Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, calling him a “courageous man”.

Speaking at an event in the Russian city of Sochi, the Russian president said that Trump was “hounded from all sides” during his first term in the White House.

Putin also said that Trump’s claim that he can help end the war in Ukraine “deserves attention at least”.

During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly said he could end the war “in a day” but has never elaborated on how that could happen.

During Putin’s address, which lasted several hours and covered a wide range of topics, he also spoke of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July, saying it “made an impression” on him.

After being shot, Trump punched his fist into the air and mouthed the words “fight, fight, fight”, before being hauled away by Secret Service agents.

“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a man,” Putin said.

Asked if he was ready to have discussions with Donald Trump, Putin replied: “We’re ready, we’re ready.”

Trump had already said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak with Putin, telling NBC News: “I think we’ll speak”.

The Kremlin was widely accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s campaign against Hilary Clinton, claims rejected by Moscow.

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia in 2016, but said in a report three years later that had found no evidence of conspiracy.

Elsewhere on Thursday, leaders gathering for the European Political Community in Budapest discussed Trump’s return to the White House.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had a “very warm” and “productive conversation” with the president-elect.

“But we have to do everything to ensure that the results of our interaction between Ukraine and America, the whole of Europe and America, are productive and positive,” he added.

Many in Ukraine and Europe are worried that Trump might slow, if not halt, the flow of American military aid to Kyiv upon taking power in January.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer assured Zelensky at the summit that the UK’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia remains “iron-clad”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – who previously said he celebrated Trump’s win by “tapping into the vodka supply happily” – said the US and Europe now face tough talks on trade.

Orban, who is a close ally of Trump, told a press conference that “the trade issue with the US will come up and it will not be easy”.

Before winning the election, Trump said he would impose tariffs of 10% on all imports.

“There was an agreement that Europe should assume greater responsibility for its own peace and security in the future. To put it even more bluntly, we cannot expect Americans to be the only ones to take care of us,” Orban said.

Donald Trump’s transition team is already vetting potential candidates who could serve in his administration when he returns to the White House in January.

On Thursday, he made the first announcement naming his campaign co-manager Susan Summerall Wiles as his White House chief of staff.

Many of the figures who served under Trump in his first term do not plan to return, though a handful of loyalists are rumoured to be making a comeback.

But the US president-elect is now surrounded by a new cast of characters who may fill his cabinet, staff his White House and serve in key roles across government.

Here is a look at the some of the names being floated for the top jobs.

The past two years have been quite a journey for the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

An environmental lawyer by trade, he ran for president as a Democrat, with most of his family speaking out against his anti-vaccine views and conspiracy theories as they endorsed Joe Biden’s re-election.

He then switched to an independent candidacy but, failing to gain traction amid a series of controversies, dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

In the last two months of the 2024 election cycle, he spearheaded a Trump campaign initiative called “Make America Healthy Again”.

Trump recently promised he would play a major role related to public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Safety Administration (FDA).

RFK Jr, as he is known, recently asserted he would push to remove fluoride from drinking water because “it’s a very bad way to deliver it into our systems” – though this has been challenged by some experts.

And in an interview with NBC News, Kennedy rejected the idea that he was “anti-vaccine”, saying he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines” but rather provide them with “the best information” to make their own choices.

Rather than a formal cabinet position, Kennedy used the interview to suggest he could take on a broader role within the White House.

Trump’s landslide victory over Kamala Harris was masterminded by campaign co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who he referred to in his victory speech on Wednesday as “the ice baby”.

She has since been confirmed to be the incoming chief of staff under the second Trump administration – Trump’s first confirmed appointment for his second term – making her the first woman to take on the role.

Wiles, who Trump claimed “likes to stay in the background”, is considered one of the most feared and respected political operatives in the country.

Less than a year after she started working in politics, she worked on Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign and later became a scheduler in his White House.

In 2010, she turned Rick Scott, a then-businessman with little political experience, into Florida’s governor in just seven months. Scott is now a US senator.

Wiles met Trump during the 2015 Republican presidential primary and she became the co-chair of his Florida campaign, at the time considered a swing state. Trump went on to narrowly defeat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Wiles has been commended by Republicans for her ability to command respect and check the big egos of those in the president-elect’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

The world’s richest man announced his support for the former president earlier this year, despite saying in 2022 that “it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.

The tech billionaire has since emerged as one of the most visible and well-known backers of Trump and donated more than $119m (£91.6m) this election cycle to America PAC – a political action committee he created to support the former president.

Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of the social media platform X, also launched a voter registration drive that included a $1m (£771,000) give-away to a random swing-state voter each day during the closing stretch of the campaign.

Since registering as a Republican ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Musk has been increasingly vocal on issues including illegal immigration and transgender rights.

Both Musk and Trump have concentrated on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs, reform regulations and streamline what he calls a “massive, suffocating federal bureaucracy”.

The would-be agency’s acronym – DOGE – is a playful reference to a “meme-coin” cryptocurrency Musk has previously promoted.

The former Kansas congressman served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then secretary of state during Trump’s first administration.

A foreign policy hawk and a fierce supporter of Israel, he played a highly visible role in moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among the key players in the implementation of the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

He remained a loyal defender of his boss, joking that there would be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” amid Trump’s false claims of election fraud in late 2020.

He has been tipped as a top contender for the role of defence secretary, alongside Michael Waltz, a Florida lawmaker and military veteran who sits on the armed services committee in the US House of Representatives.

Richard Grenell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and his acting director of national intelligence.

The Republican was also heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, in the swing state of Nevada.

Trump prizes Grenell’s loyalty and has described him as “my envoy”.

In September, he sat in on Trump’s private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The former president has often claimed he will end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of taking office and Grenell has advocated for setting up an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine as a means to that end – an idea seen as unacceptable by Kyiv.

He’s considered a contender for secretary of state or national security advisor, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.

The Trump 2024 campaign’s national press secretary previously served in his White House press office, as an assistant press secretary.

The 27-year-old Gen-Zer made a bid to become the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress in 2022, to represent a seat in her home state of New Hampshire, but fell short.

She is tipped to become the White House press secretary – the most public-facing position in the cabinet.

Tom Homan served as the acting director of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during the first Trump administration, where he was a proponent of separating migrant children from their parents as a way to deter illegal crossings.

At the time, he made headlines for saying politicians who support sanctuary city policies should be charged with crimes. He later resigned from his Ice position in 2018, mid-way through the Trump presidency.

He has since emerged as a key figure in developing Trump’s mass migrant deportation plan, and has been floated as a potential pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Homan spoke on the deportation plan last month in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS News, saying that “it’s not going to be – a mass sweep of neighbourhoods.”

“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ‘em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes,” he said.

More than 200 seriously injured and ill Palestinians and their carers have been evacuated from Gaza, in one of the biggest operations of its kind in months, Israel says.

The operation – overseen by Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in Gaza, and the World Health Organization – saw 231 Gazans allowed through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing.

They include people with autoimmune diseases, blood diseases, cancer, kidney conditions and trauma injuries.

The WHO said there were still up to 14,000 people waiting for evacuation for medical reasons.

Israel and Egypt closed their crossings with Gaza following Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October last year.

Almost 4,900 Palestinian patients needing treatment abroad were allowed to leave between November, when Egypt reopened the Rafah crossing for medical evacuations, and May, when Egypt closed the crossing after Israeli forces seized control of the Gaza side.

• Setback for evacuated Gaza teen after surgery

Before Wednesday’s evacuation, only 229 patients had left since May, according to the UN.

Wednesday also saw the WHO and Cogat announce the conclusion of the polio vaccination campaign across Gaza.

The WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 556,770 children under the age of 10 – or 94% – had received two doses of the vaccine since September.

The programme came about in reaction to the discovery of a case of polio in August, the first recorded in Gaza for 25 years.

The virus can paralyse children or even kill them. It has been the subject of a global vaccination campaign for decades and has been mostly eradicated.

On Saturday, the WHO and other UN agencies set out to administer vaccines in Gaza City, after being forced to postpone the rollout in the north of the territory last month because of Israeli bombardment, mass displacement and lack of access.

The three-day operation was briefly interrupted by an attack on a hospital. The WHO did not say who was behind the strike, but local medical staff blamed an Israeli quadcopter. The Israeli military said it was investigating but did not believe it was responsible.

Dr Tedros said 105,500 children in the north of Gaza received a second dose, which amounted to around 88% coverage. For herd immunity to work, at least 90% of all children in every community and neighbourhood need to be given a minimum of two doses.

He warned that “7,000-10,000 children couldn’t be reached for their second doses and are thus vulnerable to polio”.

Parts of northern Gaza were not included in the vaccinations due to the continuation of intense Israeli military operations in towns like Jabalia and Beit Lahia.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on Wednesday morning announced that troops had started to operate in Beit Lahia following what it said was intelligence “indicating the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”.

The IDF called on all remaining civilians to leave the area through what it called “organised routes for their safety”.

Beit Lahia has come under heavy bombardment since the IDF launched a ground offensive in neighbouring Jabalia a month ago, saying it was acting against regrouping Hamas fighters.

The IDF said its troops had killed 50 “terrorists” in Jabalia over the past day.

The BBC and other international media are not able to get access to the Gaza Strip and so cannot independently verify these claims.

The people transported out of Gaza in the medical evacuation operation will be taken to the United Arab Emirates or Romania for treatment.

One of those being moved was Khuloud Tabasi’s son Mohammed.

Hugging her husband as she entered the ambulance in the southern city of Khan Younis, Khuloud said after four operations her son’s “situation went from bad to worse… Thank God [the WHO] organised the evacuation of my son.”

Israel has been under growing international pressure to do something to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

Last weekend, 15 senior UN figures said conditions in the north were “apocalyptic”, with the entire population “at risk of death from starvation, disease and violence”.

Israel has also faced calls from its ally, the US, to take action. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the Israeli government on 13 October that it had 30 days to “surge” humanitarian aid to Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.

The numbers still in need of medical support are huge, with 19 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals out of service and the other 17 only partially functional.

Dr Marwan Abu Saada is general manager of the al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City, which was left in ruins after being raided by Israeli forces for a second time in March.

The IDF said it had been used by Hamas for military purposes, something the group has always denied.

Parts of al-Shifa have now been rebuilt and reopened, including the emergency department, and the hospital recently received patients evacuated from hospitals in Beit Lahia.

Dr Abu Saada said there were children with leukaemia, people with breast and other cancers, as well as those disabled by the fighting.

“They desperately need to travel abroad as soon as possible,” he said. “Since none of the treatment facilities are available in Gaza.”

While Wednesday’s evacuation has been widely welcomed, the numbers taken to the UAE and Romania are a small fraction of the total who need medical aid.

More than that, as long as the fighting continues, the numbers in need of help will continue to grow.

Nissan has said it will lay off thousands of workers as it slashes global production to tackle a drop in sales in China and the US.

The Japanese car making giant says it will cut 9,000 jobs around the world in a cost saving effort that will see its global production reduced by a fifth.

Nissan did not immediately respond to a request from BBC News for details on where the job cuts will be made.

The company employs more than 6,000 people at its manufacturing plant in Sunderland, North East England.

The company also cut its operating profit forecasts for 2024 by 70%. It was the second time this year that the firm has lowered its outlook.

“These turnaround measures do not imply that the company is shrinking,” said Nissan’s chief executive Makoto Uchida.

“Nissan will restructure its business to become leaner and more resilient.”

The company said Mr Uchida’s monthly salary is being cut by half and that other senior executives will also take pay cuts.

Nissan’s shares were trading more than 6% lower on Friday morning in Tokyo.

Growing competition in China has led to falling prices, which has left many foreign car makers there struggling to compete with local firms like BYD.

The firm is also struggling in the US, where inflation and high interest rates has hit sales of new vehicles.

Lower demand has led car makers to cut prices, which has dented their profits.

In November last year, Nissan and its partners announced a £2bn ($2.6bn) plan to build three electric car models at its Sunderland factory.

The firm said it will build electric Qashqai and Juke models at the plant alongside the next generation of the electric Leaf, which is already produced there.

A 17-year-old girl in China hailed as a genius in a mathematics contest cheated, competition organisers have said – ending months of scepticism over her stellar results.

Jiang Ping, a fashion design student from a rural town in Jiangsu province, made headlines in June when she came 12th in the qualifiers of an international maths contest run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

She was the first finalist since the competition began in 2018 to have come from a lowly vocational school, Chinese media reported. The vast majority of the 800 finalists came from elite universities.

Jiang’s results turned her into an overnight sensation, and she was labelled a “prodigy” in the press and on social media.

Under China’s notoriously cut-throat education system, academic excellence is lauded. Many people online were encouraged by Jiang’s results, seeing them as proof that students from vocational institutes could still excel academically.

However, as doubt surrounding her abilities snowballed, competition organisers said last Sunday that Jiang had violated competition rules in the preliminary round, by receiving help from her teacher, who was also a contestant himself.

“This has exposed problems like inadequacies in the competition format and the lack of rigour in supervision. We sincerely apologise,” organisers said in a statement.

According to the final results announced on Sunday, neither Jiang nor her teacher was among 86 winners in the competition.

The annual mathematics contest is open to contestants from institutions worldwide and hosted by Damo Academy, Alibaba’s research institute.

This year, Jiang, a student at Jiangsu Lianshui Secondary Vocational School, outperformed other finalists from some of the world’s most prestigious institutions — including Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Oxford.

She had chosen to study at the vocational school both because she was interested in fashion design, and because her sister and friends were there, said local media outlets.

Jiang’s results and unconventional educational background soon grabbed nationwide attention. Her story was featured in a video produced by Damo Academy and she was interviewed by news outlets across the country.

“Learning maths is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems I feel quite happy,” she told the state-run People’s Daily. “No matter what the future holds, I will keep learning.”

Jiang’s teacher, Wang Runqiu, was also thrust into the spotlight, hailed as an educator who noticed and encouraged her passion for maths. Speaking to the media, he described her as an attentive student who had learnt advanced mathematics herself.

“I have encountered many setbacks in the process of learning maths,” he said. “So, I want to do everything I can to help my students and let them know that there are other possibilities in the future.”

But along with an outpouring of praise for Jiang and her teacher, the student’s story also sparked a discussion about whether China’s education system did enough to support gifted students in less academic pathways – especially those who may not have received similar recognition by their teachers.

China’s education system focuses much of its resources on those taking the “Gaokao” – the notoriously difficult exam that students need to take in order to get into university. Those in vocational schools had long faced restrictions in taking the gaokao and enrolling in regular universities, until an education reform in 2022 offered vocational school students an alternative university entrance exam.

An earlier op-ed in state-news media outlet Xinhua said that Jiang’s results “hint[ed] at an awkward truth: even youths as talented as her may be easily buried without good education credentials”.

But as Jiang’s fame burgeoned, criticism and scepticism surrounding her skills also started to bubble.

In June, dozens of other finalists published a joint letter they wrote to the competition organising committee demanding an investigation into Jiang. They also called for her answers to the preliminary test questions to be made public.

The finalists alleged that Jiang had made “several apparent writing mistakes” in an online video and that she “seemed unfamiliar with these mathematical expressions and symbols”.

While the preliminary round of the competition allowed participants to use programming software, the final round was a closed-book exam. The results of the finals, which were initially set to be released in August, were postponed for several months.

When the results were finally made public on Sunday, Jiang was not among the 86 winners of the final round.

Her school also confirmed in a statement on Sunday that Jiang had been helped by her teacher Wang, and that Wang had been given a warning and disqualified from teachers’ awards for the year. The statement also called for leniency and protection for the teenager.

Attempts by the BBC to contact Jiang’s family were unsuccessful. A social media account once used by her mother is now defunct, and a phone number linked to her father has been deactivated. Multiple phone calls by the BBC to Jiang’s school went unanswered, and a village official declined to discuss Jiang when contacted by the BBC.

While Sunday’s revelation unleashed a wave of criticism of Jiang and her teacher, many social media users also spoke up for the teenager, arguing the bigger responsibility lay with her school and teacher.

“Jiang Ping is not innocent, that’s without question. But who are the worst parties in this?” reads a post on Weibo. “The adults brought this child along to do a bad deed, and let her suffer all the consequences.”

“Even if the whole thing was faked, Jiang Ping was not the mastermind behind it,” another wrote on Weibo. “She should not be burned at the stake.”

China is expected to unveil new measures to boost its flagging economy, as it braces for a second Donald Trump presidency.

Trump won the election on a platform that promised steep import taxes, including tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese-made goods.

His victory is now likely to hinder Xi Jinping’s plans to transform the country into a technology powerhouse – and further strain relations between the world’s two biggest economies.

A property slump, rising government debt and unemployment, and low consumption have slowed down Chinese growth since the pandemic.

So the stakes are higher than ever for the latest announcement from the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the executive body of China’s legislature.

During his first term in office Trump hit Chinese goods with tariffs of as much as 25%.

China analyst Bill Bishop says Trump should be taken at his word about his new tariff plans.

“I think we should believe that he means it when [he] talks about tariffs, that he sees China as having reneged on his trade deal, that he thinks China and Covid cost him the 2020 election”.

The pressure from Washington did not ease after Trump left the White House in 2021. The Biden administration kept the measures in place and in some cases widened them.

While the first wave of Trump tariffs were painful for China, the country is now in a much more vulnerable position.

The economy has been struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels of growth since abruptly abandoning its tight Covid restrictions two years ago.

Instead of delivering a widely expected fast-paced recovery, China became a regular source of disappointing economic news.

Even before Trump’s election victory and after China began rolling out measures to support its economy in September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its annual growth target for the country.

The IMF now expects the Chinese economy to expand by 4.8% in 2024, at the lower end of Beijing’s “about 5%” target. Next year, it projects China’s annual growth rate will drop further to 4.5%.

But the country’s leaders were not caught entirely off guard by the end to decades of super-fast growth.

Speaking in 2017, President Xi said his country planned to transition from “rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development.”

The term has since been used repeatedly by Chinese officials to describe a shift to an economy driven by advanced manufacturing and green industries.

But some economists say China cannot simply export itself out of trouble.

China risks falling into the type of decades-long stagnation that Japan endured after a stock and property bubble burst in the 1990s, Morgan Stanley Asia’s former chairman, Stephen Roach, says.

To avoid that fate, he says China should draw “on untapped consumer demand” and move away from “export and investment-led growth”.

That would not only encourage more sustainable growth but also lower “trade tensions and [China’s] vulnerability to external shocks,” he says.

This more robust economic model could help China fend off the kind of threats posed by Trump’s return to power.

But China, which has long been the world’s factory for low-cost goods, is trying to replicate that success with high-tech exports.

It is already a world leader in solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs) and lithium ion batteries.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) China now accounts for at least 80% of solar panel production. It is also the biggest maker of EVs and the batteries that power them.

The IEA said last year that China’s investments in clean energy accounted for a third of the world’s total, as the country continued to show “remarkable progress in adding renewable capacity.”

“For sure there is an overall effort to support high-tech manufacturing in China,” says David Lubin, a senior research fellow at London based-think tank, Chatham House.

“This has been very successful”, he adds.

Exports of electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries and solar panels jumped 30% in 2023, surpassing one trillion yuan ($139bn; £108bn) for the first time as China continued to strengthen its global dominance in each of those industries.

That export growth has helped soften the blow to China’s economy of the ongoing property crisis.

“China’s overcapacity will increase, there is not doubt about it. They have no other source of growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia Pacific region at investment bank Natixis.

But along with those increased exports, there has been a rise in resistance from Western countries, and not just the US.

Just last month, the European Union increased tariffs on Chinese-built EVs to as much as 45%.

“The problem right now is that large recipients of those goods including Europe and the US are increasingly reluctant to receive them,” said Katrina Ell, research director at Moody’s Analytics.

Today, as Trump is set to head back to the Oval Office with a pledge to hammer Chinese imports, Beijing will have to ask itself whether its latest measures to boost its slowing economy will be enough.

The Israeli parliament has passed a law allowing the government to deport the family members of people convicted of terrorism offences, including Israeli citizens.

The controversial legislation, proposed by a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, applies to first-degree relatives, meaning the parents, siblings or children of those found guilty of committing or supporting terrorism.

Israeli human rights organisations say the law is unconstitutional.

Some opposition members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, suggested it is targeted only at Palestinian citizens of Israel, sometimes called Israeli Arabs.

The law allows for the deportation of the family members of those who had advance knowledge and either failed to report the matter to the police or “expressed support or identification with an act of terrorism”.

Relatives of those who published “praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism or a terrorist organisation” could also be deported.

Relatives would be deported by order of the interior minister. Some members of the Knesset suggested during the debate on the bill that it would not be used against Jewish Israeli citizens, the Times of Israel website reported.

“Yigal Amir’s family will not be deported anywhere,” said opposition member of parliament Merav Michaeli, referring to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, a Jewish extremist.

Mickey Levy asked “whether you will deport Ben Gvir’s family,” a reference to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s conviction in his youth for incitement to violence and supporting a terror group.

Dr Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, told the BBC there was “no question” the law was intended to apply to Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

“It is very unlikely that a Jewish citizen of Israel would ever be deported under this law,” Dr Scheindlin said.

“This is clear from certain provisions in the law itself but also important elements which will determine how the law is applied, including that in normal Israeli parlance, the term ‘terror’ is almost never applied to Jewish acts of violence against Palestinian civilians.”

About 20% of the country’s population are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A truck which hit a bus stop in central Israel last month was driven by a man identified by authorities as a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

Many Israeli Arabs have also been convicted for posting support or sympathy for Hamas on social media since 7 October last year.

Both the justice ministry and the attorney general’s office have raised concerns about how the legislation, which will likely be challenged in court, can be enforced.

Eran Shamir-Borer, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former international law expert for the Israeli military, said that if the legislation reached the Supreme Court, it would likely to be struck down.

“The bottom line is this is completely non-constitutional and a clear conflict to Israel’s core values,” Mr Shamir-Borer told the Associated Press news agency.

Those deported will be sent to Gaza or to “another destination determined according to the circumstances”.

Other than the military, ordinary Israeli citizens are not legally allowed to enter Gaza.

About 100 Israelis are thought to be being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, including around 60 who are thought to still be alive.

Israeli citizens would retain their citizenship even after being expelled from the country. They would not be allowed to return for between seven and 15 years.

Permanent residents could be deported for between 10 and 20 years.

The majority of the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem hold permanent Israeli residency.

In addition, a five-year temporary order was approved allowing for prison sentences for children under the age of 14 convicted of murder as part of an act of terrorism or as part of the activities of a terrorist organisation.

For over two millennia, the Roman temples at Baalbek in eastern Lebanon have stood as some of the finest examples of Roman architecture anywhere in the world.

On Wednesday, a car park just metres away from the Unesco World Heritage site was hit by an Israeli air strike.

The attack, which also destroyed a centuries-old Ottoman building, highlighted what some archaeologists say is the risk of irreparable damage to historical sites across Lebanon from the current war between Israel and Hezbollah.

“Baalbek is the major Roman site in Lebanon. You couldn’t replace it if someone bombed it,” says Graham Philip, an archaeology professor at Durham University.

“It would be a huge loss. It would be a crime.”

Since late September, Israel has pummelled Lebanon with thousands of air strikes in an escalation of its campaign against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group it has been fighting in nearly a year of cross-border strikes.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has largely been targeting southern Lebanon, suburbs in the capital Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

But in the past fortnight, the campaign has moved into new areas, or rather, very old ground.

The IDF told the BBC that it only targets military sites. But those targets are incredibly close to the Baalbek temples and Roman ruins in Tyre, a major port of the Phoenician Empire around 2,500 years ago.

According to legend, Tyre is the place where purple pigment was first created – the dye crushed out of snail shells to embroider royal robes.

On 23 October, the IDF issued evacuation orders for neighbourhoods close to the city’s Roman ruins, including the remains of a necropolis and a hippodrome.

Hours later it began striking targets. More bombing of the sites was reported last week.

Videos from the strikes showed huge clouds of black smoke rising from seafront areas only a few hundred metres from the ruins.

There is no evidence that the Roman sites in Tyre and Baalbek have been damaged by the Israeli strikes. But Lebanese archaeologists are alarmed at how close the fighting has been to the millennia-old ruins, recognised by Unesco as having outstanding value to humanity.

“For Baalbek it was even worse than Tyre, because the temples are located within the area that is targeted and [the IDF] did not make any exemption for the temples,” says local archaeologist Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly.

She says there are no Hezbollah facilities at the Baalbek site: “No one knows what the excuse or the message behind the hit is.”

The IDF disputes this. In a statement, it told the BBC it targets military sites in accordance with strict protocol, adding that it is “aware of the existence of sensitive sites and this is taken into account and constitutes an essential part of the planning of strikes”.

“Each strike that poses a risk to a sensitive structure is weighed carefully and goes through a rigorous approval process as required.”

Some ordinary Lebanese attempting to escape Israeli bombing reportedly fled to the Baalbek ruins, judging that ancient sites would not be targeted by Israel and would therefore offer protection.

Ms Farchakh Bajjaly says “those who didn’t have a car to flee” moved closer to the ruins, in the belief that the Unesco sites are considered more valuable than their lives.

It prompted the local government to issue a warning urging people against travelling to the ruins.

“They see the site as their shelter. But the site is not a shelter,” Ms Farchakh Bajjaly says.

The war puts Israel in a “difficult situation”, says Israeli archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef.

He said that war damage to important archaeological sites would be a “huge loss to the cultural heritage of Lebanon and indeed the entire world.

“However, I know personally that Israel is doing everything it can to prevent such damage.

“Many of my fellow archaeologists, both colleagues and students, serve in the army and participate in the war… they actively work to prevent such damage, in accordance with the general guidelines of our military.”

Graham Philip, the Durham University archaeology professor, says he doesn’t believe Israel would intentionally hit Baalbek or other sites.

“It’s hard to see what they would gain in a military sense, bombing a Roman temple.”

But he cautioned about the risk of some bombs or missiles going off target and hitting the ruins, even unintentionally: “If you drop enough ordnance, not all of that lands within 25 metres of the target.”

Mr Philip has been closely monitoring the impact of Israel’s strikes on heritage sites in Gaza where it is fighting Hamas, leading a British university team documenting archaeological destruction across the territory.

He says it is still too early to assess how much damage has been done by the current wars in Lebanon and Gaza. But a Unesco survey published in September found that 69 cultural heritage sites in Gaza had been damaged by the war, which was triggered by the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.

The oldest mosque in Gaza, the Great Omari Mosque, is one. It was built on the site of an ancient Philistine temple before being converted into a church and then a mosque. It was reportedly mostly destroyed by an Israeli strike in December 2023.

Mr Philip says these ancient sites are not only important anchors to the classical past, but are “almost like the soul of a population”.

“Imagine how people would feel in Britain if the Tower of London or Stonehenge were destroyed.

“It’s part of their identity.”

Last month brought good news for the great Indian bustard, a critically endangered bird found mainly in India.

Wildlife officials in the western state of Rajasthan have performed the first successful hatching of a chick through artificial insemination.

A lone adult male in one of two breeding centres in Jaisalmer city was trained to produce sperm without mating, which was then used to impregnate an adult female at the second centre some 200km (124 miles) away.

Officials said the development was important as it has opened up the possibility of creating a sperm bank.

Over the years, habitat loss, poaching and collisions with overhead power lines have effected great Indian bustards. Their numbers have fallen from more than 1,000 in the 1960s to around 150 at present.

Most of them are found in Jaisalmer and hence, conservation activists say that the bird’s habitat in the city should be protected. But this land is also prime real estate for renewable energy firms, presenting authorities with a unique conservation challenge.

The great Indian bustard may not be as well known as the peacock (India’s national bird) but it’s just as impressive, says Sumit Dookia, a conservation ecologist who has been studying the bird for close to a decade. The massive bird, which weighs between 15kg and 18kg, is one of the biggest flying birds in India.

It once had a prolific presence in the country and was found in at least 11 states, but today, its population is confined to Rajasthan, while a handful might be spotted in the southern state of Karnataka and the western state of Gujarat.

The shy bird plays an important role in the food chain by preying on rodents, snakes and other pests and is also the state bird of Rajasthan, where it is called ‘Godawan’ by locals.

But some of the bird’s unique evolutionary traits are clashing with human interventions, making it vulnerable to extinction.

For one, the great Indian bustard has good peripheral vision but poor frontal vision, making it difficult for them to spot power lines until they fly too close to them. Their large size makes it difficult for them to quickly change their flight path and they end up colliding with the cables and dying.

“Their vision could have developed like this as the bird spends a large amount of time on land,” says Mr Dookia. It also lays its eggs on the ground, without a nest or any other form of protection except for the watchful eye of the mother and this might have caused it to develop good side vision, he adds.

The great Indian bustard also has unique breeding habits. The bird lays just one egg at a time and spends the next two years caring for its offspring.

“Since it reaches maturity at around four years of age and lives for 12-15 years, it lays just about four-five eggs in its lifetime and many of these eggs are destroyed by predators,” Mr Dookia says.

Conservationists say that over the past few years, the great Indian bustard’s habitat in Jaisalmer has been overrun by solar and wind energy farms, leading to an increase in flying accidents.

“The increased human presence has also created more filth, attracting stray dogs who kill the birds or destroy their eggs,” Mr Dookia says.

To boost the bird’s population, the government of Rajasthan collaborated with the federal government and the Wildlife Institute of India to launch a conservation breeding centre at Sam city in 2018. Another breeding centre was set up at Ramdevra village in 2022, says Ashish Vyas, a top forest official in Jaisalmer.

As a first step, researchers collected eggs found in the wild and hatched them in incubation centres. “Currently, there are 45 birds in both the centres,14 of which are captive-bred chicks (including the one born through artificial insemination),” he adds.

The plan is to further boost the bird’s population and then eventually release them into the wild. But conservationists say that this is easier said than done.

This is because the birds born in these breeding centres have imprinted on human researchers (in other words, they have formed close bonds with their human caretakers) and have lost about 60-70% of their ability to survive in the wild, says Mr Dookia.

“Human imprinting is necessary for feeding and handling the birds but it also makes them lose their natural instincts. It will be extremely challenging to re-wild them, especially if there’s no habitat left for the birds to be released into,” he adds.

The loss of habitat has also resulted in another problem: researchers have noticed that the birds, which used to migrate across states, have almost completely stopped doing so. Even in Jaisalmer, where the birds are found in two pockets – Pokhran in the eastern part of the city and the Desert National Park in the west – there’s hardly any cross-migration, says Mr Dookia.

It’s likely that the birds have stopped migrating over large distances in response to flying accidents, he adds. This increases the risk of inbreeding, which could result in birth defects.

“Thus, the only solution to conserve the great Indian bustard is to preserve its natural habitat,” he says.

But a Supreme Court judgement from April has made conservationists uneasy.

The court overturned an earlier interim order, which had instructed Rajasthan and Gujarat to prioritise moving power cables underground in great Indian bustard habitats. The order had created a furore among renewable energy firms, who said that this would cost them billions of rupees and virtually kill their business.

In its latest judgment, the court observed that people had the right to be free from the harmful effects of climate change and that shifting large sections of power cables underground may not be feasible for firms from a monetary and technical standpoint.

It also directed that a committee be set up to look into the feasibility of moving power lines and the efficacy of bird diverters – devices that have reflectors and are attached to power cables to alert birds about their presence.

While corporates have hailed the top court’s judgment, conservationists and some legal experts say that it’s problematic as it pits one good cause against another.

“The judgment brings into focus a flawed understanding of the interplay between climate change, biodiversity and development issues,” ecologist Debadityo Sinha wrote in a column.

He noted that many highly-populated cities in India have underground power lines and that other states have taken such a step to protect other bird species in the past. He also pointed out that although moving power cables underground is expensive, it’s likely to amount to a fraction of a firm’s total earnings.

Mr Dookia says that one of the reasons renewable energy companies are flocking to Rajasthan is because of the low cost of land.

“There’s also not much research on how these renewable energy farms will impact the state’s climate and ecology in the long run,” he says.

“So it’s not just the bird’s future that hangs in the balance, it’s also man’s.”

The remains of 11 people, including two children, have been found inside a vehicle in a southern Mexican city besieged by violence, officials say.

The grim discovery was made in the city of Chilpancingo, whose mayor was beheaded last month just days after taking the job, in Guerrero state.

The identities of the victims are not yet known and the case is being treated as a homicide, the state’s attorney general said.

Police were called to the scene after an abandoned pick-up truck was reported to authorities on Wednesday night.

The truck containing the bodies was found on a highway to Acapulco, which was a destination for the rich and famous in the 1950s and 1960s, but has since become a hotspot for drug-trafficking with a high murder rate.

Guerrero is one of Mexico’s most violent states because of its location on the Pacific coast smuggling routes. Last year, 1,890 murders were recorded in the state.

Chilpancingo, a city of about 280,000 people, has long been the scene of turf battles between two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos.

At least six candidates for public office were killed in the state in the run-up to Mexico’s 2 June elections.

Last month, Chilpancingo mayor Alejandro Arcos was found decapitated less than a week after taking office.

More than 450,000 people have been murdered and tens of thousands have gone missing across Mexico since the government deployed the army to combat drug trafficking in 2006.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has made tackling violent crime a priority. She unveiled a new security plan last month that included improved intelligence-sharing and boosting the National Guard.

The Israeli parliament has passed a law allowing the government to deport the family members of people convicted of terrorism offences, including Israeli citizens.

The controversial legislation, proposed by a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, applies to first-degree relatives, meaning the parents, siblings or children of those found guilty of committing or supporting terrorism.

Israeli human rights organisations say the law is unconstitutional.

Some opposition members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, suggested it is targeted only at Palestinian citizens of Israel, sometimes called Israeli Arabs.

The law allows for the deportation of the family members of those who had advance knowledge and either failed to report the matter to the police or “expressed support or identification with an act of terrorism”.

Relatives of those who published “praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism or a terrorist organisation” could also be deported.

Relatives would be deported by order of the interior minister. Some members of the Knesset suggested during the debate on the bill that it would not be used against Jewish Israeli citizens, the Times of Israel website reported.

“Yigal Amir’s family will not be deported anywhere,” said opposition member of parliament Merav Michaeli, referring to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, a Jewish extremist.

Mickey Levy asked “whether you will deport Ben Gvir’s family,” a reference to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s conviction in his youth for incitement to violence and supporting a terror group.

Dr Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, told the BBC there was “no question” the law was intended to apply to Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

“It is very unlikely that a Jewish citizen of Israel would ever be deported under this law,” Dr Scheindlin said.

“This is clear from certain provisions in the law itself but also important elements which will determine how the law is applied, including that in normal Israeli parlance, the term ‘terror’ is almost never applied to Jewish acts of violence against Palestinian civilians.”

About 20% of the country’s population are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A truck which hit a bus stop in central Israel last month was driven by a man identified by authorities as a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

Many Israeli Arabs have also been convicted for posting support or sympathy for Hamas on social media since 7 October last year.

Both the justice ministry and the attorney general’s office have raised concerns about how the legislation, which will likely be challenged in court, can be enforced.

Eran Shamir-Borer, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former international law expert for the Israeli military, said that if the legislation reached the Supreme Court, it would likely to be struck down.

“The bottom line is this is completely non-constitutional and a clear conflict to Israel’s core values,” Mr Shamir-Borer told the Associated Press news agency.

Those deported will be sent to Gaza or to “another destination determined according to the circumstances”.

Other than the military, ordinary Israeli citizens are not legally allowed to enter Gaza.

About 100 Israelis are thought to be being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, including around 60 who are thought to still be alive.

Israeli citizens would retain their citizenship even after being expelled from the country. They would not be allowed to return for between seven and 15 years.

Permanent residents could be deported for between 10 and 20 years.

The majority of the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem hold permanent Israeli residency.

In addition, a five-year temporary order was approved allowing for prison sentences for children under the age of 14 convicted of murder as part of an act of terrorism or as part of the activities of a terrorist organisation.

The remains of 11 people, including two children, have been found inside a vehicle in a southern Mexican city besieged by violence, officials say.

The grim discovery was made in the city of Chilpancingo, whose mayor was beheaded last month just days after taking the job, in Guerrero state.

The identities of the victims are not yet known and the case is being treated as a homicide, the state’s attorney general said.

Police were called to the scene after an abandoned pick-up truck was reported to authorities on Wednesday night.

The truck containing the bodies was found on a highway to Acapulco, which was a destination for the rich and famous in the 1950s and 1960s, but has since become a hotspot for drug-trafficking with a high murder rate.

Guerrero is one of Mexico’s most violent states because of its location on the Pacific coast smuggling routes. Last year, 1,890 murders were recorded in the state.

Chilpancingo, a city of about 280,000 people, has long been the scene of turf battles between two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos.

At least six candidates for public office were killed in the state in the run-up to Mexico’s 2 June elections.

Last month, Chilpancingo mayor Alejandro Arcos was found decapitated less than a week after taking office.

More than 450,000 people have been murdered and tens of thousands have gone missing across Mexico since the government deployed the army to combat drug trafficking in 2006.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has made tackling violent crime a priority. She unveiled a new security plan last month that included improved intelligence-sharing and boosting the National Guard.

It is now “virtually certain” that 2024 – a year punctuated by intense heatwaves and deadly storms – will be the world’s warmest on record, according to projections by the European climate service.

Global average temperatures across the year are on track to end up more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, which would make 2024 the first calendar year to breach this symbolic mark.

These high temperatures are mainly down to human-caused climate change, with smaller contributions from natural factors such as the El Niño weather pattern.

Scientists say this should act as an alarm call ahead of next week’s UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, COP29.

“This latest record sends another stark warning to governments at COP29 of the urgent need for action to limit any further warming,” says Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Global temperatures have been so high through the first 10 months of 2024 that only an implausibly sharp drop in the final two months would prevent a new record from being set.

In fact, it is likely that 2024 will end up at least 1.55C hotter than pre-industrial times, according to data from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“Pre-industrial” refers to the benchmark period of 1850-1900, which roughly equates to the time before humans started significantly heating up the planet, for example by burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

The projection means that 2024 could surpass the current record of 1.48C, which was set only last year.

“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

This would also represent the first time that a calendar year has passed 1.5C of warming, according to Copernicus data.

This would be symbolic, because almost 200 countries pledged to try to limit long-term temperature rises to that level under the Paris climate agreement in 2015, hoping to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change.

If the 1.5C limit is breached, that does not mean the Paris goal has been broken, because it refers to average temperatures over a period of 20 years or so, in order to smooth out natural variability.

But every year-long breach brings the world closer to passing the 1.5C mark in the longer term. Last month, the UN warned that the world could warm by more than 3C this century based on current policies.

The specifics of 2024 also offer cause for concern.

Early 2024 warmth was boosted by the natural El Niño weather pattern. This is where surface waters in the east tropical Pacific Ocean are warmer than usual, which releases extra heat into the atmosphere.

This latest El Niño phase began in mid-2023 and ended around April 2024, but temperatures have remained stubbornly high since.

Over the past week, global average temperatures have set new records for the time of year every day, according to Copernicus data.

Many scientists expect the opposite, cooler phase, La Niña, to develop soon. This should, in theory, lead to a temporary drop in global temperatures next year, although exactly how this will play out is uncertain.

“We will watch with interest what happens going into 2025 and beyond,” says Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at the University of Reading.

But, with levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere still rising quickly, scientists warn it is likely only a matter of time before new records are set.

“The warmer temperatures [are making] storms more intense, heatwaves hotter and heavy rainfall more extreme, with clearly seen consequences for people all around the world,” says Prof Hawkins.

“Stabilising global temperatures by reaching net zero emissions is the only way to stop adding to the costs of these disasters.”

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Australian scientists have solved a mystery which has gripped Sydney: what were the sticky dark blobs which washed up on some of the city’s famed beaches last month?

Initially believed to be tar balls, they were in fact a “disgusting” combination of human faeces, cooking oil, chemicals and illicit drugs, researchers say.

Eight beaches including Bondi were closed for several days and a massive clean-up ordered after thousands of the black deposits started appearing from 16 October.

Testing by chemists has determined the balls were most likely the result of a sewage spill, though their exact origin remains unknown.

Last month authorities in New South Wales (NSW) said they suspected the objects were a mixture of fatty acids, fuel oil and chemicals found in cleaning and cosmetic products.

But further testing found the material is unlikely to have originated solely from an oil spill or waste from a ship, as some had thought.

Each ball was slightly different but had a firm surface – hardened partially by accumulating sand and minerals like calcium – and a soft core.

Inside was everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.

“They smell absolutely disgusting, they smell worse than anything you’ve ever smelt,” lead investigator Associate Professor Jon Beves, from the University of NSW, told 9News.

Professor William Alexander Donald said they resembled fat, oil, and grease blobs – often called fatbergs – which are commonly formed in sewerage systems.

Detecting this along with recreational drugs and and industrial chemicals had “pointed us to sewage and other sources of urban effluent”, he explained.

The researchers said they had received unconfirmed reports of smaller but otherwise similar balls washing up over the past two years.

Sydney Water has reported that there are no known issues with waste systems in the city.

Roblox is introducing new safety features for children under the age of 13, following criticism of how it protects younger users.

The free online gaming platform, which has around 70 million daily users worldwide, allows players to create their own games and play those made by others.

It is particularly popular with children – but some have complained they have been exposed to upsetting and harmful content on the site.

Starting 3 December, game creators will be asked to say whether their games are suitable for under-13s – with any that fail to do so being blocked for players 12 and younger.

And from 18 November, under-13s will also be barred from accessing “social hangouts”, which are online spaces where players can talk to each other by text and voice.

It specifies hangout experiences as games where “the primary theme or purpose” is to allow people to communicate with each other as themselves, rather than role-playing as a character.

Younger users will also be unable to use “free-form 2D user creation” from the same date, which it said were games “that allow users to draw or write in 2D and replicate those creations to other users without the completed creation going through Roblox moderation”.

It is thought that this is aimed at preventing users writing or drawing offensive images or messages which are difficult to moderate.

“We recognize the deadline is soon, but we greatly appreciate your cooperation in helping us ensure Roblox is a safe and civil place for users of all ages to come together,” it said in a post on the Roblox developer website.

According to the media regulator Ofcom, Roblox is the most popular game in the UK for children aged 8 to 12.

But it has faced criticism over its protections for younger users, with one young person telling the BBC in May he had been approached on Roblox and asked for sexual images.

At the time, Ofcom, the regulator for online safety, told tech firms to hide “toxic” content from children and published draft codes of practice.

Since then there have been further issues, with Turkey entirely blocking access to Roblox in August.

“As a company that’s transparent with our community of developers, we needed to share key information about the upcoming changes prior to launch,” Roblox told the BBC in a statement.

“We’re constantly strengthening our safety systems and policies — we shipped over 30 improvements this year and we have more to come,” it added.

But despite announcing the changes would begin swiftly, it said it would not begin enforcing the requirements until 2025.

Japan’s Mount Fuji has seen its first snowfall after going through the longest period without snow since records began 130 years ago.

Snow fell on Japan’s highest peak about a month later than expected, as the country recovers from one of its hottest summers.

The news was welcomed, with locals celebrating and sharing photos of the snow-clad peak.

Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s most popular tourist attractions and has inspired centuries of artwork.

Snow was spotted on Wednesday, 6 November, by the Japan Meteorological Agency’s branch in Shizuoka.

As photos of the snowy peak spread on Wednesday, an X user commented, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this”. Another wrote, “I’ve never been so excited for the first snowfall this year”.

“Finally… make-up makes you look even more beautiful,” read a third tweet, referring to the white peak.

The weather agency’s office in Kofu officially confirmed the presence of snow on Mount Fuji’s peak on Thursday. It could not do so on Wednesday due to clouds obstructing the view of the summit.

This was the most delayed sighting since 2023 when snow was first seen on the summit on 5 October, according to AFP news agency. The previous record was 26 October – that happened twice, in 1955 and 2016.

Located south-west of Tokyo, Mount Fuji stands at 3,776m (12,460 ft). It last erupted just over 300 years ago and is visible from the capital on a clear day.

With temperatures between June and August 1.76C (3.1F) higher than average, Japan had its joint hottest summer on record – the other was in 2003.

The warmer-than-usual weather continued in September.

While it’s hard to attribute delayed snowfall on Mount Fuji directly to climate change, it is in line with what experts predict in a warming world.

Ghana’s outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo is facing a backlash on social media after he unveiled a statue of himself during a tour of the country’s Western Region.

The monument is intended to honour the development initiatives the president has overseen whilst in office, the region’s minister Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah says.

But many Ghanaians have been mocking its installation – outside a hospital in the city of Sekondi – seeing it as “self glorification”.

“The people of the Western Region deserve better than these self-serving displays,” opposition MP Emmanuel Armah Kofi-Buah posted on X.

Akufo-Addo, who will be standing down in January after two terms in power, has boasted that he has fulfilled 80% of his promises to Ghanaians.

He unveiled the monument, prominently placed in front of Sekondi’s Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital, on Wednesday during his visit that has been dubbed a “thank-you tour”.

At the ceremony, Darko-Mensah, who oversees the Western Region, highlighted several key projects initiated under the president.

But the statue has sparked a wave of criticism, with some Ghanaians questioning its importance when several key projects remain incomplete.

“It would be admirable if the president had allowed posterity to recognise and appreciate his work,” an X user posted.

A section of the public is calling for the statue – photos of which have gone viral – to be pulled down after the president leaves office.

But not everyone is critical, with some seeing it as an acknowledgement of Akufo-Addo’s contributions to the development of the country.

“He is very deserving of this exquisite monument. The greatest president I’ve ever had. You will be missed by Ghanaians,” one person posted, adding that Akufo-Addo was the “founder of Ghana’s free education system”.

During his tour, the 80-year-old president has singled out his policy to scrap fees for secondary schools as his “most significant legacy”.

His visit has also fed into campaigning nationwide by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). Western Region, in the south-west, is one of 16 regions in the country.

The president urged people there to vote for his deputy, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, in next month’s general election.

He will be the NPP’s candidate and Akufo-Addo said a vote for him would see the continuation of the party’s policies and projects.

Bawumia’s main challenger will be former President John Dramani Mahama, who is seeking a comeback under the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The high cost of living is a key campaign issue in Ghana, Africa’s leading producer of gold.

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The deaths of 10 elephants in three days in a national park in central India has raised alarm among conservationists.

The animals, part of a herd of 13 elephants, died over 29-31 October at the Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh state.

A preliminary toxicology report says that the elephants may have died from eating a millet crop infected with fungus.

The deaths have generated national headlines and criticism, putting the state’s government on the back foot.

“[The toxicology report indicates] that the elephants had consumed a large quantity of decayed kodo [millet] plants and grains,” said L Krishna Murthy, a senior forest official who is leading an inquiry into the deaths.

Initial unconfirmed reports said that the elephants had been poisoned, possibly by farmers to stop them destroying crops. But government officials say there is no sign of deliberate poisoning.

The toxicology report says cyclopiazonic acid – a fungal neurotoxin – was found in the samples taken from the dead elephants.

They are thought to have eaten a large amount of kodo millets, which are usually grown in arid regions in countries including India, Pakistan and Philippines and parts of West Africa.

Around 35% of kodo millet produced in India is cultivated in Madhya Pradesh.

The crop grows quickly, can withstand drought conditions and can be stored for long periods. It is also easy to digest and has several health benefits.

But some studies have found that eating the millet can cause “intoxication and poisoning” as the grains are “frequently infested” with a kind of fungus that produces cyclopiazonic acid.

Another study, done by researchers at the Indian Institute of Millets Research, says that while many “crops suffer from [cyclopiazonic acid] contamination, major adverse effects have been recorded only in kodo millet because of lack of scientific management”. They also suggest that some practices, such as drying the harvested crop quickly, could ensure it is safe.

There have been some reported cases of animals dying after eating the crop, though they are not that frequent.

In 1933, 14 elephants died near a forest in the southern state of Tamil Nadu after consuming kodo millets, according to a report co-authored by ecologist Raman Sukumar and mycologist TS Suryanarayanan in Down to Earth magazine.

Mr Sukumar, who has worked extensively on the Asian elephant and human–wildlife conflict, told the BBC that elephants frequently eat millets when they enter fields looking for food.

Elephants have a good sense of smell, but mycotoxins are odourless and tasteless.

“My sense is that elephants tried to eat as much as possible in as little time as possible because they knew that farmers would chase them away,” he said.

He adds that weather also likely played a role in the fungal growth on the millets. Days before the deaths, there were heavy rains in the region, producing moist conditions conducive to fungal infection.

After news reports began blaming kodo millets, authorities destroyed some crops in villages close to the national park.

The toxicology report recommends surveying and destroying the residue of the fungus-infected crop and preventing the entry of domestic and wild animals into such fields.

But farmers in the area said that they have been growing kodo millets for years without any adverse events.

Mr Sukumar also says it is still rare for fungal infections to produce mycotoxins in kodo millets.

“The elephants were unfortunate this time,” he says.

Donald Trump is set to return to the White House, having promised action on issues including immigration, the economy and the war in Ukraine.

He looks likely to enjoy plenty of support for his political agenda in Congress after his Republican Party regained control of the Senate.

In his victory speech, Trump vowed he would “govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises”.

But in some cases, he has given little detail of how he might achieve his aims.

Asked in 2023 by Fox News whether he would abuse his power or target political opponents, he replied he would not, “except for day one”.

“No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”

• Follow live updates after Trump won US election
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While campaigning, Trump promised the biggest mass deportations of undocumented migrants in US history.

He also pledged to complete the building of a wall at the border with Mexico that was started during his first presidency.

The number of crossings at the US southern border hit record levels at the end of last year during the Biden-Harris administration, before falling in 2024.

Experts have told the BBC that deportations on the scale promised by Trump would face huge legal and logistical challenges – and could slow economic growth.

Exit poll data has suggested the economy was a key issue for voters. Trump has promised to “end inflation” – which rose to high levels under President Joe Biden before falling again. But a president’s power to directly influence prices is limited.

He has also promised sweeping tax cuts, extending his overhaul from 2017. He has proposed making tips tax-free, abolishing tax on social security payments and shaving corporation tax.

He has proposed new tariffs of at least 10% on most foreign goods, to cut the trade deficit. Imports from China could bear an additional 60% tariff, he has said. Some economists have warned that such moves could push up prices for ordinary people.

During his first presidency, Trump rolled back hundreds of environmental protections and made America the first nation to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

This time, he has again vowed to cut regulations, particularly as a way to help the American car industry. He has constantly attacked electric vehicles, promising to overturn Biden’s targets encouraging the switch to cleaner cars.

He has pledged to increase production of US fossil fuels – vowing to “drill, drill, drill” on day one in favour of renewable energy sources such as wind power.

He wants to open areas such as the Arctic wilderness to oil drilling, which he argues would lower energy costs – though analysts are sceptical.

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Trump has criticised the tens of billions of dollars spent by the US on supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia – and has pledged to end the conflict “within 24 hours” through a negotiated deal.

He has not said what he thinks either side should give up. Democrats say the move would embolden President Vladimir Putin.

Trump wants the US to disentangle itself from foreign conflicts generally. Regarding the war in Gaza – Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, but has urged the American ally to end its operation.

He has also pledged to end the related violence in Lebanon, but gave no detail on how.

Against the wishes of some of his supporters, Trump said during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris that he would not sign into law a national abortion ban.

In 2022, the nationwide constitutional right to abortion was overturned by the Supreme Court, which had a majority of conservative judges following Trump’s first presidency.

Reproductive rights became a key campaigning topic for Harris, and several states approved measures to protect or expand abortion rights on polling day.

Trump himself has regularly said states should be free to decide their own laws on abortion, but struggled to find a consistent message of his own.

Trump has said he will “free” some of those convicted of offences during the riot in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol building in an effort to thwart the 2020 election victory of Joe Biden.

Several deaths were blamed on the violence, which Trump was accused of inciting.

He has worked to downplay the riot’s significance and recast the hundreds of supporters who were convicted as political prisoners.

He continues to say many of them are “wrongfully imprisoned”, though has acknowledged that “a couple of them, probably they got out of control”.

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Trump has vowed to sack “within two seconds” of taking office the veteran prosecutor leading two criminal investigations against him.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has indicted Trump over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump denies any wrongdoing, and managed to prevent either case coming to trial before the election. He says Mr Smith has subjected him to a “political witch hunt”.

Trump will return to the White House as the first ever president with a criminal conviction, having been found guilty in New York of falsifying business records.

• GLOBAL: What does Trump victory mean for UK?
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

A 17-year-old girl in China hailed as a genius in a mathematics contest cheated, competition organisers have said – ending months of scepticism over her stellar results.

Jiang Ping, a fashion design student from a rural town in Jiangsu province, made headlines in June when she came 12th in the qualifiers of an international maths contest run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

She was the first finalist since the competition began in 2018 to have come from a lowly vocational school, Chinese media reported. The vast majority of the 800 finalists came from elite universities.

Jiang’s results turned her into an overnight sensation, and she was labelled a “prodigy” in the press and on social media.

Under China’s notoriously cut-throat education system, academic excellence is lauded. Many people online were encouraged by Jiang’s results, seeing them as proof that students from vocational institutes could still excel academically.

However, as doubt surrounding her abilities snowballed, competition organisers said last Sunday that Jiang had violated competition rules in the preliminary round, by receiving help from her teacher, who was also a contestant himself.

“This has exposed problems like inadequacies in the competition format and the lack of rigour in supervision. We sincerely apologise,” organisers said in a statement.

According to the final results announced on Sunday, neither Jiang nor her teacher was among 86 winners in the competition.

The annual mathematics contest is open to contestants from institutions worldwide and hosted by Damo Academy, Alibaba’s research institute.

This year, Jiang, a student at Jiangsu Lianshui Secondary Vocational School, outperformed other finalists from some of the world’s most prestigious institutions — including Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Oxford.

She had chosen to study at the vocational school both because she was interested in fashion design, and because her sister and friends were there, said local media outlets.

Jiang’s results and unconventional educational background soon grabbed nationwide attention. Her story was featured in a video produced by Damo Academy and she was interviewed by news outlets across the country.

“Learning maths is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems I feel quite happy,” she told the state-run People’s Daily. “No matter what the future holds, I will keep learning.”

Jiang’s teacher, Wang Runqiu, was also thrust into the spotlight, hailed as an educator who noticed and encouraged her passion for maths. Speaking to the media, he described her as an attentive student who had learnt advanced mathematics herself.

“I have encountered many setbacks in the process of learning maths,” he said. “So, I want to do everything I can to help my students and let them know that there are other possibilities in the future.”

But along with an outpouring of praise for Jiang and her teacher, the student’s story also sparked a discussion about whether China’s education system did enough to support gifted students in less academic pathways – especially those who may not have received similar recognition by their teachers.

China’s education system focuses much of its resources on those taking the “Gaokao” – the notoriously difficult exam that students need to take in order to get into university. Those in vocational schools had long faced restrictions in taking the gaokao and enrolling in regular universities, until an education reform in 2022 offered vocational school students an alternative university entrance exam.

An earlier op-ed in state-news media outlet Xinhua said that Jiang’s results “hint[ed] at an awkward truth: even youths as talented as her may be easily buried without good education credentials”.

But as Jiang’s fame burgeoned, criticism and scepticism surrounding her skills also started to bubble.

In June, dozens of other finalists published a joint letter they wrote to the competition organising committee demanding an investigation into Jiang. They also called for her answers to the preliminary test questions to be made public.

The finalists alleged that Jiang had made “several apparent writing mistakes” in an online video and that she “seemed unfamiliar with these mathematical expressions and symbols”.

While the preliminary round of the competition allowed participants to use programming software, the final round was a closed-book exam. The results of the finals, which were initially set to be released in August, were postponed for several months.

When the results were finally made public on Sunday, Jiang was not among the 86 winners of the final round.

Her school also confirmed in a statement on Sunday that Jiang had been helped by her teacher Wang, and that Wang had been given a warning and disqualified from teachers’ awards for the year. The statement also called for leniency and protection for the teenager.

Attempts by the BBC to contact Jiang’s family were unsuccessful. A social media account once used by her mother is now defunct, and a phone number linked to her father has been deactivated. Multiple phone calls by the BBC to Jiang’s school went unanswered, and a village official declined to discuss Jiang when contacted by the BBC.

While Sunday’s revelation unleashed a wave of criticism of Jiang and her teacher, many social media users also spoke up for the teenager, arguing the bigger responsibility lay with her school and teacher.

“Jiang Ping is not innocent, that’s without question. But who are the worst parties in this?” reads a post on Weibo. “The adults brought this child along to do a bad deed, and let her suffer all the consequences.”

“Even if the whole thing was faked, Jiang Ping was not the mastermind behind it,” another wrote on Weibo. “She should not be burned at the stake.”

Donald Trump’s transition team is already vetting potential candidates who could serve in his administration when he returns to the White House in January.

On Thursday, he made the first announcement naming his campaign co-manager Susan Summerall Wiles as his White House chief of staff.

Many of the figures who served under Trump in his first term do not plan to return, though a handful of loyalists are rumoured to be making a comeback.

But the US president-elect is now surrounded by a new cast of characters who may fill his cabinet, staff his White House and serve in key roles across government.

Here is a look at the some of the names being floated for the top jobs.

The past two years have been quite a journey for the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

An environmental lawyer by trade, he ran for president as a Democrat, with most of his family speaking out against his anti-vaccine views and conspiracy theories as they endorsed Joe Biden’s re-election.

He then switched to an independent candidacy but, failing to gain traction amid a series of controversies, dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

In the last two months of the 2024 election cycle, he spearheaded a Trump campaign initiative called “Make America Healthy Again”.

Trump recently promised he would play a major role related to public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Safety Administration (FDA).

RFK Jr, as he is known, recently asserted he would push to remove fluoride from drinking water because “it’s a very bad way to deliver it into our systems” – though this has been challenged by some experts.

And in an interview with NBC News, Kennedy rejected the idea that he was “anti-vaccine”, saying he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines” but rather provide them with “the best information” to make their own choices.

Rather than a formal cabinet position, Kennedy used the interview to suggest he could take on a broader role within the White House.

Trump’s landslide victory over Kamala Harris was masterminded by campaign co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who he referred to in his victory speech on Wednesday as “the ice baby”.

She has since been confirmed to be the incoming chief of staff under the second Trump administration – Trump’s first confirmed appointment for his second term – making her the first woman to take on the role.

Wiles, who Trump claimed “likes to stay in the background”, is considered one of the most feared and respected political operatives in the country.

Less than a year after she started working in politics, she worked on Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign and later became a scheduler in his White House.

In 2010, she turned Rick Scott, a then-businessman with little political experience, into Florida’s governor in just seven months. Scott is now a US senator.

Wiles met Trump during the 2015 Republican presidential primary and she became the co-chair of his Florida campaign, at the time considered a swing state. Trump went on to narrowly defeat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Wiles has been commended by Republicans for her ability to command respect and check the big egos of those in the president-elect’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

The world’s richest man announced his support for the former president earlier this year, despite saying in 2022 that “it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.

The tech billionaire has since emerged as one of the most visible and well-known backers of Trump and donated more than $119m (£91.6m) this election cycle to America PAC – a political action committee he created to support the former president.

Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of the social media platform X, also launched a voter registration drive that included a $1m (£771,000) give-away to a random swing-state voter each day during the closing stretch of the campaign.

Since registering as a Republican ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Musk has been increasingly vocal on issues including illegal immigration and transgender rights.

Both Musk and Trump have concentrated on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs, reform regulations and streamline what he calls a “massive, suffocating federal bureaucracy”.

The would-be agency’s acronym – DOGE – is a playful reference to a “meme-coin” cryptocurrency Musk has previously promoted.

The former Kansas congressman served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then secretary of state during Trump’s first administration.

A foreign policy hawk and a fierce supporter of Israel, he played a highly visible role in moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among the key players in the implementation of the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

He remained a loyal defender of his boss, joking that there would be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” amid Trump’s false claims of election fraud in late 2020.

He has been tipped as a top contender for the role of defence secretary, alongside Michael Waltz, a Florida lawmaker and military veteran who sits on the armed services committee in the US House of Representatives.

Richard Grenell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and his acting director of national intelligence.

The Republican was also heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, in the swing state of Nevada.

Trump prizes Grenell’s loyalty and has described him as “my envoy”.

In September, he sat in on Trump’s private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The former president has often claimed he will end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of taking office and Grenell has advocated for setting up an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine as a means to that end – an idea seen as unacceptable by Kyiv.

He’s considered a contender for secretary of state or national security advisor, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.

The Trump 2024 campaign’s national press secretary previously served in his White House press office, as an assistant press secretary.

The 27-year-old Gen-Zer made a bid to become the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress in 2022, to represent a seat in her home state of New Hampshire, but fell short.

She is tipped to become the White House press secretary – the most public-facing position in the cabinet.

Tom Homan served as the acting director of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during the first Trump administration, where he was a proponent of separating migrant children from their parents as a way to deter illegal crossings.

At the time, he made headlines for saying politicians who support sanctuary city policies should be charged with crimes. He later resigned from his Ice position in 2018, mid-way through the Trump presidency.

He has since emerged as a key figure in developing Trump’s mass migrant deportation plan, and has been floated as a potential pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Homan spoke on the deportation plan last month in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS News, saying that “it’s not going to be – a mass sweep of neighbourhoods.”

“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ‘em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes,” he said.

Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, calling him a “courageous man”.

Speaking at an event in the Russian city of Sochi, the Russian president said that Trump was “hounded from all sides” during his first term in the White House.

Putin also said that Trump’s claim that he can help end the war in Ukraine “deserves attention at least”.

During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly said he could end the war “in a day” but has never elaborated on how that could happen.

During Putin’s address, which lasted several hours and covered a wide range of topics, he also spoke of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July, saying it “made an impression” on him.

After being shot, Trump punched his fist into the air and mouthed the words “fight, fight, fight”, before being hauled away by Secret Service agents.

“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a man,” Putin said.

Asked if he was ready to have discussions with Donald Trump, Putin replied: “We’re ready, we’re ready.”

Trump had already said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak with Putin, telling NBC News: “I think we’ll speak”.

The Kremlin was widely accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s campaign against Hilary Clinton, claims rejected by Moscow.

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia in 2016, but said in a report three years later that had found no evidence of conspiracy.

Elsewhere on Thursday, leaders gathering for the European Political Community in Budapest discussed Trump’s return to the White House.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had a “very warm” and “productive conversation” with the president-elect.

“But we have to do everything to ensure that the results of our interaction between Ukraine and America, the whole of Europe and America, are productive and positive,” he added.

Many in Ukraine and Europe are worried that Trump might slow, if not halt, the flow of American military aid to Kyiv upon taking power in January.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer assured Zelensky at the summit that the UK’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia remains “iron-clad”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – who previously said he celebrated Trump’s win by “tapping into the vodka supply happily” – said the US and Europe now face tough talks on trade.

Orban, who is a close ally of Trump, told a press conference that “the trade issue with the US will come up and it will not be easy”.

Before winning the election, Trump said he would impose tariffs of 10% on all imports.

“There was an agreement that Europe should assume greater responsibility for its own peace and security in the future. To put it even more bluntly, we cannot expect Americans to be the only ones to take care of us,” Orban said.

The Prince of Wales has described the past year as the “hardest year” of his life.

Speaking to reporters at the end of his visit to South Africa, Prince William talked about how he has coped after both his wife and his father were diagnosed with cancer.

“It’s been dreadful. It’s probably been the hardest year in my life. So, trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult,” he said after being asked how his year has been after a difficult year for the Royal Family.

Buckingham Palace revealed the King had cancer in February and would begin treatment. Just six weeks later it was announced the Princess of Wales was undergoing chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis.

The King has since returned to public duties and Catherine has finished chemotherapy treatment.

Prince William said: “I’m so proud of my wife, I’m proud of my father, for handling the things that they have done.

“But from a personal family point of view, it’s been brutal.”

The Prince of Wales has been in South Africa for his Earthshot prize awards ceremony.

On Wednesday night, five projects each won £1m in prize money for their environmental innovations.

He was also asked about the role of Prince of Wales and whether he liked the freedom and responsibility that came with it.

“It’s a tricky one. Do I like more responsibility? No,” he said.

“Do I like the freedom that I can build something like Earthshot then yes.

“And that’s the future for me. It’s very important with my role and my platform, that I’m doing something for good.

“That I’m helping people’s lives and I’m doing something that is genuinely meaningful.”

The prince has been sporting a beard since the summer and it has divided opinion even amongst those closest to him including his daughter Princess Charlotte.

“Well Charlotte didn’t like it the first time. I got floods of tears, so I had to shave it off. And then I grew it back. I thought, hang on a second, and I convinced her it was going to be okay.”

And on his general feelings about combining his role as a future king, husband and father, there was a sense that he had found the right mix of official duty and private time.

“I enjoy my work and I enjoy pacing myself and keeping sure that I have got time for my family too.”

The Prince’s final day in Cape Town saw him learn more about the work of Abalobi, a 2023 Earthshot prize finalist which aims to protect small-scale fishing communities.

He was met with shouts of “we love you, William” and chatted to local fishermen and women involved in the programme.

But later a handful of vocal protesters held up placards or shouted about a range of issues including conflict in Israel, indigenous rights, the culling of baboons in the area and lack of representation for local fishermen.

On Wednesday, the Prince William told broadcasters Catherine is doing “really well” and has been “amazing this whole year”.

China is expected to unveil new measures to boost its flagging economy, as it braces for a second Donald Trump presidency.

Trump won the election on a platform that promised steep import taxes, including tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese-made goods.

His victory is now likely to hinder Xi Jinping’s plans to transform the country into a technology powerhouse – and further strain relations between the world’s two biggest economies.

A property slump, rising government debt and unemployment, and low consumption have slowed down Chinese growth since the pandemic.

So the stakes are higher than ever for the latest announcement from the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the executive body of China’s legislature.

During his first term in office Trump hit Chinese goods with tariffs of as much as 25%.

China analyst Bill Bishop says Trump should be taken at his word about his new tariff plans.

“I think we should believe that he means it when [he] talks about tariffs, that he sees China as having reneged on his trade deal, that he thinks China and Covid cost him the 2020 election”.

The pressure from Washington did not ease after Trump left the White House in 2021. The Biden administration kept the measures in place and in some cases widened them.

While the first wave of Trump tariffs were painful for China, the country is now in a much more vulnerable position.

The economy has been struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels of growth since abruptly abandoning its tight Covid restrictions two years ago.

Instead of delivering a widely expected fast-paced recovery, China became a regular source of disappointing economic news.

Even before Trump’s election victory and after China began rolling out measures to support its economy in September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its annual growth target for the country.

The IMF now expects the Chinese economy to expand by 4.8% in 2024, at the lower end of Beijing’s “about 5%” target. Next year, it projects China’s annual growth rate will drop further to 4.5%.

But the country’s leaders were not caught entirely off guard by the end to decades of super-fast growth.

Speaking in 2017, President Xi said his country planned to transition from “rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development.”

The term has since been used repeatedly by Chinese officials to describe a shift to an economy driven by advanced manufacturing and green industries.

But some economists say China cannot simply export itself out of trouble.

China risks falling into the type of decades-long stagnation that Japan endured after a stock and property bubble burst in the 1990s, Morgan Stanley Asia’s former chairman, Stephen Roach, says.

To avoid that fate, he says China should draw “on untapped consumer demand” and move away from “export and investment-led growth”.

That would not only encourage more sustainable growth but also lower “trade tensions and [China’s] vulnerability to external shocks,” he says.

This more robust economic model could help China fend off the kind of threats posed by Trump’s return to power.

But China, which has long been the world’s factory for low-cost goods, is trying to replicate that success with high-tech exports.

It is already a world leader in solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs) and lithium ion batteries.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) China now accounts for at least 80% of solar panel production. It is also the biggest maker of EVs and the batteries that power them.

The IEA said last year that China’s investments in clean energy accounted for a third of the world’s total, as the country continued to show “remarkable progress in adding renewable capacity.”

“For sure there is an overall effort to support high-tech manufacturing in China,” says David Lubin, a senior research fellow at London based-think tank, Chatham House.

“This has been very successful”, he adds.

Exports of electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries and solar panels jumped 30% in 2023, surpassing one trillion yuan ($139bn; £108bn) for the first time as China continued to strengthen its global dominance in each of those industries.

That export growth has helped soften the blow to China’s economy of the ongoing property crisis.

“China’s overcapacity will increase, there is not doubt about it. They have no other source of growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia Pacific region at investment bank Natixis.

But along with those increased exports, there has been a rise in resistance from Western countries, and not just the US.

Just last month, the European Union increased tariffs on Chinese-built EVs to as much as 45%.

“The problem right now is that large recipients of those goods including Europe and the US are increasingly reluctant to receive them,” said Katrina Ell, research director at Moody’s Analytics.

Today, as Trump is set to head back to the Oval Office with a pledge to hammer Chinese imports, Beijing will have to ask itself whether its latest measures to boost its slowing economy will be enough.

The Israeli parliament has passed a law allowing the government to deport the family members of people convicted of terrorism offences, including Israeli citizens.

The controversial legislation, proposed by a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, applies to first-degree relatives, meaning the parents, siblings or children of those found guilty of committing or supporting terrorism.

Israeli human rights organisations say the law is unconstitutional.

Some opposition members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, suggested it is targeted only at Palestinian citizens of Israel, sometimes called Israeli Arabs.

The law allows for the deportation of the family members of those who had advance knowledge and either failed to report the matter to the police or “expressed support or identification with an act of terrorism”.

Relatives of those who published “praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism or a terrorist organisation” could also be deported.

Relatives would be deported by order of the interior minister. Some members of the Knesset suggested during the debate on the bill that it would not be used against Jewish Israeli citizens, the Times of Israel website reported.

“Yigal Amir’s family will not be deported anywhere,” said opposition member of parliament Merav Michaeli, referring to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, a Jewish extremist.

Mickey Levy asked “whether you will deport Ben Gvir’s family,” a reference to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s conviction in his youth for incitement to violence and supporting a terror group.

Dr Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, told the BBC there was “no question” the law was intended to apply to Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

“It is very unlikely that a Jewish citizen of Israel would ever be deported under this law,” Dr Scheindlin said.

“This is clear from certain provisions in the law itself but also important elements which will determine how the law is applied, including that in normal Israeli parlance, the term ‘terror’ is almost never applied to Jewish acts of violence against Palestinian civilians.”

About 20% of the country’s population are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A truck which hit a bus stop in central Israel last month was driven by a man identified by authorities as a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

Many Israeli Arabs have also been convicted for posting support or sympathy for Hamas on social media since 7 October last year.

Both the justice ministry and the attorney general’s office have raised concerns about how the legislation, which will likely be challenged in court, can be enforced.

Eran Shamir-Borer, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former international law expert for the Israeli military, said that if the legislation reached the Supreme Court, it would likely to be struck down.

“The bottom line is this is completely non-constitutional and a clear conflict to Israel’s core values,” Mr Shamir-Borer told the Associated Press news agency.

Those deported will be sent to Gaza or to “another destination determined according to the circumstances”.

Other than the military, ordinary Israeli citizens are not legally allowed to enter Gaza.

About 100 Israelis are thought to be being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, including around 60 who are thought to still be alive.

Israeli citizens would retain their citizenship even after being expelled from the country. They would not be allowed to return for between seven and 15 years.

Permanent residents could be deported for between 10 and 20 years.

The majority of the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem hold permanent Israeli residency.

In addition, a five-year temporary order was approved allowing for prison sentences for children under the age of 14 convicted of murder as part of an act of terrorism or as part of the activities of a terrorist organisation.

The head of the US central bank has hit back at speculation that his post might be in jeopardy as Donald Trump prepares to assume power in Washington.

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said he would not step down if Trump asked and that it is “not permitted under law” for the White House to force him out.

Mr Powell was responding to questions from reporters at a press conference after the bank announced a cut to borrowing costs, lowering the Fed’s key lending rate to the range of 4.5%-4.75%.

Forecasters have been expecting borrowing costs to fall further in the months ahead but warned that Trump’s plans for tax cuts, immigration and tariffs could keep pressure on inflation and drive up government borrowing, complicating those bets.

Trump has pledged to impose import duties of at least 10% on all goods coming into the country, costs that economists say would be passed onto consumers, helping to drive up prices.

Tax cuts could also stoke inflation by encouraging spending, while the mass deportations of immigrants proposed by Trump would create a big hole in the US workforce that could drive up wages.

Interest rates on US debt have already jumped this week, reflecting those concerns.

Mr Powell said on Thursday that it was too early to tell how the new administration’s agenda might affect the US economy – or how the Fed should respond.

“It’s such an early stage – we don’t know what the policies are, we don’t know when they will be implemented,” he said. “In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions.”

Mr Powell was named chairman of the Fed by Trump in 2017, but later became a frequent target of his criticism.

During his first term, Trump called bank officials “boneheads” on social media and reportedly consulted advisers about whether he could fire Mr Powell.

This year, US media have reported that Trump allies have been looking at ways for the White House to assert more control over the Fed, including potentially sidelining Mr Powell by prematurely naming his replacement.

Trump has said repeatedly he believes he has the right to voice his views on Fed actions. He told Bloomberg over the summer that he would let Powell serve out his term, which ends in 2026, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing”.

However, Powell said on Thursday that he would not step down if ordered to by Trump, and that an attempt to oust him before his term is over is “not permitted under the law”.

Mr Powell has faced heavy scrutiny over the last few years, as prices started surging in 2022.

The bank responding by hiking rates rapidly that year, ultimately raising them from near zero to roughly 5.3% as of July – the highest rate in more than two decades.

Those rises affected the public in the form of higher borrowing costs for credit cards, mortgages and other loans, helping to fuel discontent about higher living costs, especially for housing, that played a role in the election.

The Fed started to reverse course in September, slashing rates by a bigger-than-usual 0.5 percentage points, saying it was confident that the pace of price rises in the US was stabilising.

Inflation in the US stood at 2.4% in September, down from more than 9% in June 2022, according to the latest official figures.

The cut announced on Thursday, which was widely expected and unanimous, marked the second drop in a row, lowering rates by a further 0.25 percentage points.

Mr Powell said on Thursday officials remained equally focused on keeping prices stable and the job market healthy.

Though concerns flared earlier this year about rising unemployment, those quietened in September, after data showed an unexpectedly strong burst of hiring.

However, the latest figures showed almost non-existent job growth in October, when the country was grappling with hurricanes and strike actions.

Mr Powell said officials expected to continue to cut rates, but how fast and how far remained to be seen. He resisted questions seeking more precise guidance.

“We don’t think it’s a good time to be doing a lot of further guidance – there’s a fair amount of uncertainty,” he said. “The point is to find the right pace and destination as we go.”

Whitney Watson, co-chief investment officer of fixed income at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said her firm expected to see another rate cut in December, but acknowledged questions about the path ahead.

“Stronger data and uncertainty over fiscal and trade policies mean rising risks that the Fed may opt to slow the pace of easing,” she said, noting that the central bank might start to “skip” rate cuts next year.

The decision by the Fed came the same day that the Bank of England warned that it could take longer for borrowing costs to fall, warning that inflation could creep higher after last week’s Budget.

“On both sides of the pond, we are seeing expectations for future rate cuts being scaled back considerably compared to what many had originally hoped for,” said Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter Investors.

“In the US, it seems interest rates will stay higher for longer as the Fed will need to tread very carefully until it is better able to assess the true impact of Trump’s plans.”

US President-elect Donald Trump has doubled down on his campaign promise of the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, saying the cost of doing so will not be a deterrent.

In some of his first public remarks since winning the election, Trump said his priority upon taking office in January would be to make the border “strong and powerful”.

“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not – really, we have no choice,” Trump told NBC News.

But how would Trump’s campaign pledge of mass deportations of migrants actually work and what are the hurdles he may face?

The latest figures from the Department of Homeland Security and Pew Research indicate that there are around 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, a number that has remained relatively stable since 2005.

Most are long-term residents – nearly four-fifths have been in the country for more than a decade.

Immigrants who are in the country without legal status have the right to due process, including a court hearing before their removal. A drastic increase in deportations would likely entail a large expansion in the immigration court system, which has been beset by backlogs.

Most immigrants already in the country enter into the deportation system not through encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents but through local law enforcement.

However, many of the country’s largest cities and counties have passed laws restricting local police co-operation with Ice.

Trump has pledged to take action against these “sanctuary cities”, but America’s patchwork of local, state and federal laws further complicates the picture.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, or MPI, said that co-operation between Ice and local officials would be a “critical” aspect of any mass deportation programme.

“It’s much easier for Ice to pick someone up from a jail if local law enforcement co-operates, instead of having to go look for them,” she said.

As an example, Ms Bush-Joseph pointed to an early August declaration from the sheriff’s offices of Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties, in which they said they would not deploy deputies to help any mass deportation plan.

“There are many others who would not co-operate with a Trump mass deportation plan,” she said. “That makes it so much harder.”

Any mass deportation programme is also likely to be almost immediately met with a flurry of legal challenges from immigration and human rights activists.

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling, however, means that courts cannot issue injunctions on immigration enforcement policies – meaning they would continue even as the challenges work their way through the legal system.

If a US administration was able to legally move ahead with plans for mass deportations, authorities would still have to contend with enormous logistical challenges.

During the Biden administration, deportation efforts have focused on migrants recently detained at the border. Migrants deported from further inland in the US, from areas not located near the border, are, overwhelmingly, those with criminal histories or deemed national security threats.

Controversial raids on worksites that were carried out during the Trump administration were suspended in 2021.

Deportations of people arrested in the US interior – as opposed to those at the border – have hovered at below 100,000 for a decade, after peaking at over 230,000 during the early years of the Obama administration.

“To raise that, in a single year, up to a million would require a massive infusion of resources that likely don’t exist,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the BBC.

For one, experts are doubtful that Ice’s 20,000 agents and support personnel would be enough to find and track down even a fraction of the figures being touted by the Trump campaign.

Mr Reichlin-Melnick added that the deportation process is long and complicated and only begins with the identification and arrest of an undocumented migrant.

After that, detainees would need to be housed or placed on an “alternative to detention” programme before they are brought before an immigration judge, in a system with a years-long backlog.

Only then are detainees removed from the US, a process that requires diplomatic co-operation from the receiving country.

“In each of those areas, Ice simply does not have the capacity to process millions of people,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said.

Trump has said he would involve the National Guard or other US military forces to help with deportations.

Historically, the US military’s role in immigration matters has been limited to support functions at the US-Mexico border.

Aside from the use of the military and “using local law enforcement”, Trump has offered few specifics on how such a mass deportation plan could be carried out.

In an interview with Time magazine earlier this year, the former president said only that he would “not rule out” building new migrant detention facilities, and that he would move to give police immunity from prosecution from “the liberal groups or the progressive groups”.

He added that there could also be incentives for state and local police departments to participate, and that those who do not “won’t partake in the riches”.

“We have to do this,” he said. “This is not a sustainable problem for our country.”

Eric Ruark, the director of research at NumbersUSA – an organisation that advocates for tighter immigration controls – said that any deportation programme from the interior would only be effective if coupled with increased border enforcement.

“That has to be the priority. You’re going to make very little progress in the interior if that’s not the case,” he said. “That’s what keeps people showing up.”

Additionally, Mr Ruark said that a crackdown on companies that hire undocumented migrants would also be necessary.

“They’re coming for jobs,” he said. “And they’re getting those jobs because interior enforcement has basically been dismantled.”

Experts estimate that the total bill for one million or more deportations would run into tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Ice budget for transportation and deportation in 2023 was $420m (£327m). In that year the agency deported slightly more than 140,000 people.

Thousands of immigrants would be detained while awaiting court hearings or deportations, and the Trump campaign has envisioned building large encampments to house them all.

The number of removal flights would also need to be dramatically expanded, possibly requiring military aircraft to augment current capacity.

Just a small expansion in any of these areas could result in significant costs.

“Even a minor change is in the tens of millions, or hundreds of millions,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said. “A significant change is in the tens or hundreds of millions.”

Those costs would be in addition to the expense of other border enforcement efforts that Trump has promised: continuing work on a southern US border wall, a naval blockade to prevent fentanyl entering the country, and moving thousands of troops to the border.

Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert from the Washington Office on Latin America, said that “nightmarish images” of mass deportations could also cost a potential Trump administration politically from a public relations standpoint.

“Every community in the US would see people they know and love put on buses,” Mr Isacson said.

“You’d have some very painful images on TV of crying children, and families,” he added. “All of that is incredibly bad press. It’s family separation, but on steroids.”

Under the four years of the previous Trump administration, around 1.5 million people were deported, both from the border and the US interior.

The Biden administration – which had deported about 1.1 million people up to February 2024 – is on track to match that, statistics show.

During the two terms of the Obama administration – when Mr Biden was vice-president – more than three million people were deported, leading some immigration reform advocates to dub Barack Obama the “deporter-in-chief”.

The only historical comparison to a mass deportation programme came in 1954, when as many as 1.3 million people were deported as part of Operation Wetback, named after a derogatory slur then commonly used against Mexican people.

That figure is disputed by historians, however.

The programme, under President Dwight Eisenhower, ran into considerable public opposition – partly because some US citizens were also deported – as well as a lack of funding. It was largely discontinued by 1955.

Immigration experts say that the earlier operation’s focus on Mexican nationals and lack of due process makes it incomparable to what a modern-day mass deportation programme would look like.

“Those [deported in the 1950s] were single, Mexican men,” said MPI’s Kathleen Bush-Joseph.

“Now, the vast majority of people coming between ports of entry are from places that are not Mexico, or even northern Central America. It makes it so much harder to return them,” she added.

“Those are not comparable situations.”

Three people have been charged in connection with the death of One Direction star Liam Payne, Argentinian authorities have said.

The singer died on 16 October after falling from the third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires.

One person who accompanied the artist has been charged with the abandonment of a person followed by death and the supply and facilitation of drugs, according to the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office.

A hotel employee and a third person have also been charged with supplying drugs. None of those arrested have been named.

Payne, 31, a father-of-one, was one of the most recognisable names in pop after appearing on The X Factor and rising to fame with the boyband One Direction in the 2010s.

Argentinian authorities have been investigating Payne’s final days at the CasaSur hotel.

After the singer’s death, police found substances in his hotel room, and destroyed objects and furniture. Hotel staff had made two calls to emergency services saying they had a guest who had taken “too many drugs and alcohol”, and was “trashing the entire room”, it was previously reported.

On Thursday, the public prosecutor’s office said toxicology tests revealed traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his body.

A post-mortem examination determined his cause of death as “multiple trauma” and “internal and external haemorrhage” as a result of the fall from the hotel balcony.

According to the prosecutor’s office, medical reports also suggested Payne may have fallen in a state of semi or total unconsciousness.

The prosecutor’s office say this rules out the possibility of a conscious or voluntary act by Payne, and they conclude he did not know what he was doing nor did he understand it.

In addition, authorities have carried out nine raids at homes in Buenos Aires.

They are also continuing to investigate Payne’s broken laptop and other devices seized.

The prosecutor’s office added it has examined more than 800 hours of video footage from security cameras in the hotel and on public roads, and received dozens of testimonies from hotel staff, family members, friends and medical professionals.

The singer’s body was released to his family on Wednesday to be flown back to the UK.

Following Payne’s death, tributes flooded in including from his former partner Cheryl, One Direction bandmates and music mogul Simon Cowell.

Payne’s bandmates Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles said in a joint statement that they were “completely devastated” and will miss the singer “terribly”, adding the “memories we shared with him will be treasured forever”.

Thousands of fans also remembered the late singer at memorial events in the UK and around the world.