Germany's coalition government has agreed a new military service plan to boost troop numbers following months of wrangling between political forces.

The new military service plan will mandate all 18-year-old men to fill out a questionnaire on their suitability to serve and, from 2027, to undergo medical screening.

The decision comes as Berlin aims to create Europe's strongest conventional army.

The boss of Germany's biggest defence firm, Rheinmetall, has told the BBC he believes that target could be met in five years.

Armin Papperger said Chancellor Friedrich Merz's aim to boost the Bundeswehr was "realistic" and he told the BBC that "clear decisions" were coming from government.

Earlier this year German defence chief Gen Carsten Breuer warned that the Western Nato alliance had to prepare for a possible Russian attack within four years.

Mr Papperger said he had "no glass ball" about the future but agreed Germany had to be "ready in '29".

When they formed a coalition earlier this year, Merz's conservative CDU/CSU and the centre-left Social Democrat SPD agreed to re-introduce military service which would be voluntary "to start with".

The Bundeswehr currently has around 182,000 troops. The new military service model aims to increase that number by 20,000 over the next year, rising to between 255,000 and 260,000 over the next 10 years, supplemented by approximately 200,000 reservists.

From next year, all 18-year-old men and women will be sent a questionnaire to assess their interest and willingness to join the armed forces. It will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.

From July 2027 all men aged 18 will also have to take a medical exam to assess their fitness for duty.

If the government's targets are not met, a form of compulsory enlistment could be considered by parliament. If war were to break out, the military would be able to draw on the questionnaires and medical exams for potential recruits.

Some within Germany's political left remain deeply opposed to mandatory service.

Many young Germans are wary and a significant majority oppose it. A recent Forsa survey for Stern magazine suggested while just over half of respondents favoured compulsory service, opposition rose to 63% among 18- to 29-year-olds.

"I don't want to go to war because I don't want to die or I don't want to be shot at," said Jimi, a 17-year-old student from Berlin, who attended an anti-conscription protest outside the Bundestag earlier this week. "I also don't want to shoot people."

An attack against Germany was an "unlikely and abstract scenario" that the government was using to legitimise "stealing millions of young people's right to decide what they should be doing", he said.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Jason signed up as new Bundeswehr recruit earlier this year because of the current "security situation".

"I wanted to contribute to defend peace, to defend democracy if the worst happens," he said. By joining up he felt he was "giving back to society" but also believed in the deterrent potential of the army, "so potential enemies don't even think about attacking you".

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has sought to reassure Germans, saying that despite the new military service plan there was "no cause for concern... no reason for fear".

"The more capable of deterrence and defence our armed forces are, through armament through training and through personnel, the less likely it is that we will become a party to a conflict at all," Pistorius said.

Defence spending in Germany tumbled after the end of the Cold War, while conscription was suspended in 2011.

Given its past, Germany has long been shy of showing military might, but earlier this year Friedrich Merz announced that the rule for German defence "now has to be whatever it takes", following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Nato countries across Europe have come under pressure from President Donald Trump's White House to hike spending.

European moves to re-arm have meant significant revenue for Rheinmetall.

Its CEO, Armin Papperger, whose firm also supplies Ukraine, said: "We make a lot of money because there is a huge demand."

"We have to grow strong on vehicles, on ammunition, we have to have our own satellite competencies. We do much more on the electronics and artificial intelligence... than ever before," he said.

A US report last year suggested the Rheinmetall boss had been the target of a Russian assassination plot. There was no confirmation at the time and Mr Papperger would not be drawn on the report, saying: "I feel good, I feel safe."

Asked about whether he felt Europe was in a state of a cold or hybrid war, he said: "Whatever you call it, it's not a peaceful time."

Germany's coalition government has agreed a new military service plan to boost troop numbers following months of wrangling between political forces.

The new military service plan will mandate all 18-year-old men to fill out a questionnaire on their suitability to serve and, from 2027, to undergo medical screening.

The decision comes as Berlin aims to create Europe's strongest conventional army.

The boss of Germany's biggest defence firm, Rheinmetall, has told the BBC he believes that target could be met in five years.

Armin Papperger said Chancellor Friedrich Merz's aim to boost the Bundeswehr was "realistic" and he told the BBC that "clear decisions" were coming from government.

Earlier this year German defence chief Gen Carsten Breuer warned that the Western Nato alliance had to prepare for a possible Russian attack within four years.

Mr Papperger said he had "no glass ball" about the future but agreed Germany had to be "ready in '29".

When they formed a coalition earlier this year, Merz's conservative CDU/CSU and the centre-left Social Democrat SPD agreed to re-introduce military service which would be voluntary "to start with".

The Bundeswehr currently has around 182,000 troops. The new military service model aims to increase that number by 20,000 over the next year, rising to between 255,000 and 260,000 over the next 10 years, supplemented by approximately 200,000 reservists.

From next year, all 18-year-old men and women will be sent a questionnaire to assess their interest and willingness to join the armed forces. It will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.

From July 2027 all men aged 18 will also have to take a medical exam to assess their fitness for duty.

If the government's targets are not met, a form of compulsory enlistment could be considered by parliament. If war were to break out, the military would be able to draw on the questionnaires and medical exams for potential recruits.

Some within Germany's political left remain deeply opposed to mandatory service.

Many young Germans are wary and a significant majority oppose it. A recent Forsa survey for Stern magazine suggested while just over half of respondents favoured compulsory service, opposition rose to 63% among 18- to 29-year-olds.

"I don't want to go to war because I don't want to die or I don't want to be shot at," said Jimi, a 17-year-old student from Berlin, who attended an anti-conscription protest outside the Bundestag earlier this week. "I also don't want to shoot people."

An attack against Germany was an "unlikely and abstract scenario" that the government was using to legitimise "stealing millions of young people's right to decide what they should be doing", he said.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Jason signed up as new Bundeswehr recruit earlier this year because of the current "security situation".

"I wanted to contribute to defend peace, to defend democracy if the worst happens," he said. By joining up he felt he was "giving back to society" but also believed in the deterrent potential of the army, "so potential enemies don't even think about attacking you".

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has sought to reassure Germans, saying that despite the new military service plan there was "no cause for concern... no reason for fear".

"The more capable of deterrence and defence our armed forces are, through armament through training and through personnel, the less likely it is that we will become a party to a conflict at all," Pistorius said.

Defence spending in Germany tumbled after the end of the Cold War, while conscription was suspended in 2011.

Given its past, Germany has long been shy of showing military might, but earlier this year Friedrich Merz announced that the rule for German defence "now has to be whatever it takes", following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Nato countries across Europe have come under pressure from President Donald Trump's White House to hike spending.

European moves to re-arm have meant significant revenue for Rheinmetall.

Its CEO, Armin Papperger, whose firm also supplies Ukraine, said: "We make a lot of money because there is a huge demand."

"We have to grow strong on vehicles, on ammunition, we have to have our own satellite competencies. We do much more on the electronics and artificial intelligence... than ever before," he said.

A US report last year suggested the Rheinmetall boss had been the target of a Russian assassination plot. There was no confirmation at the time and Mr Papperger would not be drawn on the report, saying: "I feel good, I feel safe."

Asked about whether he felt Europe was in a state of a cold or hybrid war, he said: "Whatever you call it, it's not a peaceful time."

Israel has confirmed it has received a coffin Hamas says contains the body of another hostage.

Red Cross vehicles collected the body hours after Hamas issued a joint statement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad saying it had located it in the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister's office said the body will be transferred to Israel, where it will be received at a military ceremony before undergoing an identification process.

Confirmation that it belongs to a hostage would mean 25 out of 28 deceased hostages have been handed over to Israel under the first phase of the current ceasefire deal which forms part of a US plan to end the Gaza war.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living and 28 dead hostages it was still holding.

All the living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

For each dead Israeli hostage returned, Israel has agreed to hand over the remains of 15 Palestinians. But with no DNA testing available in Gaza, it is hard to identify them.

Hamas seized 251 hostages when it launched the deadly attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 during which it killed 1,200 people.

More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory response, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, whose figures the UN considers reliable, but Israel disputes.

Before the latest handover, of the four bodies still in Gaza, three were Israeli and one was Thai.

Israel has accused Hamas of deliberately delaying the recovery of the hostages' bodies, but Hamas has said it is struggling to find them under rubble.

The slow progress has meant there has been no advance on the second phase of US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan.

This includes plans for the governance of Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Hamas, and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

New details which have emerged in the aftermath of Brazil's deadliest police operation are casting doubts over whether the raid really struck at the heart of one of the country's most powerful criminal gangs, as was its stated aim.

One hundred and twenty one people, among them four police officers, were killed in the raid on 28 October in Rio de Janeiro.

The governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Claudio Castro, described the police operation as "a success", posting a photo showing the more than 100 rifles seized by police.

But rights groups have sharply criticised the security forces pointing to the high death toll and what they have described as the "brutality" of their actions.

The operation was the largest ever carried out by Rio's security forces and saw 2,500 officers deployed to the Alemão and Penha neighbourhoods.

It targeted the Comando Vermelho (Red Command) criminal gang, which rules over the nine-million-square-metre area.

Rio's public safety secretary, Victor dos Santos, told Reuters that the goal of the operation had been to carry out scores of arrest warrants issued by prosecutors.

But when BBC Brasil cross-checked the list of the deceased published by police against the 68 names on the list of suspects provided by prosecutors, it found that none of them matched.

Local media have also pointed out that even though scores of suspects were arrested during the raid, the man considered the gang's most powerful leader, Edgar Alves de Andrade, also known as Doca, was not among them.

"Early reports stated that the goal of the operation was to capture high-ranking leaders of the Comando Vermelho (CV)," Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told BBC Brasil.

"By that metric, it is fair to say the operation failed."

At a Senate hearing, the deputy intelligence secretary for Rio's military police stated that the raid had had a "negligible" impact on dismantling Comando Vermelho.

Residents of the Alemão and Penha have also told the BBC that it has done little to loosen the tight grip the CV has on their favelas.

How Rio's gangs rule through fear and control

They said that their daily lives had barely changed since the mega-operation, describing seeing armed men roaming the community the very next day, even as the bodies of those killed were still being removed.

Comando Vermelho (CV) and groups like it enforce strict rules in the areas they control.

These criminal enterprises have moved beyond the sale of drugs and now hold the monopoly for the provision of gas, cable television, internet and transport.

Residents report being charged over the odds for gas cylinders, often having to pay one third more than in zones not under gang control.

Rules imposed by gang members affect everyday life.

As CV has banned cars working for ride-hailing apps from entering the favelas, locals are restricted to using motorbike taxis and vans which have been authorised by the gangs to operate there.

Even people's clothing is policed by the gang. In 2020, residents of Penha were told not to wear Chelsea football shirts.

At the time, the jerseys were sponsored by British telecoms company Three, but CV members did not like the number being prominently displayed because it reminded them of a rival gang which happened to have the number three in its name: Terceiro Comando Puro (Pure Third Command).

Punishments for what are considered transgressions are extremely harsh. Being caught stealing can mean losing a hand or being burned alive.

Gang members "sit in judgement" over domestic violence cases and those found guilty are beaten or even executed.

Residents are forbidden from engaging in relationships with members of rival factions or with police officers.

They also know not to photograph or film drug dens or any of the armed men driving through their community.

But with mobile phone use ubiquitous, even gangs as powerful as Comando Vermelho struggle to control what gets posted online.

In Rocinha, a favela under CV control, gang members vowed to kill those who leaked a 2020 video showing a CV leader surrounded by rifles and machine guns.

When someone insists on "causing trouble", the group often resorts to assault and torture.

Police investigation files on Comando Vermelho, seen by the BBC, contain disturbing images.

One shows a woman forcibly submerged in an ice bath, accompanied by a caption accusing her of being "aggressive" and "causing trouble".

Reports of growing violence and expanding territorial control by Comando Vermelho formed the basis of the complaint filed by Rio's Public Prosecutor's Office which led to the massive police operation on 28 October.

And while rights groups labelled it a "massacre" and questioned its effectiveness, Rio de Janeiro State Governor Claudio Castro has announced that more operations against organised crime will follow.

A poll conducted by AtlasIntel suggests that Castro's approval rating has risen since the raid, and at 47% now stands higher than that of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

President Lula, for his part, has announced that the federal government would launch an investigation into the raid.

But in a post on Instagram published on 11 November, Governor Castro said he would "not back down".

"Law-abiding citizens can't take it anymore. Rio has fought back - and the whole of Brazil is fighting back with us."

The Nigerian government has announced it is cancelling a controversial policy that mandated the use of indigenous languages for teaching in the earliest years of schooling instead of English.

Education Minister Tunji Alausa said the programme, introduced just three years ago, had failed to deliver and was being scrapped with immediate effect.

Instead, English will be reinstated as the medium of instruction from pre-primary levels through to university.

The now-defunct programme was launched by former Education Minister Adamu Adamu, who had argued that children learnt more effectively in their mother tongue.

At the time, Adamu argued that pupils grasped concepts more readily when taught in "their own mother tongue" - a view supported by numerous UN studies on early childhood education.

Announcing the reversal in the capital, Abuja, Dr Alausa pointed to poor academic results from those areas which had adopted the new policy as the primary reason for the change.

He cited data from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), the National Examinations Council (Neco), and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (Jamb).

"We have seen a mass failure rate in WAEC, Neco, and Jamb in certain geo-political zones of the country, and those are the ones that adopted this mother tongue in an over-subscribed manner," the minister stated.

The abrupt cancellation of the policy has drawn a mixed response from education specialists, analysts and parents.

Some have hailed the government's decision, agreeing that the implementation was problematic and contributed to falling standards.

Others, however, believe the policy was abandoned prematurely. They argue that such a significant shift requires substantial investment in teacher training, the development of textbooks and learning materials, and a longer timeframe before it can be fairly judged and begin to bear fruit.

Education expert Dr Aliyu Tilde praised the reversal, saying Nigeria isn't ready for such a move.

"Does Nigeria have trained teachers to teach in the dozens of indigenous languages in the country? The answer is no. Also the major exams like WAEC, Jamb are all in English and not in those mother tongue languages.

"I think what's needed to improve the quality of our schools is bringing in qualified teachers,” he told the BBC.

A mother who has two children in early education schools, Hajara Musa, said she supported the reversal as it would help young children to learn English at an early age.

"English is a global language that is used everywhere and I feel it's better these kids start using it from the start of their schooling instead of waiting for when they are older,” she told the BBC.

However, social affairs analyst Habu Dauda disagreed.

“I think it was scrapped prematurely instead of giving it more time. Three years is too little to judge a big shift such as this - the government ought to have added more investment," he said.

The debate highlights the ongoing challenge in Nigeria of balancing the promotion of its rich linguistic heritage with the practical demands of a national curriculum and a globalised economy where English proficiency is dominant.

More BBC stories on Nigeria:

• The fallout from Nigeria's spectacular $25m museum and the Benin Bronzes
• Nigerians praise young soldier for standing up to powerful minister
• Are Christians being persecuted in Nigeria as Trump claims?

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor told Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell "I can't take any more of this", when he was first alerted 14 years ago that a British newspaper was about to run a report about the trio.

His email conversation with the US-based pair was among documents from the estate of the convicted sex offender Epstein that were released on Wednesday, including some mentioning Donald Trump.

The former prince's response came after he was forwarded a right-of-reply email that the Mail on Sunday has sent Maxwell in March 2011, which made numerous claims about Andrew.

According to files released on Wednesday, Andrew's reply reads: "What's all this? I don't know anything about this! You must SAY so please. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can't take any more of this."

The latest release comes after Andrew was requested by Democrats in US Congress to answer questions as part of its investigation into Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking offences.

Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, told BBC Two's Newsnight that Andrew had not yet responded to the Committee's invitation to testify before the committee.

He said the former prince "doesn't have to get on a plane to testify, he can do it remotely".

Virginia Giuffre - a prominent accuser of Jeffrey Epstein - alleged Andrew had sex with her three times as a teenager.

Andrew, who has denied the allegations, reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 which contained no admission of liability or apology.

He was stripped of all his titles earlier this month after Giuffre's posthumous memoir threw new focus on Andrew's ties to Epstein and Maxwell.

Trump mentioned in emails

Three emails from the Epstein estate, released by Democrats on the Congressional House Oversight Committee, indicate that Trump was mentioned several times by Epstein in emails exchanged with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

They also released emails between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff, who has written numerous books about Trump.

One email from Epstein to Maxwell, sent in April 2011, claims that Trump spent hours at Epstein's house with a person whose name was redacted.

Epstein wrote: "I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him."

The White House later said the unnamed "victim" referenced was Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year.

In a statement, the White House said Giuffre "repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and 'couldn't have been friendlier' to her in their limited interactions".

Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition that she never saw Trump participate in any abuse. And in a memoir released this year, she did not accuse the president of any wrongdoing.

Within hours, House Republicans then released thousands more documents to counter what they said was a Democratic effort to "cherry-pick" documents. They also said it had been an attempt to "create a fake narrative to slander President Trump".

Hours after the latest publication of emails, the newly-sworn in Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva signed a petition, meaning it now has sufficient numbers to force a House vote that could require the US Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files.

The office of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would hold that vote next week.

Epstein on Andrew photo

The latest files shed further light on the relationship between Andrew and Epstein, with one email appearing to confirm a photograph of Andrew with his arm around a 17-year-old Giuffre was real.

In an exchange with a journalist in July 2011, Epstein appeared to discuss Giuffre and her photograph with Andrew.

"Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have," he wrote.

Andrew said in his 2019 Newsnight interview that he had no recollection of that photo being taken and has suggested it might be fake.

That exchange came four months after the purported "right of reply" email from the Mail on Sunday on 4 March 2011.

The email states that a woman, whose name is redacted in the released document, was introduced to Andrew by the disgraced financier in 2001, at Maxwell's house in London where she had sex with Andrew.

On 6 March 2011 the Mail on Sunday published a story including the now infamous photograph of Andrew and Giuffre.

The email goes on to say that the masseuse and another girl were directed to sit on Andrew's knee in Epstein's New York flat, and that he groped both girls.

The email says that one of the girls was directed by Maxwell to have sex with Andrew. It also states she was directed to participate in an orgy with Andrew at Little St James - Epstein's private Caribbean island. It requests a reply by noon the next day.

It appears that the email is sent to Maxwell by her representative, forwarded on to Epstein and then to a redacted email address marked "The Duke".

On 6 March 2011, the day the Mail on Sunday published its Giuffre story, Epstein emails "The Duke", asking: "You ok?". He add: "These stories are complete and utter fantasy".

In an email to his publicist in July that year, Epstein writes: "The girl who accused Prince Andrew can also easily be proven to be a liar.

"I think Buckingham Palace would love it. You should task someone to investigate the girl Virginia Roberts, that has caused the Queen's son all this agro (sic).

"I promise you she is a fraud. You and I will be able to go to ascot (sic) for the rest of our lives."

Mandelson in contact in 2016

Lord Mandelson also appears in the newly released documents, which show he had contact with Epstein as late as 2016.

The latest previous reported contact between the pair was when the then-business secretary took advice from Epstein in a banking deal in March 2010, just months after the American businessman's release from prison for child sex offences, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The new documents include an email from Epstein to Lord Mandelson on 6 November 2016, shortly after the peer's birthday, saying "63 years old. You made it".

Lord Mandelson replies less than 90 minutes later saying: "Just. I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US".

Epstein then replies "in the Donald White House", referring to the US presidential election due later that week.

Lord Mandelson was sacked as the UK's ambassador to the US in September over his links to Epstein, after emails showed the peer sent him supportive messages after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor in 2008.

Lord Mandelson, who has repeatedly said he regrets his relationship with Epstein, declined to comment on the emails when approached by the BBC.

After 43 days, the longest US government shutdown in history is coming to an end.

Federal workers will start receiving pay again. National Parks will reopen. Government services that had been curtailed or suspended entirely will resume. Air travel, which had become a nightmare for many Americans, will return to being merely frustrating.

After the dust settles and the ink from President Donald Trump's signature on the funding bill dries, what has this record-setting shutdown accomplished? And what has it cost?

Senate Democrats, through their use of the parliamentary filibuster, were able to trigger the shutdown despite being a minority in the chamber by refusing to go along with a Republican measure to temporarily fund the government.

They drew a line in the sand, demanding that the Republicans agree to extend health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans that are set to expire at the end of the year.

When a handful of Democrats broke ranks to vote to reopen the government on Sunday, they received next to nothing in return – a promise of a vote in the Senate on the subsidies, but no guarantees of Republican support or even a necessary vote in the House of Representatives.

Since then, members of the party's left flank have been furious.

They've accused Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer – who didn't vote for the funding bill – of being secretly complicit in the reopening plan or simply incompetent. They've felt like their party folded even after off-year election success showed they had the upper hand. They feared that the shutdown sacrifices had been for nothing.

Even more mainstream Democrats, like California's Governor Gavin Newsom, called the shutdown deal "pathetic" and a "surrender".

"I'm not coming in to punch anybody in the face," he told the Associated Press, "but I'm not pleased that, in the face of this invasive species that is Donald Trump, who's completely changed the rules of the game, that we're still playing by the old rules of the game."

Newsom has 2028 presidential ambitions and can be a good barometer for the mood of the party. He was a loyal supporter of Joe Biden who turned out to support the then-president even after his disastrous June debate performance against Trump.

If he is running for the pitchforks, it's not a good sign for Democratic leaders.

For Trump, in the days since the Senate deadlock broke on Sunday, his mood has gone from cautious optimism to celebration.

On Tuesday, he congratulated congressional Republicans and called the vote to reopen the government "a very big victory".

"We're opening up our country," he said at a Veteran's Day commemoration at Arlington Cemetery. "It should have never been closed."

Trump, perhaps sensing the Democratic anger toward Schumer, joined the pile-on during a Fox News interview on Monday night.

"He thought he could break the Republican Party, and the Republicans broke him," Trump said of the Senate Democrat.

Although there were times when Trump appeared to be buckling – last week he berated Senate Republicans for refusing to scrap the filibuster to reopen the government – he ultimately emerged from the shutdown having made little in the way of substantive concessions.

While his poll numbers have declined over the last 40 days, there's still a year before Republicans have to face voters in the midterms. And, barring some kind of constitutional rewrite, Trump never has to worry about standing for election again.

With the end of the shutdown, Congress will get back to its regularly scheduled programming. Although the House of Representatives has effectively been on ice for more than a month, Republicans still hope they can pass some substantive legislation before next year's election cycle kicks in.

While several government departments will be funded until September in the shutdown-ending agreement, Congress will have to approve spending for the rest of the government by the end of January to avoid another shutdown.

Democrats, licking their wounds, may be hankering for another chance to fight.

Meanwhile, the issue they fought over – healthcare subsidies – could become a pressing concern for tens of millions of Americans who will see their insurance costs double or triple at the end of the year. Republicans ignore addressing such voter pain at their own political peril.

And that isn't the only peril facing Trump and the Republicans. A day that was supposed to highlighted by the House government-funding vote was spent dwelling on the latest revelations surrounding the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Later on Wednesday, Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in to her congressional seat and became the 218th and final signatory on a petition that will force the House of Representatives to hold a vote ordering the justice department to release all its files on the Epstein case.

It was enough to prompt Trump to complain, on his Truth Social website, that his government-funding success was being eclipsed.

"The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects," he wrote.

It was all a very clear reminder that the best-laid plans and political strategies can be derailed in a flash.

Every November, South Korea comes to a standstill for its infamous college entrance exam.

Shops are shut, flights are delayed to reduce noise, and even the rhythm of the morning commute slows down for the students.

By late afternoon, most test-takers walk out of school gates, exhaling with relief and embracing the family members waiting outside.

But not everyone finishes at that hour. Even once darkness has fully settled and night has set in, some students are still in the exam room - finishing close to 10pm.

They are the blind students, who often spend more than 12 hours taking the longest version of the Suneung.

On Thursday, more than 550,000 students across the country will sit for the Suneung - an abbreviation for College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) in Korean. It is the highest number of applicants in seven years.

The test not only dictates whether people will be able to go to university, but can affect their job prospects, income, where they will live and even future relationships.

Depending on their subject choices, students answer roughly 200 questions across Korean, mathematics, English, social or natural sciences, an additional foreign language, and Hanja (classical Chinese characters used in Korean).

For most students, it is an eight-hour marathon of back-to-back exams. They begin the Suneung test at 08:40 and finish around 17:40.

Blind students with severe visual impairments, however, are given 1.7 times the standard testing duration.

This means that if they take the additional foreign language section, the exam can finish as late as 21:48 - nearly 13 hours after it began.

There is no dinner break; the exam continues straight through.

The physical bulk of the braille test papers also contributes to the length.

When every sentence, symbol and diagram is converted into braille, each test booklet becomes six to nine times thicker than the standard equivalent.

At Seoul Hanbit School for the Blind, 18-year-old Han Donghyun is among the students who will take the longest version of the Suneung this year.

Last year, there were 111 blind test-takers nationwide - 99 with low vision and 12 with severe visual impairments like Dong-hyun - according to data from the Ministry of Education and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation.

Dong-hyun was born completely blind and cannot distinguish light.

When the BBC met him at his school on 7 November, his fingers moved quickly across a braille practice booklet of past exam questions.

With just a week left before the test, he was focused on managing his stamina and condition. Dong-hyun will take the exam using braille test papers and a screen-reading computer.

"It's really exhausting because the exam is so long," he said. "But there's no special trick. I just follow my study schedule and try to manage my condition. That's the only way."

Dong-hyun said the Korean language section is particularly difficult for him.

A standard test booklet for that section is about 16 pages - but the braille version is roughly 100 pages long.

Even with screen-reading software, spoken information disappears as soon as it is heard, unlike text that can be seen and re-read. Dong-hyun has to hold the details in his memory as he goes.

The mathematics section is no easier.

He must interpret complex graphs and tables that have been converted into braille, using only his fingertips.

Still, he noted that things are better than they used to be. In the past, students had to do almost all calculations in their heads. But since 2016, blind test-takers have been allowed to use a braille notetaker, known as Hansone.

"Just like sighted students write out their calculations in pencil, we enter them in braille on the Hansone to follow the steps," he said.

Another student at Hanbit School for the Blind, 18-year-old Oh Jeong-won, who will also sit the Suneung this year, said the late afternoon is "the hardest point" of the day.

"Up until lunch, it's manageable," he said. "But around 4 or 5pm, after English and before Korean History, that's when it gets really tough.

"There's no dinner break," he explained. "We're solving problems during the time we would normally eat, so it feels even more exhausting. Still, I keep going because I know there will be a sense of accomplishment at the end."

For Jeong-won, the fatigue is compounded by the need to stay intensely focused with both his hands and his hearing.

"When I'm reading the braille with my fingers and also taking in information through audio, it feels much more tiring than it does for sighted students," he said.

But the students say that the length of the exam and the long study hours are not the hardest part. What is most challenging is access to study materials.

Popular textbooks and online lectures that sighted students rely on are often out of reach.

There are very few braille versions, and converting materials into audio requires having text files - which are difficult to obtain. In many cases, someone has to manually type out entire workbooks to make them usable.

Online lectures also pose difficulties, as many instructors explain concepts using visual notes, diagrams and graphics on screen, which cannot be followed through audio alone.

One of the most significant barriers, however, is the delay in receiving braille versions of the state-produced EBS preparation books - a core set of materials closely linked to the national exam.

Because of this delay, blind students often receive the materials months later than others.

"Sighted students get their EBS books between January and March and study them for the whole year," said Jeong-won. "We receive the braille files only around August or September, when the exam is just a few months away."

Dong-hyun shared the same concern.

"The braille materials weren't completed until less than 90 days before the exam," he said. "I kept wishing the publication process could be faster."

The National Institute of Special Education, which produces the braille version of EBS exam materials, told the BBC that the process takes at least three months for each book because it must follow relevant guidelines.

The institute added that it is "making various efforts to ensure that blind students can study without disruption, such as producing and providing the materials in separate volumes."

The Korean Blind Union said it has long raised this issue with authorities, and plans to file a constitutional petition demanding greater accessibility to braille versions of all textbooks.

For these students, the Suneung is not just a college entrance exam - it's proof of the years they have endured to get where they are.

Jeong-won described the exam as "perseverance."

"There's almost nothing you can do in life without perseverance," he said. "I think this time is a process of training my will."

Their teacher, Kang Seok-ju, watches students go through the exam every year - and said the blind students' endurance is "remarkable".

"Reading braille means tracing raised dots with your fingertips. The constant friction can make their hands quite sore," he pointed out. "But they do it for hours."

Mr Kang urged his students to value completion rather than regret.

"This exam is where you pour everything you've learned since the first grade into a single day," he said. "Many students feel disappointed afterwards, but I just want them to leave knowing they did what they could.

"The exam is not everything."

Some 200 Kenyans are fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine and more could be recruited into the conflict, authorities say.

Among them are former members of Kenya's security forces, according to Kenya's Foreign Affairs Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

Some of those who have been rescued said they were forced to assemble drones and handle chemicals without proper training or protective gear, the minister added.

Kenyan President William Ruto last week requested the Ukrainian government to secure the release of Kenyans currently held in the conflict zone.

About 1,400 citizens from across Africa are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, with some recruited through deception, the Ukraine government said last week.

A young Kenyan athlete was in September captured in Ukraine and said that he had been tricked into joining the Russian army.

"Recruitment exercises in Russia have reportedly expanded to include African nationals, including Kenyans," said Mudavadi in a press conference on Wednesday.

"Over 200 Kenyans may have joined the Russian military... recruitment networks are still active in both Kenya and Russia," he added.

Kenya's embassy in Moscow has recorded injuries among some of the recruits, who were allegedly promised up to $18,000 (£14,000) to cover costs for visas, travel, and accommodation, the minister said.

Mudavadi also said the Kenyan government had concerns about the increasing number of nationals who have been recruited into "forced criminality" such as drug trafficking and forced labour in foreign countries.

"These crimes present a serious threat to not only the national security of Kenya but to global security as well."

In September, Kenyan authorities rescued more than 20 nationals who were preparing to join the Russia-Ukraine war near the capital, Nairobi.

One person suspected of coordinating the recruitment of Kenyans to Russia was arrested and is facing prosecution in connection with the scheme.

The BBC has found evidence to suggest the Kremlin is working to expand its sphere of influence in Africa.

South Africa recently launched an investigation into how 17 of its citizens ended up in the war-torn region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Citizens of Somalia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cuba and Sri Lanka , among others, are currently being held in Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camps, Petro Yatsenko, Ukraine's spokesperson on the treatment of prisoners of war, recently told the BBC.

Ukraine has also previously come in for criticism for trying to recruit foreign nationals, including Africans, to fight on its side.

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for international action to cut off weapons supplies to Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), following reports of mass killings in el-Fasher.

At the end of a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada, Rubio said the RSF had committed systematic atrocities, including murder, rape and sexual violence against civilians.

Sudan's army accuses the United Arab Emirates of supporting the group with weapons and mercenaries sent via African nations. The UAE has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The RSF has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, when a power struggle between their leaders erupted into a civil war.

El-Fasher was captured last month by the RSF after an 18-month siege, meaning they now control all of the cities in the western Darfur region.

At the talks near Niagara Falls, America's top diplomat said women and children had been targeted in acts of the most horrific kind by the RSF in el-Fasher.

Rubio told reporters: "They're committing acts of sexual violence and atrocities, just horrifying atrocities, against women, children, innocent civilians of the most horrific kind. And it needs to end immediately.

"And we're going to do everything we can to bring it to an end, and we've encouraged partner nations to join us in this fight."

The secretary of state rejected the paramilitary group's attempt to blame the killings on rogue elements, saying this was false and the attacks were systematic.

Asked by the BBC about his assessment of the likely scale of atrocities, he said the US feared that thousands of people who had been expected to flee el-Fasher were either dead or too malnourished to move.

He said the RSF, lacking its own arms manufacturing facilities, relied on outside support, and called for countries supplying weapons to stop.

The joint G7 statement also condemned surging violence in Sudan, saying the conflict between the army and the RSF had triggered "the world's largest humanitarian crisis".

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Valve, the company behind PC gaming platform Steam, has revealed a new console to rival Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation.

The Steam Machine is a home console designed to allow gamers to play PC games on their TV - though it can also be used as a computer.

It is a spiritual sequel to the 2014 device of the same name, which failed to break into a market dominated by the three big gaming giants.

Prices for those consoles, back then, started at $499 (£300) - but Valve's latest iteration is expected to cost a good deal more as it packs a far greater punch.

The Steam Machine will go on sale in early 2026, the company said, with the pricing yet to be announced.

The company says this and more details will be provided closer to the exact release date, which is also currently unknown.

In a video announcement, it described the device as "a powerful gaming PC in a small but mighty package" - with a decent amount of power inside a 6-inch cube.

Valve argues the device is "optimised for gaming" over other PCs because the firm is able to say which games on its massive digital storefront will work on it before you buy.

Powered by its Linux-based SteamOS operating system and AMD graphics processors, the firm said the new Steam Machine can support 4k resolution and 60 frames per second.

In an unusual move, Valve has also announced further hardware - its Steam Frame virtual reality (VR) headset.

The device is entirely wireless - and it described it as a "streaming-first" device - but it is also itself a PC running SteamOS.

And it brings a technical leap forward in the VR space - the headset displays the highest-quality graphics only in the bits of the screen you're looking at.

With the sweeping new device announcements, Valve is setting itself up to rival its more established competitors.

In recent years, Microsoft-owned Xbox has placed its subscription service Game Pass at the heart of its offering for gamers - some say at the expense of its console crown.

Meanwhile the PS5 has been the best-selling console for some time, but fans have been left asking when its successor will appear on the market.

Since Valve launched Steam in 2003, it has grown to become the world's largest distribution platform for PC gaming.

Around 25 million Steam players were online and 6 million were playing games at the time of writing, according to the platform's own metrics.

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Skims, the shapewear brand co-founded by celebrity and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian, says it has raised $225m (£171.5m) of new funding, bringing its value to $5bn.

The company says it plans to use the money from investors, including an arm of Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs, to open more shops and expand around the world.

"We can't wait to take Skims to the next level as we continue to innovate and set the standard for our industry," Kardashian said on Wednesday.

The funding round is one of the biggest this year for a US consumer brand and comes as Skims faces fierce competition from rivals like Lululemon.

Skims, which runs 18 shops in the US and sells its products through retailers worldwide, will focus "predominantly" on its physical retail business over the next few years, it said in a statement.

The company expects its sales to top $1bn this year, which Skims chief executive Jens Grede said gave the firm the confidence to pursue its long-term goals.

The brand debuted in 2019 with a line of shapewear and has since broadened its range to include loungewear and other fashion categories.

The company's growth has moved it deeper into the mainstream sports and athleisure market, which is largely dominated by brands like Lululemon and Alo Yoga.

Skims has also amassed a large pool of influencers, including the Kardashians and other celebrities like Megan Fox and Paris Hilton to boost its appeal.

Since its launch the company has faced some controversies. Its initial name, Kimono Intimates, was criticised for disregarding the significance of the traditional Japanese outfit, prompting the company to come up with another name - Skims.

One Skims product - a head wrap worn during sleep - split the internet. Some hailed it as the future of non-invasive face contouring, but others condemned it as dystopian, and said the firm was making women feel more insecure.

Since September, residents on South Korea's Jeju island have been spotting small packs of what appear to be bags of Chinese tea washed ashore. Upon closer inspection, however, they were found to contain ketamine.

Some 28kg (62 lbs) of the drug, wrapped in foil and labelled with the Chinese character for tea, have been found on at least eight occasions, police say.

Ketamine is used as an anaesthetic in medical procedures, but its recreational use is illegal in South Korea. It can cause severe physical and mental damage, including to the heart and lungs, when misused.

The Jeju Coast Guard has formed a team to trace possible sea and land routes through which the drugs may have entered the country.

Authorities have also warned residents not to touch or open any suspicious objects found along the shore, asking them to instead report such discoveries to police.

On 15 October, a beach cleaner found 20kg of these "tea bag drugs" - the largest haul in the last two months - along the coast of Seogwipo in southern Jeju.

Earlier this week, a team of more than 800 soldiers, police officers and civilian volunteers was deployed to comb the beaches in Jeju City, along the holiday island's northern coast, Korea JoongAng Daily reported.

Investigators are now focusing on the possibility that the drugs drifted to Jeju via ocean currents, according to the national daily.

It quoted the head of the Coast Guard's narcotics unit saying that similar discoveries of "tea bag drugs" have been made in Pohang, another city in South Korea, and Tsushima island in Japan.

Jeju residents have shown concern over the presence of illicit drugs on their coastlines.

"I often bring my children to this beach," said Kim, a resident who witnessed the large-scale search effort in Jeju City this week.

"Seeing so many people looking for drugs is terrifying. I shudder to think that children might touch something like that," Kim told Korea JoongAng Daily.

Another resident, Hyun, wants authorities to focus on "stopping more [drugs] from drifting in".

Yoon Heung-hee, a professor at Hansung University's drug and alcohol addiction department, suggests a larger syndicate may be behind the ketamine packets.

Some syndicates use a "sea bump" method to transport narcotics, he said, which involves dropping bundles of drugs equipped with trackers into the ocean for retrieval later.

Criminal groups could have sought to smuggle the drugs across South Korea via Jeju by "taking advantage of lax inspections at airports and ports", Prof Yoon told The Hankyoreh, another local newspaper.

Additional reporting by Suhnwook Lee in Seoul

South Sudan's leader Salva Kiir has dismissed one of his vice-presidents, Benjamin Bol Mel, who had been tipped as his possible successor.

Kiir stripped Bol Mel of his military rank of general and dismissed him from the national security service. He also sacked the central bank governor and the head of the revenue authority, both considered close allies of Bol Mel.

No explanation was given for the dismissals, which were announced in a decree broadcast on state television.

It comes when there are growing fears of political instability and a possible return to civil war, after the recent collapse of a fragile power-sharing agreement between Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar.

Bol Mel, 47, was appointed vice-president in February, replacing James Wani Igga, a veteran politician and general.

He was also elevated to become the first deputy chairman of the ruling SPLM party, which analysts believe gave him more powers and positioned him as a potential successor to the 74-year-old Kiir. The president later promoted him to the full rank of a general in the National Security Service (NSS).

Bol Mel's appointment came despite the US placing sanctions against him for alleged corruption in 2017, which were renewed earlier this year. The US Treasury described Bol Mel as Kiir's "principal financial advisor". Kiir's office denied the description.

He has never directly responded to the corruption accusations against him and has not commented on his sacking.

The president has not announced replacements in any of the positions he held.

His dismissal follows speculation on social media about an internal power struggle in the SPLM.

A senior government official, who preferred to remain anonymous for safety reasons, told the BBC that Bol Mel had been a "divisive figure" in government.

"It's good that he has gone," he said.

South Sudan is an oil-rich nation that became the world's newest country in 2011 after seceding from Sudan. It was engulfed by civil war two years later, after Kiir and Machar fell out.

The 2018 power-sharing agreement that ended the war has been fraught with challenges, as tensions persist and sporadic violence continues to erupt.

Planned elections have been postponed twice in the past three years and fighting between forces loyal to the president and armed groups has recently escalated.

Machar was sacked as vice-president and arrested earlier this year and in September charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in a move seen as aggravating tensions and sparking fears of renewed civil unrest. The case is ongoing.

His spokesperson described the charges against him as a "political witch-hunt".

The charges followed an attack by a militia allegedly linked to Machar, which the government said had killed 250 soldiers and a general.

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The world's burning of fossil fuels is set to release more planet-warming carbon dioxide than ever before this year, new figures show.

It is another sign that efforts to fight climate change by cutting emissions are moving far too slowly to meet international targets, as countries meet in Brazil for UN climate talks COP30.

But emissions have grown much less quickly over the past decade as renewables have taken off, providing hope that the world's warming trend can still be curbed.

And separate analysis by clean energy think tank Ember suggests that fossil fuel use in electricity generation has flatlined in 2025, largely thanks to the rapid growth of solar power.

It adds weight to the idea that global emissions may be nearing a peak – even though it's hard to say exactly when that might come.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for 2025 are of course an estimate, with the year not yet complete – but they show a mixed picture.

Emissions from fossil fuels and cement are forecast to increase yet again to 38.1bn tonnes of CO2, according to the Global Carbon Budget team, which comprises more than 130 scientists from 21 countries.

That would be up 1.1% on 2024.

Emissions from changing land-use – such as permanent deforestation – are forecast to be lower than last year, however.

That's largely due to the end of the natural El Niño weather pattern - which can drive higher forest losses – but is the continuation of a longer-term trend.

It means that, altogether, total emissions from all human activities are expected to reach 42.2bn tonnes CO2 in 2025 - down from the 42.4bn in 2024, albeit marginally.

What is clearer, the team say, is that emissions have grown more slowly over the past decade - 0.3% per year - compared to the previous decade's 1.9% per year.

And over the past 10 years, 35 countries significantly cut their fossil fuel emissions while also growing their economies, they say. That is nearly double the number in the decade before.

"We're not yet in a situation where the emissions go down [as] rapidly as they need to, to tackle climate change, but at the same time there are a lot of positive [developments]" said Corinne Le Quéré, professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia.

Emissions have been growing much less rapidly than before "because of that extraordinary growth in renewable energy in China and elsewhere", she added.

Nearing peak?

This effect of the renewables boom is highlighted by emissions in the power or electricity sector.

Electricity generated from fossil fuels is forecast to flatline or even decline slightly this year, according to the think tank Ember, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.

What's unusual about this year, Ember says, is that this has happened even though electricity demand increased sharply, rather than resulting from an economic recession.

And this year's extra electricity demand has been more than met by wind and, particularly, solar.

"We've had decades and centuries where fossil fuels were the only way that we could really grow our economy, and over the last decade, that's changed for the first time," said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember.

"Solar power is growing at a record pace, and faster than any electricity source in history," he added.

What happens in the power sector is particularly important in the fight against climate change.

It is the single biggest emitting sector and is expected to play an increasing role in the energy system as more people buy electric cars, heat pumps and other technologies.

"Whatever happens in the power sector has an outsized influence on what happens for emissions worldwide," said Mr Fulghum.

Ember is confident that emissions from using fossil fuels to generate electricity are now plateauing and could begin a permanent decline in a few years.

That echoes yesterday's message from the International Energy Agency, the global energy watchdog.

Carbon emissions from energy systems – more than just electricity - could peak within the next few years, based on countries' stated policies, it said.

While there is still uncertainty about the exact timing of a peak, it would undoubtedly be a landmark moment in the fight against climate change.

It would not halt warming, however, as countries would still be adding CO2 to the atmosphere - just at a slower rate.

"As long as we emit CO2, the warming will continue… to stop further warming, we have to bring [net] emissions to zero," said Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair in mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter.

And another analysis released today to coincide with COP30 offers a reality check.

The Climate Action Tracker research group finds that warming could reach 2.6C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century based on current policies – a figure which has barely changed over the past few years.

"It's very clear that we have never had a better chance to do this. It's also clear that we've never been in a worse situation," said Dr Bill Hare, from the Climate Action Tracker team.

"So it's a diabolical dilemma. Things could go really badly. We could walk away from this COP without taking the right kind of action, and entrenching fossil gas and oil, and we'll push towards 2.5C [or] 3C warming for sure," he added.

"But on the other hand, the chance is there… to do exactly the opposite, and to build on the momentum of the technology changes going on globally."

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Just as France marks the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan massacres, another reminder has come of the permanence of the jihadist threat.

A former girlfriend of the only jihadist to survive the November 2015 attacks has been arrested on suspicion of plotting her own violent act.

The woman - a 27 year-old French convert to Islam named as Maëva B - began a letter-writing relationship with Salah Abdeslam, 36, who is serving a life sentence in jail near the Belgian border following his conviction in 2022.

When prison guards discovered that Abdeslam had been using a USB key containing jihadist propaganda, they traced its origin to face-to-face meetings that the prisoner had with Maëva B.

Detectives then looked into Maëva B's own computer and telephone, where they found evidence she may have been planning a jihadist attack, and on Monday she was placed under judicial investigation along with two alleged associates.

With France commemorating 10 years since the worst attack in its modern history, the arrest has focused minds on the enemy that never went away.

On the evening of 13 November 2015, jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers conducted a sequence of co-ordinated attacks that culminated in a bloody raid on the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris.

Before that, three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France where a football international was under way. Then others in the gang opened fire with Kalashnikovs on people drinking in bars and cafés not far from the Bataclan.

There, a performance by American group The Eagles of Death Metal had just started, when three jihadists burst in and fired indiscriminately into the auditorium. They took hostages and then blew themselves up as police moved in.

Overall 130 people were killed, 90 in the Bataclan, and more than 400 treated in hospital. Countless others suffered psychological trauma.

The word Bataclan has since become a byword in France for extreme Islamist attacks, in much the same way that 9/11 did in the US.

Though there have been other attacks since, like the Nice lorry massacre of July 2016 and the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, the scale and organisation of 13 November 2015 set it apart.

Ten years on, much has changed. The disappearance of the Islamic State (IS) group as a major force in Syria and Iraq means that the wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished.

The Bataclan attackers were young men of mainly North African origin, recruited in Belgium and France, trained in IS territory in the Middle East, who then returned to Europe hidden among a vast flow of migrants.

Everywhere they could draw on a network of supporters offering shelter, transport and cash.

According to leading Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, intelligence services have also become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation.

"They now have access to IT resources… which allow them to detect a lot of individual initiatives, often not very sophisticated ones... and stop them before they hatch," he said in an interview with Le Figaro.

But according to Mr Kepel, the danger now comes from what he calls "ambient jihadism".

"The threat is now home-grown and a lot younger. It feeds on friendships and social networks of the like-minded, without there ever necessarily being people having to give and obey orders," he said.

The threat is all the more concerning, he believes, because it is so porous - with events in Gaza and Israel having a "traumatic effect" on the minds of many citizens and being "exploited by the entrepreneurs of anger".

France's current political crisis is also stoking the danger, he argues, with an impotent presidency giving way to a partisan parliament where extremists of left and right hold increasing sway.

"If what separates us becomes more important than what unites us as French people and fractures the national consensus, then there will open a chasm beneath our feet and violence will have fewer and fewer restraints," he said.

Thursday's commemorations will be held throughout the day at the various attack sites, culminating with the opening of a 13 November garden near Paris City Hall.

When night falls, the Eiffel Tower will be bathed in the red, white and blue of the French flag.

French media have been full of accounts and memories, with survivors describing how their lives have changed.

In an unexpected development, Salah Abdeslam has let it be known through his lawyer that he would be prepared to co-operate in any effort at "restorative justice" - a procedure where victims and perpetrators meet to discuss the impact of a crime.

The idea has been mooted by some families - but others are vehemently opposed.

According to Laurent Sourisseau, a cartoonist also known as Riss, who was shot and wounded in the Charlie Hebdo attack a few months before the Bataclan massacres, Abdeslam's offer is "perverse".

"Restorative justice exists for other types of crime - common crimes," he said.

"But terrorism is not a common crime. Salah Abdeslam wants to make us think his crime was like any other. But it was not."

In her Soviet-era apartment block on the outskirts of eastern Kyiv, Oksana Zinkovska-Boyarska lives with daily power cuts. The lift to her eighth-floor apartment often stops, the lights go out and sometimes the pumps maintaining pressure in the gas central heating fail.

She has a big rechargeable battery pack to keep appliances going, but it costs €2,000 (£1,770) and it only lasts so long. Her husband Ievgen, a lawyer, often has to work by torchlight. Their two-year-old daughter Katia plays by candlelight too.

Amid air raids and cold darkness, Oksana says she and Ievgen worry constantly for Katia. "I can't describe with words the animal fear when you take your child to the shelter during the explosions.

"I have never felt anything like that in my life and I wouldn't want anyone to feel anything like that. The thought that she might be scared because there's no light - this is terrible."

All across Ukraine, families are bracing themselves for even tougher times ahead - a long, cold winter in which Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to finish off his "special military operation" by striking Ukraine's power supplies.

Just last weekend, a massive drone and missile strike left much of the country for a time without power. Ukrainians are now enduring regular power cuts of up to 16 hours a day.

In winter, temperatures in Ukraine can plummet as low as -20C. One senior government figure told me they expect the next few months to be brutal.

"I think it will be the worst winter of our history," says the official. "Russia will destroy our energy, our infrastructure, our heating. All state institutions should be prepared for the worst scenario."

Maxim Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK, a large private energy company in Ukraine, says: "Based on the intensity of attacks for the past two months, it is clear Russia is aiming for the complete destruction of Ukraine's energy system."

But according to one European envoy, it's not just about people being cold at night or without light - there is more to Russia's strategy.

"[This] is also about them not getting any bread from the bakery in the morning and not being able to go to work because there is no power for the factory," says the envoy.

As the official puts it: "The goal of the Russians is to kill our economy."

So how exactly will this warfare tactic play out? And given that almost four years of war have taken their toll, what does the increasing use of this weapon in the war of attrition mean for Ukraine's people - and the endpoint of this long, hard war?

Frozen assets and suspended diplomacy

On the front line, the news is bleak. There are growing signs that the key eastern city of Pokrovsk may fall, giving Russian forces a boost in morale and a fresh platform to seize more of the Donetsk region.

What's more, for now, diplomatic efforts to end the war appear to be on hold.

Talk of a summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin are on the back burner after Moscow refused to budge from its maximalist war aims and the US imposed sanctions on Russian oil and gas.

"There is currently a pause," a Kremlin spokesman said this week, "the situation is stalled."

All the while, European nations deliberate over what to do with €180bn (£160bn) in frozen Russian assets. They plan to use the cash to raise a so-called "repatriation loan" for Ukraine, repaid only if Russia ever pays reparations after the end of the war.

But a row over how to share the risk has left Kyiv's coffers looking distinctly bare.

Yet it is the energy crisis that is worrying the Ukrainian government most, according to those I spoke to. "People are tired after four years of the war," the official tells me.

"I am afraid they will be demotivated."

Insomnia, missiles and shifting morale

Walk the streets of Kyiv and you'll pass a sea of tired faces - people's eyes are red from a lack of sleep, their rest broken by the air raid sirens.

"I am tired of not sleeping enough," says Yana Kolomiets, 31, a casting director from Odesa. "But... people who fight on the front line are tired [too]."

A recent scientific study suggested that people are three times more likely to suffer from insomnia in Ukraine than in countries at peace.

It tracked the sleep patterns of around 100 Ukrainians over six months, and found the insomnia persisted even on quiet nights. (The research was published by Texty, a data journalism website based in Ukraine.)

There have not been many quiet nights. Russia launched vast numbers of ballistic missiles at Ukraine in October - some 268 in all, the highest monthly total since the full-scale invasion, according to analysis published by the Oboz news site. The same month Russia launched 5,298 Shahed and other bomber drones.

Diplomats suggest there is a geographic focus to Russia's tactics, their strikes deliberately targeting gas and electricity transmission networks in eastern Ukraine, rather than power stations in the west of the country.

"They are trying to cut Ukraine in two in terms of energy," one European envoy says. "They want anywhere east of the river Dnipro to be cold this winter."

The aim, one government source told me, is to "instigate an insurrection, so that people go against the government in Kyiv… they are trying to destroy social cohesion."

So concerned is the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs it has already issued a formal warning, saying "the approaching winter poses new risks for Ukrainians... as intensified attacks on energy networks undermine efforts to maintain warmth in homes, schools and health centres".

Uncertainty over the outcome of the various diplomatic initiatives hasn't helped, either.

And yet opinion polls suggest people in Ukraine may in fact be more hopeful, not less.

Research by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, a pollster, suggested that in October 56% of 1,008 Ukrainians interviewed felt optimistic about the country's future, up from 43% in May.

Sasha, a Kyiv-based financier, explains that Ukrainian morale is volatile, swinging wildly between optimism and pessimism.

"If people talk about an end to the war, they feel hopeful," he says. "But then when the talks fail, they despair."

Oksana, though, is pragmatic: she says that for all the fears for her daughter, they have no choice but to endure it.

"I always think it is much worse at the front line," she adds. "There are boys and girls on the front line who suffer much, much more.

"I understand my child should not be raised in these conditions, because it is not normal in the civilised world. But we can hold on for as long as the front needs it."

Putin wants a victory he can 'sell'

Earlier this week, thick fog enabled Russian troops to move further into Prokrovsk.

The news out of the city is bleak with daily reports of Russian advances. If it fell, it would be the first major city seized by Russia since Avdiivka in February 2024.

But Russian forces would still only be about 25 miles (40km) from where they began their full scale invasion in 2022, land gained at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the Russian high command is throwing so much at Pokrovsk not just because it is tactically significant, but because Putin wants a victory he can "sell" diplomatically to the White House.

The Russians hope to convince President Trump they are making battlefield gains that will put pressure on Kyiv to sue for peace.

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's former foreign minister and ambassador in London, said Russia wanted to "force this feeling among Europe and westerners – as Russian propagandists have done before – that you can't do anything with Russia, you can't defeat Mother Russia.

"They hope that our partners will force us to lose face and sign the Russian deal, whatever that is."

When I asked President Zelensky if his people could survive the coming winter at a recent press conference, he was clear about the scale of the challenge.

"I don't know what winter will be but we have to prepare in any case," he answered.

"We understand what we have to do, we understand what we need and our partners also know from us what, in the case of difficulties, what volume of electricity we have to import."

Ukraine imports gas from across Europe, including Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. But it also has massive storage facilities which Russia could target.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Centre, says Ukraine is well placed to protect its energy supply from Russian attacks. "We are better trained, we know how to act, we have no panic," he says.

"We have an understanding of what to do if something is damaged. It will be complicated, it will be a hard winter, there will be a lot of outages but it will be manageable."

War fatigue versus strategic patience

Ukraine's prime minister is confident. Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia's goal was "to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Ours is to preserve the light."

Nonetheless, this may be harder to achieve if Trump focuses on other matters and turns his attention away from Ukraine - likewise if European voters elect governments that are less supportive of Kyiv and cannot wean themselves off Russian energy.

The danger is that war fatigue will overcome strategic patience.

But for all the bleak realism of the official government source, even he remains confident. "This winter is the last opportunity for the Russians to defeat us," he said. "And if we make it to 1 April, we will win the war."

I asked one western diplomat why Ukrainians were so unyielding. "They are just bloody-minded," the envoy said, and pointed to Ukraine's long history of withstanding hardship.

"They say they have survived the Germans, the Poles, the Turks, the Lithuanians and now they can survive the Russians."

And yet for many in Ukraine, life is going on as usual - or as usual as it can.

At the Dynamo Stadium in Kyiv, floodlights are on full beam and a game of football is being played - Dynamo Kyiv versus Shakhtar Donetsk, a rough, partisan game, the hardcore fans, known as ultras, wear masks and chant at their opponents.

One of the few signs that this is taking place in a city at war is the number of people there: the stadium can seat more than 16,000 people but only 4,300 fans are allowed in, owing to the capacity of the stadium's bomb shelters.

The fans have come from all parts of society – young and old, families and friends. Servicemen and women are there too, earning applause from the crowds, who part to let them pass through.

"It's really important to continue to live," says Anatoliy Anatolich, the match announcer, a TV and social media host.

In his view, coming to the football in itself is an act of defiance.

"[It shows] everyone that we are not going to leave our country in this hard period… We've got to be here when we win."

Five minutes before the end of the match, the chanting suddenly stops. The fans put their hands on their hearts and sing the national anthem.

Soon the whole stadium was singing as one; a crowd divided by teams, but united by country.

Top image credit: AFP/Getty Images

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After five seasons, Stranger Things is coming to an end - but another portal is already opening as the creators behind the show, twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, tell the BBC a spin-off series is already in development.

"It's early days but we're excited about it," says Matt Duffer. "It's new characters and a new mystery, so it's different, but it will be in the same world as Stranger Things."

The pair feel that there is more to explore, but Matt's twin brother Ross explains they always saw the original story as a self-contained arc and it's definitely "the end for these characters".

The clarity around the ending had always been part of the plan, and Matt says the final scene "was the one thing we had planned from the start".

"We always knew what we were working towards so it was like our north star and we built the whole season around the final scene."

Season five is set in the autumn of 1987. Hawkins, Indiana, is scarred by the opening of the Rifts and the group of friends must find and kill Vecna. At the same time, the town is under military quarantine as the hunt for Eleven intensifies.

The brothers, who were in their early thirties when the show began, had always planned for four of five seasons, but say it still feels surreal that they managed to get that far.

What started as a nostalgic horror about a missing boy in a sleepy town quickly grew into one of Netflix's biggest global hits.

"When you're making the show, you're so entrenched in it that you forget how far it's come, and every season we put everything we have into it," Ross says. "And when we made season one, we didn't even know if we'd get a second."

It's a feeling the cast shared. Joe Keery, whose character Steve Harrington goes from a high school jock to a heroic mentor-like figure, tells the BBC he remembers saying goodbye to everyone after season one and not being sure if he would see them again.

"Season one felt like an indie film and now it's this crazy big-budget movie," the 33-year-old says in disbelief.

By the time the final season wrapped, after a year of filming, "it felt like we'd been working on it forever".

"But we had a great time making it and the friendships we made aren't going anywhere. We will still be in each other's lives."

Natalia Dyer, who plays Nancy Wheeler, says the friendships they've built off camera mirror those of their on-screen characters.

"These characters have this shared secret world they all know about and in real life, we have something similar as we're the only people who know the show inside-out."

Charlie Heaton, who plays Natalia's on-screen boyfriend Jonathan Byers, agrees and explains that "the events in the show change these characters' lives forever, and similarly this show has changed our lives forever".

There have been reports that not everything has been plain sailing. The Mail on Sunday recently reported that Millie Bobby Brown filed a harassment and bullying claim against her co-star David Harbour, but that hasn't been confirmed.

However, the cast insist there's a close friendship between everyone, while the Duffer brothers say they felt an immense responsibility to protect the younger cast throughout filming.

"When we cast them we didn't know the show was going to be what it was and you hear so many horror stories about young people that become famous as the spotlight can be harsh," Ross says.

"I think it helped that there were so many younger cast members so they weren't going through anything alone and could turn to each other during challenging times."

That solidarity was a vital help for Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler and says growing up in the spotlight was a challenge "because you're going through puberty and a life change like being part of Stranger Things at the same time".

His on-screen, and perhaps also off-screen, best friends Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo agree, and the trio start laughing about how young they were when they first met.

I ask the young men how they feel about the show ending and stepping into new projects, and Gaten is first to admit they feel some trepidation.

"I'm a bit shaky and there is a bit of anxiety, but I think that's the point."

The 23-year-old, who plays Dustin Henderson, says now feels like a good time to step into a period of unknown.

"Your twenties are all about change, transition and growing, and we're incredibly lucky to be in a position to establish consistency in our careers.

"I see that as a real blessing and I look at it optimistically as I can because it is scary to not have the comfort of knowing there's another Stranger Things season."

The legacy of the show is undeniable - it's transformed a cast of newcomers into stars and spawned a global fanbase who have grown up alongside it.

Caleb hopes that connection lasts and the show "lives on and becomes one of those things that people will rewatch and never get tired of, like a classic film".

Knowing the impact of the show made saying goodbye even harder, and the final day of shooting is something Caleb won't forget for a while.

"Everyone was there and it bought us back to episode one - that feeling of home, being supported and loved, and everyone was on the same page in terms of their connection with the show," he says.

Netflix has announced an animated follow-up, while details of the Duffer brothers' live-action spin-off are still under wraps.

It's the end of an era for the current cast. But would they reunite for another project?

"Our part of the Stranger Things story is done for now," Gaten says. "But if they called us in a while, who knows?"

The first four episodes of season five will be available in the US from 26 November, with the next three arriving on Christmas Day, and the finale on New Year's Eve. In the UK those releases will be a day later.

South Sudan's leader Salva Kiir has dismissed one of his vice-presidents, Benjamin Bol Mel, who had been tipped as his possible successor.

Kiir stripped Bol Mel of his military rank of general and dismissed him from the national security service. He also sacked the central bank governor and the head of the revenue authority, both considered close allies of Bol Mel.

No explanation was given for the dismissals, which were announced in a decree broadcast on state television.

It comes when there are growing fears of political instability and a possible return to civil war, after the recent collapse of a fragile power-sharing agreement between Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar.

Bol Mel, 47, was appointed vice-president in February, replacing James Wani Igga, a veteran politician and general.

He was also elevated to become the first deputy chairman of the ruling SPLM party, which analysts believe gave him more powers and positioned him as a potential successor to the 74-year-old Kiir. The president later promoted him to the full rank of a general in the National Security Service (NSS).

Bol Mel's appointment came despite the US placing sanctions against him for alleged corruption in 2017, which were renewed earlier this year. The US Treasury described Bol Mel as Kiir's "principal financial advisor". Kiir's office denied the description.

He has never directly responded to the corruption accusations against him and has not commented on his sacking.

The president has not announced replacements in any of the positions he held.

His dismissal follows speculation on social media about an internal power struggle in the SPLM.

A senior government official, who preferred to remain anonymous for safety reasons, told the BBC that Bol Mel had been a "divisive figure" in government.

"It's good that he has gone," he said.

South Sudan is an oil-rich nation that became the world's newest country in 2011 after seceding from Sudan. It was engulfed by civil war two years later, after Kiir and Machar fell out.

The 2018 power-sharing agreement that ended the war has been fraught with challenges, as tensions persist and sporadic violence continues to erupt.

Planned elections have been postponed twice in the past three years and fighting between forces loyal to the president and armed groups has recently escalated.

Machar was sacked as vice-president and arrested earlier this year and in September charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in a move seen as aggravating tensions and sparking fears of renewed civil unrest. The case is ongoing.

His spokesperson described the charges against him as a "political witch-hunt".

The charges followed an attack by a militia allegedly linked to Machar, which the government said had killed 250 soldiers and a general.

More about South Sudan from the BBC:

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor told Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell "I can't take any more of this", when he was first alerted 14 years ago that a British newspaper was about to run a report about the trio.

His email conversation with the US-based pair was among documents from the estate of the convicted sex offender Epstein that were released on Wednesday, including some mentioning Donald Trump.

The former prince's response came after he was forwarded a right-of-reply email that the Mail on Sunday has sent Maxwell in March 2011, which made numerous claims about Andrew.

According to files released on Wednesday, Andrew's reply reads: "What's all this? I don't know anything about this! You must SAY so please. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can't take any more of this."

The latest release comes after Andrew was requested by Democrats in US Congress to answer questions as part of its investigation into Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking offences.

Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, told BBC Two's Newsnight that Andrew had not yet responded to the Committee's invitation to testify before the committee.

He said the former prince "doesn't have to get on a plane to testify, he can do it remotely".

Virginia Giuffre - a prominent accuser of Jeffrey Epstein - alleged Andrew had sex with her three times as a teenager.

Andrew, who has denied the allegations, reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 which contained no admission of liability or apology.

He was stripped of all his titles earlier this month after Giuffre's posthumous memoir threw new focus on Andrew's ties to Epstein and Maxwell.

Trump mentioned in emails

Three emails from the Epstein estate, released by Democrats on the Congressional House Oversight Committee, indicate that Trump was mentioned several times by Epstein in emails exchanged with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

They also released emails between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff, who has written numerous books about Trump.

One email from Epstein to Maxwell, sent in April 2011, claims that Trump spent hours at Epstein's house with a person whose name was redacted.

Epstein wrote: "I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him."

The White House later said the unnamed "victim" referenced was Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year.

In a statement, the White House said Giuffre "repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and 'couldn't have been friendlier' to her in their limited interactions".

Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition that she never saw Trump participate in any abuse. And in a memoir released this year, she did not accuse the president of any wrongdoing.

Within hours, House Republicans then released thousands more documents to counter what they said was a Democratic effort to "cherry-pick" documents. They also said it had been an attempt to "create a fake narrative to slander President Trump".

Hours after the latest publication of emails, the newly-sworn in Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva signed a petition, meaning it now has sufficient numbers to force a House vote that could require the US Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files.

The office of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would hold that vote next week.

Epstein on Andrew photo

The latest files shed further light on the relationship between Andrew and Epstein, with one email appearing to confirm a photograph of Andrew with his arm around a 17-year-old Giuffre was real.

In an exchange with a journalist in July 2011, Epstein appeared to discuss Giuffre and her photograph with Andrew.

"Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have," he wrote.

Andrew said in his 2019 Newsnight interview that he had no recollection of that photo being taken and has suggested it might be fake.

That exchange came four months after the purported "right of reply" email from the Mail on Sunday on 4 March 2011.

The email states that a woman, whose name is redacted in the released document, was introduced to Andrew by the disgraced financier in 2001, at Maxwell's house in London where she had sex with Andrew.

On 6 March 2011 the Mail on Sunday published a story including the now infamous photograph of Andrew and Giuffre.

The email goes on to say that the masseuse and another girl were directed to sit on Andrew's knee in Epstein's New York flat, and that he groped both girls.

The email says that one of the girls was directed by Maxwell to have sex with Andrew. It also states she was directed to participate in an orgy with Andrew at Little St James - Epstein's private Caribbean island. It requests a reply by noon the next day.

It appears that the email is sent to Maxwell by her representative, forwarded on to Epstein and then to a redacted email address marked "The Duke".

On 6 March 2011, the day the Mail on Sunday published its Giuffre story, Epstein emails "The Duke", asking: "You ok?". He add: "These stories are complete and utter fantasy".

In an email to his publicist in July that year, Epstein writes: "The girl who accused Prince Andrew can also easily be proven to be a liar.

"I think Buckingham Palace would love it. You should task someone to investigate the girl Virginia Roberts, that has caused the Queen's son all this agro (sic).

"I promise you she is a fraud. You and I will be able to go to ascot (sic) for the rest of our lives."

Mandelson in contact in 2016

Lord Mandelson also appears in the newly released documents, which show he had contact with Epstein as late as 2016.

The latest previous reported contact between the pair was when the then-business secretary took advice from Epstein in a banking deal in March 2010, just months after the American businessman's release from prison for child sex offences, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The new documents include an email from Epstein to Lord Mandelson on 6 November 2016, shortly after the peer's birthday, saying "63 years old. You made it".

Lord Mandelson replies less than 90 minutes later saying: "Just. I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US".

Epstein then replies "in the Donald White House", referring to the US presidential election due later that week.

Lord Mandelson was sacked as the UK's ambassador to the US in September over his links to Epstein, after emails showed the peer sent him supportive messages after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor in 2008.

Lord Mandelson, who has repeatedly said he regrets his relationship with Epstein, declined to comment on the emails when approached by the BBC.

The public prosecutor's office in Milan has opened an investigation into claims that Italian citizens travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina on "sniper safaris" during the war in the early 1990s.

Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo.

The Milan complaint was filed by journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a "manhunt" by "very wealthy people" with a passion for weapons who "paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians" from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.

Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.

More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege of Sarejevo.

Yugoslavia was torn apart by war and the city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.

Similar allegations about "human hunters" from abroad have been made several times over the years, but the evidence gathered by Gavazzeni, which includes the testimony of a Bosnian military intelligence officer, is now being examined by Italian counter terrorism prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.

The charge is murder.

The Bosnian officer apparently revealed that his Bosnian colleagues found out about the so-called safaris in late 1993 and then passed on the information to Italy's Sismi military intelligence in early 1994.

The response from Sismi came a couple of months later. They found out that "safari" tourists would fly from the northern Italian border city of Trieste and then travel to the hills above Sarajevo.

"We've put a stop to it and there won't be any more safaris," the officer was told. Within two to three months the trips had stopped.

Ezio Gavazzeni, who usually writes about terrorism and the mafia, first read about the sniper tours to Sarajevo three decades ago when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported the story, but without firm evidence.

He returned to the topic after seeing "Sarajevo Safari", a documentary film from 2022 by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic which alleges that those involved in the killings came from several countries, including the US and Russia as well as Italy.

Gavazzeni began to dig further and in February handed prosecutors his findings, said to amount to a 17-page file including a report by former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic.

An investigation in Bosnia itself appears to have stalled.

Speaking to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, Gavazzeni alleges that "many" took part in the practice, "at least a hundred" in all, with Italians paying "a lot of money" to do so, up to €100,000 (£88,000) in today's terms.

In 1992, late Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov was filmed firing multiple rounds into Sarajevo from a heavy machine gun.

He was being given a tour of hillside positions by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide by an international tribunal in the Hague.

Limonov didn't pay for his war tourism, though. He was there as an admirer of Karadzic, telling the so-called Butcher of Bosnia: "We Russians should take example from you."

The fact Milan prosecutors had opened a case was first reported back in July when Il Giornale website wrote that the Italians would arrive in the mountains by minivan, paying huge bribes to pass checkpoints as they went, pretending to be on a humanitarian mission.

After a weekend shooting in the war zone, they would return home to their normal lives.

Gavazzeni described their actions as the "indifference of evil".

Prosecutors and police are said to have identified a list of witnesses as they try to establish who might have been involved.

Counting castes in India has always been about more than numbers - it is about who gets a share of government benefits and who doesn't.

The country's next national census, scheduled for 2027, will - for the first time in nearly a century - count every caste, a social hierarchy that has long outlived kingdoms, empires and ideologies. The move ends decades of political hesitation and follows pressure from opposition parties and at least three states that have already gone ahead with their own surveys.

A 2011 survey - neither run nor verified by census authorities or released by the government - recorded an astonishing 4.6 million caste names.

A full count of castes promises a sharper picture of who truly benefits from affirmative action and who is left behind. Advocates say it could make welfare spending more targeted and help recalibrate quotas in jobs and education with hard evidence.

Yet in a provocative new book, The Caste Con Census, scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde warns that the exercise may harden the deeply discriminatory caste system, when the need is to dismantle it.

The argument cuts against the prevailing view that better data will produce fairer policy. For Mr Teltumbde, castes are "too pernicious to be managed for any progressive purpose".

"Caste is, at its core, a hierarchy seeking impulse that defies measurement," he writes.

Mr Teltumbde sees the modern caste census as a colonial echo.

British administrators began counting castes in 1871 as a "deliberate response to the post-1857 unity of Indians across caste and religion", turning it into an "effective tool of imperial control". They held six caste censuses between 1871 and 1931 - the last full caste enumeration in India.

Each count, Mr Teltumbde argues, "did not merely record caste, but reified and hardened it".

Independent India, in Mr Teltumbde's reading, preserved the system under the moral banner of social justice, "while effectively evading its core obligation of building the capacities of all people, which is a prerequisite for the success of any genuine social justice policy".

The obsession with counting, he says, bureaucratises inequality. By turning caste into a ledger of entitlements and grievances, the census reduces politics to arithmetic - who gets how much - rather than addressing what Mr Teltumbde calls the "architecture of social injustice".

He sees the demand for a caste census as a push for more reservations - a cause driven by an "upwardly mobile minority", while the majority slips into deprivation and dependence on state aid. Nearly 800 million Indians, he notes, now rely on free rations.

Affirmative action quotas were first reserved for Dalits - formerly known as untouchables - and Adivasis (tribespeople), India's most oppressed groups. But soon, the less disadvantaged "other backward classes" (OBCs) began clamouring for a share of the pie. Politics quickly coalesced around demands for new or bigger caste-based quotas.

Mr Teltumbde's deeper worry is that enumeration legitimises what it measures. Political parties, he warns, will exploit the data to redraw quotas or convert caste resentment into electoral capital.

For Mr Teltumbde, the only rational politics is one of "annihilation of caste", not its management - echoing what BR Ambedkar, the architect of India's constitution, argued when he said that caste cannot be reformed, it "must be destroyed".

But in an India where even its victims "see value in its preservation", that goal feels utopian, the author admits. The looming caste census, Mr Teltumbde argues, will not expose inequality but entrench it.

Many scholars don't quite agree, seeing the census as a necessary tool for achieving social justice.

Sociologist Satish Deshpande and economist Mary E John call the decision not to count castes "one of independent India's biggest mistakes".

Today, they note in a paper, caste has come to be seen as the burden only of India's lower castes - Dalits and Adivasis - who must constantly prove their identity through official labels.

What's needed, they write, is "a fuller, more inclusive picture where everyone must answer the question of their caste". This isn't an "endorsement of an unequal system", they stress, but a recognition that "there is no caste disprivilege without a corresponding privilege accruing to some other caste".

In other words, the lack of reliable caste data obscures both privilege and deprivation.

Sociologist and demographer Sonalde Desai told me that without a fresh caste census, India's affirmative action policies operate "blindly", relying on outdated colonial data.

"If surveys and censuses could shape social reality, we would not need social policies. We could simply start asking questions about domestic violence to shame people into refraining from wife-beating. We have not asked any questions in the census about caste since 1931. Has it eliminated caste equations?" she asks.

Political scientist Sudha Pai, however, broadly agrees with Mr Teltumbde's critique that counting castes can solidify identities and distract from deeper inequalities based on "land, education, power and dignity".

Yet she acknowledges that caste has already been politicised through welfare and electoral strategies, making a caste census inevitable.

"A caste census would be useful if the income levels within each caste group are collected. The government could then use the data collected to identify within each caste the needs of the truly needy and offer them the required benefits and opportunities, such as education and jobs for upward mobility," Dr Pai says.

"This would require moving away from simply using caste as the parameter for redistribution of available resources, to use of both caste and income levels in policymaking."

Dr Pai argues that if done "thoughtfully" - linking caste data to income and educational indicators - it could shift India from a "caste-based to a rights-based welfare system".

Yet, scholars warn that counting castes and interpreting the data will be fraught with challenges.

"It won't be painless. India has changed tremendously in the century since 1931. Castes that were designated as being poor and vulnerable may have moved out of poverty, some new vulnerabilities may have emerged. So if we are to engage in this exercise honestly, it cannot be done without reshuffling the groups that are eligible for benefits," says Professor Desai.

Another challenge lies in data collection - castes have many subgroups, raising questions about the right level of classification. Sub-categorisation aims to divide broader caste groups into smaller ones so the most disadvantaged among them receive a fair share of quotas and benefits.

"Castes are not made of a single layer. There are many subgroups within a single caste. What level of aggregation should be used? How will the respondents in a census respond to this question? This requires substantial experimentation. I do not believe this has yet been done," says Prof Desai.

Mr Teltumbde remains unconvinced. He argues that endless enumeration cannot remedy a system built on hierarchy.

"You will be counting all your life and still not solve the caste problem. So what will be the use of that counting?," he wonders. "I am not against affirmative action, but this is not the way to do it."

Just as France marks the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan massacres, another reminder has come of the permanence of the jihadist threat.

A former girlfriend of the only jihadist to survive the November 2015 attacks has been arrested on suspicion of plotting her own violent act.

The woman - a 27 year-old French convert to Islam named as Maëva B - began a letter-writing relationship with Salah Abdeslam, 36, who is serving a life sentence in jail near the Belgian border following his conviction in 2022.

When prison guards discovered that Abdeslam had been using a USB key containing jihadist propaganda, they traced its origin to face-to-face meetings that the prisoner had with Maëva B.

Detectives then looked into Maëva B's own computer and telephone, where they found evidence she may have been planning a jihadist attack, and on Monday she was placed under judicial investigation along with two alleged associates.

With France commemorating 10 years since the worst attack in its modern history, the arrest has focused minds on the enemy that never went away.

On the evening of 13 November 2015, jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers conducted a sequence of co-ordinated attacks that culminated in a bloody raid on the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris.

Before that, three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France where a football international was under way. Then others in the gang opened fire with Kalashnikovs on people drinking in bars and cafés not far from the Bataclan.

There, a performance by American group The Eagles of Death Metal had just started, when three jihadists burst in and fired indiscriminately into the auditorium. They took hostages and then blew themselves up as police moved in.

Overall 130 people were killed, 90 in the Bataclan, and more than 400 treated in hospital. Countless others suffered psychological trauma.

The word Bataclan has since become a byword in France for extreme Islamist attacks, in much the same way that 9/11 did in the US.

Though there have been other attacks since, like the Nice lorry massacre of July 2016 and the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, the scale and organisation of 13 November 2015 set it apart.

Ten years on, much has changed. The disappearance of the Islamic State (IS) group as a major force in Syria and Iraq means that the wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished.

The Bataclan attackers were young men of mainly North African origin, recruited in Belgium and France, trained in IS territory in the Middle East, who then returned to Europe hidden among a vast flow of migrants.

Everywhere they could draw on a network of supporters offering shelter, transport and cash.

According to leading Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, intelligence services have also become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation.

"They now have access to IT resources… which allow them to detect a lot of individual initiatives, often not very sophisticated ones... and stop them before they hatch," he said in an interview with Le Figaro.

But according to Mr Kepel, the danger now comes from what he calls "ambient jihadism".

"The threat is now home-grown and a lot younger. It feeds on friendships and social networks of the like-minded, without there ever necessarily being people having to give and obey orders," he said.

The threat is all the more concerning, he believes, because it is so porous - with events in Gaza and Israel having a "traumatic effect" on the minds of many citizens and being "exploited by the entrepreneurs of anger".

France's current political crisis is also stoking the danger, he argues, with an impotent presidency giving way to a partisan parliament where extremists of left and right hold increasing sway.

"If what separates us becomes more important than what unites us as French people and fractures the national consensus, then there will open a chasm beneath our feet and violence will have fewer and fewer restraints," he said.

Thursday's commemorations will be held throughout the day at the various attack sites, culminating with the opening of a 13 November garden near Paris City Hall.

When night falls, the Eiffel Tower will be bathed in the red, white and blue of the French flag.

French media have been full of accounts and memories, with survivors describing how their lives have changed.

In an unexpected development, Salah Abdeslam has let it be known through his lawyer that he would be prepared to co-operate in any effort at "restorative justice" - a procedure where victims and perpetrators meet to discuss the impact of a crime.

The idea has been mooted by some families - but others are vehemently opposed.

According to Laurent Sourisseau, a cartoonist also known as Riss, who was shot and wounded in the Charlie Hebdo attack a few months before the Bataclan massacres, Abdeslam's offer is "perverse".

"Restorative justice exists for other types of crime - common crimes," he said.

"But terrorism is not a common crime. Salah Abdeslam wants to make us think his crime was like any other. But it was not."

Nigeria's stunning new Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) has found itself in the crosshairs of local power politics on the week it was supposed to - but failed - to open its doors to the public for the first time.

The six-hectare (15-acre) campus sits in the heart of Benin City, capital of the southern state of Edo - and includes an archaeological dig and buildings designed by high-profile British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye, best known for the National Museum of African American History and Culture that opened in Washington in 2016.

It has been five years in the making - and is envisioned to celebrate both the past and the present of creativity in the region famous for the Benin Bronzes, artworks looted from the city's royal palace by British soldiers in the 19th Century.

It is impressive - and ahead of the planned opening, Mowaa was buzzing with staff determined to prove it is a place that can rival established museums and galleries in the West.

Inside conservators carefully unwrapped artworks from protective packaging, inspecting each piece and taking meticulous records before positioning them on walls and plinths.

Technicians fine-tuned climate control systems. In the materials science laboratory, officers calibrated equipment meant to preserve centuries-old artefacts.

The project has been the brainchild of businessman Phillip Ihenacho - now Mowaa's executive director.

"I want us to have a significant economic impact on communities around here," he told the BBC, adding that he hoped to make Benin City "a cultural destination".

Mowaa, a non-profit Nigerian institution, sees itself creating more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs and contributing more than $80m (£60m) annually to the regional creative economy through partnerships and programming.

It has taken $25m (£19m) to get here - money raised from various donors, including the French and German governments, the British Museum and the Edo state government.

But now the local government has pulled the rug from under it - revoking the use of the land on which the museum was built.

An Edo state spokesperson told the BBC this was because in the original paperwork it had called itself Edo Museum of West African Art - and it had since dropped "Edo" from its name.

This announcement followed protests on Sunday, when people stormed the campus demanding it be called the Benin Royal Museum.

A rowdy group insulted foreign guests at the museum ahead of the opening - forcing them to be hurried away under police escort.

President Bola Tinubu has even stepped in to try and resolve the tensions, setting up a high-level committee to do some damage control.

But how has this become so politicised - and such a PR disaster?

Much of it comes down to internecine rivalries at a local state level, as it was Edo's previous governor Godwin Obaseki - whose term in office ended last year - who was a major backer of the museum.

And it seems the administration of the new governor, a close ally of the local traditional ruler, known as the Oba, may want more of a stake in the project. The protesters on Sunday, for example, were demanding that the museum be placed under the control of Oba Ewuare II.

This brings into focus the contentious issue of the Benin Bronzes, one of Africa's most celebrated cultural treasures.

Because even if the museum does eventually open, these bronzes will be conspicuously absent.

They are brass, ivory and wooden sculptures that once adorned the royal palace of the Benin Kingdom before British soldiers looted them in 1897 during a punitive expedition.

Today, thousands remain scattered across museums in Europe and North America -- including the British Museum, Berlin's Humboldt Forum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Their return has become one of the most contested debates in the global art world. About 150 have now made their way home - and more are due to follow.

When plans for the museum in Benin City were first announced in 2019, the movers and shakers on Nigeria's art scene hoped it would become their natural home - a state-of-the-art complex to show them off to the world.

But the waters were muddied two years ago after the federal government announced that the Oba would be the rightful owner and custodian of any returned bronzes - and the palace pushed for a museum under the royal family's direct control, against the wishes of Obaseki, the former governor.

This left Mowaa in a delicate position: asserting a clear stance on restitution while remaining diplomatic on custodianship - and emphasising its broader vision, which led to it dropping "Edo" from its name.

"One of the frustrations I've always had is that from the beginning we have said we will be about the modern and contemporary," said Mr Ihenacho.

"But because of the Western story about the return of the Benin Bronzes, everyone kept referring to us as the museum where they will go. The problem with that is we are not the owners, nor do we have any legal title to the bronzes."

His goal is to build a haven for contemporary African creativity, including film, photography, music, dance and fashion - not just visual art.

"Yes, we want to focus on the historical, but the purpose is to inspire the contemporary," he said.

"What we have become is a museum that is really about creating an ecosystem to support creatives in West Africa."

From a young Nigerian artist who relocated from the US to work as a conservator, to a recent graduate undergoing his one-year mandatory national youth service programme, to a Ghanaian PhD candidate conducting research, Mowaa has already become a hub of regional collaboration.

Eweka Success, a 23-year-old sculpture graduate from the University of Benin who has had a tour of Mowaa, welcomed this opportunity.

He noted that while many residents of the city "don't care" about the restitution conversation, the museum still offered something valuable.

"Many of us have never seen the originals, but there we can study their design, technique and history more closely," he told the BBC.

Cultural specialist Oluwatoyin Sogbesan agrees that the conversation has grown increasingly elitist.

"The everyday person is concerned about making a living, going to work, and feeding their family. Many don't even know about the bronzes," she told the BBC.

For her, restitution must move beyond just the return of artefacts to also restore memory and language.

"We need to decolonise the term 'Benin Bronzes' itself," she explained.

"Call them by their original Edo name – 'Emwin Arre' [meaning 'Cultural Things'] - what the people who made them would have called them."

This is something that chimes with the museum's inaugural exhibition - Homecoming - should it open to the public.

It features works by acclaimed artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Precious Okoyomon, and Tunji Adeniyi-Jones - many of whom live in the diaspora and have rarely exhibited in Nigeria.

Shonibare's Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul has pride of place - a pyramid-shaped unit featuring more than 150 clay replicas of the Benin Bronzes.

"Creating a monument like this is acknowledging the trauma caused by the looting of those spiritual artefacts," he told the BBC. "It's a deeply emotional engagement with the trauma of the invasion."

He chose clay deliberately, as a metaphor for connection with the land of Benin itself.

"In the modern world, we seem to have become increasingly distanced from nature, whereas our ancestors had a deep connection and respect for it."

The pyramid evokes Africa's ancient wonders while the replicas speak to absence and memory.

"The work is conceptual - about the meaning of absence, the spiritual meaning of the bronzes," Shonibare explained. "In a way, the work is cathartic. It is almost mourning."

Also commanding attention is Ndidi Dike's 2016 mixed-media work National Grid, which reflects on power, both electrical and political.

Nigerians experience power outages so frequently they have become an accepted part of daily life - a metaphor Dike uses to question the nation's broader failures in governance and infrastructure.

It is something likely to resonate all too well for those working at Mowaa this week.

Though they may take heart from the words of the culture minister, who is chairing the presidential committee that wants to resolve the dispute.

"Cultural institutions are pillars of our national identity and must be protected through collaborative approaches that respect both traditional custodianship and modern institutional structures," Hannatu Musawa said.

There are fears the row may damage ongoing efforts to reclaim Africa's stolen art, with Western museums feeling justified about their concerns over the conservation of returned works.

But many working within the walls of Mowaa remain determined to show that their creativity can redefine what a modern African museum can be - with or without historic artefacts.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

US lawmakers have released more than 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including some that mention President Donald Trump.

Early on Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published three email exchanges, including correspondence between Epstein, who died in 2019 in prison, and his long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

They also released emails between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff, who has written numerous books about Trump.

Within hours, House Republicans then released a massive tranche of documents to counter what they said was a Democratic effort to "cherry-pick" documents. They also said it was an attempt to "create a fake narrative to slander President Trump".

Trump was a friend of Epstein's for years, but the president has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

The BBC is still reading through the cache of documents and will provide updates as we get them. Here is what we know so far and how the White House has responded.

'Dog that hasn't barked is Trump'

The first email released by Democrats is from 2011 and is between Epstein and Maxwell.

In it, Epstein writes to Maxwell: "I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him".

Epstein goes on to write that Trump "has never once been mentioned", including by a "police chief".

Maxwell responded: "I have been thinking about that..."

The victim's name was redacted in the email the Democrats released, although the unredacted version is in the tranche released by the committee. That shows the name "virignia".

The White House said it refers to the late Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who died by suicide earlier this year. In a statement, the White House said Giuffre "repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and 'couldn't have been friendlier' to her in their limited interactions".

Asked why the name was originally redacted, Representative Robert Garcia - the leading Democrat on the US House Oversight Committee - said the party will never release names of victims in line with the wishes of the families.

Epstein seeks guidance from Wolff

In exchanges with Wolff, Epstein discusses his connection to Trump, who was campaigning for the presidency ahead of his first term in office.

In a second email exchange released by Democrats, Wolff writes to Epstein in 2015 to notify him that CNN is planning to ask Trump about their relationship, "either on air or in scrum afterwards".

Epstein responds: "If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?"

Wolff writes: "I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt."

He adds, "of course, it is possible that, when asked, he'll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime."

In a separate email from October 2016, days before the US presidential election, Wolff offers Epstein a chance to sit for an interview that could "finish" Trump.

"There's an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?", Wolff writes to Epstein.

A third email released by Democrats is dated January 2019, during Trump's first term in office.

In it, Epstein tells Wolff: "Trump said he asked me to resign" apparently referring to his membership at the president's Mar-a-Lago club, adding, he was "never a member ever".

Epstein adds that "of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop".

Responding to the release in a video he posted to Instagram, Wolff said: in a video posted on his Instagram: "Some of those emails are between Epstein and me, with Epstein discussing his relationship with Donald Trump."

"I have been trying to talk about this story for a very long time now," he added.

Emails an effort to 'smear' Trump, White House says

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails were "selectively leaked" by House Democrats to "liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump".

"The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre," she said.

"These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump's historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again."

When asked at the press briefing about the wider release of documents by the House Oversight Committee, Leavitt said they proved "absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong".

A deadly car blast in a busy area of India's capital city Delhi was a "terror incident", the country's government has said.

At least eight people were killed and 20 more injured in the explosion near the city's historic Red Fort on Monday.

Prime minister Narendra Modi's cabinet condemned the attack at a security meeting late on Wednesday, saying it was a cowardly act carried out by anti-national forces.

Authorities have not yet named anyone or made any arrests in connection with the explosion.

In Wednesday's resolution, the cabinet said: "The country has witnessed a heinous terror incident, perpetrated by anti-national forces, through a car explosion.

"The cabinet directs that the investigation into the incident be pursued with the utmost urgency and professionalism so that the perpetrators, their collaborators, and their sponsors are identified and brought to justice without delay."

The cabinet also said it "unequivocally condemns this dastardly and cowardly act that has led to the loss of innocent lives".

India has an "unwavering commitment" to a zero tolerance policy towards terrorism, it added.

The explosion happened near a metro station close to the Red Fort, one of Delhi's most high-profile landmarks.

Delhi Police Commissioner Satish Golcha told reporters the incident happened at around 18:52 local time (13:52 GMT), when a slow-moving vehicle stopped at a red light before it exploded, damaging nearby vehicles.

A police spokesperson told the BBC that the explosion came from a Hyundai i20 car that was moving and carrying three people at the time, a police spokesman told the BBC.

As news of the explosion broke, Delhi police declared a high alert, with neighbouring states quickly following suit, including the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which is home to famous sites like the Taj Mahal and is a densely populated region.

Police, forensic experts, and security teams are investigating the explosion, a minister said on Monday after the incident.

"We are exploring all possibilities and will conduct a thorough investigation, taking all possibilities into account. All options will be investigated immediately and we will present the results to the public," home minister Amit Shah said.

Modi sent his condolences to those who lost loved ones in the blast. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said the news was "extremely heartbreaking".

The Red Fort was built in the the 17th Century and is visited by thousands of tourists daily. Indian prime ministers give their annual Independence Day speeches at the site.

China is facing a number of economic challenges and its government wants the next generation of consumers to start spending more for the good of all, but it is not having much luck convincing them to do so.

Officials say insufficient domestic consumption across much of society is dragging on growth, but recent graduates have more reasons than most to be cautious.

Youth unemployment has been hovering at just under 20% for some time, those who have jobs fear they could lose them, and the ongoing property crisis can make the prospect of home ownership seem unreachable, especially in big cities.

Youth unemployment has been hovering at just under 20% for some time, those who have jobs fear they could lose them, and the ongoing property crisis can make the prospect of home ownership seem unreachable for many, especially in big cities.

This uncertainty is encouraging many of China's youth to instead embrace frugality, and social media has been flooded with tips on how people can survive on small amounts of money.

"My work is dedicated to a minimalist way of life," one full-time influencer tells the BBC.

Videos by the 24-year-old, who goes by the online name Zhang Small Grain of Rice, feature content like her using a bar of ordinary soap for all her personal cleaning requirements, rather than expensive skin cleansing products.

She can also be seen walking around shopping areas and showing off various bags and items of clothing which she says are good value because they'll last longer.

Companies pay her to feature their goods to her 97,000 followers on the Xiaohongshu site.

"I hope more people will understand consumption traps so they can save. This will reduce their stress and relax them," she said.

Others focus on budget eating.

A 29-year-old using the name Little Grass Floating In Beijing posts videos of himself preparing basic dishes. He says he can have two meals for a little over $1 (76p).

"I am just an ordinary person from the countryside. I have neither a good educational background nor a network of influential contacts, so I must work hard for a better life", he tells his followers.

He works for an online sales firm and claims his extremely modest lifestyle has enabled him to save more than $180,000 over 6 years.

Some have asked him online if he would expect his future wife and children to live the same way and what the end goal is. His response: "I don't know".

China has developed a reputation for being an unstoppable economy, able to ride out the turmoil of the pandemic and US President Donald Trump's trade war.

But analysts say it will face significant long-term challenges if it does not boost domestic spending.

While the US has a problem with people racking up credit card debt, in China it's the opposite challenge. People are already inclined to save rather than spend and this only increases when there are perceptions of tough times ahead.

The Chinese government has been promising for years to increase household consumption but it still accounts for only around 39% of gross domestic product (GDP), as opposed to about 60% in most developed countries.

Part of the problem is that today's youth are more pessimistic than in the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Right now, making money is more important to me. I actually need to expand my income sources and cut my costs," a young woman in central Beijing tells the BBC.

Like many other young people, her salary has been cut, she adds.

"I changed jobs, and it doesn't pay as well. Also, I don't know for how long this new job can sustain me in the future. A bad economic environment like this makes people feel down because we're not earning very much. Finding a job in the first place also isn't easy."

This level of youth unemployment - apart from spreading insecurity - makes it easier for struggling employers to cut wages because workers face a choice of accepting lower pay or diving into a highly competitive job market.

A young man, also in his 20s, says there are low-level jobs available but it's hard to find decent work in one's area of expertise.

"Some of my friends are unemployed, still living at home and looking for a job," he says.

"They had all kinds of majors at university from financial services to product sales. The economy is a bit off right now. I hope it gets better so we can all have a better life".

And how does he rate the chances of this happening soon? "I'm not very optimistic," he admits.

A big concern for China's recent graduates is that the country is making a difficult transition from being a mass producer of cheap goods to a high-tech economy. And many of these new industries don't require as many workers.

Economist George Magnus, an associate at the China Centre at Oxford University, has been tracking this phenomenon.

He cites figures from two big recruitment firms in Beijing showing a high level of university graduates, even with master's degrees, taking jobs as delivery drivers.

"It reflects the skills mismatch between the qualifications which people are leaving higher education with and what's out there in terms of demand for labour," he says.

"Of course, that's not being helped by the push to become a champion in robotics and AI because, at least for the time being, this is something of a dampener on job opportunities. Tech isn't really that labour intensive."

Helena Lofgren has been studying China's consumption patterns for the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and believes its economy is relying too heavily on pouring money into preferred industries and focusing on selling products overseas in a time of considerable geopolitical uncertainty.

"People save more than they consume, and you need consumption to make up a bigger share of the economy than it's doing today in China," she says.

"You have a very export-oriented and investment driven economy and what we see now is that these parts are too big for the economy to stay healthy."

It is all about economic imbalance. If, for example, China suddenly lost significant export revenue would it have the tools to counter this by financially empowering its enormous domestic population?

Some observers have questioned how serious the Communist Party is about increasing domestic consumption.

In recent decades, the country has thrived on an investment and export model but that approach is now facing a big challenge: deflation. Would-be customers are often waiting for the price of goods to fall.

If a young couple wanted to buy, say, a new lounge suite, it may make sense for them to wait to get a better deal.

The longer they, and many more like them, hold off from making big purchases, the more likely companies are to cut prices, leading people to wait even longer for an even better deal.

It may seem like a good idea to have cheaper goods, but deflation can force firms out of business and drag on growth overall.

This could be countered by somehow fuelling optimism amongst 20 or 30-something consumers. Building a better social safety net or increasing minimum wages might help.

There have been some attempts to do this by offering incentives to replace old cars, home appliances and other items but it has not significantly lifted consumption.

The influencer Zhang says being cautious with spending runs deep in her country's culture.

"My grandfather's generation was very frugal, very thrifty. It is part of Chinese tradition. For Chinese people to be economical is in their bones," she says.

The public prosecutor's office in Milan has opened an investigation into claims that Italian citizens travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina on "sniper safaris" during the war in the early 1990s.

Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo.

The Milan complaint was filed by journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a "manhunt" by "very wealthy people" with a passion for weapons who "paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians" from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.

Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.

More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege of Sarejevo.

Yugoslavia was torn apart by war and the city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.

Similar allegations about "human hunters" from abroad have been made several times over the years, but the evidence gathered by Gavazzeni, which includes the testimony of a Bosnian military intelligence officer, is now being examined by Italian counter terrorism prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.

The charge is murder.

The Bosnian officer apparently revealed that his Bosnian colleagues found out about the so-called safaris in late 1993 and then passed on the information to Italy's Sismi military intelligence in early 1994.

The response from Sismi came a couple of months later. They found out that "safari" tourists would fly from the northern Italian border city of Trieste and then travel to the hills above Sarajevo.

"We've put a stop to it and there won't be any more safaris," the officer was told. Within two to three months the trips had stopped.

Ezio Gavazzeni, who usually writes about terrorism and the mafia, first read about the sniper tours to Sarajevo three decades ago when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported the story, but without firm evidence.

He returned to the topic after seeing "Sarajevo Safari", a documentary film from 2022 by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic which alleges that those involved in the killings came from several countries, including the US and Russia as well as Italy.

Gavazzeni began to dig further and in February handed prosecutors his findings, said to amount to a 17-page file including a report by former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic.

An investigation in Bosnia itself appears to have stalled.

Speaking to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, Gavazzeni alleges that "many" took part in the practice, "at least a hundred" in all, with Italians paying "a lot of money" to do so, up to €100,000 (£88,000) in today's terms.

In 1992, late Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov was filmed firing multiple rounds into Sarajevo from a heavy machine gun.

He was being given a tour of hillside positions by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide by an international tribunal in the Hague.

Limonov didn't pay for his war tourism, though. He was there as an admirer of Karadzic, telling the so-called Butcher of Bosnia: "We Russians should take example from you."

The fact Milan prosecutors had opened a case was first reported back in July when Il Giornale website wrote that the Italians would arrive in the mountains by minivan, paying huge bribes to pass checkpoints as they went, pretending to be on a humanitarian mission.

After a weekend shooting in the war zone, they would return home to their normal lives.

Gavazzeni described their actions as the "indifference of evil".

Prosecutors and police are said to have identified a list of witnesses as they try to establish who might have been involved.

At least 37 people were killed and dozens injured in Peru when a bus plunged into a 200m (650ft) deep ravine after a head-on collision.

The incident happened in the early hours of Wednesday morning on a "rugged" stretch of the Pan-American Highway that connects Peru with Chile in the country's southern region of Arequipa.

Local media say the bus was carrying 60 passengers when it smashed into a pickup truck on a curve, careered off the road and fell down to the banks of the Ocoña River.

Bus crashes are common in Peru, especially at night and on mountain highways. This is often due to poor road conditions, excessive speed, and lack of safety signage.

The bus, operated by the Llamosas company, was heading from Chala, a town in Caraveli province, to Arequipa.

Both drivers reportedly survived the crash, which happened at kilometre 780 of the Pan-American Highway South.

Pictures from the scene of the crash show the wrecked bus at the bottom of a steep ravine - its windows completely shattered, bodywork badly damaged and roof caved in.

Waldor Llerena, Ocona's district mayor, told radio station RPP that the terrain around the crash site is "very rugged", and the area had a history of similar deadly accidents.

Thirty-six people died at the scene and another person later died in hospital, Walther Oporto, Arequipa's regional health chief told local media, citing firefighters at the scene of the crash.

Health officials told RPP that 25 people - including three minors - are being treated in a local hospital for their injuries.

An investigation into the incident is underway and the driver of the pickup truck has been detained, the Public Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.

In 2022, more than 3,300 people died in traffic accidents in Peru, official figures suggest.

Stretching from Alaska to the pencil tip of Argentina, the 48,000km-long Pan-American Highway holds the record for the world's longest road navigable by motor vehicle.