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Storm Nate has weakened to a tropical depression after bringing strong winds, heavy rain and some flooding to the south-eastern United States.

It made landfall as a hurricane twice, in Louisiana and Mississippi, and is currently over Alabama.

Storm surge warnings have been lifted across the region.

Nate killed at least 25 people in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Honduras. No deaths or injuries have yet been reported in the US.

Although it was not as strong as last month’s Maria and Irma, the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and parts of Florida had issued warnings and evacuation orders ahead of its arrival.

‘Minimal’ damage

Film footage from Biloxi, Mississippi, where the storm made landfall, showed flooded streets and highways.

But the waters quickly receded, leaving boats and vehicles marooned.

Mayor of nearby Gulfport, Billy Hewes, told the BBC the storm surge did not appear to be as high as feared and he thought the damage there would “be minimal”.

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Mississippi emergency official Greg Flynn told AP that more than 1,000 people in the state spent the night in shelters but no major damage had been reported.

In southern Alabama, the local power company said some 5,000 people were without power. Residents there had been urged to take precautions ahead of Nate’s arrival.

A mandatory curfew was lifted in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the threat to the city – devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – was downgraded.

Nate was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the National Hurricane Center at 09:00 GMT on Sunday, and later to a tropical depression.

Warnings of storm surge flooding were lifted on Sunday afternoon.

Five ports along the Gulf Coast were also closed to shipping as a precaution ahead of Nate’s arrival. Most oil and gas platforms in the US Gulf of Mexico also evacuated their staff, but are now planning to reopen.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday issued an emergency declaration for Louisiana and Mississippi, allowing the state to seek federal help with preparation and possible relief efforts.

Nate’s deadly impact in Central America

Nate caused heavy rains, landslides and floods which blocked roads, destroyed bridges and damaged houses as it tore through central America.

At least 13 people died in Nicaragua, eight in Costa Rica, three in Honduras and one in El Salvador.

The tail of the storm is still causing problems in the region, where thousands have been forced to sleep in shelters and some 400,000 people in Costa Rica were reported to be without running water.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, visiting Antigua and Barbuda which were badly damaged by Hurricane Irma in September, said the international community needed to do more to help Caribbean countries hit by a series of powerful hurricanes.

“There is an increasing intensity of hurricanes, an increasing frequency, and increasing devastation,” he told the BBC. “The origin is clear – we are facing the consequences of climate change.”

Are you in the affected area? Email us with your experiences at haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

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Blade Runner 2049 has made far less than expected on its opening weekend at the US box office.

The $31.5m (£24.1m) total will be a major disappointment for distributor Warner Bros, which had projected ticket sales of between $45m and $50m.

Its 163-minute running time, limiting the number of screenings, was said to be one factor in the under-performance.

But it was still the weekend’s most popular movie in the US. It topped the UK box office, with sales above £6m.

The sequel to the 1982 cult classic, which also stars Harrison Ford as well as Ryan Gosling, cost Sony and Alcon Entertainment $150m to make.

Despite strong advance ticket sales and glowing reviews from many critics, the movie made $12.7m on Thursday night and Friday, $11.4m on Saturday and a projected $7.4m on Sunday from just over 4,000 cinemas.

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Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore, said: “The core of enthusiastic and loyal ‘Blade Runner’ fans were over 25 and predominantly male, and propelled the film as expected to the top spot, but a lengthy running time and lesser interest among females made it tougher for the film to reach the original weekend box office projections.”

Men over 25 accounted for half the audience, according to PostTrack, with women over 25 making up 27%.

Jeff Goldstein, of Warner Bros, said Blade Runner 2049 had disappointed in smaller cities and in the South and Midwest, where the running time and baseball playoffs appeared to have deterred moviegoers.

“We did well in the major and high-profile markets,” he said. “Alcon and Denis [Villeneuve, the director] made an amazing movie. The audience for it was narrower than we anticipated.”

Globally, the film took $50.2m and claimed the number one spot in 45 of its 63 markets, Screen Daily reported.

That tally was higher than the $44.6m for The Martian, starring Matt Damon, on its opening weekend in 2015. The movie was directed by Ridley Scott, who also made the original Blade Runner and was an executive producer on 2049.

The Chinese comedy Never Say Die took $66m globally to top the international box office, pushing Kingsman: The Golden Circle into second place.

The remake of the Stephen King killer clown thriller It has now taken $305m in the US, and almost as much internationally, to top the $600m mark globally, making it the most successful horror film.

UK moviegoers have been its biggest fans, spending $40.7m (£31.1m) on tickets since its release on 8 September.

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Image copyright @VP/Twitter

US Vice-President Mike Pence has walked out of a National Football League (NFL) game after several players refused to stand for the US national anthem.

Mr Pence said he could not be present at an event that “disrespects our soldiers, our flag” after abandoning the game in his home state of Indiana.

President Donald Trump tweeted that he had asked Mr Pence to leave if players kneeled and said he was “proud of him”.

Kneeling at NFL games has become a form of protest against racial injustice.

Mr Trump has criticised players sharply for the protests and pressed the NFL to ban them.

• What’s really driving Trump in his NFL feud?
• Decoding the NFL protests

“I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS [President Trump] and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our flag, or our National Anthem,” Mr Pence tweeted on Sunday.

His departure came after players from the visiting San Francisco 49ers did not stand during the anthem before the game against the Indianapolis Colts.

“While everyone is entitled to their own opinions, I don’t think it’s too much to ask NFL players to respect the flag,” Mr Pence added.

He had earlier tweeted that he was looking forward to the game.

Mr Trump has previously said that his comments condemning the NFL protests have “nothing to do with race”.

But his criticism of the protests has appeared to galvanise players,

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Recent protests have involved players kneeling, linking arms or staying in the locker room during the Star-Spangled Banner.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick stirred controversy when he knelt for the anthem in protest against police brutality last year.

Since then, more and more public figures in the US have been “taking a knee” at big events and using the hashtag #TakeAKnee on social media.

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Image copyright Reuters

US President Donald Trump has had an ill-tempered exchange with a leading Republican senator, aggravating already poor relations between the two men.

Foreign Relations Committee head Bob Corker was a “negative voice” and “largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal”, Mr Trump tweeted.

Mr Corker hit back that the White House had become an “adult day care centre”.

He was considered for the job of secretary of state by Mr Trump last year but they have since clashed.

Analysts suggest Mr Trump’s tirade on Sunday morning may have been prompted by Mr Corker’s message of support last week for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, which was also seen as a jab at the president.

He was quoted by media as saying that Mr Tillerson was “in an incredibly frustrating place” where he “ends up not being supported in the way that I hope a secretary of state would be supported”.

On Wednesday Mr Tillerson denied rumours that he was about to resign.

Last month Mr Corker announced that he would not seek re-election at next year’s mid-term elections. He has been an ardent supporter of the 2015 agreement to curb Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

Mr Trump has sharply criticised the deal on many occasions and is expected to de-certify it next week.

In a series of tweets, Mr Trump said: “Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement).

“He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said ‘NO THANKS.’ He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!

“Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn’t have the guts to run!”

Mr Corker responded: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center.

“Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

The two men previously clashed in August when the senator criticised Mr Trump’s response to the clashes between white supremacists and anti-fascist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Mr Trump responded by tweeting about Mr Corker’s apparent hesitation about running for re-election.

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Image copyright Reuters

White nationalist protesters have returned to the US town Charlottesville two months after violent clashes there saw a woman killed.

The town’s mayor said the small group’s appearance at the statue of a Confederate general was “another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards”.

The brief torch-lit rally was organised by far-right figure Richard Spencer.

In videos he posted protesters can be heard chanting “You will not replace us” and “we will be back”.

The statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee was also the venue for the “Unite the Right” rally in August, held to oppose plans to remove it.

Counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a participant drove into a group of counter-protesters at high speed.

Between 40 and 50 people are thought to have attended the rally in Emancipation Park by the statue of Gen Lee, which has been covered up while a legal challenge to its removal takes place.

In the video live-streamed by Mr Spencer, he said Charlottesville had become a symbol of the suppression of free speech and destruction of historical monuments.

The group, all dressed similarly and holding lit torches, could be heard chanting “the south will rise again” and “Russia is our friend”.

Another speaker said the group was there to “represent white America’s interests” and criticised the local community and the media.

Police said the group left the park shortly before 20:00 (0:00 GMT). Mayor Mike Signer said officials were looking at legal ways to prevent further events.

Mr Spencer is the founder of a right-wing website and think-tank and has made a series of controversial comments at public events, including allegedly advocating “peaceful” ethnic cleansing.

The US has been gripped by a national debate on whether to remove Confederate symbols from the US civil war because of their association with slavery.

After the violence in Charlottesville, many local governments acted to remove Confederate monuments.

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The BBC’s 100 Women 2017 season is tackling some of the biggest issues facing women around the world and has given teams of experts a week to change the world. It kicked off by challenging women working at the home of hi-tech industries in California’s Silicon Valley to smash the glass ceiling, as the BBC’s Nuala McGovern reports. Here are her five findings:

1) They will show up

We gave our team of four women just five days to make a product that would change women’s lives in the workplace. A mammoth task in a minimal amount of time.

But from day one, they started making connections to make it happen. They reached out to networks of strangers and a huge variety of women were willing to pitch in.

• Meet the women reshaping Silicon Valley

We had a Spanish diversity expert Skypeing in from Copenhagen, a wearable tech expert hopped on a plane from New York and even a couple of men showed up.

Dwight had “introvert” stamped on his baseball cap and didn’t say much, but worked through the night with our women to invent something to crack that glass ceiling.

2) Women have been invited to the party, but they haven’t been asked to dance

So what was the catalyst for their inventions? Enter our case studies: Erin who had trouble speaking up in meetings (more on Erin later), and Lea who described working in the “bro-culture” of Silicon Valley.

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The term refers to the dominance of young white men that can create an environment that is unwelcoming to women and has been cited as one of the reasons that women drop out of the industry at twice the rate of men.

Lea described it as like “1000 little cuts” – ranging from inappropriate comments to unprofessional interviews to feeling outnumbered in meetings.

A well-known Silicon Valley saying is “move fast and break things”, but the women I met said too many people are also getting broken in the process.

3) Take up the space you deserve

In what is sometimes a toxic environment for women, it’s useful to keep adding tools to your survival toolkit.

Amy Cuddy is a body language expert and many people (including me) have taken her advice on how your body can change how you feel. She flew in to give advice to Erin, who finds it tough to speak up in meetings.

She told Erin to “take the space you deserve”. Don’t collapse into yourself when you find the going a little tough in meetings, interviews or other challenging situations.

Keep that hand away from your neck, your hair. Shoulders back and hands on the table. All these actions create a neurological response that helps us perform at our best.

She is also now exploring the concept of ‘presence’ – of remaining your true self and completely within the moment rather than worrying about the future or the past.

4) The glass ceiling is titanium for some

Many of the women I spoke to pointed out that it is not a level playing field even among women themselves – your chances of success in the tech industry dwindle the further you are outside the norm.

So if you are a black or Latina woman in tech you have an even steeper mountain to climb.

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At our World Service radio brainstorm on the topic, one of our panellists, Shellye Archambeau, pointed out that black women made up just 0.1% of CEOS in the Valley.

As The Guardian recently reported, participation in the tech industry by Latino and black industry professionals is actually on the decline – and although Asians are still being hired they are less likely than their white counterparts to make it up the ladder.

Experts say part of the problem is that managers tend to hire in their own image, or at least an image that they associate with success.

In the run-up to our Challenge Week we heard from Eileen Carey, CEO of start-up Glassbreakers, who as a natural blonde was advised to dye her hair brown for this reason.

5) Be the change you want to see

It might sound like I’m down on Silicon Valley. I’m not. It’s an extraordinary place, filled with fabulously inventive people creating things we don’t even know we need yet that will become essential to our lives.

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I loved using an adult-sized slide every morning in the workplace and I loved people bringing their dogs to work. I had access to a 3D printer for whatever invention I might envision that day but there is also a diversity issue in the boardrooms of this industry that needs to be solved.

So what did our geeks make? They repeated the mantra “be the change you want to see”. And after five days and very little sleep, they delivered:

• An app that monitors speech in meetings
• An elegant silver necklace that is actually wearable tech – and allows you to send positive messages to your female colleagues during meetings
• A huge A-Frame installation that required me to dress as Rosie the Riveter

We drove it in a pick-up truck through downtown Palo Alto in rush hour to test on the public.

It gathered stories of sexism from around the world and retold them in both a woman and a man’s voice to raise awareness and provoke discussion.

In an area like Silicon Valley with so many huge brains centred in one place – including those of our experts – and a great appetite to disrupt the current status quo, it feels like there must be real change on the horizon.

What is 100 Women?

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we’re challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today – the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport.

With your help, they’ll be coming up with real-life solutions and we want you to get involved with your ideas. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women

Read more: Who is on the 100 Women list?

Image copyright Courtesy North Preston’s Future

Canadian descendants of so-called Black Loyalists have long lived without title to the land they were given centuries ago. Now Nova Scotia is righting that historical injustice.

Violet Downey, 70, and her husband have lived on their land for 50 years. It’s been in her husband’s family for much, much longer.

The family live in North Preston, one of the oldest and largest black communities in Canada.

The land they live on may belong to the Downeys – but they don’t own it.

Like many families in historic black Nova Scotian communities, they don’t have legal title to land that has sometimes been in families for generations.

That means families who live and pay taxes on the land can’t legally will it to descendants, can’t sell it, can’t get a mortgage.

It’s a problem that dates back to the 1780s, the dying days of the American Revolution.

Black Loyalists were former slaves encouraged by the Crown to fight with British regiments against American forces, exchanging freedom in return for military service.

After the war, about 3,000 of them fled to Canada – then British North America – on the promise of “freedom and a farm”.

Their evacuation was compiled in the Book of Negroes, an official document that recorded names and descriptions of the black refugees who sailed from New York to Nova Scotia.

Most were given access to rocky, hardscrabble lots – often on the worst soil – in the maritime province of Nova Scotia.

But they weren’t given the ownership white settlers received.

In the decades that followed, they were joined by Jamaican Maroons – a group of freed slaves exiled from the island nation – and others escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad.

Some of the Nova Scotia communities they built are there today – places like North and East Preston, Cherry Brook, Lincolnville and Sunnyville.

But the lack of land titles has never been fully resolved.

In late September, Nova Scotia’s government took a step towards fixing the problem.

It announced C$2.7m ($2.2m;£1.6m) in funding over two years to assist five communities to get clear title to land on which they live, help cover the costs and handle the bureaucracy.

The money comes shortly after a UN report on anti-black racism in Canada urged the province to do more to resolve the issue.

Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) executive director Darrel Pink called the funding “really significant. It’s a big step”.

The NSBS began working on the issue in 2014 and has offered free help to residents who want to make a land claim.

Pink says he feels “somewhat embarrassed” that he initially didn’t know much about the issue.

“We didn’t appreciate how bad it was and how long it had gone completely unaddressed with literally no resources and virtually no progress being made,” he says.

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A 2015 multimedia project called “Untitled” by Nova Scotia journalism students also helped bring the issue to public attention, profiling the Downeys’ case and others.

The government doesn’t know how many residents plan to seek clarity of ownership, but an estimated 800 land parcels across the province could lack proper title.

It says some certificates of land have been granted but acknowledges communities “suffered from historical racial discrimination that prevented people from receiving legal title to the land they own”.

How has this problem languished for so long?

In 1963, the province passed the Land Titles Clarification Act, which was meant to lay out a simple process to assist people in obtaining title.

It was never properly implemented and residents have called the process unjust and discriminatory.

Some properties are caught up in ownership conflicts.

“Who lived here three generations ago? Who married whom? Who had a common-law relationship with whom? Who were the children of that relationship? These are the things that need to be addressed,” says Pink.

In some cases, up to five houses have been built on one lot without proper subdivision approval or land surveys, which has caused confusion around property taxes.

The properties need to be surveyed as part of the claims process, something that is often too expensive for poor residents.

“We’re generally talking about people who are indigent,” Pink says.

He adds the current legal framework doesn’t take into account cultural realities of those communities that “conflicted with dominant law”.

For example, few people in those communities write wills. There’s also a tradition of passing property on to the youngest – not the eldest – child.

Neville Provo, who has lived in North Preston for most of his life, describes it as “a tight knit community, a loving community”.

Provo, who volunteers with the North Preston Land Recovery Initiative, is cautious about celebrating the funding announcement.

“In the 1800s our people formed the same committee and fought for the same things,” he says, referring to North Preston residents who unsuccessfully petitioned Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant Governor in the 1840s asking that land titles be confirmed.

Provo says the lack a land titles creates uncertainty for both individual families and the community in the historically black suburb.

Communities around North and East Preston are surrounded by growing affluent neighbourhoods and are prime spots for development.

In the 1960s, the African Nova Scotian community of Africville was destroyed to make way for development. Former residents received an apology in from Halifax in 2010.

Over the phone, Violet Downey says: “I just hope and pray that we get our land in our own name. It would mean so much because we’ve been fighting for so long.

“I would love my children and their children to grow up and build houses around us.”

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