadella spoke to the BBC News in between board meetings, shortly before jumping on a flight to join Donald Trump as he arrives in the UK on a three-day state visit. Nadella will be among other tech leaders, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, attending the Royal state banquet on Wednesday.

He said he would use Microsoft's AI tool Copilot to help him decide what to wear.

"I was very surprised that there was a very different dress protocol, which I'm really not sure that I'm ready for," he said.

Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.

Labour deputy leadership contender Lucy Powell, who was fired by Sir Keir Starmer in his cabinet reshuffle, has criticised "unforced errors" by the government over welfare.

In her first broadcast interview since being sacked, she told the BBC's Nick Robinson attempts to cut disability benefits and winter fuel payments had left voters questioning "whose side we are on".

She urged the party's leaders to be clearer about their desire to scrap the two-child benefit cap, and move out of a "defensive crouch" on the issue.

And she hit back at claims her deputy leadership bid was a "proxy" for a leadership bid by Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham or Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.

Powell is running against former cabinet colleague Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, in the contest to replace Angela Rayner as Labour's deputy leader.

She dismissed speculation that she was seeking to pave the way for a leadership bid by her long-time ally Andy Burnham as a "classic Westminster bubble obsession".

The Manchester Central MP praised Burnham as a "great politician" and communicator but said it was "sexist" and "wrong" to suggest Labour members might voter for her to be deputy leader to signal they wanted him to replace Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister.

"You've got two strong women standing in a in an open and transparent contest," said the Manchester Central MP.

"And instead of talking about the two strong women, everybody's talking about this being a sort of proxy for war between two men, which quite honestly, I find kind of sexist, but it's also completely wrong."

The Manchester Mayor can not stand to be Labour leader because he is not an MP, but there has been speculation he could seek to return to Westminster in a by-election.

Nick Robinson also suggested Powell could be acting as a proxy for Ed Miliband, who led Labour to defeat in the 2015 general election, if he decided to stand for the leadership again.

Powell, who is Miliband's former chief staff, told Robinson: "Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a proxy for anybody. I'm me.

"I'm a very independent, strong-minded, effective politician in my own right."

She said she may have been sacked as Commons leader in Sir Keir's reshuffle for telling the Labour leadership things "they didn't want to hear" such as how deeply MPs opposed welfare cuts.

If she were elected deputy leader she said she would be a "conduit" for the views of members and tell Sir Keir "when we're getting things wrong".

Speaking to the Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, she said she did not want not want a cabinet job if she succeeds, adding that Sir Keir had been "really clear" that David Lammy would be Rayner's replacement as deputy PM.

As a "full-time deputy leader", she said she would aim to bridge the gap between party members and the leadership.

Launching her bid for the deputy leadership, Phillipson has urged Labour to remain united to win a second term in government.

"I won't pretend this government hasn't made mistakes – I've been first to admit it" she told supporters in her Sunderland constituency.

"But we can't afford to look inwards - to go back to bad old days of divided Labour Party and open old wounds.

"If we turn against each other only one person will win – Nigel Farage - but millions more will lose."

You can hear the full interview with Lucy Powell on Political Thinking with Nick Robinson on BBC Sounds. The interview will also be broadcast on BBC2 on Friday at 14:45 and BBC Radio 4 on Saturday at 17:30.

Nepal's Gen Z protesters brought down a government in under 48 hours – but the victory has come at a heavy price.

"We are proud, but there is also a mixed baggage of trauma, regret and anger," says Tanuja Pandey, one of the protest organisers.

With 72 people killed, last week's protests were the deadliest unrest in the Himalayan country in decades. Official buildings, residences of political leaders and luxury hotels such as the Hilton, which opened in July 2024, were torched, vandalised and looted. The wife of a former prime minister is fighting for her life after their home was set ablaze.

The protests represented "a wholesale rejection of Nepal's current political class for decades of poor governance and exploitation of state resources", said Ashish Pradhan, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group. But the damage to government services, he added, could "parallel the toll of the 2015 earthquake which took almost 9,000 lives".

The destruction is not only confined to the capital Kathmandu - at least 300 local government offices across the nation have been damaged.

The financial losses could amount to 3 trillion Nepalese rupees ($21.3bn; £15.6bn), nearly half of the country's GDP, according to the Kathmandu Post. Its offices were also attacked by crowds and set on fire.

'Nepo babies'

Two days before the deadly demonstration on 8 September, Ms Pandey, a 24-year-old environmental campaigner, uploaded a video showing a mining site in Chure, one of the most fragile mountain ranges in the region. Nepal's resources should belong to the people, not to "politicians' private limited companies", she wrote, calling on her peers to "march against corruption and the misuse of our nation's wealth".

Like many youth movements in Asia, Nepal's Gen Z protests were leaderless. Others had made similar pleas to Ms Pandey's after the Nepali government decided to ban 26 social media platforms, citing their failure to register locally.

For months, fury had been brewing against "nepo babies", the children of powerful politicians of all stripes, who were accused of flaunting their unexplained wealth on social media.

One of the most viral photos showed Saugat Thapa, the son of a provincial minister, standing next to a Christmas tree made of boxes of luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Cartier. In response, he said it was "an unfair misinterpretation" and his father "returned every rupee earned from public service to the community".

Ms Pandey had watched almost all "nepo babies" content, but one video juxtaposing the luxurious life of a political family and an ordinary young Nepali who had to find work in a Gulf country struck her.

"It is painful to watch, especially knowing that even educated youth are forced to leave the country because wages here are far below what one needs to live with dignity," she said.

Nepal is a young democracy. It became a republic in 2008, after a decade-long, Maoist-led civil war that killed more than 17,000 people.

But the promised stability and prosperity have not materialised. In 17 years, Nepal has had 14 governments, and no leader has completed a full five-year term. The country's politics resemble a game of musical chairs, with communist parties and the centrist Nepali Congress taking turns to rule. Three leaders, including KP Sharma Oli who resigned over the Gen Z protests, returned to power multiple times.

Nepal's GDP per capita remained under $1,500, making it the second-poorest country in South Asia, behind only Afghanistan. An estimated 14% of the population work overseas, and one in three households receives remittances.

Ms Pandey comes from a middle-class family in eastern Nepal and her father is a retired government teacher. Three years ago, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, for which she is still receiving treatment. The medical bills nearly bankrupted her family, so her older sister moved to Australia to support them.

Before the protests, Ms Pandey worked with others to create guidelines stressing non-violence and respect and reminding participants to stay vigilant against "hijackers".

On the morning of 8 September, she arrived at Maitighar Mandala, a huge traffic island in central Kathmandu with several of her friends. She was expecting thousands would turn up at most – but the crowds kept swelling.

Aakriti Ghimire, a 26-year-old protester, said things were initially peaceful and communal. "We were all seated, we were singing old Nepali songs," she said. "The slogans and everything were so funny, we were enjoying it. And after that, we started to march… the police were there to ensure that there were no vehicles disturbing us."

Both Ms Pandey and Ms Ghimire started to sense danger at around midday, when crowds began moving to New Baneshwor, the neighbourhood housing parliament. Both saw people arriving on motorbikes, and Ms Pandey said these people appeared older than average Gen Z protesters.

Ms Ghimire believes they were infiltrators. "It became very tricky for us to distinguish the peaceful protesters – some people who genuinely came for something – versus those who came in with the intention of being violent."

When some protesters tried to breach the security around parliament, police fired tear gas, water cannon and shots in return. There is evidence live rounds were used and they are accused of shooting at schoolchildren as well. An investigation into what happened is under way.

Chaos and violence reigned the next day. Demonstrators retaliated by setting parliament, the prime minister's office and other government buildings ablaze. Both Ms Pandey and Ms Ghimire stayed indoors and watched the developments online.

"A lot of people did share that it felt so good to finally see politicians face the consequences of everything they've done," Ms Ghimire said, referring to the destruction of the leaders' homes. But the mood soon darkened.

"I saw people with bottles filled with petroleum. They got it from the motorbikes. They started attacking the parliament," said Ms Pandey.

The law graduate cried after seeing the Supreme Court on fire, saying that it was like "a temple" for her. Her friends at the scene were pouring water on the flames to try to put them out. They all knew the effort would be futile – they did it only to console themselves.

"People say the arsonists intended to come and burn these things… Who are these people?" asked Ms Ghimire. "The videos show these people are all masked."

Some calm was restored when the army was deployed to take control of the situation - a curfew was in place for days. Later in the week former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki was appointed interim prime minister. She had been backed by protesters for the post.

Ms Pandey hopes she "can lead the country efficiently, do the election in stipulated time and hand the power to the people".

But the anxiety about Nepal's political future persists.

Rumela Sen, a South Asia expert at Columbia University, said it was "worrying" to see "an unprecedented glorification of the army as a voice of sanity and stability".

Many are also uncomfortable with the involvement of Durga Prasai in the initial negotiation at the invitation of the military. Mr Prasai was arrested for his role in violent pro-monarchy protests in March. He fled to India but was returned to Nepal. The Gen Z protesters walked out.

Meanwhile, families of protesters who were killed are reckoning with their deaths.

"We are deeply shocked because we have lost our beloved son," said Yubaraj Neupane, whose 23-year-old son Yogendra died in the protests. "I am yet to find out how he died."

Yogendra was shot in the back of the head near the parliament building, according to the post mortem report.

From south-eastern Nepal, the family's eldest son had pursued his studies in Kathmandu and aspired to be a civil servant. He was always studying, friends and relatives said.

But on 8 September, he joined the protests with his friends, dreaming of bringing change to the country. His family didn't know he was at the scene until he called them after the situation started heating up.

"Our beloved has lost his life calling for change," his great-uncle Saubhagya said. "His blood and sacrifice should be recognised so that other young people won't have to hit the streets again in the future."

Ms Pandey said she was cautiously optimistic about her country's future, but the trauma of the past week would stay with her for the rest of her life.

This is a political awakening for her generation.

"We are no longer willing to stay silent or accept injustice," she says. "This is not just a gentle nudge; it's a bold challenge to a system that has hoarded power for decades."

Additional reporting by Grace Tsoi

Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox.

Josh Wintersgill has been running a successful business selling products to help wheelchair users travel for six years, but its future hangs in the balance.

He's been using the government's Access to Work scheme to help with some of the additional costs of running his company and is afraid that he may lose it after his one-on-one support was slashed by 80%.

The Business Disability Forum (BDF) says businesses and their disabled employees are being "set up to fail," despite the government's ambitions to get 80% of disabled people into the workforce.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it was reviewing all aspects of the scheme.

'Really frustrating'

Josh needs physical support with most things throughout the day because of his disability. This includes travelling, overnight stays and packing and shipping customer orders. Without this support he says he would not be able to run his company.

The Access to Work grant was providing him with a support worker five days a week, but on reassessment, it was reduced to one day.

He said: "They're basically with me all the time. They help me in every facet of helping me do my job and without them, I can't do any of that."

Josh has appealed the decision and has not had any support since the start of July, when his grant ran out, despite no change in his personal circumstances.

Under the Access to Work scheme, companies and employees can apply for grants to help support disabled people in the workplace.

The programme can pay employees and businesses for the extra costs associated with being a disabled worker - things that go beyond what is legally required by employers to provide. It covers a range of things like paying for taxis, assistive technology and British Sign Language interpreters.

Disabled people have told the BBC their awards have been significantly reduced, completely taken away and in some cases left them forced to shut their businesses and turn down job offers.

Josh is currently managing by using his own money to keep the business afloat, but says things are "very tight" and he'll only be able to do this for the next few months.

"I'm not getting everything done that I used to get done," he says. "There's so much to do that it's just so hard to stay on top of it... it's just really frustrating."

Josh says Access to Work helped him get into work and set up his own business, but is fearful of what will happen if that is taken away.

"It's scary to think that I'm a disabled entrepreneur, helping disabled people and potentially being deprived of doing that."

• Jobs fears as disability scheme owes businesses thousands
• 'I don't want to live on benefits, I want to work'
• Plans to help benefits recipients into work 'a mess', say DWP officials

"We have a system that's making it very difficult for you to remain in work," he adds.

Campaign group Access to Work Collective was set up in response to problems people were facing when applying or reapplying for grants. Its founder, Dr Shani Dhanda said since July they've amassed almost 4,000 members.

The group recently sent an open letter to the prime minister asking him to take "urgent" action to fix the "broken" scheme.

'Affecting the quality of our work'

The lunchtime rush at the Sea Change in cafe in Sunderland is under way. The social enterprise employs 25 neurodiverse adults and uses Access to Work to support most of them.

Lexie O'Connor has been at the cafe since it opened in 2019. In between customers she explains how working at the cafe has given her confidence and a sense of pride and now trains others on how to work with neurodiverse and disabled staff.

Lexie's reapplication took 10 months to come through and when it did the hours for her one-to-one support worker had been greatly reduced, leaving the business to make up the shortfall.

"A lot of employers in that time physically would not be able to manage keeping people like myself employed," she said.

Lexie says she sees a lot of her colleagues worry about their job prospects because of the problems with Access to Work. The cafe has said it already had to let two members of staff go because support was cut.

"We're worrying so much about it, it's affecting the quality of work that we worked so hard to get to in the first place.

"I feel like places like Sea Change are trying their best, they are fighting for people like me."

'Set up to fail'

Ministers have widely acknowledged Access to Work as a key driver in getting disabled people in work, but in an interview with the BBC, minister for social security and disability, Sir Stephen Timms, said the problem was the "huge numbers of people wanting it", adding they had been struggling "to keep up with the demand".

Spending on the programme increased by 41% in 2023-24 to £257.8m.

In February 2025 about 62,000 applications were waiting to be processed, with 33,000 people awaiting payment, according to the DWP.

A government consultation on Access to Work closed at the end of June with ministers currently reviewing what a new scheme could look like.

​​Angela Matthews, director of public policy and research at BDF called on the government to make access to work "more efficient and more resourced".

​​She told the BBC: "Disabled people are set up to fail and so are employers, because disabled people won't get what they need to be able to work and employers won't have the means or the support to provide an inclusive workplace for disabled people."

Member of BDF, Allianz UK, said despite the size of the insurance business, it had not been immune to the struggles with Access to Work.

Diana Salmon, head of occupational health and safety at the firm, says the biggest issue has been the long waits for awards to be processed. In some cases people are waiting longer than 10 months to start work.

Diana says: "It [the delays] could put people off applying to us... so we do our best but we can't afford really to pick up the high support costs."

She referenced a recent example of a new recruit who left the company shortly after starting the role because it took nearly a year to get specialist equipment in place so they could fully carry out the job.

"We want to provide an inclusive environment, but without timely Access to Work funding for colleagues with complex disabilities, they are potentially being excluded," Diana said.

Diana has herself used Access to Work in a previous job. The money paid for travel costs to visit her team in different locations, which she otherwise wouldn't have been able to do, but said she sees the value in the programme.

"It would be much more difficult for us to attract, recruit and to retain employees with disabilities [without the scheme]," she said.

In a statement the DWP said: "We inherited an Access to Work scheme that is failing both employees and employers, which is why - as part of our welfare reform - we consulted on how it could be improved.

"We are reviewing all aspects of the scheme and will develop future policy with disabled people and the organisations that represent them."

It added there had been "no change in Access to Work policy".

Celebrated children's writer Robert Munsch has been approved for medically assisted dying in Canada.

Munsch, whose 85 published books include The Paper Bag Princess and Love You Forever, was diagnosed with dementia in 2021 and also has Parkinson's disease.

The author told the New York Times Magazine that he had not decided a date for his death, but said he would go "when I start having real trouble talking and communicating. Then I'll know."

Canada first legalised euthanasia in 2016 for people with terminal illnesses. In 2021, the law was changed to include those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even in non-life threatening circumstances.

Munsch has sold more than 80 million copies of his books in North America alone and they have been translated into at least 20 language - including Arabic, Spanish and Anishinaabemowin, an indigenous North American language.

In 1999, Munsch was made a member of the Order of Canada. A decade later, he received a star of Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.

In the interview with the New York Times Magazine, Munsch said his decision was influenced by watching his brother die from Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND).

Munsch said: "They kept him alive through all these interventions. I thought, let him die."

In Canada, people over 18 must meet several requirements to be eligible for assisted dying.

They include having a "serious and incurable illness", making a "voluntary request that is not the result of external pressure" and be in an "advanced state of irreversible decline in capability".

Two independent doctors or nurse practitioners must then assess the patient to confirm that all of the eligibility requirements are met.

Scholastic, Munsch's publisher, said in a statement on Instagram that his decision to speak publicly about medically assisted dying "reminds us, once again, why Robert's work continues to touch many generations".

Munsch's daugher, Julie, posted on Facebook that her father's decision to pursue medically assisted dying was made five years ago.

Julie called the New York Times Magazine interview "great", but added that "nowhere does it say my dad isn't doing well, nor that he's going to die anytime soon".

According to Canadian law, the person must be able to actively consent on the day of his death.

"I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it," he said in the interview.

Medically assisted dying accounted for 4.7% of deaths in Canada in 2023 - the most recent official government statistics.

Some 96 per cent of the 15,300 people that underwent assisted dying in 2023 had a death deemed "reasonably forseeable", due to severe medical conditions like cancer.

The wheat fields outside Seqalbia, near the Syrian city of Hama, should be golden and heavy with grain.

Instead, Maher Haddad's 40 dunums (10 acres) are dry and empty, barely yielding a third of their usual harvest.

"This year was disastrous due to drought," said the 46-year-old farmer, reflecting on the land that cost him more to sow than it gave back.

His fields delivered only 190kg (418 lbs) of wheat per dunum - far below the 400-500kg he relies on in a normal year.

"We haven't recovered what we spent on agriculture; we've lost money. I can't finance next year and I can't cover the cost of food and drink," Mr Haddad told the BBC.

With two teenage daughters to feed, he is now borrowing money from relatives to survive.

Mr Haddad's struggle is echoed across Syria, where the worst drought in 36 years has slashed wheat harvests by 40% and is pushing a country - where nearly 90% of the population already lives in poverty - to the brink of a wider food crisis.

A report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates Syria will face a wheat shortfall of 2.73m tonnes this year, the equivalent of annual dietary needs for 16.25 million people.

Without more food aid or the ability to import wheat, Syria's hunger crisis is set to worsen dramatically, warned Piro Tomaso Perri, FAO's senior programme officer for Syria.

"Food insecurity could reach unprecedented levels by late 2025 into mid-2026," he said, noting that more than 14 million Syrians - six in 10 people - are already struggling to eat enough. Of those, 9.1 million face acute hunger, including 1.3 million in severe conditions, while 5.5 million risk sliding into crisis without urgent intervention.

The same report showed rainfall has dropped by nearly 70%, crippling 75% of Syria's rain-fed farmland.

"This is the difference between families being able to stay in their communities or being forced to migrate," Mr Perri said. "For urban households, it means rising bread prices. For rural families, it means the collapse of their livelihoods."

Farming families are already selling livestock to supplement lost incomes from wheat, reducing their number of daily meals, and there has been a rise in malnutrition rates among children and pregnant women.

Yet, the implications of the drought stretch far beyond the thousands of kilometres of barren farmlands.

Wheat is a staple crop in Syria. It is the main ingredient for bread and pasta - two food staples that should be low cost foods to families. So with the lack of wheat supply, the cost goes up.

For 39-year-old widow Sanaa Mahamid, affording bread has become a massive struggle.

With six children between the ages of nine and 20, she relies on the wages of two sons, but their salaries are not enough to cover the family's basic expenses.

"Sometimes we borrow money just to buy bread," she said.

Last year, a bag of bread cost Sanna 500 Syrian pounds ($4.1; £3; €3.5), but now it is 4,500 Syrian pounds. To feed her family, Sanaa needs two bags a day - an expense of 9,000 pounds, before accounting for any other food.

"This is too much. This is just bread, and we still need other things," she said. "If the price of bread rises again, this will be a big problem. The most important thing is bread."

The crisis is a challenge for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, as his administration works to rebuild Syria in the aftermath of the 14-year conflict and the removal of former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

International agencies, like the UN World Food Programme (WFP), are rushing to step in alongside the government to provide bread subsidies for those at risk of facing severe food insecurity.

But aid officials warn that subsidies are only a temporary fix, and that the long-term stability of Syria depends on whether farmers can stay on their land and sustain production.

"We're trying to keep people in the farming game," Marianne Ward, the WFP's country director for Syria, said. She has worked to give $8m (£6m; €6.9m) in direct payments to small farmers - about 150,000 people - who lost all of their crops.

"If you're not going to make money, you're going to leave the land. And then you're not going to have people who are going to be working in the agriculture sector which is essential for the economy," she said

But after more than a decade of war, Syria's agricultural sector was already battered by economic collapse, destroyed irrigation systems, and mined fields.

Dr Ali Aloush, the agriculture director for the Deir al-Zour region, Syria's breadbasket, said wheat fields needed to be irrigated four to six times per season, but that due to lack of rain, most farmers could not keep up.

"The farmer's primary concern is first securing water and water requires fuel. The fuel price skyrocketed. It reached to 11,000 to 12,000 Syrian pounds per litre," Dr Aloush said.

The high price of fuel and power cuts meant water pumps were out of reach, and many growers were already burdened with debt.

Dr Aloush says a priority for his department and the transitional government in Damascus is putting money into irrigation projects - like solar powered drips - that will make water more accessible to farmers.

But projects like that take time and money - luxuries wheat farmers do not currently have.

So for millions of Syrians across the country, there is only one thing to do in the coming months: pray for rain.

Additional reporting by Lana Antaki in Damascus