Passengers travelling from Doncaster to London have been attacked in a mass stabbing on Saturday night.

Ten people were injured and taken to hospital. Nine of them are believed to have life-threatening injuries.

Two people were arrested after the train made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and witnesses reported that police used a Taser on one man holding a knife.

Counter-terror police have joined the investigation. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the attack was "appalling" and "deeply concerning".

Here is what we know so far about what happened.

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• Watch: Police rush to scene of train attack

How did the attack unfold?

The stabbing took place on the 18.25 GMT Saturday night LNER train service from Doncaster to London's King Cross station.

Passengers reported that at least one person brandishing a knife began stabbing people on the train after the train stopped at Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.

Witnesses told the BBC of panic and confusion.

Olly Foster, who was on the train, said he heard people dashing across carriages shouting "run, there's a guy stabbing literally everyone and everything" - and thought it might have been a Halloween-type prank.

Another passenger heard someone shouting, "someone's got a knife"

Some passengers hid inside the toilets while others swarmed towards the front of the train.

At 19:39, the train driver made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, where dozens of armed police officers and emergency services rushed to the platform.

Witnesses said police used a Taser on one man. Two people, whose identities are not yet known, were arrested.

Altogether, the incident was estimated to last roughly 10 to 15 minutes.

The uninjured passengers were interviewed by police and some boarded a coach bound for London.

What do we know about the victims?

Emergency crews took 10 people to hospital, nine of whom are believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries, according to police.

The identities of the victims are not yet known.

Witnesses described some of the victims, including a man keeled over in pain on the platform, bleeding from his stomach.

Wren Chambers, a passenger on the train, told the BBC that one person had been stabbed in the arm and bolted down the train to alert others.

Olly Foster told the BBC how an older man had gashes on his head and neck after he "blocked" the attacker from stabbing a younger girl and passengers then used their jackets to try to staunch the bleeding.

London Underground worker Dean McFarlane told the BBC how he saw multiple people running down the platform bleeding, with one man in a white shirt "completely covered in blood".

What is happening with the train services?

London North Eastern Railway (LNER), which operates East Coast Mainline services in the UK, has urged passengers to avoid travelling on Sunday 2 November.

Ticketholders who are no longer planning to travel will be eligible for a full refund. Unused weekend LNER tickets will be valid until Tuesday 4 November.

Huntingdon station is not guaranteed to reopen on Sunday, LNER warned. Disruption to services between Stevenage and Peterborough are due to last all day.

Passengers are able to use their tickets on the following services without incurring extra cost:

• Avanti West Coast between London Euston, Manchester

• TransPennine Express between Manchester, Leeds and York/Newcastle

• ScotRail between Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley

• Northern between Carlisle and Newcastle

• East Midlands Railway (EMR) between London St Pancras, Leicester and Sheffield.

• CrossCountry between Sheffield, Doncaster/Leeds, York and Newcastle/Edinburgh

• Greater Anglia between London Liverpool Street, Stevenage and Peterborough.

• Great Northern and Thameslink between London Kings Cross, Stevenage and Peterborough

• London Northwestern Railway services from Euston

LNER said delays are expected across the train system, including from other services and operators in the East of England and London, throughout Sunday.

Thameslink tickets that were not used on Saturday will be valid for Sunday.

In a statement published early on Sunday morning, LNER Managing Director David Horne wrote that he was "deeply shocked and saddened by this serious incident" and thanked emergency services for their "quick and professional" response.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor arranged a private tour of Buckingham Palace while the late Queen was in residence, for businessmen from a cryptocurrency mining firm which agreed to pay his ex-wife up to £1.4m, the BBC can reveal.

Jay Bloom and his colleague Michael Evers were driven through the palace gates in the former prince's own car after being collected from their five-star Knightsbridge hotel for the visit in June 2019.

Their company, Pegasus Group Holdings, which Mr Bloom co-founded, employed Sarah Ferguson as a "brand ambassador" for a crypto-mining scheme which would lose investors millions when it failed less than a year later.

Mr Bloom, an entrepreneur who had previously set up a failed Mafia-themed museum in Las Vegas, and Mr Evers, a former actor, were met by a greeter and escorted inside the palace.

Mr Evers told the BBC they then met the Queen, although Mr Bloom disputed this.

Both Mr Evers and Mr Bloom were invited by the then-prince to his Pitch@Palace event - a Dragons' Den-style business pitching competition - at nearby St James's Palace later that day, and they dined that evening with Andrew, Ms Ferguson and their daughter Princess Beatrice.

Ms Ferguson was working with Pegasus Group Holdings at the time of the palace visit, while she was Duchess of York, to promote plans to use thousands of solar power generators to mine Bitcoin at a remote site in the Arizona desert.

But the project ultimately failed with only 615 of the planned 16,000 generators acquired and just $33,779 (about £25,000) in cryptocurrency mined.

In April 2021, some investors took legal action, claiming millions of dollars of investor funds were unaccounted for. A tribunal awarded the investors $4.1m, but Mr Bloom is seeking permission to appeal.

The revelations add to growing questions about how Andrew and his former wife have funded their lifestyle, as well as long-standing concerns about their business connections and that the then-prince may have used his royal titles and connections for private gain.

On Thursday evening, Buckingham Palace announced that it was starting the formal process of stripping Andrew of his royal titles and that he would be losing his Windsor mansion, following intense criticism of his links with the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew and Ms Ferguson did not respond to a detailed list of questions about their involvement with Mr Bloom and the crypto-mining venture.

Sarah Ferguson was paid more than £200,000 for her work for the company and a leaked contract reveals she was in line for a separate bonus worth £1.2m.

She also received a stake in the business, which proposed using solar generators to reduce the cost of the energy-intensive computer calculations needed to generate or "mine" the digital currency Bitcoin.

Her contract stipulated that she required first-class travel, five-star hotels and the services of a professional hairdresser and make-up artist for the maximum of four "networking events" she would attend on the company's behalf.

It said she did not "hold herself out as an expert on the solar industry" and therefore accepted no responsibility for "industry-related information or commercial assessments" used as the basis for her statements promoting the company.

A royal friendship

Sarah Ferguson first met the Las Vegas businessman Jay Bloom in May 2018 when she was at a convention in the city to promote one of her children's books.

The pair struck up a friendship and business relationship.

Pegasus documents would subsequently describe her role as to "engage with the company's clients, investors and strategic relationships" as well as involvement with the company's planned "philanthropic activities".

For Mr Bloom, it was an introduction to royal circles which would lead to visits to Buckingham Palace and St James's Palace, a tour of Ms Ferguson and Andrew's home, the Royal Lodge in Windsor, and dinners with her and her family in at least four different countries.

Eight years before the duchess signed up to be a brand ambassador for Pegasus, Mr Bloom had hit the Las Vegas headlines, accused of missing payments and deceiving investors in connection with a "mob experience" exhibition in the city. Mr Bloom denied wrongdoing, fought investors' lawsuits and vowed to repay them.

He now had a new company, Pegasus, and ambitions to build a hotel and casino in Greece.

It was there in July 2018, while considering investing in the company, that Michael Evers, a former actor and reality TV star who had made money from cryptocurrency investments, first met Ms Ferguson.

The hotel and casino did not get built, but Mr Bloom had soon pivoted Pegasus to a new idea, one that was inspired by seeing a mobile solar power generator in use at the Las Vegas motor speedway in early 2019, according to filings in the later legal action brought by investors.

Mr Bloom and his co-founders hit upon a plan to use vast banks of these units to power a crypto-mining operation. The endeavour, the company estimated, would generate millions of dollars a month.

In March 2019, Ms Ferguson had dinner with Mr Bloom in Los Angeles. They had lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel a few days later as she helped him try to close a deal for Pegasus. One of her daughters stopped by during the meal.

Mr Evers was now working for Pegasus as well as being an investor. He said he and Mr Bloom were regularly in London over the following months as they explored taking Pegasus public on the AIM market - part of the London Stock Exchange for growing companies.

He said he got to know Ms Ferguson and her family and "through all that, I met Prince Andrew [and] Princess Beatrice and a lot of their family" who he described as "really great people, really friendly".

"We were there once a month for a week to two weeks at a time and every time the relationships just kind of grew stronger and stronger and they started offering tours of different places, I guess like behind the scenes or I don't know what you'd call it," Mr Evers said. "And just wanting to introduce us to more and more people."

As well as a tour of the Royal Lodge, Andrew and his ex-wife arranged for the pair to visit Buckingham Palace on a day in June 2019 when it was closed to the public.

They were picked up from their Knightsbridge hotel by an official driver in a dark blue Range Rover used by Andrew and driven through the palace gates in the early afternoon.

Once inside they were taken through to the inner courtyard, where a female greeter was waiting to meet them. A video taken by the men from inside the car captured their arrival.

A former Royal Household employee, who reviewed the footage, told BBC News that it was clear that palace security staff on the gate were expecting the vehicle.

"The ramp was dropped before they came out to speak to the driver," they said. "That was the reception we'd expect if we were carrying a member of the Royal Family."

What happened once they went inside is disputed by the two men.

Mr Evers said they had been told in advance that there would be an opportunity to meet the Queen. But once there, he said staff told him he was not allowed to take photos.

"They didn't want anyone knowing that we were meeting Elizabeth. And it was very, very brief, she was not doing super well, so it was more just like a hello and in passing. No touching or anything," he said.

He said it wasn't a formal meeting, "it was just like a quick, 'hello, goodbye'".

The Queen was in residence that day, with her published schedule including her regular weekly audience with the prime minister. The Palace was unable to confirm or deny whether the introduction with the two men took place.

Responding to questions by email, Mr Bloom initially said he had decided just to visit the palace as a tourist. He subsequently said the only person he met at the palace was a "staffer".

When challenged and presented with evidence from his own social media, which included footage of him being driven into the palace, and comments about spending time with Andrew, and there being "pictures I can post, the pictures I can't, and then the stuff I couldn't take pictures of... lol", Mr Bloom said he had misremembered.

He then admitted that he "was in fact shown to Andrews [sic] office and did thank him for the car and for him and Sarah arranging the tour".

He denied ever having met or been in the same room as the late Queen.

Mr Bloom made a second visit to Buckingham Palace in July 2019, photos show. On social media he made an apparently joking reference to "meeting HRH".

Helicopters and guns in the desert

Two months later, Ms Ferguson was one of two celebrity guests - alongside the motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who says he has coached figures such as Serena Williams and Hugh Jackman - at a "ground breaking" for Pegasus's energy project launch in the Arizona desert.

They were flown in, with Mr Bloom, Mr Evers and others, in two black-and-gold helicopters and posed with gold-coloured spades and construction hats at the remote site of what Pegasus promised would become a multi-billion-dollar off-grid data centre.

With armed guards with AR-15 rifles and pistols standing nearby, Mr Bloom introduced Ms Ferguson at a press conference as a "personal friend".

In the short speech that followed, Ms Ferguson praised the company, saying she was "so proud to be here" and touted the potential philanthropic uses of the technology in Africa.

That October, a month before Andrew's fateful BBC Newsnight interview where he disastrously attempted to explain his connections to Mr Epstein, Ms Ferguson signed a contract agreeing to provide specific services for Pegasus.

For reasons that remain unexplained, the contract itself was with Alphabet Capital, a British company whose owner, Adrian Gleave, ran a number of caravan and holiday parks.

A High Court ruling in London in 2024 has previously revealed that Ms Ferguson received more than £200,000 for her work for Pegasus from Alphabet Capital.

Andrew has also received money from Alphabet, including £60,500 traced to Mr Gleave and his businesses, according to court documents previously reported by the BBC.

Neither Andrew nor Mr Gleave have explained why this money was paid.

Mr Bloom said he has never heard of Alphabet or Mr Gleave and there was no connection with Pegasus.

Lawsuits and recriminations

A year after investing millions of dollars in the crypto solar scheme, some of its main investors became concerned about progress and began legal proceedings.

In 2023, judges from the Commercial Arbitration Tribunal in the US found in the investors' favour awarding them millions of dollars.

Jay Bloom has since mounted a number of legal challenges over the award in the Nevada courts.

Mr Bloom told BBC News that Pegasus emphatically disputed "any allegations of misconduct" and said they were "addressing the clearly flawed arbitral findings through established legal processes".

Andrew and Ms Ferguson did not respond to the BBC's questions, including whether Ms Ferguson planned to repay money received for her Pegasus work to the company's investors.

Mr Evers said he regretted being involved with Pegasus. He said Mr Bloom was "working very, very hard to get all the investors paid back" but that he was frustrated to still be owed money himself several years later.

• If you have any information on stories you would like to share with the BBC Politics Investigations team, please get in touch at politicsinvestigations@bbc.co.uk

A flight carrying British aid arrived in Jamaica early on Saturday to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Melissa, as the UK plans its first chartered flight to bring British nationals home later on Saturday.

The aid flight brought more than 3,000 emergency shelter kits as part of a £7.5 million regional emergency package.

Part of the funding will be used to match donations to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent - with King Charles and Queen Camilla among those who have donated.

Despite aid arriving in Jamaica in recent days, fallen trees and landslides have complicated distribution efforts after Hurricane Melissa devastated parts of the island, killing at least 19 people.

The hurricane made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a category five storm and was one of the most powerful hurricanes ever measured in the Caribbean.

Melissa swept across the region over a number of days and left behind a trail of destruction and dozens of people dead. In Haiti, at least 30 people were killed, while Cuba also saw flooding and landslides.

Jamaica's Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon said on Friday "there are entire communities that seem to be marooned and areas that seem to be flattened".

The UK initially set aside a £2.5 million immediate financial support package, with an additional £5 million announced by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Friday.

Cooper said the announcement came as "more information is now coming through on the scale of devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, with homes damaged, roads blocks and lives lost".

The British Red Cross said, as of Saturday morning, that 72% people across Jamaica still do not have electricity and around 6,000 are in emergency shelters.

The organisation said the King and Queen's donation would help the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) "continue its lifesaving work" - which includes search and rescue efforts in Jamaica as well as ensuring access to healthcare, safe shelter and clean water.

Although aid is entering the country, landslides, downed power lines and fallen trees have made some roads impassable. The situation has made it difficult to get aid to the worst-hit areas.

Some communities are being affected by water shortages, while the BBC has seen queues for petrol pumps, with people waiting for hours to then be told there is no fuel left when they reach the front of the queue.

Some people are seeking fuel for generators, others for a car to reach an area in which they can contact people, as the power is still down across most of the island.

Around 8,000 British nationals were thought to have been on the island when the hurricane hit.

The UK's first chartered flight to bring British citizens home is set to leave Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport late on Saturday.

The UK foreign office has asked travellers to register their presence on the island.

The department also advises travellers to contact their airline to check whether commercial options are available.

A British teenager - eight months pregnant and charged with drugs smuggling - is awaiting sentencing in prison in Georgia, South Caucasus. A payment of £137,000 by her family will reduce her sentence but what are the days like for Bella Culley, incarcerated 2,600 miles (4,180km) from home?

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Bella Culley's mother reveals her daughter - now 35 weeks pregnant - has been transferred to a prison "mother and baby" unit.

This marks a significant change for the 19-year-old after five months in a cell in Georgia's Rustavi Prison Number Five, with only a hole in the ground for a toilet, one hour of fresh air daily, and communal showers twice a week.

Lyanne Kennedy says her daughter has been boiling pasta in a kettle and toasting bread over a candle flame but is now allowed to cook for herself and other women and children in the unit, and is learning Georgian.

"She now gets two hours out for walking, she can use the communal kitchen, has a shower in her room and a proper toilet," she says, describing the improved conditions since a transfer earlier this month.

"They all cook for each other," Ms Kennedy says. "Bella has been making eggy bread and cheese toasties, and salt and pepper chicken."

Miss Culley has been held in pre-trial detention since May, after police discovered 12kg (26lb) of marijuana and 2kg (4.4lb) of hashish in her hold luggage at Tbilisi International Airport.

Some accounts from inside the jail paint a stark picture of conditions.

In September, Georgian media widely published an open letter they said had been sent from prison by Anastasia Zinovkina, a Russian political activist sentenced to eight-and-a-half years on drug possession charges.

Ms Zinovkina, who insisted the drugs were planted on her, described the sanitary conditions as "appalling" and "horrific".

"One single bar of soap is used to wash hair, body, socks, underwear, and dishes," she wrote. "If the soap runs out before the guards decide to give out a new one (which happens once every three months) then they simply don't wash.

"Toilet paper is provided once monthly, and only to those with no money on their prison account. Showering is permitted only twice weekly - on Wednesdays and Sundays - for 15 minutes.

"The girls who don't have slippers bathe barefoot or use shared slippers. They get fungal infections and pass them to each other."

The Georgian Ministry of Justice told the BBC in May that conditions in the prison had significantly improved since earlier monitoring reports by the Georgian Public Defender.

Under Georgia's new penitentiary code, which came into force in January last year, inmates "have the right to fresh air at least one hour on a daily basis", it said.

It also highlighted various reforms, including vocational education programmes, a digital university for distance learning, and improved healthcare through an online clinic.

"Georgian authorities put human-centered approach at the heart of the penitentiary reform to ensure the healthy management of prison system," it said in a statement.

The ministry also said the UN sub-committee on prevention of torture visited the prison in October 2023 and "did not express any concerns regarding the prison conditions, sanitary or issues related to out-of-cell activities/contact with outside world".

The committee's report is confidential but the UN said at the time it encouraged the Georgian government to make it public.

The case has drawn attention to Georgia's strict approach to drug-related offences and its extensive use of "plea bargaining" to resolve criminal cases.

Guram Imnadze, a criminal justice lawyer and drug policy expert based in Tbilisi, says in 2024 nearly 90% of drug-related crimes in Georgia were resolved in this way.

"Sentences are so severe that plea bargaining is in both sides' interests," Mr Imnadze explains. "The main strategy from a defence perspective is to have plea bargaining as fast as possible."

Earlier agreements typically result in softer conditions, with lower sentences and fines, he says.

For trafficking involving large amounts of drugs, Georgian law provides for sentences of up to 20 years or life imprisonment. Mr Imnadze says Miss Culley's case coincided with a new interior minister taking office, who made drug crimes a priority.

"What they want is to show the public right now what tangible results they have, and 12kg of marijuana is already a huge amount for public perception," he says.

Miss Culley claimed she had been tortured and forced to carry the drugs but was warned she was facing 20 years in prison. But, for a "substantial sum", she could be released, she was told.

Back in Tbilisi City Court last Tuesday, the teenager heard her family had managed to raise £137,000. Not the amount needed for her to walk free but enough to reduce her sentence significantly, to two years. She is due in court again on Monday to hear her final sentence.

Ms Kennedy says the family is doing everything they can to get her home "where she should be".

Miss Culley's lawyer, Malkhaz Salakaia, has previously said that, once an agreement was reached, he would appeal to the President of Georgia to pardon the British teenager.

Mr Salakaia confirmed Miss Culley had pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into the country, flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, but said she was made to do so by gangsters who tortured her with hot iron.

Georgian police had launched a separate criminal investigation into her coercion allegations, he said.

When the teenager landed in Tbilisi on 10 May, her luggage was immediately flagged by Georgian authorities and, although she attempted to explain to police that someone was supposed to meet her at the arrivals hall, they did not follow this up and charged her, he said.

Mr Salakaia says there is a provision in Georgian law for pregnant women, raising the family's hopes that the teenager could be released before giving birth.

"It is written in the law that when a child is born, the mother must be outside until the child is one year old," he says.

Ms Kennedy, who has been traveling back and forth between the UK and Georgia, says her daughter is getting on well with staff and prisoners and she had been able to take in baby clothes for her.

Her daughter's full story "will come in time", she says.

"Until then we are just a family doing everything we can for my daughter and grandson."

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Molecule, a pill promising rapid weight loss, went viral on Russian TikTok earlier this year.

Young people's feeds started filling up with captions like "Take Molecule and forget food exists", and "Do you want to sit in the back of the class in oversized clothes?"

Clips showed fridges lined with blue boxes featuring holograms and "Molecule Plus" labels.

The orders began piling in, as teenagers shared their "weight-loss journeys" on social media.

But there was a catch.

Maria, 22, had purchased the pill from a popular online retailer. She took two pills per day and, after two weeks, says her mouth dried up and she completely lost her appetite.

"I had absolutely no desire to eat, let alone drink. I was nervous. I was constantly biting my lips and chewing my cheeks."

Maria developed severe anxiety and began having negative thoughts. "These pills were having a profound effect on my psyche," she says.

Maria, who lives in St Petersburg, says she wasn't prepared for such severe side effects.

Other TikTok users mentioned dilated pupils, tremors and insomnia. And at least three schoolchildren are reported to have ended up in hospital.

In April, a schoolgirl in Chita, Siberia, needed hospital care after overdosing on Molecule. According to local reports, she was trying to lose weight quickly, in time for the summer.

The mother of another schoolgirl told local media her daughter was admitted to intensive care after taking several pills at once.

And in May, a 13-year-old boy from St Petersburg needed hospital care after experiencing hallucinations and panic attacks. He had reportedly asked a friend to buy him the pill because he was being teased at school about his weight.

Substance banned in UK, EU and US

The packaging for Molecule pills often lists "natural ingredients" such as dandelion root and fennel seed extract.

But earlier this year, journalists at the Russian newspaper Izvestiya submitted pills they had purchased online for testing and found they contained a substance called sibutramine.

First used as an antidepressant in the 1980s and later as an appetite suppressant, studies later found sibutramine increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes - while only slightly promoting weight loss.

It was banned in the US in 2010, and is also illegal in the UK, EU, China and other countries.

In Russia, it is still used to treat obesity, but available only to adults and by prescription.

Purchasing and selling sibutramine without a prescription is a criminal offence. But that hasn't stopped individuals and small businesses from selling it online - often in higher doses than legal medication - and without requiring prescriptions.

The unlicensed pills cost about £6-7 ($8-9) for a 20-day supply - much cheaper than recognised weight-loss injections like Ozempic, which on the Russian market sell for £40-160 ($50-210) per monthly pen.

"Self-administration of this drug is very unsafe," says endocrinologist Ksenia Solovieva from St. Petersburg, warning of potential overdose risks, "because we do not know how much of the active ingredient such 'dietary supplements' may contain."

Russians regularly receive prison sentences for purchasing and reselling Molecule pills. But it's proving difficult for authorities to get a grip on the drug being sold illegally.

In April, the government-backed Safe Internet League reported the growing trend involving young people to the authorities - prompting several major online marketplaces to remove Molecule from sale. But it soon began appearing online under a new name, Atom, in near-identical packaging.

A law was recently passed allowing authorities to block websites selling "unregistered dietary supplements" without a court order - but sellers have been getting around this by categorising them as "sports nutrition" instead.

On TikTok, you can find retailers selling Molecule under listings that look like they are for muesli, biscuits and even lightbulbs. And some retailers aren't even trying to hide it any more.

A few weeks ago, the BBC found Molecule listings on a popular Russian online marketplace. When approached for comment, the site said it had promptly removed any products containing sibutramine. But it admitted it was difficult to find and remove listings that didn't explicitly mention sibutramine.

If you do manage to get your hands on Molecule, it's hard to know exactly what you're getting - and it's unclear where the pills are being manufactured.

The BBC found some sellers with production certificates from factories in Guangzhou and Henan, in China. Others claim to be sourcing the pills from Germany.

Some packets state they were produced in Remagen in Germany - but the BBC has discovered there is no such company listed at the address given.

Certain Kazakh vendors selling Molecule to Russians told the BBC they bought stock from friends or warehouses in the capital Astana but couldn't name the original supplier.

• Details of support with eating disorders in the UK are available at BBC Action Line

Meanwhile, online eating-disorder communities have become spaces where Molecule is promoted, with users relying on hashtags and coded terms to slip past moderation.

Ms Solovieva says Molecule is particularly harmful when taken by young people who already have eating disorders. For those in or near relapse, an easily available appetite suppressant can be seriously dangerous, she says.

Anna Enina, a Russian influencer with millions of followers who herself has admitted using unlicensed weight-loss pills in the past, publicly warned her subscribers: "As someone who has struggled with an eating disorder… the consequences will be dire. You'll regret it tenfold."

Twenty-two-year old Maria suffered bad side effects, and is one of those who regrets it. After taking too many Molecule pills, she was sent to hospital.

Now she discourages other young women and girls from taking the pills in weight-loss forums. She even reached out to one teenage user's parents to alert them.

But Molecule remains popular online.

And every video that appears on Maria's TikTok feed is a reminder of the pills that made her sick.

As Zohran Mamdani walked the streets of the Upper East Side for a campaign event to greet early voters, he could barely walk a few steps without being stopped by his supporters.

Two smiling young women looked starstruck and told him they followed him on Instagram. The millennial Democratic nominee for mayor thanked them before posing with another young man who had readied his phone for a selfie.

Throngs of press surrounded Mamdani and captured his every moment, like running into the street to shake hands with a taxi driver shouting "we support you, man".

With a comfortable lead in the polls, the 34-year-old is on the brink of making history when New Yorkers vote on Tuesday, as the youngest mayor in over a century and the first Muslim and South Asian leader of the city.

A relatively unknown figure just months ago, few could have predicted his rise, from hip-hop artist and housing counsellor to New York State Assembleyman and frontrunner to lead the biggest city in the US, a job which comes with a $116bn budget and global scrutiny.

Leading a three-way race

Through viral videos and outreach to content creators and podcasters, Mamdani has reached disaffected voters at a time when faith in the Democratic party among its own members is at an all-time low.

But there are questions over whether he can deliver on his ambitious promises and how a politician with no executive experience will handle the onslaught sure to come from a hostile Trump administration.

There is also the complicated relationship he has with his party establishment, as he becomes a national figurehead for left-wing Democrats.

He describes himself as a democratic socialist, which essentially means giving a voice to workers, not corporations. It's the politics of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with whom Mamdani has often shared a stage.

Trump has threatened to withdraw federal funds if New Yorkers elect a "communist". Mamdani's retort is that he's more like a Scandinavian politician, only browner.

Victory would be seen as a rejection of politics as usual by New Yorkers as they struggle with the cost of living - Mamdani's number one issue.

His main rival in Tuesday's vote is former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary.

Cuomo accuses Mamdani of an anti-business agenda that would kill New York. He says he has shown he can stand up to Trump but Mamdani calls Cuomo the president's puppet.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, mocks both of them. In the last debate, he said: "Zorhan, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin. And Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City."

Rent freezes and free buses

Mamdani's message has been laser-focused on affordability and quality of life issues. He has promised universal childcare, freezing rent in subsidised units, free public buses and city-run grocery stores.

It's a message that has landed with New Yorkers fed up with sky-high prices.

"I support him because I'm a housing attorney and I see how the cost of living just keeps going up and up and up," Miles Ashton told the BBC outside the candidates' debate earlier this month. "We all want an affordable city."

The costs of the Mamdani agenda would be covered by new taxes on corporations and millionaires which he insists would raise $9bn although some experts like the libertarian Cato Institute say his sums don't add up. He would also need the support of the state legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul to implement new taxes.

• From Uganda to Queens - Zohran Mamdani
• 'I don't think we should have billionaires' says Mamdani

She has endorsed him but says she is against increased income taxes. She does, however, want to work with him to achieve universal healthcare which is by far the biggest ticket item on his agenda at $5bn.

As he rode the M57 bus across Manhattan to highlight his free buses plan, he told the BBC why his focus on affordability was the right approach in the Trump era.

"It's time for us to understand that to defend democracy, it's not just to stand up against an authoritarian administration. It is also to ensure that that democracy can deliver on the material needs of working class people right here. That's something we've failed to do in New York City."

Among New Yorkers who told the BBC they were not voting for Mamdani, doubts about him being able to pay for his agenda and his inexperience were two of the biggest factors.

What New York business world thinks

After Mamdani won the Democratic primary in June, Wall Street leaders were hardly celebrating. Some threatened to leave the city.

But there's been a noticeable shift since then - the mood is less panic, more collaboration. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon even said he would offer his help if Mamdani is elected.

Real estate developer Jeffrey Gural, who has met Mamdani, says he is too inexperienced to lead the nation's largest city. He thinks his rent freeze plan would hurt tenants and his taxes on wealthy people will drive high earners away.

He does, however, support Mamdani's universal childcare plan, a provision he gives his own staff at his casino upstate.

Part of the change in tone since the primary has been down to a concerted effort on Mamdani's part to meet his critics.

On 14 October, Alexis Bittar, a self-taught jewellery designer who grew his business into a global company, hosted Mamdani and 40 business leaders at his 1850s Brooklyn townhouse.

They were a mix of CEOs or business owners from financial, fashion and art sectors. More than half were Jewish and they were all either on the fence or opposed to Mamdani's candidacy.

There were questions about business, his management experience, and how he would finance his agenda.

"I think he came across great," Mr Bittar told the BBC. "The thing that's remarkable about him is he's incredibly equipped to answer them and diligently answer them."

• Sparks fly in second NYC mayoral debate
• How Mamdani stunned field to win primary

An apology to police

Part of Mamdani's engagement with his critics has been a willingness to change his position.

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Mamdani called for the city to defund police and called the NYPD "racist". But he has since apologised and says he no longer holds those views.

Crime is the number one issue for Howard Wolfson, who worked for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is now a Democratic strategist. He was present during a meeting last month between the mayoral hopeful and Bloomberg, who spent $8m during the primary race trying to beat him.

Wolfson told the BBC he will judge Mamdani on how the city is policed.

"I think it's great that he reaches out and is engaged, but I'm much more interested in how he's going to govern," he said. "Public safety is really the prerequisite for success or failure."

Many see Mamdani's pledge to ask the police commissioner Jessica Tisch to stay on as a way to allay concerns he would be soft on crime.

He says he would maintain the current level of NYPD staffing and create a new department of community safety that would deploy mental health care teams instead of armed officers to non-threatening, psychiatric calls.

A city divided over Gaza

One position Mamdani has stood firm on is his criticism of Israel and lifelong support for Palestinian rights.

It represents a break from the Democratic Party establishment and could be a deciding factor for many voters in a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

He sparked outrage during the primary process when he refused to condemn the term "globalise the intifada". But after Jewish New Yorkers expressed their unease to him, telling him they felt unsafe on hearing it, he said he discouraged others from using it.

A letter signed by more than 1,100 rabbis cited Mamdani as it condemned the "political normalization" of anti-Zionism

Jewish voters are largely split between Mamdani and Cuomo in polling.

Brad Lander, the city's comptroller who teamed up in the Democratic primary with Mamdani to endorse each other's candidacy against Cuomo, says many Jewish New Yorkers like him are very enthusiastic about Mamdani.

He is a mayoral candidate deeply committed to keeping everyone safe, regardless of religious beliefs, Lander told the BBC.

Sumaiya Chowdhury and Farhana Islam of the group Muslims for Progress have canvassed for the mayoral hopeful.

Ms Islam said while they are all excited that he could be New York's first Muslim mayor, he doesn't need to lean on his identity for support.

"His policies speak for themselves and they alone are enough to make him popular."

Since his primary win, the Islamophobia Mamdani faces has increased. He now has police security and last month a Texas man was arrested on charges of making terroristic threats against him. In one message, the man said "Muslims don't belong here".

Mamdani decided to deliver an address on Islamophobia after Andrew Cuomo laughed along to a radio talkshow host saying that Mamdani would cheer another 9/11-style attack.

In an emotional speech he said he had hoped that by ignoring racist attacks and sticking to a central message, it would allow him to be more than just his faith. "I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough."

Future of the party

What may propel Mamdani to victory in liberal New York may not be a recipe for success nationally. And Democrats in Congress seem worried about the implications of his ascendancy as party tensions between moderates and progressives persist.

Senator Chuck Schumer has not endorsed Mamdani while his fellow New Yorker House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries only endorsed him a few hours before early voting began.

Democratic strategists have said the problem posed by Mamdani for the party's establishment is that Trump and Republicans already cast Democrats, no matter how moderate, as socialists. And it's a tactic that is thought to have landed with some effect among Cuban and Venezuelan voters in the 2024 election.

Josh Gottheimer, the moderate Democratic representative of New Jersey, told the Washington Post he thinks Mamdani has "extremist views" at odds with the Democratic Party and he fears Republicans will use him as a kind of "bogeyman".

At a campaign event on the Upper East Side, Mamdani told the BBC how he plans to handle the intense scrutiny if he wins, pointing to the energy behind his candidacy.

There is no doubt that there will be opposition, he said, but the mass movement behind him will overcome it.

Rescuers and relatives searched knee-deep in water for the body of one-year-old Zara. She'd been swept away by flash floods; the bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been found days earlier.

"We suddenly saw a lot of water. I climbed up to the roof and urged them to join me," Arshad, Zara's grandfather, said, showing the BBC the dirt road where they were taken from him in the village of Sambrial in northern Punjab in August.

His family tried to join him, but too late. The powerful current washed away all six of them.

Every year, monsoon season brings deadly floods in Pakistan.

This year it began in late June, and within three months, floods had killed more than 1,000 people. At least 6.9  million were affected, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs, OCHA.

The South Asian nation is struggling with the devastating consequences of climate change, despite emitting just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To witness its effects, the BBC travelled from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south for three months. In every province, climate change was having a different impact.

There was one element in common, though. The poorest suffer most.

We met people who'd lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones – and they were resigned to going through it all again in the next monsoon.

Lakebursts and flash floods

Monsoon floods started in the north, with global warming playing out in its most familiar form in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.

Amid the high peaks of the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush, there are more than 7,000 glaciers. But due to rising temperatures, they are melting.

The result can be catastrophic: meltwater turns into glacial lakes which can suddenly burst. Thousands of villages are at risk.

This summer hundreds of homes were destroyed and roads damaged by landslides and flash floods.

These "glacial lake outbursts" are hard to warn against. The area is remote and mobile service poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are trying to improve an early warning system, which often doesn't work because of the mountainous terrain.

Community is a powerful asset. When shepherd Wasit Khan woke up to rushing waters, with trailing chunks of ice and debris, he ran to an area with a better signal. He began warning as many villagers as he could.

"I told everyone to leave their belongings, leave the house, take their wives, children and elderly people and get away," he told BBC Urdu's Muhammad Zubair.

Thanks to him, dozens were saved.

The danger took a different form in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In Gadoon, the BBC found hundreds of villagers digging through piles of rocks with their bare hands.

A cloudburst had caused a flash flood early in the morning, a local official said. That happens when a sudden updraft in humid, moist air leads to a heavy and localised burst of rain. The current washed away several homes and triggered a landslide.

Men from neighbouring villages rushed over to help, which was invaluable – but not enough. The excavators the villagers desperately needed were trapped in flooded roads, some blocked by massive rocks.

"Nothing will happen until the machines arrive," one man told the BBC.

Then a silence suddenly blanketed the area. Dozens of men stood still in one corner. The bodies of two children, soaked in dark mud, were pulled from under the rubble, and carried away.

Scenes like this played out across the province, with rescuers delayed due to uprooted trees and major infrastructure being destroyed. A helicopter carrying aid crashed in the bad weather, claiming the lives of all crew on board.

Building on Pakistan's floodplains

In villages and cities, millions have settled around rivers and streams, areas prone to flooding. Pakistan's River Protection Act - which prohibits building within 200 ft (61m) of a river or its tributaries - was meant to solve that issue. But for many it's simply too costly to settle elsewhere.

Illegal construction makes matters worse.

Climate scientist Fahad Saeed blames this on local corruption and believes officials are failing to enforce the law. He spoke to the BBC in Islamabad, next to a half-built, four-storey concrete building as big as a car park - and right by a stream that he saw flood this summer, killing a child.

"Just a few kilometres from parliament and still such things happen in Pakistan," he says, visibly frustrated. "It's because of misgovernance, the role of the government is to be a watchdog."

Former climate minister Senator Sherry Rehman, who chairs the climate committee in Pakistan's Senate, calls it "graft", or simply "looking the other way" when permissions are given for construction in vulnerable areas.

The country's breadbasket submerged

By late August, further south in the province of Punjab, floods had submerged 4,500 villages, overwhelming "Pakistan's breadbasket", in a country that can't always afford to import enough food.

For the first time, three rivers - the Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab - flooded simultaneously, triggering the largest rescue operation in decades.

"It was the most important anomaly," said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, the chief risk officer for the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In Punjab's capital, Lahore, the impact on wealthier and poorer communities was stark. The gated community of Park View City was inundated by the Ravi river, making its prized streets impossible to navigate. Residents of luxury homes were forced to evacuate.

Surveying the damage, two local men, Abdullah and his father Gulraiz, were convinced water would be drained soon, thanks to the area's property developer Aleem Khan, a federal minister.

"No problem, Aleem Khan will do it," Gulraiz told the BBC.

But for residents in the poorer neighbourhood of Theme Park, the floods were crushing. One officer told the BBC they kept having to rescue people who swam back to their homes when the water levels dropped, desperate to salvage whatever they could. But then the water would rise, leaving them stranded.

We saw one man returning from his house, an inflatable donut resting on his hip.

Some residents were moved to tents provided by the Alkhidmat Foundation Pakistan. Sitting outside in the summer heat, Sumera was weeks away from giving birth. She was extremely thin.

"My doctor says I need two blood transfusions this week," she said as she tried to keep hold of her toddler, Arsh.

Nearby, Ali Ahmad was balancing a small kitten he rescued from the floods on his shoulder. The boy was one of the few who had a mattress to sleep on.

By the end of monsoon season, the floods had displaced more than 2.7 million people in Punjab, the UN said, and damaged more than one million hectares of farmland.

Further south in Multan district, always hit hard by floods, the scale of the humanitarian crisis became even clearer, with tents lining dirt roads and highways.

Access to healthcare was already a challenge in rural areas of Pakistan, but once the floods hit, the challenge was unbearable for many women we met.

BBC Urdu's Tarhub Asghar met two sisters-in-law, both nine months pregnant. A doctor had warned them they weren't drinking enough water. They raised a bottle to explain. The water was completely brown.

The search for solutions

Some are trying different solutions.

Architect Yasmeen Lari has designed what she calls "climate-resilient houses" in dozens of villages. In Pono, near Hyderabad, women showed the BBC huts they'd built themselves - a large circular building on wooden stilts. Dr Lari calls it their training centre and says families can move their belongings there and shelter.

But Dr Lari argues building an entire village on stilts would be unfeasible and too expensive. Instead, she says her designs ensure the roofs don't collapse, and that by using natural materials such as bamboo and lime concrete, the homes can be rebuilt quickly by the villagers themselves.

Pakistan has reached a point where "it's not about saving buildings; it's about saving lives," she says.

This is the reality for Pakistan. All the climate scientists and politicians the BBC spoke to warn of an increasingly worrying future.

"Every year the monsoon will become more and more aggressive," Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah at the NDMA said. "Every year, there will be a new surprise for us."

As the country faces the growing and ever-changing challenges posed by climate change, in which the poorest are often the worst affected, there is one refrain from people returning to homes likely to flood next year: "I have nowhere else to go."

When Anna was planning her first visit to Xinjiang in 2015, her friends were perplexed.

"They couldn't understand why I'd visit a place that back then was considered one of China's most dangerous areas."

One of her friends pulled out of the trip and started "ghosting" her on WeChat, said the 35-year-old Chinese national, who did not want to reveal her real name.

"She said her parents forbade her from going anywhere near Xinjiang and did not want to engage further."

Anna went anyway, and returned this June. But it had changed, she says.

"Xinjiang was as beautiful as I remember it, but there are far too many tourists now, especially at the major attractions."

For years, Xinjiang had bristled under Beijing's rule, sometimes erupting into violence, which kept many domestic Chinese tourists away. Then it became infamous for some of the worst allegations of Chinese authoritarianism, from the detention of more than a million Uyghur Muslims in so-called "re-education camps", to claims of crimes against humanity, by the United Nations.

China denies the allegations, but the region is largely cut off to international media and observers, while Uyghurs in exile continue to recount stories of terrified or disappeared relatives.

And yet in recent years Xinjiang has emerged as a tourist destination – within China and, increasingly, outside of the country. Beijing has pumped in billions of dollars to develop infrastructure, help produce TV dramas set in its unusual landscapes, and has occasionally welcomed foreign media on carefully orchestrated tours.

It has been repackaging the controversial region into a tourist haven, touting not just its beauty but also the very local "ethnic" experiences that rights groups say it is trying to erase.

Stretched across China's north-west, Xinjiang borders eight countries. Located along the Silk Road, which fuelled trade between the East and West for centuries, some of its towns are packed with history. It is also home to remote, rugged mountains, majestic canyons, lush grasslands and pristine lakes.

"The views exceeded my expectations by miles," says Singaporean Sun Shengyao, who visited in May 2024 and describes it as "New Zealand, Switzerland and Mongolia all packed into one place".

Unlike most of China which has a Han majority, Xinjiang mostly has Turkic-speaking Muslims, with the Uyghurs being the largest ethnic group. Tensions escalated throughout the 1990s and 2000s as Uyghur allegations of marginalisation by Han Chinese spurred separatist sentiments and deadly attacks, which intensified Beijing's crackdown.

But it is under Xi Jinping that the Chinese Communist Party has begun tightening control like never before, sparking allegations of the forcible assimilation of Uyghurs into Han Chinese culture. On a visit in September, he hailed the region's "earth-shattering" development and called for the "Sinicisation of religion" – the transformation of beliefs to reflect Chinese culture and society.

Meanwhile investment has been pouring into the region. Some 200 international hotels, including prominent names like Hilton and Marriott, are either already operating or planning to open in Xinjiang.

In 2024, the region welcomed some 300 million visitors, more than double the number in 2018, according to Chinese authorities. Tourism revenue from Xinjiang grew about 40% over this period to reach 360 billion yuan ($51bn; £39bn). In the first half of this year, some 130 million tourists visited the region, contributing about 143bn yuan in revenue.

While foreign tourism has been growing, the vast majority are domestic visitors.

Beijing now has an ambitious target: more than 400 million visitors a year, and tourism revenue of 1 trillion yuan by 2030.

Some people are still scared to go. Mr Sun says it took him a while to gather friends for a trip in May 2024 as many of them saw Xinjiang as unsafe. The 23-year-old himself had a bout of the jitters, but as the trip continued, they vanished.

They started off in the bustling streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. They then spent eight days on the road with a Chinese driver, travelling through mountains and lush steppes, which left Mr Sun in awe.

It is common for drivers and tour guides in Xinjiang to be Han Chinese, who now make up about 40% of the region's population. Mr Sun's group did not interact extensively with local Uyghurs, but the few they managed to strike up conversations with were "very welcoming", he says.

Since he has returned, Mr Sun has become somewhat of an advocate for Xinjiang, which he says has been "misunderstood" as dangerous and tense. "If I can inspire just one person to learn more about the province, I would have helped reduce the stigma by a little."

To him, the stunning sights he enjoyed as a tourist seem far removed from the disturbing allegations that put Xinjiang in global headlines. All he saw was evidence that Xinjiang remains highly surveilled, with police checkpoints and security cameras a common sight, and foreigners required to stay in designated hotels.

But Mr Sun was unfazed by that: "There is heavy police presence, but that's not to say that this is a big problem."

Not every tourist is convinced that what they are seeing is the "real" Xinjiang.

Singaporean Thenmoli Silvadorie, who visited with friends in May for 10 days, says: "I was very curious about Uyghur culture and wanted to see how different things may be there. But we were quite disappointed."

She and her friends were wearing hijabs and, she says, Uyghur food vendors had approached them saying they were "envious we could freely wear our hijabs... but we didn't get to have very deep conversations". They also weren't allowed to visit most local mosques, she adds.

Still, the allure for foreign visitors is strong. China itself is a hugely popular destination, and Xinjiang has emerged as an "untouched", less commercialised option.

A growing number of foreigners are "approaching Xinjiang with open minds and a genuine desire to see and assess the truth for themselves", China's state-run newspaper Global Times wrote in May.

The party has also been quick to promote content on Xinjiang by foreign influencers that aligns with the state's narrative. Among them is German vlogger Ken Abroad, who in one of his videos said he'd seen "more mosques [in Xinjiang] than in the US or any countries in Europe".

But others take a different view. Writer Josh Summers, who lived in Xinjiang in the 2010s, tells the BBC the city of Kashgar's Old Town was "completely torn down, reimagined and rebuilt in a way that doesn't reflect Uyghur culture in any way".

According to a Human Rights Watch report from 2024, hundreds of villages in Xinjiang had their names - which were related to the religion, history or culture of Uyghurs - replaced between 2009 and 2023. The group has also accused authorities of closing, destroying and repurposing mosques in Xinjiang and across China to curb the practice of Islam.

Grave rights violations have also been documented by other international organisations, including the UN. The BBC's reporting from 2021 and 2022 found evidence supporting the existence of detention camps, and allegations of sexual abuse and forced sterilisation.

Beijing, however, denies all of this. Within the country, the party has been remaking the image of what was once seen as a troubled province to woo more domestic tourists. And it appears to be working.

When Anna went for the second time, it was with her mother, who was eager to visit after watching a drama series set in the mountainous Altay prefecture in the north. The series, To the Wonder, was funded by the government and promoted on state media.

Altay has plenty of fans on the Chinese internet. "Who would have known that I'd wander into God's secret garden in Altay? At the Ka Nasi Lake, I finally understood what it means to be in paradise. This is a place where the romance of mountains, rivers, lakes and the seas are woven together in a single frame," reads one comment on RedNote.

Another says: "At dawn, I watch from the guesthouse as the cattle graze the fields. Golden birch forests glow in the sunlight, and even the air seems wrapped in sweetness – such undisturbed beauty is the Altay I've always longed for."

Travel agencies describe the region as "exotic" and "mysterious". It offers a "magical fusion of nature and culture you won't experience anywhere else in China", says one such agency, The Wandering Lens. The prices for these tours vary. A 10-day trip could set you back between US$1,500 and US$2,500 (£1,100-1,900), excluding flights.

A typical itinerary for the north would include the Kanas National Park, with outings to alpine lakes and the popular five-coloured beach, and a visit to a Uyghur village where you can ride on carriages and spend time with a Uyghur family.

Things get more adventurous in the south, where trips often include drives through the desert, various lake excursions, and a visit to Kashgar, a 2,000-year-old Silk Road city.

Visitors share their itineraries online, complete with coloured-coded route maps and snaps of Uyghur delicacies, like the spicy stew, "big plate chicken", grilled lamb skewers, and wine made with horse milk. Some even mention "hours-long performances that recreate the splendour of the Silk Road".

If you search for Xinjiang on social media platforms RedNote and Weibo, as you'd expect, you get posts raving about its beauty and iconic architecture. There is no mention of the allegations that clash with this idyllic appeal.

At this time of the year, Chinese social media is awash with photographs of Xinjiang's poplar forests bathed in autumn's amber glow.

The Communist Party is "selling its own version of Uyghur culture by presenting Uyghur people as tourist attractions", says Uyghur-American Irade Kashgary who left the region in 1998.

"They are telling the world we're no more than dancing, colourful folk who look good on social media."

Watching her hometown grow in popularity from across the Pacific, Ms Kashgary, the Uyghur activist, urges tourists to "recognise the serious issues" in Xinjiang.

"It's not my place to tell people not to visit, but they need to realise that what they experience there is a whitewashed version of [Xinjiang]," she says.

"Meanwhile, people like me will never be able to go back because of our activism. It is far too dangerous... and yet, why can't I? This is my homeland."

Robert Medhurst spent most of his freshers' week looking at social media, reading posts about other students' fun nights out.

"I was just in bed," Robert recalls, describing the week as the loneliest time of his life.

Robert's flatmates didn't go out much, and his course didn't feel very sociable.

Despite putting himself out there by going to taster sessions for various societies, he couldn't find his people.

"I started to lose my confidence," he says. "I felt like people didn't want to be friends with me, or they didn't like me."

Initially, Robert had no intention of going to university and had a job offer for after sixth form. But then he saw his friends living it up as students on Instagram and Snapchat.

"When you've got to get up for work on Thursday at 9:00 and you see someone's been out on Wednesday night, you do start thinking the grass is greener," Robert says.

Sick of the FOMO, and wanting to keep his career options open, Robert decided to apply to Nottingham Trent to study business. He chose the university because of its reputation for student life: "I did so much research to make sure I was confident in my choice."

But in a matter of days, Robert was considering dropping out.

"Social media makes it worse," he says of those early months of his first year, explaining that other people's posts about student life can make it feel like "everyone's getting along, but I'm not".

In a TikTok video, Robert posted about feeling lonely during freshers' week. The comments section was flooded with other students sharing similar experiences.

'Some come to uni with rose-tinted glasses'

TV shows and social media can glorify the idea of student life. Lots of people come to university with high expectations for what they think could be the best years of their lives: living with their friends, going on nights out, studying a subject they love, and getting stuck in with a new sport or hobby.

But for some, the experience isn't what they expect.

Some students come to university with "rose-tinted glasses", says Lauren Howard, who manages counselling services at the University of Bradford.

In a poll of freshers in their first week at Swansea University, students' biggest concern was fitting in and feeling included, says Joanne Parfitt, the university's associate director of transition and progression.

And in a survey by market research agency Cibyl, 17% of students said they had no friends at university and 37% said they worried daily or weekly about making friends.

"[New students] find it quite daunting because if you've left school or sixth form, you have your friendship groups that you have to leave," Ms Parfitt says. "For some, it's an opportunity to start again and create a new identity. But for many, it's really daunting."

'I spent a lot of freshers' week in my room. I felt alienated'

Alisha Miah's TikTok feed was full of videos of girls having fun while living together in student houses - having movie nights and picnics, going on trips together.

But when Alisha moved from London to Sheffield in September 2024 to study journalism, she found freshers' week "overwhelming" because of how much alcohol it involved.

Alisha doesn't drink and had never been clubbing before.

"I did spend a lot of freshers' week in my room," she says. "I just felt a bit alienated."

This continued over Alisha's first few months at university. "I felt anxious when socialising," she says. "I also feel I didn't put myself out there enough."

Like Robert, Alisha considered dropping out or switching courses, but decided not to because she felt she was at university to study, not to make friends.

In a 2025 survey of more than 10,000 undergraduate students by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the charity Advance HE, 29% said they had considered dropping out.

The most common reason, was their mental and emotional health, followed by financial concerns.

As new students navigate trying to make friends, living away from family and potentially budgeting for the first time, "it's difficult to imagine a more challenging time", says Mrs Howard, from the University of Bradford.

"Anxiety about all of these different things is massively common, and normal."

'Not the utopia of friendship I thought it would be'

Though Christina Aaliyah Davis enjoyed her time studying medicine at Newcastle University, she says it wasn't the "utopia of friendship" her family told her it would be.

"It was almost like there was this pressure to see university as this magical, friendly place where everyone is singing and dancing together," the 24-year-old doctor says.

When she was in sixth form, she dreamed of having dinners with her university flatmates and hosting Halloween parties. But Christina wasn't very close to her first-year flatmates and sometimes felt lonely.

"I felt like I missed out a little bit," she says.

With time, Robert, Alisha and Christina all found their feet and developed friendships.

Alisha made friends through her course and through TikTok, while Christina felt happier once she was able to move in with friends after her first year.

'My advice? Leave your room!'

For Robert, now 24 and in his final year, it was joining his university's drama society and getting a part-time job at a bar that helped him make friends. He also enjoyed volunteering at freshers' week in his second and third years, helping new students settle in.

Robert's advice to first-year students struggling to socialise is to just "get out of your room" and go to club and society taster events until you find one you enjoy. And he recommends continuing to turn up, even if it feels a bit awkward at first.

"After a few weeks of consistently showing up, people recognise your face," Robert says, "you recognise theirs, and you start making friends".

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The most recent edition of the Football Manager game was played by a mind-blowing 20 million people.

But last year a new game wasn't released, for the first time in its 20-year history.

That's due to significant delays as its studio, Sports Interactive, made massive changes to refresh the series.

Usually, minor tweaks and features are added in new versions.

But what's coming in Football Manager 26 - when it finally releases on 4 November - is closer to a complete rewrite of everything that came before.

Some of the new features are ambitious, to say the least.

It will be the first game ever to feature women's football, including around 40,000 players from 14 leagues.

And the user interface - the system you click through to sign players, read news and get to the football - has been remade.

Essentially, it is no minor update.

"This isn't a continuation," series boss Miles Jacobson told me. "This is a new game - the start of the next 20 years."

He even admitted it wasn't perfect, and said fixes would be needed.

And let's be blunt - as the public beta test nears its end, there are a lot of people online who are frankly furious with many of these changes.

"The user interface sucks," reads one angry comment. "They ruined my favourite game," reads another.

"New leadership is needed," reads a third.

Speaking of the leadership, Jacobson accepted this game could impact his future at the studio.

After last year's cancellation, he told me Football Manager 26 simply needed to be a hit.

"You live and die by your decisions," he said. "If it was the wrong decision then I'm not going to be here in a year's time."

So what is it - a bold new step for one of the best-selling gaming franchises in history, or a colossal misfire akin to Ange Postecoglou's 39-day stint in charge of Nottingham Forest?

Four years of sweat and tears

Fans of women's football will be relieved to know this is no half-measure.

I played through a few seasons as Liverpool in the Women's Super League and was pleasantly surprised by just how well-integrated women are into the game.

"It's been four years of sweat and tears," Sports Interactive's head of women's football research Tina Keech told me.

"This is the biggest database in women's football in video games. We've had to go out and do some real hard work to find this accurate data."

She explained getting the stats of individual players' careers isn't as simple as Googling it - back in the day, clubs weren't so diligent about keeping records.

But Football Manager, of course, is not just a database.

On the pitch, it benefits from new graphics, based on work with women's footballers in the motion capture studio, and a perhaps unlikely source: VAR.

Players' movements in real life have been captured by the tech and turned into animations in the game.

Women's football provides its own unique challenges to the series.

Like in the real world, budgets are much tighter even for the top teams, so you need to be more careful how you spend your money.

For example, I mindlessly appealed against a failed work permit application to sign an international player - an irrelevant sum to a top men's team - only to discover this had wiped out a solid chunk of my transfer budget.

It all felt like playing Football Manager on hard mode, which was a welcome challenge.

But for those of us looking for a way to make the game a bit easier, Keech gave us the inside track on the game's first ever female wonderkids - young footballers who haven't yet hit the big time but who have significant potential.

She told me about two players in particular who can be signed immediately and have the potential to become star players - as long as you have the money.

"Felicia Schröder, I think there were quite a few WSL [Women's Super League] clubs looking at her in the summer, she's out in Sweden, scoring goals for fun," Keech said. "And then Trinity Armstrong, who's out in the US and is supposed to be a really impressive centre-back."

Tactical overhaul

It's the football matches themselves which have faced the biggest changes.

In previous versions, you didn't have much to do between watching the highlights. You could follow the text at the bottom of the screen, but most people just twiddled their thumbs and waited.

But that's all changed - now, you see a small visual representation of what's happening with dots on a screen, harking back to how the game looked in the 00s.

Visually, it's lots of fun, with new camera angles which better reflect how football plays out on the telly.

Another massive new feature - and I appreciate this one is really for the football nerds out there - is an overhaul of the tactics system.

Previously you would have one tactic and individual instructions for players. Now, you can set two different tactics at once - one for when your team has the ball, and one for when they don't.

These completely change the match experience for the better, and coupled with the new graphics, it's fair to say football has never been so much fun in Football Manager.

I'll even admit to clapping my hands and spinning in my chair with excitement when Fūka Nagano blasted in a piledriver from 35 yards - which led to a bunch of staff at the studio gathering around to watch the replay.

But for all the bits that work, there are problems too. The game sometimes felt unfinished.

I played a work-in-progress version of the game when I visited Sports Interactive in October, and since then, I've been playing a "beta" version. So it's possible some of these issues may be addressed by the time the game comes out.

The user interface has been the focus of dissent online, and not without good reason. When it works, it's great - but when you can't figure out how to do something, it's a chore.

Fans will say the old user interface had its problems, but we all knew how to use it - so why change it?

Then there were the bugs. At various times, information displayed incorrectly, menus didn't pop up when I clicked on them, and once a player even seemed to forget to wear their kit in a match and played in a tracksuit instead.

For a lot of people, these aren't deal-breakers, and some may even sound quite petty.

But I'm only listing a few of the problems I encountered. There's no real excuse for all of the problems this close to the game's full release.

Final whistle

After playing the game for quite a few hours, I was torn.

You have to reward the studio for the ambition. The matches are great, and women's football is an excellent addition.

But you can't manage national teams for men or women, only club teams, which seems ridiculous after England goalie Hannah Hampton's heroics this summer - though I've had it confirmed this will be added later as a free update.

And on that point, the studio confirmed to me there will be only one paid extra, an editor that lets you change player's stats. There will be no flood of micro-transactions or season passes, as has become common elsewhere in the gaming industry.

But there are glaring bugs. As someone who's been playing since 2004, it's clear to me the user interface needs many more months of work.

Ultimately, the thing fans will want to know is: can you still be hooked by the new version of a game so addictive it has reportedly been cited in multiple divorce cases?

As I enter my fourth season in charge of Liverpool, following a genuinely devastating 1-0 defeat in the Uefa Women's Champions League final to Arsenal courtesy of a late Alessia Russo goal, my answer probably becomes fairly obvious.

All the changes take some getting used to, but that desire for just "one more match" hasn't gone away.

Does that mean you should get it? I don't know. But I do think the early social media critics should remember one thing that's been a fact of football for decades.

Fans calling for the manager to be sacked should often be careful what they wish for.

Thousands of military homes across the UK will be modernised, refurbished or rebuilt over the next decade under a £9bn government plan to improve defence housing.

The Ministry of Defence's new housing strategy will see improvements made to almost all of its 47,700 homes for military families in what Defence Secretary John Healey said will be the "biggest renewal of Armed Forces housing in more than 50 years".

The plan is in response to consistent complaints from serving personnel about the state of their accommodation.

In 2022, dozens of members and their families told the BBC they were having to live in damp, mould-infested housing without heating.

A Commons defence committee last year found two-thirds of homes for service families needed "extensive refurbishment or rebuilding" to meet modern standards.

Under the new strategy, service family accommodation (SFA) will be refurbished with new kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems.

About 14,000 will receive either "substantial refurbishment" or be completely replaced.

The plans are part of the government's wider defence housing strategy, to be published on Monday. A total of £4bn in funding to tackle the housing problem had already been announced.

The government says it has also identified surplus MoD land which could be used to build 100,000 new homes for civilian and military families.

Healey said: "This is a new chapter - a decisive break from decades of underinvestment, with a building programme to back Britain's military families and drive economic growth across the country."

Almost three years ago, the BBC was contacted by families in military accommodation in Sandhurst who had been living without heating for days.

"We're at breaking point and something has to change. The system is broken," they said at the time.

In response to the story, the MoD said it was working with its contractors to improve the service. But a report released in December last year found those problems "still exist".

"It is shocking that until a policy change in 2022, it was considered acceptable to house families in properties known to have damp and mould," the report said.

The MoD last year announced it would acquire 36,347 military houses from property company Annington Homes for nearly £6bn, reversing a privatisation deal struck in 1996 under the Conservative government.

The deal would save millions in rent and maintenance costs, the MoD said, money that would be put towards fixing military accommodation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the defence of Pokrovsk is a "priority", as elite special force were deployed to the embattled town on the eastern front line.

Ukrainian army sources told the BBC that special forces from military intelligence and assault groups were being used as regular infantry to protect supply lines to troops holding the town in the Donbas region.

There have been growing reports of Russian advances around the strategic town to the west of Donetsk. Ukraine has denied claims their forces were surrounded.

Moscow wants Kyiv to cede the entire Donbas region as part of a peace deal, including the parts it currently does not control.

Russia currently controls around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula it annexed in 2014.

The deployment of special forces suggests officials in Kyiv are determined to try to hold onto the town, which Russia has been trying to seize for more than a year.

Local media reports that the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, was in the region to personally oversee the operation.

Pokrovsk is a key transport and supply hub whose capture could unlock Russian efforts to seize the rest of the region.

But Kyiv also believes its capture would help Russia in its efforts to persuade the US that its military campaign was succeeding - and, therefore, that the West should acquiesce to its demands.

Washington has grown increasingly frustrated with the Kremlin's failure to move forward with peace negotiations - culminating in US President Donald Trump placing sanctions on its two largest oil producers and axing plans for a summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky has indicated he was open to Trump's proposal for a ceasefire that would freeze the war along the current front lines. Russia has publicly insisted Ukrainian troops leave the remainder of the Donbas.

In his nightly address, the Ukrainian president said: "Pokrovsk is our priority. We continue to destroy the occupier, and that is what matters most... They must be halted where they have reached - and destroyed there."

Images shared with news agencies appear show a Ukrainian Black Hawk helicopter deploying about 10 troops near Pokrovsk, although the location and date could not be verified.

Russia's defence ministry has claimed it thwarted the deployment of Ukrainian military intelligence special forces north-west of the town, saying all 11 troops who landed by helicopter had been killed.

DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source monitoring group, estimates about half of Pokrovsk is a so-called "grey zone" where neither side is in full control.

A military source in Donetsk told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were not surrounded but their supply lines were under fire from Russian troops.

"The situation in the city has changed so much that [Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General] Syrsky is now sending elite units into the city to stabilise it," he said.

These included special forces and assault units in Ukraine's Defence Intelligence agency (GUR), he said.

"Fighting is now taking place for the railway station and the industrial zone in the west. The battles for the industrial zone have almost reduced logistics from roughly vehicle-based to foot-based.

"The Ukrainian Armed Forces are not in a physical encirclement, but in an operational one - this means that all logistics are under fire control."

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Ukrainian forces had "marginally advanced" during recent counter-attacks north of Pokrovsk, but said the town was "mainly a contested 'grey zone'".

A flight carrying British aid arrived in Jamaica early on Saturday to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Melissa, as the UK plans its first chartered flight to bring British nationals home later on Saturday.

The aid flight brought more than 3,000 emergency shelter kits as part of a £7.5 million regional emergency package.

Part of the funding will be used to match donations to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent - with King Charles and Queen Camilla among those who have donated.

Despite aid arriving in Jamaica in recent days, fallen trees and landslides have complicated distribution efforts after Hurricane Melissa devastated parts of the island, killing at least 19 people.

The hurricane made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a category five storm and was one of the most powerful hurricanes ever measured in the Caribbean.

Melissa swept across the region over a number of days and left behind a trail of destruction and dozens of people dead. In Haiti, at least 30 people were killed, while Cuba also saw flooding and landslides.

Jamaica's Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon said on Friday "there are entire communities that seem to be marooned and areas that seem to be flattened".

The UK initially set aside a £2.5 million immediate financial support package, with an additional £5 million announced by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Friday.

Cooper said the announcement came as "more information is now coming through on the scale of devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, with homes damaged, roads blocks and lives lost".

The British Red Cross said, as of Saturday morning, that 72% people across Jamaica still do not have electricity and around 6,000 are in emergency shelters.

The organisation said the King and Queen's donation would help the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) "continue its lifesaving work" - which includes search and rescue efforts in Jamaica as well as ensuring access to healthcare, safe shelter and clean water.

Although aid is entering the country, landslides, downed power lines and fallen trees have made some roads impassable. The situation has made it difficult to get aid to the worst-hit areas.

Some communities are being affected by water shortages, while the BBC has seen queues for petrol pumps, with people waiting for hours to then be told there is no fuel left when they reach the front of the queue.

Some people are seeking fuel for generators, others for a car to reach an area in which they can contact people, as the power is still down across most of the island.

Around 8,000 British nationals were thought to have been on the island when the hurricane hit.

The UK's first chartered flight to bring British citizens home is set to leave Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport late on Saturday.

The UK foreign office has asked travellers to register their presence on the island.

The department also advises travellers to contact their airline to check whether commercial options are available.

Emergency services have been called after "multiple people" were stabbed on a train.

British Transport Police are currently responding to the incident on a train to Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Cambridgeshire Police are also at the scene and two people have been arrested.

No details about how many people have been stabbed have been released, or how serious the injuries are.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.

The Kenyan government has confirmed that 21 people have died following a landslide in the western part of the country after heavy rainfall.

Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said the bodies had been transferred to a nearby airstrip after the landslide in Marakwet East late on Friday night.

He said on X that more than 30 people were still unaccounted for after being reported missing by their families while 25 people with serious injuries had been airlifted to receive further medical attention.

The Kenyan Red Cross, which is helping to coordinate rescue efforts, said that the most affected areas are still not accessible by road due to mudslides and flash flooding.

The Kenyan government paused the search and rescue operation on Saturday evening but said it would resume on Sunday.

"Preparation to supply more food and non-food relief items to the victims is underway," said Murkomen, adding: "Military and police choppers are on standby to transport the items."

Kenya is in its second rainy season when it usually experiences a few weeks of wet weather compared to a heavier, more prolonged period earlier in the year.

The government has urged people living near seasonal rivers as well as areas that experienced landslides on Friday to move to safer ground.

Meanwhile, flash flooding and landslides in Uganda, near the border with Kenya, have killed a number of people since last Wednesday.

On Saturday, the Uganda Red Cross said another mudslide had occurred in Kapsomo village in the east of the country, destroying a house and killing four people inside.

The Red Cross said floods had severely affected most villages near riverbanks in the Bulambuli District.

It said continuous heavy rainfall had caused the River Astiri and the River Sipi "to overflow, resulting in widespread destruction of homes, crop fields, and community infrastructure".

A sea of people flowed along the roads leading up to Novi Sad railway station.

They came in their tens of thousands to remember the 16 people who died there this time last year, on another unseasonably warm and sunny autumn day.

The victims were standing or sitting underneath a concrete canopy at the recently-renovated facility, when it collapsed. The two youngest were just six years old, the oldest, 77.

Regular protests have rocked Serbia in the 12 months that have followed. But on Saturday morning, the huge crowd participated in an event that put the emphasis on quiet commemoration.

At 11:52 (10:52 GMT), the time of the disaster, they observed a silence for 16 minutes - one for each of the victims. Family members cried. One woman needed to be physically supported by men wearing the red berets of armed forces veterans.

After the silence, relatives laid flowers at the front of the station.

The rubble of the collapsed canopy has been cleared away, but otherwise the building appears to have remained untouched since the disaster.

Twisted metal protruding from the walls and broken glass still offer evidence of the catastrophe.

• Fourteen dead in Serbia railway station canopy collapse
• Fury over Serbia station tragedy prompts first arrests

Novi Sad station was supposed to be a symbol of Serbia's progress, under President Aleksandar Vučić's Progressive Party. The country's second city would be a key stop on the high-speed railway line whipping passengers from Belgrade to Budapest in less than three hours.

Vučić and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban jointly opened the renovated facility in 2022. Its angular, Yugoslav-era form had been upgraded as part of the high-speed project.

But now, after another renovation and the disaster that followed, the station stands as the prime example of everything that is wrong in Serbia.

For the government's flagship infrastructure project to prove deadly to its citizens was more than many people could bear. They took to the streets, carrying placards reading "corruption kills".

University students quickly took leadership.

Anti-government demonstrations are not exactly a novelty in Serbia, but in contrast to previous movements which fizzled out, the student-led anti-corruption protests have persisted.

"Every other protest movement was organised by political opposition parties and people in Serbia don't trust them," says Aleksa, a 23-year-old management student at Novi Sad University.

"We are the most trusted group in the country - that's why, even though we have made mistakes, people believe in us."

The students have shunned the opposition parties. After initially demanding accountability from the authorities, they are now calling for fresh elections.

They plan to submit a list of independent, expert candidates who could run a technocratic government. This would, they say, be the best way to rid Serbian institutions of the cronyism and corruption which they hold responsible for the railway station disaster.

In September, 13 people, including former construction, infrastructure and Transport Minister Goran Vesić, were charged in a criminal case over the collapse.

A resolution in the European Parliament last month called for full and transparent legal proceedings and an assessment "of potential corruption or negligence" - underlining the "need to examine more broadly the extent to which corruption led to the lowering of safety standards and contributed to this tragedy".

The government has denied accusations of corruption.

The student protesters' approach has gained the respect of some opposition leaders.

"They showed integrity and perseverance," says Biljana Djordjević, an MP and co-leader of the Green-Left Front.

"The new generation have found their way of participating, that is the difference this time. They have cut across generations in the families, we always wanted them to be more vocal, and now they are."

Political scientist Srdjan Cvijić, from the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, believes the students have cut through in a way that Serbia's opposition parties simply could no longer do.

"Until last year, the regime had been effectively managing to render traditional politics disgusting to the overall population," he says.

"They haven't managed to do so with the student movement and the result is that the student movement has managed to pierce into the traditional electorate of the ruling party in a way that nobody previously managed to do."

Perhaps this explains a sudden change in tone from President Vučić. He has generally taken a combative line with the protesters, accusing them of attempting a "colour revolution" - the kind of popular movements that were behind pro-European protests which toppled governments in European countries in earlier years.

These changes in former Soviet republics in the early years of the 21st Century pushed the likes of Georgia and Ukraine in a pro-EU direction.

But on the eve of the commemoration, Vučić apologised for his fiery rhetoric towards protesters, claiming that he had "said some things that I am now sorry for saying".

The students responded dismissively. They told the president, "You have blood on your hands."

This day may have been about respect and remembrance. But the anger remains.

US President Donald Trump has unveiled renovations to the bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, as his remodelling of the White House continues.

Trump shared photos of the new bathroom on social media, saying it had been "renovated in the 1940s in an art deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era".

He claimed the new black and white marble is "very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!".

It is the latest change Trump has made to the White House this year. In October, its East Wing was demolished to make way for his new multi-million dollar ballroom.

The bathroom is a part of Abraham Lincoln's office and cabinet room, which former President Harry Truman fixed up as a part of his massive renovation of the White House in the late 1940s.

The wallpaper of Lincoln's office and bedroom was once coloured in green and gold, according to the White House Historical Association.

After Trump's remodelling, it now features gold fixtures and accents for the sink, bathtub faucet and shower door, as well as a chandelier.

The US president's attempts to put his own stamp on the White House has prompted criticism from conservation groups and his political opponents.

Trump previously said his ballroom addition to the East Wing would not "interfere with the current building". But in October, he said the "existing structure" had to be torn down.

Conservationists argued Trump should have sought public review before making the changes, which they say would overwhelm the classical style of the White House.

Other changes include his decision in August to pave over grass in the iconic Rose Garden with stone, transforming a lawn into a patio.

Trump also added touches of gilded gold all over the Oval Office, including additional portraits framed in gold, gold-framed mirrors and a gold leaf for the presidential seal on the ceiling of the office.

In response to his latest bathroom renovation, the Democrats accused Trump of being more focused on remaking the White House than solving the government shutdown, which is now entering its second month.

"Donald Trump actually cares more about his toilet than he does about fixing your healthcare," Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a post on social media.

Democrats are pushing to renew expiring health insurance subsidies, which they say will hit American families. Republicans say they will discuss the subsidies when the government reopens.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the defence of Pokrovsk is a "priority", as elite special force were deployed to the embattled town on the eastern front line.

Ukrainian army sources told the BBC that special forces from military intelligence and assault groups were being used as regular infantry to protect supply lines to troops holding the town in the Donbas region.

There have been growing reports of Russian advances around the strategic town to the west of Donetsk. Ukraine has denied claims their forces were surrounded.

Moscow wants Kyiv to cede the entire Donbas region as part of a peace deal, including the parts it currently does not control.

Russia currently controls around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula it annexed in 2014.

The deployment of special forces suggests officials in Kyiv are determined to try to hold onto the town, which Russia has been trying to seize for more than a year.

Local media reports that the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, was in the region to personally oversee the operation.

Pokrovsk is a key transport and supply hub whose capture could unlock Russian efforts to seize the rest of the region.

But Kyiv also believes its capture would help Russia in its efforts to persuade the US that its military campaign was succeeding - and, therefore, that the West should acquiesce to its demands.

Washington has grown increasingly frustrated with the Kremlin's failure to move forward with peace negotiations - culminating in US President Donald Trump placing sanctions on its two largest oil producers and axing plans for a summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky has indicated he was open to Trump's proposal for a ceasefire that would freeze the war along the current front lines. Russia has publicly insisted Ukrainian troops leave the remainder of the Donbas.

In his nightly address, the Ukrainian president said: "Pokrovsk is our priority. We continue to destroy the occupier, and that is what matters most... They must be halted where they have reached - and destroyed there."

Images shared with news agencies appear show a Ukrainian Black Hawk helicopter deploying about 10 troops near Pokrovsk, although the location and date could not be verified.

Russia's defence ministry has claimed it thwarted the deployment of Ukrainian military intelligence special forces north-west of the town, saying all 11 troops who landed by helicopter had been killed.

DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source monitoring group, estimates about half of Pokrovsk is a so-called "grey zone" where neither side is in full control.

A military source in Donetsk told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were not surrounded but their supply lines were under fire from Russian troops.

"The situation in the city has changed so much that [Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General] Syrsky is now sending elite units into the city to stabilise it," he said.

These included special forces and assault units in Ukraine's Defence Intelligence agency (GUR), he said.

"Fighting is now taking place for the railway station and the industrial zone in the west. The battles for the industrial zone have almost reduced logistics from roughly vehicle-based to foot-based.

"The Ukrainian Armed Forces are not in a physical encirclement, but in an operational one - this means that all logistics are under fire control."

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Ukrainian forces had "marginally advanced" during recent counter-attacks north of Pokrovsk, but said the town was "mainly a contested 'grey zone'".

A flight carrying British aid arrived in Jamaica early on Saturday to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Melissa, as the UK plans its first chartered flight to bring British nationals home later on Saturday.

The aid flight brought more than 3,000 emergency shelter kits as part of a £7.5 million regional emergency package.

Part of the funding will be used to match donations to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent - with King Charles and Queen Camilla among those who have donated.

Despite aid arriving in Jamaica in recent days, fallen trees and landslides have complicated distribution efforts after Hurricane Melissa devastated parts of the island, killing at least 19 people.

The hurricane made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a category five storm and was one of the most powerful hurricanes ever measured in the Caribbean.

Melissa swept across the region over a number of days and left behind a trail of destruction and dozens of people dead. In Haiti, at least 30 people were killed, while Cuba also saw flooding and landslides.

Jamaica's Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon said on Friday "there are entire communities that seem to be marooned and areas that seem to be flattened".

The UK initially set aside a £2.5 million immediate financial support package, with an additional £5 million announced by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Friday.

Cooper said the announcement came as "more information is now coming through on the scale of devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, with homes damaged, roads blocks and lives lost".

The British Red Cross said, as of Saturday morning, that 72% people across Jamaica still do not have electricity and around 6,000 are in emergency shelters.

The organisation said the King and Queen's donation would help the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) "continue its lifesaving work" - which includes search and rescue efforts in Jamaica as well as ensuring access to healthcare, safe shelter and clean water.

Although aid is entering the country, landslides, downed power lines and fallen trees have made some roads impassable. The situation has made it difficult to get aid to the worst-hit areas.

Some communities are being affected by water shortages, while the BBC has seen queues for petrol pumps, with people waiting for hours to then be told there is no fuel left when they reach the front of the queue.

Some people are seeking fuel for generators, others for a car to reach an area in which they can contact people, as the power is still down across most of the island.

Around 8,000 British nationals were thought to have been on the island when the hurricane hit.

The UK's first chartered flight to bring British citizens home is set to leave Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport late on Saturday.

The UK foreign office has asked travellers to register their presence on the island.

The department also advises travellers to contact their airline to check whether commercial options are available.

A man who died in a helicopter crash in Doncaster on Thursday has been named by his family as Peter Smith, aged 70.

The pilot, 41, and two other passengers, a 58-year-old woman and a boy, 10, suffered minor injuries.

In a statement released by South Yorkshire Police, the family described Mr Smith as "a beloved husband, father and grandfather" and said they were "all devastated by this sudden loss".

"He had a real passion for aviation, and this was something he shared with his family," they added.

"He particularly liked to spend time with his grandchildren doing crafts and playing. He was a proud family man who spent a lot of his time with his son, both working with and socially. Peter loved to have meals out with his wife and had a particularly sweet tooth."

The aircraft had taken off from Retford Gamston Airport, in Nottinghamshire, shortly before it crashed in the Doncaster suburb of Bentley, off Ings Lane, just after 10:00 GMT.

South Yorkshire Police and the government's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) have launched a joint investigation into the incident.

In the statement, the family said they were supporting the investigation and asked people "to not speculate on the circumstances surrounding the accident".

"We would like to ask for privacy during this incredibly difficult time to allow us to come to terms with what has occurred and grieve for the loss of Peter," they added.

A spokesperson for the AAIB said a team of experts in aircraft operations, engineering and recorded data had been deployed to the site on Thursday.

The aircraft is understood to have been owned by Kuki Helicopters, based at Retford Gamston Airport. The firm said it would "continue to support" the agencies involved in the investigation into the crash.

The firm, which according to its website offers flying lessons and experiences, said in a post on Facebook: "At this very sad time all our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of all those involved in the helicopter incident which happened yesterday."

The statement continued: "Our heartfelt condolences are sent to everyone affected by this tragedy and we will of course continue to support relevent agencies involved in the continuing investigation."

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

A woman has been charged over a theft at the Louvre Museum in Paris last month, French media report.

The 38-year-old, who has not been named, was charged with complicity in organised theft and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime. She appeared before a magistrate, who will decide whether to detain her.

The woman was arrested earlier this week with four others. Two men who had previously been arrested were already charged with theft and criminal conspiracy after officials said they had "partially recognised" their involvement in the heist.

Jewels worth €88m (£76m; $102m) were taken from the world's most-visited museum on 19 October.

Four men carried out the daylight theft.

Two of the alleged thieves - who had been arrested earlier - later admitted their involvement in the theft, while the fourth person has not yet been caught.

Appearing before the magistrate on Saturday, the woman was in tears as she confirmed that she lived in Paris' northern suburb of La Courneuve suburb, a journalist working for the AFP news agency reported.

The hearing then continued behind closed doors at the prosecution's request.

She was one of the five people arrested earlier this week in and around the French capital, including the suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. One of those held has been released without charge.

However, one of the five is thought to have taken part in the heist.

Thousands of people from some of Scotland's most deprived areas are to be offered free weight-loss jabs as part of government-funded research.

Up to 5,000 people in Scotland will take the injections as part of the multi-million pound study being led by Glasgow University.

The findings will provide insight into the lives of people living with obesity and health inequalities across the UK.

If successful, it could lead to a wider rollout of the injections throughout the country.

The jabs copy or boost the effects of natural hormones called incretins, which control blood sugar levels.

They act on areas of the brain which impact hunger and appetite and can slow down how fast the stomach empties. This may help people living with obesity regulate their eating habits.

The UK government has provided an initial £650,000 for the Scotland CardioMetabolic Impact Study (SCoMIS).

As a leading cause of long-term illness such as heart disease and cancer, tackling obesity will help millions live longer healthier lives and reduce the pressure on health services, potentially saving the NHS billions annually.

UK Health Innovation Minister Dr Zubir Ahmed said: "As a practicing NHS surgeon and Glasgow MP, I know firsthand the impact of the obesity crisis that plagues Scotland – and the litany of health problems it leads to.

"More than 1 in 3 adults in Scotland's most deprived areas are living with obesity. The UK government is committed to tackling inequality wherever it finds it in our country.

"It's why this landmark UK government investment is targeting help where it's needed most in Scotland and meeting people where they are and backing helping the NHS services they trust to treat them."

Aims of the study:

• To test how weight‑loss medicines can be delivered effectively and fairly in everyday NHS care.
• To measure the level of weight loss and improvements in quality of life, particularly for patients in disadvantaged areas.
• To examine the impact on obesity‑related illness, NHS use, and overall healthcare costs.
• To explore whether better health through weight loss can help people stay in work, reduce sick leave, and take a fuller part in society.

Jason Gill, professor of cardiometabolic health at Glasgow University, who is leading the study, said: "While tackling obesity requires multifactorial public health action, incretin therapies add a powerful new tool to the national obesity strategy.

"The burden of obesity is greatest in the most deprived segments of society and the status quo risks widening health inequalities.

"SCoMIS aims to be a landmark real‑world study evaluating a new model of obesity care, providing incretin treatment via primary and community care to Scottish adults living with obesity, with a focus on those in the most economically deprived communities."

'Cutting-edge research'

Jenni Minto, Scottish minister for public health, said the Scottish government was proud to be leading the way in tackling obesity through innovation and collaboration.

"This study places patients and communities at the heart of cutting-edge research into weight-loss medicines, ensuring we build the evidence needed to deliver the greatest benefit to those who need it most," she said.

UK Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Scotland has always been at the forefront of medical innovation and public health, and this initiative is further proof of the world-class expertise that can be found here.

"By learning how these weight-loss medicines work, and how we can support them to reach our most deprived areas, we can slash health inequalities in Scotland and the rest of the UK so that our obesity strategy delivers a real, lasting change."

The study, which will be launched next year, also involves industry leaders Novo Nordisk and IQVIA, as well as clinical leaders at the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh.

They will work out how to make best use of AI driven digital technologies to support patient access, engagement and data collection.

The study will involve 3,000 to 5,000 Scottish patients living with obesity who will benefit from the medicines the most.

Americans are expected to see skyrocketing health care prices as the open enrollment period for insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace begins on Saturday.

About 24 million people buy health insurance through the marketplace, the majority of whom used to receive tax credits to lower the monthly price of insurance.

Without credits, the monthly cost could rise by 114% on average, according to health research nonprofit KFF. This could mean an extra $1,000 a year, and in some cases much more.

Democrats have demanded the healthcare subsidies, which expire at the end of the year, be extended in exchange for ending the month-long federal government shutdown.

Republican leaders have argued the health insurance issue should be dealt with separately, and after the government reopens. Though some conservative lawmakers have expressed concerns with the subsidies ending.

For those who have previously made use of the tax credits, the new costs could be a shock.

Stacy Cox and her husband, who are small business owners in Utah, were paying $495 (£376) a month for health insurance.

Ms Cox said that without the tax credits, their monthly premiums are estimated to rise to $2,168, a 338% increase.

"It's horrific to actually see real numbers," she said.

If the subsidies are not extended, Ms Cox said she and her husband will cancel their health plan and buy some type of emergency insurance, which would not cover any of their routine and preventative health care costs.

The back-up plan is worrying for Ms Cox, who has an autoimmune disease, and her husband, who has hereditary cardiovascular disease.

"It's horribly stressful, because what I know is that the emergency plan is not going to cover what I need," she said.

Experts say that about seven million people like Ms Cox are expected to stop buying health insurance through the marketplace if the tax credits end. Of those, around four to five million are expected to lose health care coverage altogether because they won't be able to find other means, some experts suggest.

Lawmakers remain at an impasse over the issue, as they enter the second month of the government shutdown.

Democrats are seeking to renew the subsidies and reverse steep cuts President Donald Trump made to Medicaid, the government-run programme which provides healthcare insurance for low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticised the subsidies as a part of Obamacare legislation that they do not support.

But at least a few conservative lawmakers have said they want the tax credits to continue, including Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has said she is "absolutely disgusted" by the subsidies ending.

Americans were also facing the possibility of a suspension of food aid used by more than 40 million people, because of the government shutdown.

But judges on Friday ruled that the Trump administration must pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits using emergency funds.

President Donald Trump reacted to the legal decision via Truth Social on Friday, saying: "our government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two Courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do.

"I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible," he said.

"You might think this is about Andrew," a senior Whitehall figure wonders out loud.

"But put this in your diary as a pivot point in the relationship between Palace and Parliament."

Will this royal mess usher in a new era? And despite their conventional refusal to comment, could politicians become quicker to point out the monarchy's flaws, and more willing to speak out?

"Nice try!" was the then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's response when he was asked by reporters about the original, disastrous interview with the man who was until 48 hours ago afforded his title Prince Andrew, back in 2019.

That just about sums up the response - for years. Ministers would rather do almost anything than speak out on the saga.

"It was more than being allergic - you were going into a no-win scenario," a former No 10 official recalls. "You either incur the wrath of the Palace, or you look like you are defending the indefensible."

The avoid-it-if-you-possibly-can tactic was not just associated with the long-running Andrew saga. For many years, the broad convention has been that senior politicians who want to get near government keep their mouths diplomatically shut about the royals, aside from bland praise, or supportive quiet murmuring.

And the convention worked both ways - with the Royal Family never talking about political matters in public. Polite nods in both directions were the order of the day. It has been deliberate - "don't upset the Queen, don't upset the King."

In our political system, it's hard to think of other areas where there is the same kind of unwritten rule. The former No 10 source says the prime minister is rarely told to not do something, but when it comes to the royals, aides and officials are "preprogrammed" to advise: do not get involved.

There have, of course, always been notable exceptions.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a republican, and questioned whether the royal family should be scaled back.

Boris Johnson infuriated the Palace when he closed down Parliament for weeks, suspected of seeking to stop MPs trying to thwart his ambition to take the UK out of the EU. For the Palace, that nakedly political action was deeply uncomfortable.

David Cameron was rapped on the knuckles when he claimed the late queen "purred" down the phone line when he told her the result of the Scottish referendum.

The leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, tells me they are a republican party, and there are plenty of proud republicans peppered through Labour, the SNP, and Lib Dem ranks, although those aren't the parties' official positions.

The truth is, for those in, or close to power, the monarchy is not just a fact of political life, but part of it. The reason? Don't forget, the crown is depicted on the headed paper of government documents, on the front of our laws, and stamped on the side of ministers' red boxes. The government is his or her majesty's administration.

Ministers are appointed by the Crown. And that's not just abstract. Senior politicians who attend the Privy Council will see the monarch on a regular basis. The prime minister famously has an "audience", a one-to-one chat, with the King every week.

So the government and Palace are fundamentally connected through process and personalities. Insiders underline these real relationships are another reason for not taking potshots.

In the last few weeks, however, there is no question there's been a bolder appetite in Parliament. Revelation after revelation about Andrew's behaviour has prompted an unusual level of chatter. We've seen MPs trying to force a change in the law for him to lose his titles.

The Lib Dems pondered using their allotted time in the Commons to debate cranking up the pressure. And the powerful Public Accounts Committee has been demanding answers over Andrew paying only a peppercorn rent at his home in Windsor. Even though his big brother is calling in the removal vans, the PAC is still waiting for responses to its queries. Depending on the responses it gets, they may still launch a bigger investigation into the financial trail.

And while it still seems unlikely, the committee's MPs could even summon Andrew to give evidence to them.

American politicians have threatened to do the same - and UK Trade Minister Chris Bryant said on Friday morning he should attend if asked to do so, as any "decent person" would.

Even a few weeks ago, it's hard to imagine those kinds of comments escaping the mouth of any member of a British government.

The nature of the allegations - and arguably the Palace's hesitation to take bolder action over a long period of time - has changed the mood, reflecting, as politicians often do, the public's attitude.

"The truth is we are very supportive of the Royal Family and the King," one opposition source said. "But lots of people we spoke to knocking on doors were so unhappy, so we felt it needed to get sorted."

Unease about royal behaviour had spread way beyond regular critics of the monarchy – Robert Jenrick and Sir Ed Davey bringing it up "sent shockwaves".

And sources suggest messages were being quietly conveyed from government too. One said: "'people [...] politely saying to the Palace this is not going away and this is difficult - the government saying 'eek, this isn't going away' - will have been part of it."

It is also the case that the royal furore has been incredibly convenient for the government this week - grabbing headlines while Chancellor Rachel Reeves' behaviour was being questioned.

During royal scandals, "you breathe a sigh of relief as you guys - the media - go crackers over something else," a former No 10 official told me.

By her own admission, Reeves broke the rules. She didn't get her story straight at the start. Had the King made his decision a few days earlier or a few days later, the chancellor's embarrassment might have been building into a bigger scandal.

It'd be wrong to suggest it was politicians who sent Andrew packing. The King was very unusually heckled. There have been years of unease over Andrew's behaviour. Allegation after allegation.

Several weeks ago Virginia Giuffre's family went on my show and said Lord Mandelson should never have been the UK ambassador to the US.

But the role of Parliament and politicians did matter, a source says. Another Whitehall insider tells me it started in Parliament - and the Palace "would have been aware that it was becoming a bigger issue" there.

While technically, of course, the monarch is the ultimate boss, Parliament writes the cheques, through what's known as the Sovereign Grant, and has the power to scrutinise the Palace's spending.

So what now? Some MPs perhaps have a taste for exerting pressure on the royals. There is the possibility of a full investigation into Andrew's finances. There are already calls for a debate about removing Andrew from the line of succession. That would require a change of the law. It's not a tempting prospect for a weak government to pursue that kind of deeply controversial business.

But one insider tells me: "There are quite a lot of politicians in both houses who have wanted to get into this over the years and now Andrew has opened the door ajar and they can now push it fully open and go in."

Perhaps royal rows will become a more regular part of our political fare.

What another former Downing Street figure described as the "blanket blah-blah-blah, we can't comment" approach might have had its day.

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It's fright night in the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom!

Stars are gearing up for the contest's annual Halloween Week on Saturday evening, with songs by Charli XCX, Lady Gaga and Benson Boone in the mix.

It's one of a number of themed weeks that happen every year - the others are Movies, Blackpool, Musicals and Icons.

It comes as speculation continues to mount over who will replace presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, after their announcement last week that they will be leaving at the end of the current series.

Fans outside Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire suggested names including Alesha Dixon, Zoe Ball and Alison Hammond as possible new hosts.

This year's Strictly grand finale is on 20 December, and the BBC said Winkleman and Daly's final appearance would be the Christmas Day special.

During last week's show, the duo nodded to the news of their departure, as they thanked audiences for their "beautiful messages".

This weekend will also see a special performance from Celebrity Traitors star Cat Burns, who will appear during Sunday night's results show.

Here's who is dancing on Saturday night - and to what:

• Alex and Johannes - Salsa to Horny by Mousse T feat. Hot 'n' Juicy
• Amber and Nikita - Viennese Waltz to I See Red by Everybody Loves an Outlaw
• Balvinder and Julian - Samba to Stay by Shakespears Sister
• Ellie and Vito - Tango to Abracadabra by Lady Gaga
• George and Alexis - Cha Cha Cha to Apple by Charli XCX
• Harry and Karen - American Smooth to Mystical Magical by Benson Boone
• Karen and Carlos - Argentine Tango to Red Right Hand by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• La Voix and Aljaž - Paso Doble to Beethoven's 5th
• Lewis and Katya - Couple's Choice to Creep by Radiohead
• Vicky and Kai - American Smooth to Total Eclipse of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler

Stop reading now if you want to avoid spoilers from last Saturday's Icons Week

Last week, Emmerdale star Lewis Cope and his dance partner Katya Jones led the pack with 34 points, after their Johnny Cash Quickstep impressed the judges.

La Voix brought the laughs - belting out Cher's Believe before diving into a Salsa to Strong Enough. The judges noted there was room for improvement, but La Voix's charisma on the dancefloor was lauded.

Other highlights included a mood-boosting dance by Ellie Goldstein and her partner Vito Coppola, who packed a punch with a dynamic Salsa to a Spice Girls medley. Goldstein even got a heart-warming video message from her favourite Spice Girl, Baby.

Despite some impressively garish trousers, YouTuber George Clarke hit a bum note with his Jive to Harry Styles' As It Was. Craig Revel Horwood, acerbic as ever, called it "flat footed", and Clarke and his partner Alexis Warr crashed out with the lowest score this evening - at 27.

But in the end, it was Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and his partner Lauren Oakley who left the competition follow a dance off against Amber Davies and Nikita Kuzmin.

This Saturday night, the remaining couples will undergo terrifying transformations as they perform routines they hope will win over the judges and audiences at home.

We can expect judges Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke to embrace the Halloween spirit too - with all eyes on what costumes they might opt for.

Halloween week is also a milestone, as week six is almost halfway through the competition.

Fans can expect to enjoy plenty of tricks and treats from the vampires, zombies and skeletons.

But as always - the couple whose performance doesn't quite cast a spell will be banished during Sunday night's results show.

Strictly Come Dancing is broadcast live at 18:35 on BBC One and on BBC iPlayer.

Eighty-one-year-old Viv Truran is very particular about how she takes her photos.

"We do it in portrait for social," she says, matter-of-factly.

Viv is embracing life as an online fashion content creator who regularly goes viral and is part of a growing number of women in later life turning to Instagram and TikTok to express themselves.

"I don't mind being called a 'silver surfer' or a 'silver influencer'. I'll take that," she said.

"Can you believe over five million people have seen me? I just can't get over it."

With almost 300,000 followers on Instagram, the content creator, who was born and raised in Cardiff, shares daily videos of her outfits and styling tips.

Her followers are from across the globe and she said they varied in age from people in their 20s to over-65s.

"I love the youngsters because they want me to be their grandma."

Viv said it was only when she got comments on her posts asking where her outfits were from that she became "for the want of a better word, an influencer".

After a career involving stints in the civil service and British Telecom, Viv became "Del Boy on legs" as a "wheeling and dealing" antique dealer in her late 40s.

But what does she think is at the heart of her success in her "third career"?

"I think people want authenticity and I think, I hope, I'm authentic. What you see is what you get."

Sherry Grossi, 81, from North Carolina in the US, tries to "give a lot of encouragement" to her almost 130,000 followers on Instagram and 30,000 on TikTok.

"I find that women, as they age, get booked into a certain category and you're supposed to slow down and you're not supposed to do this or that and, to me, that's totally wrong."

The businesswoman, mother and grandmother is pleased to see social media embracing people in later life and is determined to prove to older people that they shouldn't allow anyone to put them into categories.

"I see a lot more older influencers. People are thinking that 80 is the new 60, and 60 is the new 40.

"If I can do it at 80 years old, anybody can do it."

The Office for National Statistics estimates the number of people aged 65 and over increased across the whole of the UK, in the year to mid-2024.

Prof Eleri Rosier from Cardiff University Business School said it was no surprise to see the changing demographics reflected on social media, adding that there had been a "massively noticeable shift" of the age of the people shaping fashion and beauty content online.

"For a long time, social media has been dominated by younger creators but now, a lot more, we're seeing older influencers," she said.

She added that they were popular because they created content they know their followers enjoy.

Rhian Davies, 58, from Cwmbran, Torfaen, said she was once told of the idea that when many women hit middle age they become "invisible" and admits she "felt that".

But when the mum-of-two started sharing her outfits on TikTok, she racked up more than 170,000 followers.

"It is really important to me to show other women my age that it's still OK to take up space, it's still OK to want to look after yourself and do the best that you can."

Her most successful videos are when she's "showing the reality" of life and recording herself with no make up and natural hair.

"From very early on I realised that most women wanted to see themselves represented, not this perfectly groomed woman with the Aga in the background and the kitchen island.

"They wanted to see somebody that looked like them.

"When you're in your 50s, you don't always want to watch the ones in their 20s doing their makeup, because what works for them doesn't work for my age group."

Sali Hughes, beauty columnist for The Guardian, isn't surprised to see the rise of "silver influencers" as brands have spent years "marketing aggressively at young people who don't have any money" to buy their products.

But now they are waking up to the fact that age diversity is essential for success as older people, generally, have more money than young consumers.

"If you obsess so much on youth that will bite you on the bum, unfortunately."

When Valerie Mackay, 62, joined Instagram, she found it tricky to find fashion content creators who looked like her so she "just started posting my outfits."

Eight years on and with more than one million followers under her belt, the mother-of-two from the Highlands of Scotland is regularly invited to work with high-end brands such as Armani and L'Oréal.

She said: "With social media, it doesn't matter how old you are, where you live, the opportunity's there if you want to go for it."

While many of us are still deciding what fancy dress to wear for Halloween, celebrities have wasted no time in posting pictures in their elaborate costumes - and the big night hasn't even arrived yet.

Demi Lovato, Janelle Monae, Jade and North West are a few of the stars who have been showcasing a mixture of elaborate, impressive and downright hilarious Halloween outfits.

What they lack in practicality (few of them are appropriate for wearing on the bus) they make up for in creativity and execution.

Last year, a number of celebrities including Billie Eilish, Alix Earle and Khloe Kardashian hosted parties for their famous friends, but it remains to be seen whether they'll be doing the same again this year.

However, Heidi Klum's legendary Halloween party looks set to go ahead once more in New York, while others are watching to see whether Jonathan Ross will return to the party hosting circuit as he rides high on his Celebrity Traitors appearance.

There will be many more Halloween looks to come, but here are our favourites so far.

Singer Demi Lovato recreated her "Poot Lovato" meme which went viral on Tumblr in 2015 - a reference to her alter-ego who has been locked in a basement.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's daughter North West and her friends dressed up as Japanese kawaii-metal band BABYMETAL.

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion opted for portraying Choso from the Manga series Jujutsu Kaisen.

Singer Jade, formerly of girl group Little Mix, dressed up as Greta from the Gremlins.

The Cat in the Hat's famous aesthetic was recreated by singer Janelle Monae.

Elsewhere, Paris Hilton recreated the famous look from Britney Spears's music video for Oops!... I Did It Again.

Actress Keke Palmer channelled her inner rapper by dressing up as Snoop Dogg (and lip-synching to his music).

The mother of a teenage soldier who took her own life after being sexually assaulted by a superior has said young women should not join the Army.

Leighann McCready said the armed forces had still not done enough to protect recruits after her daughter Jaysley Beck was found dead in her barracks in Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in 2021.

Warrant Officer Michael Webber, 43, pinned down Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck and tried to kiss her in July 2021. He was jailed for sexual assault on Friday.

Her mother told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Evidence has shown through our own daughter that the protection is not there."

"Until policies are properly changed, I wouldn't recommend anybody joining the Army because they protect themselves and not the soldiers, and that's what happened to our daughter Jaysley," she said.

"Army recruits are such a vulnerable age and when they first join up, as females, in such a minority surrounded by lots of men."

The Army said it did not listen to Gunner Beck, who was originally from Oxen Park in Cumbria, when she reported the assault and has apologised for its handling of her complaint.

Her comments come the day after Webber was jailed for six months by a military court after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting Gunner Beck.

Gunner Beck was found dead five months later in her barracks after the assault.

Webber, a Sergeant Major at the time, made a sexual advance towards her following an evening of drinking while on deployment for a training exercise.

Gunner Beck claimed Webber said he had been "waiting for a moment for them to be alone" before grabbing her leg, pinning her down, and trying to kiss her.

She filed a complaint against Webber following the incident, despite attempts by superiors to persuade her not to.

The incident was not reported to police and Webber wrote a letter of apology to Gunner Beck. He was later promoted.

An inquest into Gunner Beck's death later found that the incident and the Army's failure to take appropriate action "more than minimally" contributed to her death.

Ms McCready said it had been "relentless to fight the Army" and demanded "real changes" rather than "empty promises and glorified words".

Emma Norton, the family's solicitor and director of the Centre for Military Justice, said that while there had been some improvements to the Army's process for handling complaints, they did not go far enough.

Since Gunner Beck's death, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has set up a serious crime command and launched a violence against women and girls taskforce, and more recently has agreed in principle to remove the handling of serious complaints from the individual services.

Ms Norton told Today: "They are not having the impact on the ground that I think the MoD hoped they would have.

"Which isn't to say that there isn't a continued commitment to want to improve those things, but we are still seeing very serious complaints against military policing."

Ms McCready added that she was still being "inundated" with stories from soldiers and their families saying "this is still happening" and urging her to "keep fighting".

Last week also saw Wiltshire Police announce it had identified "offending spanning several decades" as part of an investigation into alleged sexual assaults during Army medical examinations between the 1970s and 2016.

Ms Norton called for the new independent Armed Forces Commissioner to be given responsibility for handling serious complaints, and called on the military to do more to improve conviction rates for sexual offences.

Following Webber's conviction, the Army said it had introduced a significant cultural reform programme to give service personnel "the confidence they need to report sexual offences and inappropriate behaviours".

Maj Gen Jon Swift, assistant chief of the General Staff, said the Army was "sorry we didn't listen to Jaysley when she first reported her assault".

"We are determined to make sure the same mistakes don't happen again."

Defence minister Louise Sandher-Jones said the Army had accepted the failings identified by the service inquiry but "there is more work to be done".

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