Donald Trump swept to victory on Tuesday by chipping away at groups of voters which Democrats once believed would help them win the White House for a generation.

After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, many triumphantly claimed that the liberal voting coalition which had elected the first black president was growing more powerful, as the makeup of America changed.

Older, white conservatives were reducing in number, and non-white Americans were projected to be in the majority by 2044. College-educated professionals, younger people, black Americans, Latinos and other ethnic minorities, and blue-collar workers were part of a “coalition of the ascendant”.

These voters were left-leaning on cultural issues and supportive of an active federal government and a strong social safety net. And they constituted a majority in enough states to ensure a Democratic lock on the Electoral College – and the presidency.

“Demography,” these left-wing optimists liked to say, “is destiny.” Sixteen years later, however, that destiny appears to have turned to dust.

• LIVE UPDATES: Trump projected to win Arizona

Cracks began forming when non-college educated voters slipped away from the Democrats in midterm elections in 2010 and 2014. They then broke en masse to Trump in 2016. While Joe Biden, with his working-class-friendly reputation built over half a century, won enough back to take the White House in 2020, his success proved to be only a temporary reprieve.

This year, Trump supplemented his gains with the blue-collar workers by also cutting into the Democratic margins among young, Latino and black voters. He has carved up the coalition of the ascendant.

According to exit polls, Trump won:

– 13% of the black vote in 2024 compared to Republican John McCain’s 4% against Obama

– 46% of the Latino vote this time, while McCain got 31% in 2008

– 43% of voters under 30 against the 32% for McCain

– 56% of those without a college degree – back in 2008, it was Obama who won a majority

Speaking on Thursday after his comeback victory, Trump celebrated his own diverse coalition of voters.

“I started to see realignment could happen because the Democrats are not in line with the thinking of the country,” the president-elect told NBC News.

Trump did it with a hard-line message on immigration that included border enforcement and mass deportations – policies that Biden and the Democrats recoiled from when they took power back from Trump in 2021, lest they anger immigrant rights activists in their liberal base.

Illegal border crossings reached record levels under the Biden administration, with more than eight million encounters with migrants at the border with Mexico.

“If you watch a video from Hillary Clinton back in 2008 in the primaries, she talks about making sure there’s wall-building, making sure that that immigrants who violate the law get deported, making sure everybody learns English,” said Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Republican commissioner in Miami-Dade County. “It’s funny how far to the left [the Democrats] have gone.”

This week, Trump became the first Republican since 1988 to win that heavily Latino county in Florida. He also won Starr County in south Texas, with its 97% Latino population, with 57% of the vote. In 2008, only 15% of the county voted for McCain, the Republican.

Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who specialises in Latino voting trends, told the BBC that the problem with “demography is destiny” was that it risked treating all non-white Americans as an “aggrieved racial minority”. “But that is not and nor has it ever been the way Latinos have viewed themselves,” he added.

“I hate that if you’re black, you’ve got to be a Democrat or you hate black people and you hate your community,” Kenard Holmes, a 20-year-old student in South Carolina, told the BBC during the presidential primaries earlier this year. He said he agreed with Republicans on some things and felt Democratic politicians took black voters for granted.

With some states still tabulating their results, Trump currently has improved on his electoral margins in at least 2,367 US counties, while slipping in just 240.

It wasn’t just the number of counties that Trump won that made a difference, either. Kamala Harris needed to post significant margins in the cities to offset Republican strength in rural areas. She consistently fell short.

In Detroit’s Wayne County, for example, which the latest US Census reports is 38% black, Harris won 63% of the vote – significantly lower than Joe Biden’s 68% in 2020 and Obama’s 74% in 2008.

Polls consistently suggested that the economy, along with immigration, were the two issues of highest importance to voters – and where polls indicated Trump had an advantage over Harris.

His economic message cut across racial divides.

“We’re just sick of hearing about identity politics,” said Nicole Williams, a white bartender with a black husband and biracial children in Las Vegas, Nevada – one of the key battleground states that Trump flipped this year.

“We’re just American, and we just want what’s best for Americans,” she said.

Democrats are already engaged in considerable soul-searching, as they come to grips with an election defeat that has delivered the White House, the Senate and, perhaps, the House of Representatives to Republican control.

Various elements within the party are offering their own, often conflicting, advice on the best path from the wilderness back to power.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders, who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, also criticised identity politics and accused the party of abandoning working-class voters.

Some centrist Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that the struggle to connect with voters goes beyond the economy and immigration. They point to how the Trump campaign was also able to use a cultural message as a wedge to fracture the Democratic coalition.

Among the positions that Republicans targeted in this year’s election were calls to shift funding away from law enforcement, decriminalise undocumented border-crossings and minor crimes like shoplifting, and provide greater protections for transgender Americans.

Many arose after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the resulting rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as other efforts to advance social justice and acknowledge darker parts of American history.

Within a few years, however, some of those positions proved a liability for Democrats when trying to win over persuadable voters and keep their coalition from fraying. Harris, for example, backed away from some positions she’d taken when she first ran for president in 2019.

In the last month of the presidential campaign, the Trump team made the vice-president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal prisoners and detained immigrants a central focus.

One advert ended with the line: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The Trump campaign spent more than $21m on transgender issue ads in the first half of October – about a third of their entire advertising expenditures and nearly double what they spent on spots on immigration and inflation, according to data compiled by AdImpact.

It’s the kind of investment a campaign makes if it has hard data showing an advert is moving public opinion.

After Trump’s convincing win, Congressman Seth Moulton, a moderate from Massachusetts, said his party needed to rethink its approach on cultural issues.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the New York Times. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterisation, and argue that standing up for the rights of minorities has always been a core value of the party. Congressman John Moran wrote on X in response: “You should find another job if you want to use an election loss as an opportunity to pick on our most vulnerable.”

Mike Madrid, the political strategist, has a brutal assessment of where the Democratic coalition is today.

“The Democratic Party was predicated on what really is an unholy alliance between working-class people of colour and wealthier white progressives driven and animated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. “The only glue holding that coalition together was anti-Republicanism.”

Once that glue came unstuck, he said, the party was ripe for defeat.

Future elections are sure to be held in a friendlier political environment for Democrats. And Trump, who has shown a unique ability to attract new and low-propensity voters to the polls, has run his last campaign.

But 2024’s results will provide plenty of fuel for Democratic angst in the days to come.

The Harris campaign itself believes she lost to Trump because she was facing a restive public angry over the economic and social turbulence in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

“You stared down unprecedented headwinds and obstacles that were largely out of our control,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a letter to her staff. “The whole country moved to the right, but compared to the rest of the country, the battleground states saw the least amount of movement in his direction. It was closest in the places we competed.”

Moses Santana, a Puerto Rican living in Philadelphia, is from a demographic which seemed reliably Democratic a decade or so ago. But when he spoke to the BBC this week, he was not so convinced the Democrats had delivered when in power – or that their message today connected with Americans like him.

“You know, Joe Biden promised a lot of progressive things, like he was going to cancel student debt, he was going to help people get their citizenship,” he said. “And none of that happened. Donald Trump is bringing [people] something new.”

• Seven things Trump says he will do in power
• When does he become president again?
• What happens to his legal cases now
• How he pulled off an incredible comeback

Israeli strikes on northern Lebanon and Gaza have killed dozens of people, rescuers and officials say, including a number of children.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 23 people including seven children were killed in Almat near Byblos, to the north of the capital Beirut.

In northern Gaza the official Palestinian news agency Wafa and Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency said at least 30 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia. The civil defence said the dead included 13 children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented on the strike in Lebanon. It said it struck a site in Jabalia where “terrorists were operating”, steps had been taken to mitigate civilian harm and the details were under review.

The Lebanese health ministry said rescue workers were still searching the rubble after the strike in Almat.

Israel has escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Its main focus had been southern Lebanon, aiming to weaken the group’s capacity to launch rockets across the border. But in recent weeks, operations have targeted cities and towns throughout Lebanon.

In a separate incident to the south, three medical workers were killed when an Israeli strike hit an Islamic Health Authority building in Adloun, the health ministry said.

The IDF said it had intercepted Hezbollah rockets on Saturday after the militant group launched 70 projectiles, according to Israel’s military.

Since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah seven weeks ago, at least 3,002 people have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced across Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities.

In Gaza, aid groups say Jabalia and other parts of northern Gaza have been under siege since early October when Israel launched a new ground offensive against the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

Dr Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, told AP news agency that his facility had received 17 bodies from Jabalia so far, including those of nine women, and the death toll was likely to rise.

Eyewitnesses described the Israeli strike as an “earthquake”.

“We were just sitting peacefully. These are innocent citizens who don’t belong to any military organization or faction,” eyewitness and relative to the victims Hamza Alloush told Reuters.

The house “was bombed over the residents’ heads without warning, which led to the martyrdom of everyone inside. Those who were lucky enough to survive were thrown onto the trees, onto the neighbours, and the remains are still scattered under the rubble”, he said.

Videos and images showed multiple bodies wrapped in blankets in the back of cars and laid to the ground at a hospital.

Another strike in Gaza City killed a welfare ministry official and seven members of his family, including his wife and children, medics and relatives said.

Israel is facing a US deadline that expires within days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on military cooperation.

The UN previously said the “darkest moment” of the war in Gaza was unfolding in the northern part of the territory.

On Saturday, Israel rejected warnings of famine in northern Gaza from global food security experts, saying the group relied on “partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests”.

The independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine and that immediate action was required to ease a catastrophic situation.

Israel said it had increased aid efforts, including opening an additional crossing on Friday to get more aid into southern Gaza.

The IDF later said it had delivered 11 trucks of food, water and medical aid into Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on Thursday.

Meanwhile, efforts to reach a ceasefire have stalled, with Qatar suspending its work as a mediator until Hamas and Israel “show their willingness” to negotiate.

Israel launched its current military offensive in Gaza after Hamas’ attack on 7 October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN sees as reliable, has reported a death toll of more than 43,600 people since the start of the war. Many more bodies are believed to remain under the rubble of bombarded buildings.

In Lebanon, Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.

Israeli air strikes have eliminated most of the group’s leadership and caused widespread destruction in parts of southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs – areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Israeli authorities say more than 70 people have been killed by Hezbollah attacks in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the past year.

Russia and Ukraine have carried out their largest drone attacks against each other since the start of the war.

Russia’s defence ministry said it intercepted 84 Ukrainian drones over six regions, including some approaching Moscow, which forced flights to be diverted from three of the capital’s major airports.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 145 drones towards every part of the country on Saturday night, with most shot down.

The barrages come amid expectations that US president-elect Donald Trump may put pressure on both sides to end the conflict.

Ukraine’s attempted strike on Moscow was also its biggest attack on the capital since the war began, and was described as “massive” by the region’s governor.

Most of the drones were downed in the Ramenskoye, Kolomna and Domodedovo districts, officials said.

In Ramenskoye, south-west of Moscow, five people were injured and four houses caught fire due to falling debris, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. It added that 34 drones had been shot down over the town.

In September, a woman was killed in a drone attack that hit Ramenskoye. In May last year, two drones were destroyed near the Kremlin in central Moscow and there were several drone attacks on the Moscow City business district.

In Ukraine, at least two people were injured after a drone hit the Odesa region. Images showed flames rising from some buildings, as well as aftermath damage.

The Ukrainian air force said 62 of Russia’s Iranian-made drones were shot down, while 67 were “lost”. A further 10 left Ukraine’s airspace heading back towards Russia, as well as neighbouring Belarus and Moldova, it added.

The drone barrages comes as Russian troops reportedly made their largest territorial gains in October since March 2022, according to analysis of Institute for the Study of War data by the AFP news agency.

However, Sir Tony Radakin, the UK’s army chief, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Russia had suffered its worst month for casualties since the start of the war.

Russian forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured “every single day” in October, he said.

There has been intense speculation about how Trump will approach the conflict since his election win in the US.

The president-elect regularly said in his election campaign that he could end the war “in a day”, but has not offered details on how he would do that.

A former adviser to Trump, Bryan Lanza, told the BBC that the incoming administration would focus on achieving peace rather than enabling Ukraine to gain back territory from Russia.

In response, a spokesperson for Trump distanced the president-elect from the remarks, saying Mr Lanza “does not speak for him”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke via state media on Sunday of “positive” signals from the incoming US administration.

He claimed that Trump spoke during his election campaign about wanting peace and not a desire to inflict defeat on Russia.

Trump has spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since his election win, a source telling the BBC that the conversation lasted “about half an hour”.

Zelensky has previously warned against conceding land to Russia and has said that without US aid, Ukraine would lose the war.

Malevolent spirits, spooky zombies and vengeful witches are making a comeback to Bollywood this year, with horror films emerging as some of the biggest earners of 2024. The BBC looks at how these modest-budget films are earning impressive returns.

Earlier this month, Bollywood witnessed a dramatic showdown between the big and the not-so-big.

On one side was the star-studded high-budget action film Singham Again, and on the other, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, the latest instalment of a mid-budget three-part horror-comedy series by the same name.

Singham Again, which featured five of Bollywood’s biggest stars – Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and Ranveer Singh – managed to pull in 1.86bn rupees ($22.05m; £17.06) worldwide in four days, according to film analytics tracker Sacnilk.

While Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, which features the relatively young and new Kartik Aryan, earned slightly less in the same period (1.63bn rupees), its smaller budget meant that its performance was even more impressive

The film brings back Aaryan, who also featured in the second part, as a conman exorcist who is hired by a royal family to purge their palace of an evil spirit.

Packed with adventure and hilarity, the film’s racy plot has been drawing audiences to theatres in droves.

The film’s success marks a continuation of a new trend in Bollywood, where horror and horror-comedy films – once relegated to the fringes – are now leading the box office.

The trend began with Shaitaan, a psychological horror film starring Ajay Devgn, which earned over $25m worldwide despite a modest budget. Following that, Munjya and Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank continued the success, with the latter becoming the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2024, grossing over $103mn.

The film, Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aantank, set in the fictional town of Chanderi, features the mysterious Stree, who once targeted patriarchal men, now facing off against a monster that abducts free-thinking women.

The film sold out shows for months while other major Bollywood productions struggled to find an audience.

The industry has gone through through a slump post the Covid-19 pandemic, with most films tanking at the box-office, trade figures show.

What’s interesting is that a lot of these horror films did not receive glowing reviews – in fact, some critics have criticised the films for their “lousy” plotlines.

Yet their back-to-back successes seem to have given Bollywood a new lease of life.

So what’s driving this trend?

“Horror-comedy plays on the most primal instinct of the audience – alternating between fear and humour,” says Mayank Shekhar, a senior film critic.

“Both are infectious. You audibly sense the shrieks and the laughs in the hall.”

Films like Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Stree 2 have also benefited from the success of their prequels.

People come to watch these films simply because they enjoyed the films that came before it, making them somewhat “critic-proof”, Shekhar adds.

“I think we go because we loved the original film and want to feel the same magic in the sequels,” says Apurva, a radio jockey, who watched both films recently.

Horror as a genre in Bollywood has also reinvented itself over the years.

Unlike the horror films of the 1980s, which were designed for an adult audience, horror films nowadays have become a collective cinematic experience, fit for family viewing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Ramsay Brothers ruled the Hindi horror scene with hits like Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972) and Purana Mandir (1984), built on a formula of exaggerated ghosts, witches, gore, and titillation.

“The films were profitable but lacked the legitimacy and appeal that could attract big actors and wider viewership,” says Taran Adarsh, a trade analyst.

In the new millennium, producer brothers Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, along with director Vikram Bhatt, took the reins of the genre.

Their Raaz series (The first film released in 2002) – a sleeker reimagining of the Ramsay Brothers’ formula, featuring chart-topping songs and sensual scenes – achieved significant success.

But apart from a few exceptions, the charm of horror films remained limited.

The turning point came in 2007, when Bhool Bhulaiyaa’s first part, starring Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan, hit theatres.

Adapted from the 1993 Malayalam blockbuster Manichitrathazhu, the movie offered a perfect blend of humour and horror and became an instant hit with the audiences.

The genre – with its newfound family-friendly approach, which tones down explicit content – gained more popularity with the release of Stree in 2018, which combined horror with social themes like patriarchy and feminism.

Anees Bazmee, the director of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and 3, says a big part of his vision was to ensure his films are enjoyable for children. “I wanted them to be on the edge of their seats but never truly scared, like a roller-coaster ride – happy on the ascent, with a thrill of fear on the descent,” he told the BBC.

And it’s not just humour, there are other common elements as well – most of these films are set in small towns and cities and combine local folklore with universal themes of kindness, bravery and the eventual triumph of good over evil.

Take the film Tumbbad, a bold blend of mythology, horror and moral lessons.

The film follows Vinayak, who discovers a treasure guarded by a cursed creature and attempts to steal it, only to realise greed is a deadly trap. Originally released in 2018, the film was re-released in cinemas earlier this year, managing to earn more than its original collection.

Mr Adarsh says there is no doubt that horror is enjoying a “revival” at the box office this year.

But others warn against the oversimplification of the trend.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa was our first horror-comedy success that established a successful formula,” says Munjya director Aditya Sarpotdar.

“But it took more than a decade to come up with the next big hit (Stree),” he adds.

Bazmee says that often, it’s the plot and not the genre that determines a film’s popularity.

“In the end, it’s always the well-made films that work. That’s always going to be a fundamental factor,” he says.

What the rest of the world sees as a sex tape scandal could in fact be the latest episode in the real-life drama over who will become Equatorial Guinea’s next president.

Over the past fortnight, dozens of videos – estimates range from 150 to more than 400 – have been leaked of a senior civil servant having sex in his office and elsewhere with different women.

They have flooded social media, shocking and titillating people in the small central African country and beyond.

Many of the women filmed were wives and relatives of people close to the centre of power.

It appears some were aware they were being filmed having sex with Baltasar Ebang Mr Engonga, who is also known as “Bello” because of his good looks.

All this is hard to verify as Equatorial Guinea is a highly restricted society where a free press does not exist.

But one theory is that the leaks were a way to discredit the man at the centre of the storm.

Mr Engonga is a nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and one of those thought to be hoping to replace him.

Obiang is the world’s longest-serving president having been in power since 1979.

The 82-year-old has overseen an economic boom that has turned to bust as a result of the now-dwindling oil reserves.

There is a small, extremely wealthy elite, but many of the 1.7 million people in the country live in poverty.

Obiang’s administration is heavily criticised for its human rights record, including arbitrary killings and torture, according to a US government report.

It has also had its fair share of scandals – including the revelations about the lavish lifestyle of one of the president’s sons, now vice-president, who once owned a $275,000 (£210,000) crystal-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson.

Despite regular elections, there is no real opposition in Equatorial Guinea as activists have been jailed and exiled and those with designs on office are closely monitored.

Politics in the country is really about palace intrigue and this is where the scandal involving Mr Engonga fits in.

He was the head of the National Financial Investigation Agency, and worked on tackling crimes such as money laundering.

But it turned out he himself was under investigation.

He was arrested on 25 October accused of embezzling a huge sum of money from state coffers and depositing it in secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. He has not commented on the accusation.

Mr Engonga was then taken to the infamous Black Beach prison in the capital, Malabo, where it is alleged that opponents of the government are subjected to brutal treatment.

His phones and computers were seized and a few days later the intimate videos started appearing online.

The first reference the BBC has found to them on Facebook is from 28 October on the page of Diario Rombe, a news site run by a journalist in exile in Spain, which said that “social networks exploded with the leaking of explicit images and videos”.

A post on X the following day referred to a “monumental scandal shaking the regime” as “pornographic videos flood social media”.

But they are believed to have originally appeared one-by-one a few days earlier on Telegram, on one of the platform’s channels known for publishing pornographic images.

They were then downloaded on to people’s phones and shared among WhatsApp groups in Equatorial Guinea, where they caused a storm.

Mr Engonga was quickly identified along with some of the women in the videos, including relatives of the president and wives to ministers and senior military officials.

The government was unable to ignore what was going on and on 30 October Vice-President Teodoro Obiang Mangue (once owner of the Michael Jackson glove) gave telecoms companies 24 hours to come up with ways to stop the spread of the clips.

“We cannot continue to watch families fall apart without taking any action,” he wrote on X.

“In the meantime, the origin of these publications is being investigated to find the author or authors and make them answer for their actions.”

As the computer equipment was in the hands of the security forces, suspicion has fallen on someone there, who, perhaps, sought to trash Mr Engonga’s reputation ahead of a trial.

The police have called on women to come forward to open a case against Mr Engonga for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. One has already announced that she is suing him.

What is not clear is why Mr Engonga made the recordings.

But activists have put forward what could be other motives behind the explosive leak.

As well as being related to the president, Mr Engonga is the son of Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, the head of the regional economic and monetary union, Cemac, and very influential in the country.

“What we are seeing is the end of an era, the end of the current president, and there is a succession [question] and this is the internal fighting we are seeing,” said Equatoguinean activist Nsang Christia Esimi Cruz, now living in London.

Speaking to the BBC Focus on Africa podcast, he alleged that Vice-President Obiang was trying to politically eliminate “anyone who could challenge his succession”.

The vice-president, along with his mother, are suspected to be pushing aside anyone who threatens his path to the presidency, including Gabriel Obiang Lima (another son of President Obiang from a different wife), who was oil minister for 10 years and then moved to a secondary government role.

Those in the elite are thought to know things about each other that they would rather was not made public, and videos have been used in the past to humiliate and discredit a political opponent.

There are also frequent accusations of coup plotting, which further fuels paranoia.

But Mr Cruz also alleges that the authorities want to use the scandal as an excuse to crack down on social media, which is how a lot of information about what is really going on in the country gets out.

In July, the authorities temporarily suspended the internet after protests broke out on the island of Annobón.

For him, the fact that a high-ranking official was having sex outside of marriage was not surprising as it was part of the decadent lifestyle of the country’s elite.

The vice-president, who himself has been convicted of corruption in France and has had lavish assets seized in various countries, wants to be seen as the man cracking down on graft and wrong-doing at home.

Last year, for example, he ordered the arrest of his half-brother over allegations he sold a plane owned by the state airline.

But in this case, despite the vice-president’s efforts to stop the spread of the clips, they continue to be viewed.

This week, he tried to appear more resolute calling for the installation of CCTV cameras in government offices “to combat indecent and illicit acts”, the official news agency reported.

Saying that the scandal had “denigrated the image of the country” he ordered that any officials found engaging in sex acts at work would be suspended as this was a “flagrant violation of the code of conduct”.

He was not wrong that the story has attracted a lot of outside interest.

Judging by Google’s data, search enquiries that include the country’s name have shot up since the beginning of this week.

On Monday, on X, “Equatorial Guinea” was one of the top trending terms in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – surpassing at times interest in the US election.

This has left some activists who have been trying to tell the world about what is really going on in the country frustrated.

“Equatorial Guinea has much bigger problems than this sex scandal,” said Mr Cruz, who works for a rights organisation called GE Nuestra.

“This sex scandal for us is just a symptom of the illness, it’s not the illness itself. It just shows how corrupt the system is.”

• The president’s son who loves Bugattis and Michael Jackson
• World’s longest-serving president eyes re-election
• Equatorial Guinea country profile

Arnaud Poulay never wanted to leave the tiny Indian Ocean island of Agalega, but this year he packed his bag and took off, broken-hearted by what he regards as the militarisation of his home.

Until recently, just 350 people lived on Agalega, fishing and growing coconuts. Other food was delivered four times a year by ship from the capital of Mauritius, 1,100km (680 miles) to the south. A small airstrip was rarely used except in medical emergencies.

But in 2015, Mauritius, an island nation of which Agalega is a part, signed a deal enabling India to build a vast 3,000m runway and a big new jetty there, as part of the two countries’ deepening collaboration on maritime security.

However some Agalegans fear this could grow into a fully-fledged military presence.

Mr Poulay, a 44-year-old handyman and reggae musician, led a campaign against the project.

“I love my island and my island loves me,” he says. “But when that base was unveiled, I knew I had to leave.”

Agalega – two small islands covering 25 sq km, in the south-west Indian Ocean – would be an ideal location for India to monitor marine traffic. And a comparison of satellite images from 2019 with others taken in July this year shows how much has changed.

A carpet of palm trees has made way for the runway, which stretches along the spine of the north island between the two main villages – La Fourche in the north and Vingt-Cinq further south.

Two 60m-wide buildings can be seen sitting on a tarmac apron, at least one of which could be a hangar to accommodate the Indian navy’s P-8I aircraft, according to Samuel Bashfield, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University.

The P-8I is a Boeing 737 modified to hunt and potentially attack submarines, and to monitor maritime communications. Islanders have already photographed the aircraft on the airstrip.

To the north-west is the new jetty jutting out into the ocean, which Mr Bashfield says could be used by Indian surface patrol vessels, as well as the ship that brings supplies to Agalega.

“As newer satellite images become available, we’ll better understand Agalega’s role in Indian Ocean communications,” he says.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies refers to the facility as a “surveillance station” and says it is likely to contain a coastal radar surveillance system similar to Indian-built equipment elsewhere in Mauritius.

The Indian government declined to answer questions about Agalega, and referred the BBC to earlier statements on its website. In one of these, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India and Mauritius were “natural partners” in maritime security, facing traditional and non-traditional challenges in the Indian Ocean region.

The two countries have had a close defence relationship since the 1970s. The country’s national security adviser, its coastguard chief and the head of the police helicopter squadron are all Indian nationals and officers in India’s external intelligence agency, navy and air force, respectively.

Both sides would want the facility to be seen “as one that is more about capacity building than for any overt military use”, says Prof Harsh Pant, of the India Institute at King’s College London.

It’s no secret, though, that India and its Western allies are concerned about China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean.

While it’s not unusual for a large country to establish a military outpost on the territory of a smaller ally, the construction work on Agalega has troubled some islanders.

A number of areas, including some of the island’s palm-fringed white-sand beaches, have already been cordoned off, islanders say. There are also persistent rumours that the village of La Fourche will be swallowed by the Indian infrastructure that has grown up around it, and that the 10 families who live there will be forced out.

“It will become a restricted area completely for Indians,” says Laval Soopramanien, president of the Association of Friends of Agalega.

He fears that “Agalega will become the story of the Chagos islands” – a concern echoed by 26-year-old handyman Billy Henri, who is the son of an Agalegan and a woman expelled from the Chagos islands.

“My mother [lost] her island,” says Mr Henri. “My father will be the next.”

A number of Agalega’s residents are from families scarred by eviction from the Chagos Islands, 2,000km to the east, after the UK government declared them in 1965 to be British territory and granted the US permission to build a communications station on the largest island, Diego Garcia. This gradually became a fully-fledged military base.

Billy Henri fears that the Mauritius government, which owns all land on Agalega and is the only employer, is trying to make conditions so miserable that everyone will leave.

He points to problems with healthcare and education, limited investment in the local economy, a lack of job opportunities, and a ban on local people opening their own businesses.

A Mauritius government spokesman told the BBC that no-one would be asked to leave, and that local people were only prevented from entering the airport and the port – facilities that he said would help the country control piracy, drug-trafficking and unregulated fishing.

Mauritius also denies suggestions that Agalega hosts a military base, saying that the national police are still in full control. However, it acknowledges that India will assist in the “maintenance and operation” of the new facilities, which were built at Indian expense.

The Mauritius and Indian governments say the improvements to sea and air transportation were designed to benefit the islanders and help lift them out of poverty. But local people say this hasn’t happened: there are still only four ferries to the main island of Mauritius every year, and no passenger flights.

Agalegans say they are barred from a new Indian-built hospital, even though a Mauritius government press release vaunted its operating theatres, X-ray machines and dentistry equipment.

Billy Henri says that a boy suffering from cooking oil burns, who needed more help than he could get from the north island’s health centre, was refused entry in October.

“It’s only for Indians!” he says.

The injured boy and his parents were flown to the main island of Mauritius instead. Laval Soopramanien says the boy is still in hospital there, and that the family will remain on the main island until the next boat leaves for Agalega.

The Mauritius government did not respond, when asked to comment on the plight of the boy with burns. The Indian government declined to comment.

In a recent speech to the Mauritius parliament, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said the socio-economic development of Agalega was higher than ever on his government’s agenda.

A “master plan” had been drawn up to improve health and education, transport connections and recreational facilities for the island’s residents, and to develop the fishing sector and the exploitation of coconut by-products, he said.

But distrust is fuelled by the fact that neither India nor Mauritius has published the details of the 2015 memorandum of understanding, so their plans for the future are unknown.

When dairy farmer Patrick Holden sat down at his kitchen table to read his emails one day in July, he couldn’t believe his luck. A buyer, who claimed to represent a French supermarket chain, wanted to buy 22 tonnes of Hafod, his specialist cheddar.

“It was the biggest order for our cheese we’ve ever received,” he recalls, “and, because it was from France, I thought, ‘finally, people on the continent are appreciating what we do’.”

The order had been made through Neal’s Yard Dairy, an upmarket cheese seller and wholesaler, and the first batch of Hafod arrived at its London base in September. It took up just one square metre on a pallet but represented two years of effort and had a wholesale value of £35,000.

“It’s one of the most special cheeses being made in the UK,” explains Bronwen Percival, a buyer at Neal’s Yard Dairy. Once bound in muslin cloth and sealed with a layer of lard, Hafod is aged for 18 months.

The farm didn’t have enough to fulfil the order, so 20 tonnes of Somerset cheddar was also provided by two other dairy farms to make it up; in all, this was £300,000-worth of some of the most expensive cheese made in the UK.

On 14 October, it was collected from Neal’s Yard’s warehouse by a courier and taken to a depot – and then, mysteriously, it disappeared.

There had, in fact, been no order. It came instead from someone impersonating the supposed buyer.

The theft made global headlines, and was nicknamed “the grate cheese robbery”. British chef Jamie Oliver warned his followers on X: “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”

In late October, a 63-year-old man was arrested in London, then released on bail. And there has been no news since. The 950 truckles of cheese – roughly the weight of four full-sized elephants – have disappeared without a trace.

“It is ridiculous,” says fellow cheesemaker Tom Calver, whose cheddar was part of the stolen consignment. “Out of all the things to steal in the world – 22 tonnes of cheese?”

And yet it isn’t as surprising as it at first seems – for this is far from the first theft of its kind.

Food-related crimes – which include smuggling, counterfeiting, and out-and-out theft – cost the global food industry between US $30 to 50 billion a year (£23-£38 billion), according to the World Trade Organisation. These range from hijackings of freight lorries delivering food to warehouses to the theft of 24 live lobsters from a storage pen in Scotland.

But a number of these food crimes have also targeted the cheese industry – and in particular luxury cheese.

Last year, in the run-up to Christmas, around £50,000 worth of cheese was stolen from a trailer in a service station on the M5 near Worcester. The problem isn’t a new one – as far back as 1998, thieves broke into a storeroom and took nine tonnes of cheddar from a family-run farm in Somerset.

It’s happening elsewhere in Europe, too: in 2016, criminals made off with £80,000 of Parmigiano Reggiano from a warehouse in northern Italy. This particular type of parmesan, which requires at least a year to mature, is created by following a process that has been in place, with little modification, for almost 1,000 years. At the time of the heist, Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium told CBS news that about $7 million (£5.4m) worth of cheese had been stolen in a two-year period.

The problem is only set to rise across the industry as cheese becomes more valuable. The overall price of food and non-alcoholic drinks in the UK rose around 25% between January 2022 and January 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics. Cheese, meanwhile, saw a similar price hike in the space of a single year.

“Cheesemaking is an energy-intensive business,” says Patrick McGuigan, a specialist in the dairy sector. This is because in the production process milk needs to be heated up and, once made, cheese is stored in energy-hungry refrigerators, meaning that fuel prices play a big part in the cost. “And so there was a big price increase following the disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

In 2024, overall food price inflation in the UK has fallen to 1.7 per cent, but less so for cheese. “The retail price of cheddar increased by 6.5 per cent up to May 2024,” adds McGuigan. “This is why we’re seeing security tags on blocks of cheddar in supermarkets. Based on price alone, cheese is one of the most desirable foods a criminal can steal.”

Yet it isn’t the easiest product to shift – particularly farmhouse cheese, most of which tends to be heavy and bulky and must be kept at specific temperatures. As such, transporting it can be a costly, complicated procedure that is beyond most criminals – unless, of course, they are organised.

But the question that remains is who exactly these organised criminals are – and where does the cheese end up?

“There is a long-established connection between food and organised crime,” says Andy Quinn of the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU), which was established in 2015 following the 2013 horse meat scandal. One example of this is the high proportion of illegal drugs smuggled through legal global food supply chains.

In September, dozens of kilograms of cocaine were found in banana deliveries to four stores of a French supermarket, with police unsure who the intended recipient was. For the drugs to reach the end of the food supply chain is highly unusual, but this method of transporting illegal items across borders in containers of food is common.

According to Quinn, once drug cartels and other criminal operators gain a foothold into how a food business operates, they spot other opportunities. “They will infiltrate a legitimate business, take control of its distribution networks and use it to move other illegal items, including stolen food.”

For criminal networks, food has other attractions. “They know crimes involving food result in less severe convictions than for importing drugs,” says Quinn, “but they can still make similar amounts of money.” Particularly if it’s a premium cheese.

The problem for the criminals is what to do with it. “There are few places to offload them,” says Jamie Montgomery, who runs the Somerset farm that was targeted in the 1998 heist. “Shifting that much artisan cheese is difficult.”

This is why people in the industry believe stolen cheese is often sent overseas to countries where there are thriving food black markets – and indeed cheese black markets.

Russia is one country where there is a thriving black market for cheese. Following the illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the EU and other states imposed economic sanctions on Russia. President Vladimir Putin responded by banning fresh produce from the countries behind the sanctions.

State television made a great show of the ban by broadcasting footage of foreign food being bulldozed, buried or burned, including huge cheeses being dumped and crushed.

Soon the so-called “fromagicide” was worldwide news.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have been further tightened and the availability of certain food from the West has become even more limited, among them Scottish whisky and Norwegian salmon. At the same time, the black market in Russia for high-end foods from the EU has been growing.

“Cheese and wine are two of the most common products being transported illegally into Russia,” says Professor Chris Elliott, founder of the Global Institute for Food Security and a senior scientific advisor to the UN, “and there are sophisticated routes across Europe’s borders through Belarus and Georgia”.

Many Russians feel that the quality of local cheese doesn’t compare to banned foreign goods, so there is wide demand. Indeed, after the ban, some resorted to extreme measures – one man was caught attempting to drive into Russia from Poland with 460kg of banned cheese on the backseat of his car.

Since 2014, expensive and complex varieties of cheese from countries that were not previously known for their cheese have appeared on shop shelves, such as Belarusian camembert and parmesan. Some companies import European cheese to Belarus or other CIS countries, where the label is swapped so that it can be sold legally in Russian shops.

There were also reports of corner shops becoming black market cheese dealers.

Corruption makes the movement of sanction-busting food possible, says Prof Elliott. “So much money is involved that officials, including border guards, can be paid off. Sanctioned goods are bought and sold through digital networks and these online orders also make it into shops.”

Paul Thomas spent years running cheesemaking courses in Russia. When he visited Moscow after the sanctions were tightened, he observed firsthand that banned cheeses were being displayed openly on the shelves of shops. “There was plenty of authentic Italian Parmigiano Reggiano and French Roquefort, all clearly labelled”.

He also observed that cheesemakers in Russia have been boosting production and attempting to emulate types of European cheese.

It’s not just Russia – in various parts of the Middle East, for example, food subsidies in one country can provide an incentive to smuggle ingredients into others where governments provide no support and prices are high. Counterfeiting, or creating a replica of an official type of cheese, is also common in the region.

And in the US, strict federal rules mean it’s illegal to produce or import unpasteurised cheeses aged for less than 60 days, leading to a black market for raw-milk products such as French classics Brie de Meaux and Mont d’Or. In 2015, a raw-milk trafficking gang was prosecuted for distributing unpasteurised cheeses.

Food counterfeiting also happens in the US – in some cases, cheap and even dangerous ingredients are being used to produce “fake” versions of expensive cheese, such as parmesan made using additives derived from wood pulp.

Andy Quinn explains: “Food chains are truly global. The same goes for the movement of illegal food.”

Now, many in the industry are fighting back, however. Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium – the cheesemakers behind the world’s most stolen cheese – have said that the black market for that variety is “robust”. This is partly down to the fact that it is hugely valuable, generating global sales of almost £3bn a year – and so they have come up with a unique way of protecting it.

In 2022, the consortium began introducing tracking chips, no larger than a grain of rice, as part of the label embedded in the hard rind of the cheese. This helps to reduce thefts, but also means counterfeit Parmigiano Reggiano can be identified, as each tiny chip contains a unique digital ID that can authenticate the cheese.

Buyers can now scan each wheel to check its authenticity or find out if it was stolen. The consortium is yet to release any figures showing whether the technology is cutting down levels of fraud.

Neal’s Yard Dairy says it plans to use a less high-tech approach to preventing future fraud, including visiting buyers in person when big cheese orders are made, rather than relying on digital contracts and emails.

As for what will become of the cheddar stolen in the October heist, there may be no swift solution: given that they could easily be stored for as long as two years, the cheese could still surface many months from now.

“A criminal could hide tonnes away and then pass them slowly, truckle by truckle, into supply chains,” says Ben Lambourne of the online retailer Pong Cheese.

For the cheesemakers, this isn’t just about a stolen food; the missing Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork represent ways of farming and food production that took thousands of years to evolve, shaped landscapes and became part of British culture, yet which have been all but lost in just a few generations.

Lancashire-based cheesemonger Andy Swinscoe says that at the beginning of the 20th Century, in the area surrounding his shop there were 2,000 farmhouse cheesemakers. Today, there are just five. There have been declines in Somerset with cheddar makers, in the East Midlands with Stilton and in the north-west with Cheshire cheese.

“It would be impossible for these small family farms to survive by selling liquid milk,” says Swinscoe – but they can add value by turning their milk into a farmhouse cheese.

Patrick Holden admits that the financial loss from this theft would have had a huge impact on his farm. “A fraud of this scale can easily spell the end of a farm and cheesemaking.” In this instance, Neal’s Yard paid its suppliers in full, describing the effect of the fraud on their business as “a significant financial blow”.

Unless crimes like this are stopped, however, other farms and businesses will suffer similar blows, particularly when luxury cheese remains sought-after and prized.

“Conflicts around the world, the cost-of-living crisis, even climate change, all increase the appeal for food fraud,” says the NFCU’s Andy Quinn. Until that changes, cheesemakers might need to tighten up their security – and think twice when an order seems too good to be true.

The leader of a notorious gang of football hooligans in Argentina has been shot dead near his club’s stadium in Rosario.

Andrés Bracamonte, known as Pillín, had spent more than 20 years as head of the Rosario Central supporters’ gang and had a history of taking part in violent conflicts with rival hooligans.

He and his deputy, Daniel “Rana” Atardo, were just four blocks from the Gigante de Arroyito stadium when they were gunned down by a motorcyclist on Saturday.

Rosario Central had just played a league match, but Bracamonte did not attend it. He had been banned from matches because of previous incidents and had been accused of money-laundering and extortion by Argentine authorities.

The two men were taken to the local Centenario Hospital, but doctors were unable to save their lives.

Bracamonte’s killing was widely reported by Argentine media, who described it as a settling of scores.

Newspapers reported that Bracamonte had a long criminal record and had been the victim of frequent attacks.

The most recent was in August, when a bullet grazed his back while he was with his partner, who was also injured.

Bracamonte, who was 52, was also accused of having links with a drug cartel known as Los Monos and was under investigation for money-laundering as a result.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered what he called “total support” for Africa, including in the struggle against terrorism and extremism.

The speech was read out at a summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to his African counterparts.

Several African governments have cut ties with traditional Western allies and are looking to Moscow for help in tackling frequent attacks by jihadists.

During the summit, Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré said Russia was a more suitable international partner than the former colonial power, France.

• How Russia is trying to influence Africa
• How Wagner has rebranded in Africa

It is a view shared by several of France’s former colonies – and was reiterated by Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, who contrasted the Kremlin’s “sincere” partnership to the “neo-colonial” relationship of Western powers.

He said that as well as military co-operation, Mali was exploring other joint projects in the energy, telecommunications, technology and mining sectors.

“Russian companies are working in all these areas with the Malian government and [private] partners in Mali to provide solutions to the challenges facing the Malian people. The two parties have agreed to step up the pace to ensure rapid results,” he said on the second and final day of the conference of African foreign ministers.

Wagner mercenary fighters – now rebranded under the Africa Corps banner by Russia’s defence ministry – were the preferred choice for the military leaders who ordered French and UN troops to leave.

Russia’s help, often in exchange for access to raw materials, also comes with a promise that there will be no meddling in a country’s internal affairs or lessons on how to run an election.

However, Russia’s military expeditions to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have helped protect the junta leaders there, but have failed to make much progress in the fight against Islamist militants.

Nonetheless, the Kremlin is trumpeting about these new-found friends, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying the conference had dashed Western hopes for Russia’s isolation.

And Lavrov said Russia’s relations with Africa were strengthening “more and more” with progress “on all axes”.

Putin’s speech underlined this point.

“I would like to reiterate that our country will continue to provide total support to our African friends in different sectors: ensuring sustainable development, the struggle against terrorism and extremism, combating epidemics, food problems and the consequences of natural disasters,” it said.

Rwanda, whose Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe was also in Sochi, is one of several African countries which have already signed deals with Moscow to get help building a nuclear power plant.

He told the AFP news agency that hundreds of Rwandan students had graduated from Russian universities, including “those who specialise in nuclear science”.

“We hope to be able to train a certain number of scientific managers specialising in this field,” he added.

Five years ago, Putin promised to double trade with Africa – this has not happened.

But using other means, which the West sees as destabilising the continent, Russia’s influence has grown significantly.

• Was Ukraine’s role in big Wagner defeat an own goal in Africa?
• Why Wagner is winning hearts in the Central African Republic
• Wagner – built by blood and treasure in Africa

A British teenager has been left in a serious condition after being hit by a paraglider while she ate a meal with her family on holiday.

Lily Nichol, 15, from Chester-le-Street in County Durham, was injured on Friday on the final day of her holiday in Oludeniz, a resort town in southwest Turkey.

She now needs multiple operations including back and jaw surgery, which would cost the family £45,000, Lyndsey Logan, her mother, told the BBC.

When Lily was eating pizza at a restaurant with her mum and older sister, a paraglider “came from nowhere”, Ms Logan said.

“Next thing we knew, my daughter was just unconscious on the floor,” she said.

“I was just screaming, crying for help,” Ms Logan continued. “I thought she was dead.”

Ms Logan said that Lily’s injuries included a broken jaw, a split tongue and four breaks in her spine, which meant that she cannot be moved from hospital.

Her eye was also “gashed open” and her teeth were “wobbly” and would need replacing, she said.

Doctors told her that Lily had also suffered a bleed on the brain but a scan later confirmed that she had no serious head injuries.

Ms Logan had not taken out travel insurance meaning the family has now been left to foot the bill for Lily’s medical care.

It has so far cost £7,200, which Lily’s father has paid, but the back and jaw surgery would add an extra £45,000.

Ms Logan said her family does not have the money, with Lily set to have the surgery on Monday.

Her mother said she would pay a deposit for the operation beforehand but would need to pay the full charge before Lily was able to leave hospital.

Lily’s family have set up an online fundraiser to try cover the costs.

“My daughter didn’t remember anything,” Ms Logan said. “She thought she was having a dream.”

On both Friday and Saturday nights, Lily had “bad nightmares,” Ms Logan said.

Her other daughter, Megan, 19, had also been knocked unconscious by the paraglider but was not as badly injured.

“She came around when I started screaming,” she said.

Ms Logan said that she was “absolutely traumatised” herself, adding: “I’ll never forget this day”.

The family have been in contact with the British Embassy in Turkey.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told the BBC: “We are providing support to a British girl and her family following an accident in Turkey.”

The three Baltic states came up with the idea years ago for a high-speed railway spanning 870km (540 miles) across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Rail Baltica began as a grand project, but it has now become a strategic imperative: since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Baltics increasingly view their neighbour as an existential threat.

Currently, there is no direct link that crosses the Baltics and connects with Poland.

Rail Baltica will do that, cutting travel time and bringing economic and environmental benefits, but the costs of this ambitious scheme are mounting.

Meanwhile, Baltic states and their Nato allies need the railway in place fast.

Estonia’s Infrastructure Minister Vladimir Svet said the rail link is vital amid the Russian war in Ukraine.

“History is repeating itself,” he said. “Putin’s aggressive regime is trying to recreate an imperial project on the territory of the former Soviet bloc.”

The memory of decades of Soviet occupation is still fresh in the Baltics. Moscow deported hundreds of thousands of people from the region to Siberia.

Estonia and Latvia share land borders with Russia, while Lithuania is adjacent to the Russian enclave Kaliningrad, which also shares a border with Poland, and Moscow’s close ally, Belarus.

About 10,000 Nato soldiers are currently stationed in the Baltics, alongside local troops. Their total number could reach 200,000 in a worst-case scenario.

“Rail Baltica will increase military mobility and allow trains to go directly from the Netherlands to Tallinn,” Cmdr Peter Nielsen, from Nato’s Force Integration Unit, said.

For Estonia’s infrastructure minister, the railway is “an unbreakable link with the networks of Europe”.

Not far from the Estonian capital, Tallinn, at the tip of the railway, dozens of workers are welding and hammering away at the new Ülemiste passenger terminal.

“This will be the network’s most northern point, the starting point of 215km of railway in Estonia and 870km across the three Baltic States,” said Anvar Salomets, CEO of Rail Baltica Estonia, stepping carefully across the embryonic platforms.

Until now, the Baltics have used a Russian track width because their rail system dates back to the Soviet era.

Passengers have to change trains to the European system when they get to the Polish border.

The new network will use the European railway track width and connect seamlessly with railways across the EU.

LISTEN: Building a geopolitical railway

Baltic concerns over plans to move Russia’s sea borders

“The trains will run at up to 250km/h (155mph) compared with 80 or 120km/h (50 or 74mph) right now,” Salomets added.

That means journey times from Tallinn to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, will be massively reduced, from at least 12 hours now to under four.

“It’ll be a game-changer, decreasing the environmental impact across our whole transport sector,” says Salomets, who foresees big economic benefits.

Recent analysis for the Rail Baltica consortium estimates the overall economic boost at €6.6bn (£5.5bn).

“The vast majority of studies of existing high speed rail systems show a positive economic impact,” said Adam Cohen of the University of California at Berkeley.

But those benefits will not appear overnight and there is growing concern at the spiralling cost. Developers’ estimates have increased fourfold since 2017 and now stand at €24bn.

So far, the EU has subsidised 85% of the project and has just announced another €1.1bn.

Estonia and Latvia have also come under criticism for focusing on putting up the rail terminals first before they build the mainline.

French engineer Emilien Dang, whose RB Rail oversees the project, blamed recent global crises for the big spike in costs: “Our initial estimate hadn’t taken into account the Covid pandemic and high inflation – and the situation in Ukraine has dramatically increased the cost of material.”

As he walked across a big new terminal in the Latvian capital Riga, he also cited cultural issues.

“The view from France, wrongly, is that the Baltics are one unit. But they are three countries, with different regulations.”

The Baltic states have decided to split the project into two phases. The first, costing €15bn, will have a single instead of double track laid by 2030 and focus on the most important train stops.

The second track and additional train stations are to be completed as part of a second phase with no specific completion date yet.

The soaring costs have prompted the states to scale back some of their ambitions.

“We can further scale back the scope of phase one, for example by connecting Riga airport at a later stage,” said Andris Kulbergs, who chairs a Latvian parliamentary committee investigating the project.

As billions of euros for the first phase are yet to be secured, that might be necessary.

Estonia’s national auditor Janar Holm believes several more years of delays are likely: “We have to find the funds to build this railway now or it’ll be even more expensive.”

The country’s infrastructure minister, Vladimir Svet, insisted “we are decreasing the budget as much as possible, we’ve rationalised the public procurement process and, if necessary, we’ll take on a loan.”

“If we want to preserve our culture and feel secure about our freedom, there is no other way than being in a strong EU, Nato and international community that supports international law,” he added.

For the three Baltic states that broke free of the Soviet Union to join the EU and Nato, Rail Baltica could serve as a lifeline – if it manages to stay on track.

A day after her husband’s big election night win, Melania Trump took to social media to address the nation.

“The majority of Americans have entrusted us with this important responsibility,” Mrs Trump said.

“We will safeguard the heart of the republic – freedom,” she vowed, and urged Americans to rise above ideology for the sake of the country.

It was a brief message, but suggested a shift in how the former first lady will approach the role this second time around.

When Trump won his first presidency in 2016, his wife was initially absent from the White House, instead staying in New York with their young son. She appeared reticent, at times, with the traditions set out by first ladies that preceded her.

But experts say that this time, Mrs Trump will likely be more deliberate with her approach to the largely undefined role of being America’s First Lady.

Born Melanija Knavs, the 54-year-old Slovenian-American former fashion model eventually traded a glamorous life in the gilded walls of Manhattan’s Trump Tower for the confines of political life that came with the Oval Office, during a presidency that was often mired in controversy.

Described by some as an “enigma”, Mrs Trump has preferred to be less public than her predecessors, giving fewer speeches both in the White House and on the campaign trail.

“She’s been unique among modern first ladies,” said Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of communications at Boston University and author of a book on Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.

“She does things the way she wants to do them, as opposed to the way she has to do them. But she fulfils the base expectations.”

In recent years, she avoided the spotlight as her husband challenged several legal cases against him while he campaigned for a second term.

Her absence inspired several news articles this summer asking: “Where is Melania?”

Mrs Trump did appear on key occasions, like when her husband announced in late 2022 that he would be running again.

She also attended the Republican National Convention in July wearing a bright red Christian Dior suit, but did not deliver a speech – another break from tradition.

When she does speak, her words appear carefully chosen, offering hints to her point of view.

At her husband’s Madison Square Garden rally just weeks before Election Day, she delivered short but pointed remarks in line with the Trump campaign’s law and order messaging, painting New York City as a “great metropolis” in decline due to rampant crime.

She also spoke after the first assassination attempt on her husband, calling for unity and labelling the perpetrator a “monster”.

In a rare interview on Fox, she later accused his political opponents and the media of “fuelling a toxic atmosphere” that led to the attack.

Mrs Trump declared her pro-choice stance in her recent memoir, putting her at odds with anti-abortion activists within the Republican Party – though the remarks prompted speculation due to their timing, as her husband was struggling to campaign on the issue after the overturning of Roe v Wade.

• Melania Trump is latest Republican First Lady to back abortion

Mrs Trump wrote about her modelling career, her admiration for her husband and their past political disagreements, but chose to keep details of those disputes private.

She has, however, publicly stood by Trump on controversial stances like his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“I am not the only person who questions the results,” she wrote in her book. On the Capitol Riots on 6 January, 2021, she wrote that she “wasn’t aware” of what was taking place because she was preoccupied with her duties.

Her former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, wrote in her own memoir that Mrs Trump refused to issue a statement condemning the violence, leading Ms Grisham to resign.

Some commentators have questioned whether she enjoyed the role of first lady at all.

One of her biographers, former CNN reporter Kate Bennett, maintains she did despite her early reluctance.

“She liked all the accoutrements that go with being first lady and living in the White House,” Ms Bennett told People magazine in 2021. “I think she actually really enjoyed it.”

In her memoir, Mrs Trump wrote that she has a “strong sense of duty to use the platform as First Lady for good”.

And she said in a 1999 interview that if her then-boyfriend Trump ever ran for president, she would use former first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy and Betty Ford as role models, calling them “very traditional”.

• Five takeaways from Melania Trump’s new book

Mrs Kennedy was a fashion icon who was dedicated to the preservation of the White House, while Mrs Ford was known as a trailblazer who advocated for abortion rights and women’s rights.

After relocating to Washington, Mrs Trump started taking on first lady duties, such as hosting luncheons and state dinners for visiting world leaders. She also focused on White House aesthetics, ordering extensive renovations and overseeing ambitious Christmas decorations (and was once secretly recorded complaining about that last task).

Her clothing was the subject of media fascination and controversy, particularly after she was spotted wearing a jacket with the phrase “I really don’t care, do you?” during a trip to a migrant child detention centre in 2018.

She said the jacket was a message for “the people and the left-wing media” who were criticising her.

Mrs Trump came under fire again after being secretly recorded by her former friend and senior advisor. She was heard expressing her frustration at being criticised for her husband’s policy to separate migrant children from their families.

She later revealed that she had been blindsided by the policy, and had told Trump privately that she did not support it. The policy was dropped by the president in June 2018 after a firestorm of controversy.

Prof Vigil says one of the biggest challenges that Mrs Trump faced in her first term was her political inexperience as well as a revolving door of staff, who were equally inexperienced and at times disloyal.

But Mrs Trump kept quietly busy regardless, Prof Vigil adds, advocating for issues like children’s welfare through her Be Best campaign against online bullying.

She was forced to defend that campaign given her own husband’s aggressive use of social media, telling CBS in 2016 that how he conducted himself online got him in trouble – and boosted his followers.

She also advocated for children affected by the opioid crisis, and has since started a foundation that raises education funds for children in foster care.

Many expect for that work to continue once she moves back to Washington, though it remains unclear if she will live there full-time.

Prof Vigil says the role of first lady has evolved over the years and Mrs Trump will “make choices about how active in public she wants to be”.

“And I think she’ll do that much more intentionally.”

The party that will control the US House of Representatives for the next two years is not yet decided – but the Republicans look to be inching towards a majority that would hand them full control of the US government.

On Saturday morning, the party was a handful of seats short of the 218 needed to take control of the lower chamber of Congress.

The Senate, or upper chamber, and the White House have already flipped to Republicans – meaning President-elect Donald Trump could have significant power to carry out his political agenda after he is sworn in on 20 January 2025.

Control of the House gives a party the power to initiate spending legislation and launch impeachment proceedings against officials.

• Follow live updates: Trump plans White House transition
• Results: Who did each state vote for?
• In maps and charts: How small gains delivered Trump a big win
• These are the seven things Trump says he will do as president
• Analysis – Why Kamala Harris lost: A flawed candidate or doomed campaign?

Under Trump, a unified Republican Party could more easily push through tax cuts and introduce border control measures.

Here are some of the races that have yet to be called.

Democrats are closely monitoring five seats in California they see as crucial to winning back the House.

Challengers are hoping to defeat the incumbent Republicans and flip the seats blue, but polling has shown incumbents holding onto their seats by narrow margins.

The key races to watch are:

• California’s 45th congressional district: Republican Congresswoman Michelle Steel, the incumbent, has been leading against Democrat Derek Tran
• California’s 27th: Democrat George Whitesides is challenging incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Garcia. Garcia has been leading by a narrow margin
• California’s 41st: Incumbent Republican Congressman Ken Calvert is running against Democrat Will Rollins, and has also been leading by a narrow margin
• California’s 22nd: Democrat Rudy Salas is challenging incumbent Republican Congressman David Valadao, who has been enjoying a lead
• California’s 13th: Incumbent Republican Congressman John Duarte is running against Democrat Adam Gray, and has been leading

There are two closely-watched races in this swing state.

Republican Juan Ciscomani, the Republican, appears to be neck and neck with his Democratic challenger, Kirsten Engel, in Arizona’s 6th district, located in the south-east corner of the state.

In Arizona’s 1st district, David Schweikert has a slight lead over Democratic challenger Amish Shah. This district covers north-eastern Maricopa County, outside Phoenix.

Incumbent Democratic Congressman Jared Golden is fighting to keep his seat in Maine’s 2nd congressional district – one of two congressional districts in the state. This encompasses the majority of the state north of Augusta and Portland.

Golden is currently leading in the race against his Republican challenger, Austin Theriault. Almost all votes have been counted.

Democrats are looking to hold onto one seat in Ohio’s 9th congressional district, which encompasses Toledo in the state’s north.

Incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who has served in Congress since 1983, narrowly leads in the race against her Republican challenger, Derek Merrin.

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.

Donald Trump made the first official hire of his incoming administration, announcing 2024 campaign co-chair Susan Summerall Wiles as his chief of staff.

The president-elect’s transition team is already vetting a series of candidates ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025.

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

The 78-year-old Republican is also surrounded by new allies who could fill his cabinet, staff his White House and take up other key roles across government.

Here is a closer look at names in the mix for the top jobs.

Susie Wiles and campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita were the masterminds behind Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris.

In his victory speech on Wednesday, he called her “the ice maiden” – a reference to her composure – and said she “likes to stay in the background”.

Wiles was confirmed the next day as the first appointee of his second term – as his White House chief of staff. She will be the first woman ever to hold that job.

Chief of staff is often a president’s top aide, overseeing daily operations in the West Wing and managing the boss’s staff.

Wiles, 67, has worked in Republican politics for decades, from Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign to turning businessman Rick Scott into Florida’s governor in just seven months back in 2010.

Republicans have said she commands respect and has an ability to corral the big egos of those in Trump’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

No personnel decision may be more critical to the trajectory of Trump’s second term than his appointee to lead the Department of Justice.

After uneven relationships with both Jeff Sessions and William Barr, the attorney generals during his first term, Trump is widely expected to pick a loyalist who will wield the agency’s prosecutorial power to punish critics and opponents.

Among the names being floated for the cabinet post are Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been both indicted and impeached like Trump; Matthew Whitaker, the man who took over for three months as acting attorney general after Sessions stepped down at Trump’s request; Mike Davis, a right-wing activist who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and has issued bombastic threats against Trump critics and journalists; and Mark Paoletta, who served in Trump’s budget office and argues there is no legal requirement for a president to stay out of justice department decisions.

The secretary of homeland security will take the lead in enforcing Trump’s promises of deporting undocumented migrants en masse and “sealing” the US-Mexico border, as well as leading the government response to natural disasters.

Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), stands out as the most likely pick.

Homan, 62, supported separating migrant children from their parents as a means to deter illegal crossings and has said politicians who support migrant sanctuary policies should be charged with crimes. Though he resigned in 2018, midway through the Trump presidency, he remains a proponent of the Trump approach on immigration.

Chad Wolf, who served as acting homeland secretary from 2019-20 until his appointment was ruled unlawful, and Chad Mizelle, the homeland department’s former acting general counsel, are also potential contenders.

Stephen Miller, widely considered to be the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, is expected once again to play a senior advisory role with the White House.

The US secretary of state is the president’s main adviser on foreign affairs, and acts as America’s top diplomat when representing the country overseas.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio – who was most recently under consideration to be Trump’s vice-president – is a major name being floated for the key cabinet post.

Rubio, 53, is a China hawk who opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary but has since mended fences. He is a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee and vice-chairman of the chamber’s select intelligence panel.

Other contenders for the job include Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien; Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty, who was previously Trump’s ambassador to Japan; and Brian Hook, the hawkish special envoy to Iran in Trump’s first term and the man who is leading the transition effort at the State Department.

A dark horse for the nomination, however, is Richard Grenell, a loyalist who served as ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and acting national intelligence chief. Grenell, 58, was heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and even sat in on his private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September.

Grenell’s combative style may make him a better fit for national security adviser – a position that does not require Senate confirmation – than secretary of state.

Also in line for major posts in a second Trump term are former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe; Keith Kellogg, a national security adviser to Trump’s first Vice-President Mike Pence; former defence department official Eldridge Colby; and Kash Patel, a loyalist who staffed the national security council and became chief of staff to the acting secretary of defence in Trump’s final months in office.

Patel, 44, who helped block the transition to the incoming Joe Biden administration in the latter role, is tipped to become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief.

Trump has also said he would fire Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) Director Chris Wray, who he nominated in 2017 but has since fallen out with. Jeffrey Jensen, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, is under consideration to replace Wray.

Two names being discussed are Michael Waltz, a Florida lawmaker who sits on the armed services committee in the US House of Representatives, and Robert O’Brien.

Trump has ruled out Mike Pompeo, who was an early favourite to head up the Pentagon.

Former CIA director Pompeo served as secretary of state during Trump’s first presidency, when he led the administration’s diplomatic blitz in the Middle East.

During Trump’s first term, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik transformed from a moderate to a vocal backer. The fourth-ranking House Republican leader has remained one of Trump’s most fiercely loyal defenders on Capitol Hill – which makes her a leading contender to represent him in unfriendly territory at the United Nations.

But she may find herself competing for the position with the likes of former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus; David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel; and Kelly Craft, who served as UN ambassador at the end of Trump’s term.

Trump is reportedly considering Robert Lighthizer, a free trade sceptic who led the tariff war with China as the US trade representative, as his chief financial officer.

But at least four others may be under consideration for the role, including Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has become a major fundraiser and economic adviser to the president-elect; John Paulson, another megadonor from the hedge fund world; former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton; and Fox Business Network financial commentator Larry Kudlow, who ran Trump’s national economic council during his first term.

The woman co-chairing Trump’s transition team, Linda McMahon, is tipped as a key contender to represent US businesses and job creation in his cabinet – after previously serving as small business administrator during his first term.

Others who could fill this vacancy include Brooke Rollins; Robert Lighthizer; and Kelly Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman who briefly served in the US Senate.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem – who was passed over to be Trump’s running mate over a bizarre admission that she killed her pet dog – could see her loyalty to him pay off with the leadership of the interior department, which manages public land and natural resources.

She may compete with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum for the role.

Doug Burgum is also a contender to lead the energy department, where he would implement Trump’s pledges to “drill, baby, drill” and overhaul US energy policy.

A software entrepreneur who sold his small company to Microsoft in 2001, Burgum briefly ran in the 2024 Republican primary before dropping out, endorsing Trump and quickly impressing him with his low-drama persona and sizeable wealth.

Former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also reportedly in the running.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, who impressed Trump as his campaign’s national press secretary, has already served as an assistant White House press secretary and may be a shoo-in to be the administration’s spokesperson.

RFK Jr, as he is known, is an environmental lawyer by trade, a vaccine sceptic by fame and the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

He is on a shortlist to run the heath and human services department, multiple people close to the president-elect’s campaign told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.

Despite having no medical qualifications to his name, Kennedy, 70, is expected to become a kind of “public health star” in the Trump administration.

Democratic Party attacks on Kennedy’s credentials are not likely to carry much weight, as control of the US Senate is in the hands of Republicans and confirming Kennedy to any cabinet-level post will not require Democratic support.

Besides a new job at the health and human services department, Kennedy could also influence policy at the agriculture department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Safety Administration (FDA).

The world’s richest man poured millions of dollars into re-electing Trump and critics say he will now have the power to shape the regulations that affect his companies Tesla, SpaceX and X.

Both he and Trump have focused on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs 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.

But Musk, 53, could also play a role in global diplomacy. He participated in Trump’s first call with Ukraine’s Zelensky on Wednesday.

Donald Trump has offered a sweeping immigration pitch that he has promised to begin on the first day of his presidency, including mass deportations and a major crackdown on illegal border crossings. Arizona could find itself on the frontline of these moves, and the sharply divided state is contending with what they could mean.

In the Phoenix home of the Villalobos family, members across three generations discussed Donald Trump’s decisive election victory with their friends.

Over Latin jazz and a dinner of empanadas, beans and rice, the group – mostly women – were close to tears.

“I really had hope for humanity, and I feel like we were let down,” said Monica Villalobos, 45. “It changes the way we think about ourselves in the Latino community.”

Her family made America their home after immigrating from Jalisco, Mexico. They worry that friends and relatives’ families could be torn apart with deportations.

Trump has promised the biggest mass deportations of migrants in US history, and has pledged to seal the border and stop the “migrant invasion”. He is also promising to hire 10,000 Border Patrol agents and says he will ask Congress to give all agents a 10 % pay raise.

His message is one that resonates with many voters here who consistently rank immigration and border security as top concerns. Many detail seeing the impacts of illegal migration firsthand, but voters are divided on how to handle it.

Arizona was, for a time, a Republican stronghold. Trump was the first to lose here in more than 20 years when Joe Biden came out victorious in 2020. The 2024 result is still too close to call – a testament to just how split residents are.

Voters on Tuesday, however, overwhelmingly approved a Republican-supported measure that gives sheriffs, police and state law enforcement the authority to enforce federal immigration laws and arrest those who cross the border illegally. It had faced opposition from Democratic and Latino groups, who argue it could result in racial profiling.

• Trump says there’s ‘no price tag’ for mass deportations. How would it work?
• Seven things Trump says he will do as president
• In maps and charts: How small gains delivered Trump a big win

There are an estimated 12 million undocumented migrants in the US, and many have lived and worked here for decades. When discussing Trump’s mass deportation proposals, Ms Villalobos’s niece, 19-year-old university student Alexandra de Leon, said they were “terrifying”.

“It’s your neighbours, it’s the people you see in the grocery store, it’s your teachers, it’s your friend’s parents,” she said. “To know that those people are in danger and their families could be torn apart at any moment… it’s heartbreaking.”

One of the main storylines of election night was the extent to which Trump racked up huge support from Latino voters nationwide. He saw a mammoth 14 percentage-point bump compared to the 2020 election, according to exit polls.

One of these supporters is Jorge Gonzalez, Sr, who moved his family to Arizona from Mexico 20 years ago in the hope of building a more prosperous future. Now the proud owner of a body shop in Phoenix, he believes Trump’s policies will help him as a business owner.

“As a person I don’t like him, but as a politician, I like how he ran the economy. Many Latinos probably think he managed the country better,” he said.

“He allowed a large number of undocumented workers to come here and get work visas. I didn’t see any family separations,” he added. “I saw that he integrated and allowed undocumented immigrants to live and work here in a regulated way.”

Across the yard, Jorge’s son, Jorge Jr, was under a car examining brake pads and checking an engine.

As he swapped out wrenches, he said Trump had the right tools to be a successful president.

“I don’t like his attitude. His mouth gets the better of him a lot of times, but when you are in a position of power or leadership, you need to be able to be a little bit tough,” he said.

When asked about the mass, militarised deportations Trump campaigned on in his home state, Jorge Jr just laughed.

“That’s impossible!” he said, noting the millions of undocumented immigrants in the US. “You will need a lot of resources, planes, food, detention centres, police, more ICE officers, so I don’t think it will be feasible.”

If the Trump administration were to move forward with mass deportations, they would likely face a host of challenges. Experts are wary that federal immigration authorities do not have proper staffing to track down migrants, or the capacity to hold them until a court date.

“You learn to develop a thick skin, especially coming from where we come from,” Jorge Jr said. “We don’t pay attention to a lot of the things that people say, because we know those are just words and there’s a long gap between the things that we say and the things that we actually do.”

Others are excited to see Trump’s proposals come to fruition.

Mark Lamb, the sheriff in Pinal County – a conservative area just south-east of Phoenix – said Trump winning the White House would deter migrants.

“Once you start holding people accountable, securing the border, you’re going to start to see a lot of these folks will go back on their own. And then we can start to go after the criminals, people that are causing problems in communities.”

But how Trump’s policies will actually work on the ground is still anyone’s guess.

“I don’t think anybody has the resources right now,” Sheriff Lamb said. “But the people he picks are going to really have to figure out what that looks like.”

• UNITED KINGDOM: What does Trump victory mean for UK?
• GLOBAL: What Trump’s win means for Ukraine, Middle East and China
• AFRICA: Trade, aid, security: What does Trump’s win mean for Africa?
• ANALYSIS: Analysis: Will Trump’s victory spark a global trade war?
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

Known as Buz Stop Boys, a group of mostly young professionals and tradespeople are driving a new wave of civic responsibility in Ghana, picking up brooms and shovels to clean up the mounds of rubbish that are an eyesore in cities and towns across the country.

Their initiative has won the admiration of local celebrities and politicians – and even caught the attention of some UK teenagers who flew to the capital, Accra, to join the clean-up.

“Our goal is not just to clean the streets but to change mindsets,” Buz Stop Boys leader Heneba Kwadwo Sarfo told the BBC.

“If we can make people understand that keeping their environment clean benefits everyone, we’ll have a cleaner, healthier, and prouder Ghana.”

About 12,700 tonnes of solid waste is generated in Ghana each day, with only 10% disposed of properly.

Fed up with the filth and flooding it causes, Buz Stop Boys go around Greater Accra two to four times a week to clear clogged drains and gutters, pavements and roads, as well as to cut over-grown grass.

The number of volunteers will vary, depending on who has spare time that day.

A civil engineer, Mr Sarfo formed the group in July 2023 with just five people. He called it Buz Stop Boys, knowing the name would resonate with the public.

“The rich and poor, everybody knows what a bus stop is,” Mr Sarfo said.

His small-scale initiative has now blossomed into a movement, with more than 40 men and women – from midwives to carpenters to military officers – joining.

“Social media has been key in getting more people to join our movement,” Mr Sarfo said.

“Through our videos, we’ve been able to change the mindset of some people, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

It also led to a group of UK students visiting Ghana during their summer break to help with a clean-up operation in Ablekuma, an area in Accra notorious for its waste disposal issues.

Mr Sarfo saw their visit as an inspiration for more locals to get involved.

“Don’t sit back at home and say you don’t care. One thing is key, without [the] environment we are useless, we are nonentities, and we can’t survive on this planet,” he said.

Popular musician and human rights activist Sister Derby has thrown her weight behind Buz Stop Boys, praising the activists on her Instagram and X accounts.

She told the BBC that she had been touched by their “pure selflessness”, and she and her brother had one day joined them to clean a stretch of a street market in the heart of Accra.

Dancehall star and businessman Shatta Wale has also rallied behind the group, helping raise 30,000 cedis ($1,830, £1,415) during a live TikTok.

“These boys are the real heroes. They are doing what most of us are too busy or too proud to do. If we all helped them, imagine how beautiful Accra would be,” he said.

The donations have been bolstered by those of politicians.

Former President John Mahama – who is making a fresh bid for power by contesting elections due in December under the banner of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) – donated 50,000 cedis, while Transport Minister Asensu Boakye – who comes from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) – gave 10,000 cedis.

Welcoming the donations, Mr Sarfo said the cash was used to fund their activities – including paying for rubbish disposal and buying fuel for their tricycle to transport rubbish to a refuse site.

Politically non-partisan, the Buz Stop Boys’ sole focus is on realising their vision of a cleaner Ghana – one street at a time.

“Individuals should take up initiatives because waiting for government hasn’t worked over the decades and the records also show that in the event of an environmental disaster we as citizens suffer the most,” Mr Sarfo said.

“It is therefore important for us to rise and help ourselves.”

• Idris Elba: Why I’m planning a move to Africa
• Ghana gold rush sparks environmental disaster
• ‘Bipolar, colour and me’ – an artist’s spreadsheet of emotion

A hologram of a young sex worker haunts Amsterdam’s red light district.

Dressed in faded denim hotpants, a leopard-print bra, with a tattoo snaking up her stomach and across her chest, the 3D computer-generated image reaches out and appears to knock on the window to attract attention.

She leans forward, breathes on the glass and writes the word “help”.

The hologram is designed to represent Bernadette “Betty” Szabo, a 19-year-old woman from Hungary who was murdered a few months after giving birth in 2009.

Her fatal stabbing has baffled police for 15 years. Dutch cold case detectives are using the innovative technology for the first time in an effort to solve the case.

The murdered teenager’s image is being projected from behind a window, alongside hundreds of young women who continue to make a living in this notoriously risky industry.

Investigators hope the lifelike hologram will help jog memories and draw attention to the unsolved murder.

Until now, Betty’s killer has eluded justice and cold case detective Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk is determined to change that: “A young woman, only 19, taken from life in such a horrific way.”

Szabo had a tough life and her story was one of hardship and resilience, according to the detective.

She had moved to Amsterdam aged 18 and became pregnant soon afterwards. She carried on working throughout her pregnancy, returning to the job shortly after her son was born.

It was in the early hours of 19 February 2009, when two sex workers went to check on the teenage mother during a break between clients, because they realised her usual music was not playing.

When they entered her brothel, a small room with a plastic-covered bed, vanity table and sink, they discovered Betty Szabo’s body.

She had been murdered three months after giving birth, the victim of a savage knife attack.

Her baby was placed in foster care and never got to know his mother – a fact that motivates detectives.

Although police immediately launched a murder investigation, her killer was never found. They combed through CCTV footage and questioned potential witnesses.

The majority of people eyeing the scantily dressed women behind the red neon windows are tourists. Police suspect the perpetrator came from abroad.

Now they are urging people who may have visited Amsterdam to think back, with a €30,000 reward to encourage witnesses to come forward.

As Amsterdam grapples with controversial plans to relocate its famous brothels to an out-of-town “erotic zone”, Betty Szabo’s hologram offers a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of sex workers in an area that, despite a range of security measures, remains perilous.

Sex workers have voiced concerns that removing the women who sell sex from public view could expose them to even greater danger.

The fact that such a violent crime could occur in one of the Netherlands’ busiest nightspots without witnesses coming forward continues to confound investigators.

In the historic red-light district where she once lived and worked, the teenage sex worker’s digital presence reminds passers-by that her case is yet to be solved.

Arnaud Poulay never wanted to leave the tiny Indian Ocean island of Agalega, but this year he packed his bag and took off, broken-hearted by what he regards as the militarisation of his home.

Until recently, just 350 people lived on Agalega, fishing and growing coconuts. Other food was delivered four times a year by ship from the capital of Mauritius, 1,100km (680 miles) to the south. A small airstrip was rarely used except in medical emergencies.

But in 2015, Mauritius, an island nation of which Agalega is a part, signed a deal enabling India to build a vast 3,000m runway and a big new jetty there, as part of the two countries’ deepening collaboration on maritime security.

However some Agalegans fear this could grow into a fully-fledged military presence.

Mr Poulay, a 44-year-old handyman and reggae musician, led a campaign against the project.

“I love my island and my island loves me,” he says. “But when that base was unveiled, I knew I had to leave.”

Agalega – two small islands covering 25 sq km, in the south-west Indian Ocean – would be an ideal location for India to monitor marine traffic. And a comparison of satellite images from 2019 with others taken in July this year shows how much has changed.

A carpet of palm trees has made way for the runway, which stretches along the spine of the north island between the two main villages – La Fourche in the north and Vingt-Cinq further south.

Two 60m-wide buildings can be seen sitting on a tarmac apron, at least one of which could be a hangar to accommodate the Indian navy’s P-8I aircraft, according to Samuel Bashfield, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University.

The P-8I is a Boeing 737 modified to hunt and potentially attack submarines, and to monitor maritime communications. Islanders have already photographed the aircraft on the airstrip.

To the north-west is the new jetty jutting out into the ocean, which Mr Bashfield says could be used by Indian surface patrol vessels, as well as the ship that brings supplies to Agalega.

“As newer satellite images become available, we’ll better understand Agalega’s role in Indian Ocean communications,” he says.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies refers to the facility as a “surveillance station” and says it is likely to contain a coastal radar surveillance system similar to Indian-built equipment elsewhere in Mauritius.

The Indian government declined to answer questions about Agalega, and referred the BBC to earlier statements on its website. In one of these, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India and Mauritius were “natural partners” in maritime security, facing traditional and non-traditional challenges in the Indian Ocean region.

The two countries have had a close defence relationship since the 1970s. The country’s national security adviser, its coastguard chief and the head of the police helicopter squadron are all Indian nationals and officers in India’s external intelligence agency, navy and air force, respectively.

Both sides would want the facility to be seen “as one that is more about capacity building than for any overt military use”, says Prof Harsh Pant, of the India Institute at King’s College London.

It’s no secret, though, that India and its Western allies are concerned about China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean.

While it’s not unusual for a large country to establish a military outpost on the territory of a smaller ally, the construction work on Agalega has troubled some islanders.

A number of areas, including some of the island’s palm-fringed white-sand beaches, have already been cordoned off, islanders say. There are also persistent rumours that the village of La Fourche will be swallowed by the Indian infrastructure that has grown up around it, and that the 10 families who live there will be forced out.

“It will become a restricted area completely for Indians,” says Laval Soopramanien, president of the Association of Friends of Agalega.

He fears that “Agalega will become the story of the Chagos islands” – a concern echoed by 26-year-old handyman Billy Henri, who is the son of an Agalegan and a woman expelled from the Chagos islands.

“My mother [lost] her island,” says Mr Henri. “My father will be the next.”

A number of Agalega’s residents are from families scarred by eviction from the Chagos Islands, 2,000km to the east, after the UK government declared them in 1965 to be British territory and granted the US permission to build a communications station on the largest island, Diego Garcia. This gradually became a fully-fledged military base.

Billy Henri fears that the Mauritius government, which owns all land on Agalega and is the only employer, is trying to make conditions so miserable that everyone will leave.

He points to problems with healthcare and education, limited investment in the local economy, a lack of job opportunities, and a ban on local people opening their own businesses.

A Mauritius government spokesman told the BBC that no-one would be asked to leave, and that local people were only prevented from entering the airport and the port – facilities that he said would help the country control piracy, drug-trafficking and unregulated fishing.

Mauritius also denies suggestions that Agalega hosts a military base, saying that the national police are still in full control. However, it acknowledges that India will assist in the “maintenance and operation” of the new facilities, which were built at Indian expense.

The Mauritius and Indian governments say the improvements to sea and air transportation were designed to benefit the islanders and help lift them out of poverty. But local people say this hasn’t happened: there are still only four ferries to the main island of Mauritius every year, and no passenger flights.

Agalegans say they are barred from a new Indian-built hospital, even though a Mauritius government press release vaunted its operating theatres, X-ray machines and dentistry equipment.

Billy Henri says that a boy suffering from cooking oil burns, who needed more help than he could get from the north island’s health centre, was refused entry in October.

“It’s only for Indians!” he says.

The injured boy and his parents were flown to the main island of Mauritius instead. Laval Soopramanien says the boy is still in hospital there, and that the family will remain on the main island until the next boat leaves for Agalega.

The Mauritius government did not respond, when asked to comment on the plight of the boy with burns. The Indian government declined to comment.

In a recent speech to the Mauritius parliament, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said the socio-economic development of Agalega was higher than ever on his government’s agenda.

A “master plan” had been drawn up to improve health and education, transport connections and recreational facilities for the island’s residents, and to develop the fishing sector and the exploitation of coconut by-products, he said.

But distrust is fuelled by the fact that neither India nor Mauritius has published the details of the 2015 memorandum of understanding, so their plans for the future are unknown.

The Prince of Wales has said he wants to use his royal role differently and make it relevant for a younger generation.

It’s a sign of his view of modern royalty and came while speaking to reporters at the end of his trip to South Africa for his Earthshot environmental prize.

Throughout, Prince William has spoken openly at times, not just about his role but also his family.

“I can only describe what I’m trying to do, and that’s I’m trying to do it differently and I’m trying to do it for my generation,” he told us. “And to give you more an understanding around it, I’m doing it with maybe a smaller R in the royal, if you like, that’s maybe a better way of saying it.”

His use of the words “smaller R in royal” is an insight into Prince William’s view of his role in public life.

The pomp and ceremony of royalty doesn’t always sit easily with Prince William, neither does some of the leadership he has seen globally.

“It’s more about impact philanthropy, collaboration, convening, and helping people. And I’m also going to throw empathy in there as well, because I really care about what I do. It helps impacts people’s lives. And I think we could do with some more empathetic leadership around the world.”

I have spent the past week with Prince William on his visit to South Africa.

It’s the longest period of time he’s spent with the media this year and he’s been more open than perhaps many of us had expected.

He was pretty relaxed and spoke freely about his family and his role as Prince of Wales both on and off the record.

The chat was often light hearted – how he was settling into his wardrobe of sustainable clothing, the perils of having a beard when your daughter doesn’t like it and the ‘papa’ bracelet she made for him when he took his children to see Taylor Swift.

But the impact of the past year was also on show.

Seeing and talking to Prince William up close, it’s clear the toll it has taken with both his wife and his father undergoing cancer treatment.

As he put it, it has been “the hardest year of my life”.

Add to that, the burden of being a senior Royal and a future King which has hung heavily over Prince William.

The formality that comes with the job and the need to live some of your life in the public gaze haven’t sat comfortably at times.

• William announces Earthshot winners in Cape Town

He has found a peace by trying to carve out the role of Prince of Wales in his own way.

His aim is to a have a smaller number of projects to work on where he can make a greater impact

But it’s a risk.

His two big projects, the Earthshot Prize and Homewards, his homelessness project, are not free of politics.

They both also leave him open to accusations of hypocrisy – the wealthy prince, with the comfort of privilege, from his palaces and castles telling us how to make the world a better place.

Prince William also began his trip to South Africa amidst reports questioning the transparency of the royal family’s finances and income.

Those close to the prince say he is well aware of this criticism but it would be far worse if he did nothing, and they argue that privilege shouldn’t prevent you trying to improve the lives of others.

Questioned about the future, Prince William said both he and the Princess of Wales would hopefully be doing more public duties together next year and described how they both wanted to bring something different to the organisations they support.

“I sit here right now doing Earthshot and doing all the projects I’m doing, like Homewards as well. And who knows what’s going to come next, but it all centres around those values of trying to help deliver change and make those lives better.”

Warning: contains some Yellowstone plot spoliers

Cowboys, murderous revenge plots and family secrets have kept Yellowstone fans hooked since 2018.

It is one of the most watched shows in the US and turned creator Taylor Sheridan into the king of prime time television.

But last year, Paramount announced that the fifth season, which is due to end next month, would be the last.

Its star, Kelly Reilly, tells me it will be “an ending to the Yellowstone world we have known”.

“Does it mean it’s the end of me playing her? Maybe, maybe not,” she says. “We don’t know yet is the honest answer.”

There have already been two Yellowstone spin-offs, with more in the works. Reilly, who plays the troubled and volatile Beth Dutton, says she would “love” to keep playing her character, but any spin-off “would be a new beginning somewhere”.

It sounds like something is possibly in the works, though, with Reilly saying she “can’t talk about the future because there are so many conversations happening”.

Yellowstone’s drama on screen has been mirrored off screen, with the departure of its leading man, Kevin Costner.

He only filmed half of season five because of what he says were contract and scheduling issues.

Sheridan has said it was down to Costner’s wish to focus on his Horizon film series, which the star is directing, co-writing, producing and starring in.

Either way, it leaves British-born Reilly as arguably the star of the show.

The daughter of a police officer and a hospital receptionist, the actress was born and brought up in Chessington, Greater London.

A far cry from the Hollywood Hills.

She has previously starred in True Detective, Prime Suspect and Above Suspicion.

But Yellowstone has introduced her to a huge international audience.

I ask how it feels to be an in-demand leading lady.

“Well, I’m 47 years old, it hasn’t happened overnight, you know. So it’s not like I’m getting whiplash,” she laughs.

“I have been a working actor for 30 years. It’s not lost on me that there’s a unicorn of shows that have such success worldwide and a character that has had this amount of attention or appeal.

“But I treat it at arm’s length. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. I have a very normal life. It’s very important to me that my life is normal. Nothing has changed, other than I’m really busy.

“I don’t get to sleep at home very often, which is annoying because I love home!”

Most fans assume Reilly is herself an American, not the softly spoken Brit she is in reality.

She tells me that when Yellowstone started, she “didn’t do any press” because she wanted people to believe in her character.

“People talk to me as if Beth is real,” she says. “We all talk about Beth like she’s a real-life person.

“I’m always going to be a bit of a let down when people meet me. I go into the local bakery and the lady is like, ‘I’d love to drink with you.’

“I know what she means – she wants to drink with Beth. People want to feel part of that energy… someone so connected with their primal self.

“And we’re so disconnected. We’re all on our phones, on social media. It is like it doesn’t happen if someone doesn’t take a picture of it. Beth is the opposite of that. She is just so alive.”

To say Reilly’s character has been put through the wringer would be an understatement.

Beth has survived attempted rape, attempted murder, crushing heartbreak and being betrayed by family members.

She even exclaims: “I am the rock therapists break themselves against.”

Reilly describes Beth as a “powerhouse”, telling me it’s been “such a fun adventure to put her on”.

“I’m very introverted,” she adds. “I don’t have any dreams of vengeance in my life.

“There’s something really exciting about playing her. I feel like I’m on an adrenaline rush for four months while I play her, and when I’m finished I’m like, I now have to go back to my quiet, boring life. And I’m very grateful for my quiet, boring life after I’ve played her.

“But by the time every summer comes around where I’m sort of gearing up again and the scripts start coming in, I get excited again to meet her.

“I’m very aware of the gift of her as a character, but I lock her up in a padlocked box for six months of the year.”

The character of Beth quickly became a fan favourite, with articles devoted to getting her character’s look, and thousands of social media posts about her.

One of Beth’s most memorable lines of dialogues, “You are the trailer park, I am the tornado”, is even printed on T-shirts.

What does Reilly put that popularity down to?

“She’s unequivocally herself and unapologetic about that,” she says. “And as a woman, it is so refreshing and so much fun to play.”

The actress believes Beth “has penetrated a zeitgeist in women specifically”.

“I think it is that unencumbered kind of freedom that she moves through the world with. She is not afraid of dying, she is not afraid of losing.

“There is a scene in season two where she is being attacked by a man who is in the process of raping her and is about to kill her and she is covered in blood.

“She will not be a victim to him. And I think for women and for me, I love that. She is fierce.”

After all the trauma her character has experienced, Reilly says she “goes through different phases” of considering what a happy ending would be for Beth.

“I trust Taylor and his vision for her. He loves her so much,” she says.

“I would like something cathartic, potentially. I would hate to leave her out in the wilderness. But I don’t know if happiness is something any of these characters strive for.

“They strive to protect, they strive to kill, they strive to be killed. These are not looking for peaceful lives.”

Malevolent spirits, spooky zombies and vengeful witches are making a comeback to Bollywood this year, with horror films emerging as some of the biggest earners of 2024. The BBC looks at how these modest-budget films are earning impressive returns.

Earlier this month, Bollywood witnessed a dramatic showdown between the big and the not-so-big.

On one side was the star-studded high-budget action film Singham Again, and on the other, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, the latest instalment of a mid-budget three-part horror-comedy series by the same name.

Singham Again, which featured five of Bollywood’s biggest stars – Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and Ranveer Singh – managed to pull in 1.86bn rupees ($22.05m; £17.06) worldwide in four days, according to film analytics tracker Sacnilk.

While Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, which features the relatively young and new Kartik Aryan, earned slightly less in the same period (1.63bn rupees), its smaller budget meant that its performance was even more impressive

The film brings back Aaryan, who also featured in the second part, as a conman exorcist who is hired by a royal family to purge their palace of an evil spirit.

Packed with adventure and hilarity, the film’s racy plot has been drawing audiences to theatres in droves.

The film’s success marks a continuation of a new trend in Bollywood, where horror and horror-comedy films – once relegated to the fringes – are now leading the box office.

The trend began with Shaitaan, a psychological horror film starring Ajay Devgn, which earned over $25m worldwide despite a modest budget. Following that, Munjya and Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank continued the success, with the latter becoming the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2024, grossing over $103mn.

The film, Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aantank, set in the fictional town of Chanderi, features the mysterious Stree, who once targeted patriarchal men, now facing off against a monster that abducts free-thinking women.

The film sold out shows for months while other major Bollywood productions struggled to find an audience.

The industry has gone through through a slump post the Covid-19 pandemic, with most films tanking at the box-office, trade figures show.

What’s interesting is that a lot of these horror films did not receive glowing reviews – in fact, some critics have criticised the films for their “lousy” plotlines.

Yet their back-to-back successes seem to have given Bollywood a new lease of life.

So what’s driving this trend?

“Horror-comedy plays on the most primal instinct of the audience – alternating between fear and humour,” says Mayank Shekhar, a senior film critic.

“Both are infectious. You audibly sense the shrieks and the laughs in the hall.”

Films like Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Stree 2 have also benefited from the success of their prequels.

People come to watch these films simply because they enjoyed the films that came before it, making them somewhat “critic-proof”, Shekhar adds.

“I think we go because we loved the original film and want to feel the same magic in the sequels,” says Apurva, a radio jockey, who watched both films recently.

Horror as a genre in Bollywood has also reinvented itself over the years.

Unlike the horror films of the 1980s, which were designed for an adult audience, horror films nowadays have become a collective cinematic experience, fit for family viewing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Ramsay Brothers ruled the Hindi horror scene with hits like Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972) and Purana Mandir (1984), built on a formula of exaggerated ghosts, witches, gore, and titillation.

“The films were profitable but lacked the legitimacy and appeal that could attract big actors and wider viewership,” says Taran Adarsh, a trade analyst.

In the new millennium, producer brothers Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, along with director Vikram Bhatt, took the reins of the genre.

Their Raaz series (The first film released in 2002) – a sleeker reimagining of the Ramsay Brothers’ formula, featuring chart-topping songs and sensual scenes – achieved significant success.

But apart from a few exceptions, the charm of horror films remained limited.

The turning point came in 2007, when Bhool Bhulaiyaa’s first part, starring Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan, hit theatres.

Adapted from the 1993 Malayalam blockbuster Manichitrathazhu, the movie offered a perfect blend of humour and horror and became an instant hit with the audiences.

The genre – with its newfound family-friendly approach, which tones down explicit content – gained more popularity with the release of Stree in 2018, which combined horror with social themes like patriarchy and feminism.

Anees Bazmee, the director of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and 3, says a big part of his vision was to ensure his films are enjoyable for children. “I wanted them to be on the edge of their seats but never truly scared, like a roller-coaster ride – happy on the ascent, with a thrill of fear on the descent,” he told the BBC.

And it’s not just humour, there are other common elements as well – most of these films are set in small towns and cities and combine local folklore with universal themes of kindness, bravery and the eventual triumph of good over evil.

Take the film Tumbbad, a bold blend of mythology, horror and moral lessons.

The film follows Vinayak, who discovers a treasure guarded by a cursed creature and attempts to steal it, only to realise greed is a deadly trap. Originally released in 2018, the film was re-released in cinemas earlier this year, managing to earn more than its original collection.

Mr Adarsh says there is no doubt that horror is enjoying a “revival” at the box office this year.

But others warn against the oversimplification of the trend.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa was our first horror-comedy success that established a successful formula,” says Munjya director Aditya Sarpotdar.

“But it took more than a decade to come up with the next big hit (Stree),” he adds.

Bazmee says that often, it’s the plot and not the genre that determines a film’s popularity.

“In the end, it’s always the well-made films that work. That’s always going to be a fundamental factor,” he says.

The UK chief of defence staff Sir Tony Radakin has said the government should provide more money for defence.

Speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, he said his call would not be a “surprise” and that the person in his job would “always want more more for defence”.

Appearing on the same programme, Treasury minister Darren Jones said the government wanted to increase defence spending from 2.3% to 2.5% of the national income.

However, he did not say when the target would be reached or whether it would be met before the next election, which could be held in 2029, at the latest.

Jones said the government would not commit to a deadline until it had completed its strategic defence review.

The review – led by former Labour minister and Nato head George Robertson – is examining the current state of the armed forces, the threats the UK faces and the capabilities needed to address them. It is due to be completed in the spring.

Jones warned that increasing defence spending would mean “trade offs” with other areas of public spending.

A Whitehall source told the BBC it is a question of “when, not if” the government reaches the 2.5% target. They also said the election of Donald Trump as the next US president had “focused minds” on the need to increase military spending.

Trump has repeatedly urged European countries to increase defence spending and said he would let aggressors such as Russia do “whatever the hell it wants” to those that don’t.

Dame Priti Patel – who was appointed the Conservative’s shadow foreign secretary earlier this week – said the government should be aiming to meet the 2.5% target by 2030.

Asked if her party would accept cuts elsewhere in order to meet 2.5%, Dame Priti argued there were “efficiencies” that could be made as well as changes around the “performance of the civil service”.

She added that the government “could have done more in that Budget to put the pathway forward for 2.5% of GDP on defence”.

She said the increase was “essential” adding: “We are living in very insecure times geopolitically, and we do need to step up.”

Sir Tony said it was “crucial” for the government to “balance the ambition of the nation and the prime minister against the resources to match that ambition”.

He also said the Army needed “longer-term stability” and “clarity” around spending.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has intensified calls for a boost to the UK’s defence budget.

Assessing the conflict, Sir Tony said Russia had suffered its worst month for casualties since the start of the war in 2022.

He said Russia’s forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured “every single day” in October.

Russia does not disclose the number of its war dead, but Western defence officials have said October’s death toll was the heaviest so far.

Sir Tony said the Russian people were paying an “extraordinary price” for Putin’s invasion.

“Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,” said Sir Tony.

He said the losses were “for tiny increments of land”.

“There is no doubt that Russia is making tactical, territorial gains and that is putting pressure on Ukraine,” he said.

But he added that Russia is spending more than 40% of its public expenditure on defence and security, which he said was “an enormous drain” on the country.

While allies of the US’s president-elect Donald Trump insist that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have to cede territory to bring the conflict to an end, Sir Tony insisted that Western allies would be resolute for “as long as it takes”.

“That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky,” he told the programme.

A 37-year-old Irish man has been arrested in connection with the murder of an American nurse in Hungary, police say.

Mackenzie Michalski, 31, from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing after a night out in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, on Tuesday.

Officers said the suspect was identified through CCTV footage and later confessed to killing Ms Michalski, but claimed her death had been an accident.

In a statement, put out on Saturday, police said the man had attempted to conceal Ms Michalski’s death by renting a car, putting her body in a suitcase and hiding it in woodland near the village of Szigliget in the country’s west.

Officers said Ms Michalski was killed during an “intimate encounter” with the suspect, but did not provide any further details.

They were able to establish that the pair had met at a nightclub, danced together and then travelled to the man’s rented apartment.

He was arrested there on Thursday evening, and has been remanded in custody.

After being questioned, the suspect showed detectives where he had disposed of Ms Michalski’s body, the police statement said.

It added that the man had placed the nurse’s body in a wardrobe while he cleaned his apartment – in a bid to “remove traces” of the alleged murder – before driving to the woods.

Ms Michalski was reported missing by friends when she failed to return to their accommodation.

During the course of their investigation, police said they uncovered evidence which “gave rise to the suspicion of murder”.

Following Ms Michalski’s disappearance, the man made a series of online searches – including “what does a dead body smell like after it decomposes?”, “how do the police handle missing person cases?”, and “removing rotting meat smell”.

He is also alleged to have searched whether pigs eat dead bodies and about the appearance of wild boar along Lake Balaton – a body of water near Szigliget.

In footage released by Hungarian police, a man in handcuffs can be seen guiding officers through woodland. Sniffer dogs and forensic investigators are present.

A Facebook group, called Find Mackenzie Michalski, says the 31-year-old often went by the nickname Kenzie.

On Saturday, her friends held a candlelit vigil close to the US embassy in Budapest.

Known as Buz Stop Boys, a group of mostly young professionals and tradespeople are driving a new wave of civic responsibility in Ghana, picking up brooms and shovels to clean up the mounds of rubbish that are an eyesore in cities and towns across the country.

Their initiative has won the admiration of local celebrities and politicians – and even caught the attention of some UK teenagers who flew to the capital, Accra, to join the clean-up.

“Our goal is not just to clean the streets but to change mindsets,” Buz Stop Boys leader Heneba Kwadwo Sarfo told the BBC.

“If we can make people understand that keeping their environment clean benefits everyone, we’ll have a cleaner, healthier, and prouder Ghana.”

About 12,700 tonnes of solid waste is generated in Ghana each day, with only 10% disposed of properly.

Fed up with the filth and flooding it causes, Buz Stop Boys go around Greater Accra two to four times a week to clear clogged drains and gutters, pavements and roads, as well as to cut over-grown grass.

The number of volunteers will vary, depending on who has spare time that day.

A civil engineer, Mr Sarfo formed the group in July 2023 with just five people. He called it Buz Stop Boys, knowing the name would resonate with the public.

“The rich and poor, everybody knows what a bus stop is,” Mr Sarfo said.

His small-scale initiative has now blossomed into a movement, with more than 40 men and women – from midwives to carpenters to military officers – joining.

“Social media has been key in getting more people to join our movement,” Mr Sarfo said.

“Through our videos, we’ve been able to change the mindset of some people, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

It also led to a group of UK students visiting Ghana during their summer break to help with a clean-up operation in Ablekuma, an area in Accra notorious for its waste disposal issues.

Mr Sarfo saw their visit as an inspiration for more locals to get involved.

“Don’t sit back at home and say you don’t care. One thing is key, without [the] environment we are useless, we are nonentities, and we can’t survive on this planet,” he said.

Popular musician and human rights activist Sister Derby has thrown her weight behind Buz Stop Boys, praising the activists on her Instagram and X accounts.

She told the BBC that she had been touched by their “pure selflessness”, and she and her brother had one day joined them to clean a stretch of a street market in the heart of Accra.

Dancehall star and businessman Shatta Wale has also rallied behind the group, helping raise 30,000 cedis ($1,830, £1,415) during a live TikTok.

“These boys are the real heroes. They are doing what most of us are too busy or too proud to do. If we all helped them, imagine how beautiful Accra would be,” he said.

The donations have been bolstered by those of politicians.

Former President John Mahama – who is making a fresh bid for power by contesting elections due in December under the banner of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) – donated 50,000 cedis, while Transport Minister Asensu Boakye – who comes from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) – gave 10,000 cedis.

Welcoming the donations, Mr Sarfo said the cash was used to fund their activities – including paying for rubbish disposal and buying fuel for their tricycle to transport rubbish to a refuse site.

Politically non-partisan, the Buz Stop Boys’ sole focus is on realising their vision of a cleaner Ghana – one street at a time.

“Individuals should take up initiatives because waiting for government hasn’t worked over the decades and the records also show that in the event of an environmental disaster we as citizens suffer the most,” Mr Sarfo said.

“It is therefore important for us to rise and help ourselves.”

• Idris Elba: Why I’m planning a move to Africa
• Ghana gold rush sparks environmental disaster
• ‘Bipolar, colour and me’ – an artist’s spreadsheet of emotion

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “road trip”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “autumn walks” and the deadline for entries is 19 November 2024.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

Terms and conditions apply.

Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

All photographs subject to copyright.

Paralympians have criticised the decision by Fortnum & Mason to hold an event for Olympians but neglect to invite any Paralympic athletes.

Team GB and Paralympics GB medallists attended a reception at Buckingham Palace on Thursday, but Paralympians were not invited to an after-party hosted by the luxury department store.

Zac Shaw, a Paralympic visually impaired sprinter, called it “hurtful” and said it was part of a “wider issue” in how disabled athletes are treated.

Fortnum & Mason has apologised for the “mistake” and said a separate Paralympics event is being organised.

“It’s a sad reality that we always have to fight for equality,” Shaw, 29, said. “The thing that hurt the most was that we were both at the palace at the same time so it wasn’t a case of us being at different locations. It was one event and we didn’t get invited.”

Shaw, who won silver in the mixed 4x100m and bronze in the 100m T12 in Paris, said he only realised after one of his friends in Team GB asked if he needed a lift to the after-party, but after a trawl of his emails, Shaw and his partner Ali Smith – also a Paralympic sprinter – did not find an invite.

After contacting Fortnum & Mason twice in a 24 hour period and not receiving a response, he decided to post publicly on X.

Once his post gained traction, he said he was messaged by representatives of the London upmarket department store.

Fortnum & Mason then sent Smith a private message, saying that there was a “separate reception for Paralympians in the works” which would be announced soon.

The store apologised for the “failure of communication”.

The message read: “We are really sorry that we could not do both of the planned parties together, which would have been our preference, but we are restricted on space and simply could not have fitted everyone in at the same time.”

But Shaw said the response appeared “reactionary” and “very much reads as an excuse”.

“It doesn’t seem like it was even thought of until there was a backlash.”

He added: “If they had wanted to do an event for us, we would have known about it before. And if they really wanted us there, the venue could have been bigger.”

Shaw also said that hosting a separate event at a later date did not take into account the difficulty for many disabled athletes in travelling to London.

“Accessibility is difficult for people with disabilities and it’s just ignorant and upsetting that they even had the thought to do it after.

“And in this situation, even if you only have room for a certain number of athletes, why would you not prioritise the ones with accessibility needs?”

Shaw said it was a symptom of a “wider issue” in how disabled athletes are treated differently in sport.

“Why is it Team GB and Paralympics GB? Why don’t we compete under the same name like Team France did at the Olympics/Paralympics? And why were we at Buckingham Palace in tracksuits, when the Olympians were provided suits?”

He said Paralympians were instructed to wear their tracksuits and trainers to the reception hosted by the King, while Team GB athletes were given “fresh suits”.

“And that just made the Buckingham Palace experience feel a bit strange,” he added.

When he queried the request and said he would like to wear a suit, he was met with silence, he said.

“You have situations like this so frequently, whether it’s brands or funding,” he continued.

“The Paralympics are amazing but they happen once every four years and in between brands don’t show the same support to disabled athletes, which speaks volumes about the culture.”

Archie Atkinson, who won a silver in cycling for Paralympics GB in Paris, said he was told suits were not given to the Paralympic squad to meet the King for “environmental reasons”.

The 20-year-old said he told the head of Paralympics GB that he thought it was “disrespectful” having Paralympic athletes go to Buckingham Palace in a tracksuit “making us stand out and feel inferior to the Olympic athletes were were dressed smartly”.

“Lots of athletes complained or joined in with wearing suits to say not gonna be made to look lower then the Olympic athletes,” he told the BBC.

He said he wore a suit to meet the King and later snuck into the Fortnum & Masons party with some of his friends on the Team GB team, who he said they felt it was “shocking” there was no party for Paralympic athletes.

In a statement, Fortnum & Mason said: “We entered into this with good intentions but recognise that we have made a mistake here for which we fully apologise.

“We have been planning for, and of course will be honoured to host, a ParalympicsGB celebratory event at Fortnum’s and an invitation to do that has been made, but we do understand the hurt we have caused by not making our plans clear to the athletes earlier.”

But Shaw said it was unlikely he would attend such an event.

“The day’s been and gone,” he said.

“It doesn’t feel right that this has come on by pity and like I said it’s not easy for people with disabilities to travel and I think it’s unfair they’d even ask us to do that.”

The British Olympic Association and The British Paralympic Association have been approached for comment.

What the rest of the world sees as a sex tape scandal could in fact be the latest episode in the real-life drama over who will become Equatorial Guinea’s next president.

Over the past fortnight, dozens of videos – estimates range from 150 to more than 400 – have been leaked of a senior civil servant having sex in his office and elsewhere with different women.

They have flooded social media, shocking and titillating people in the small central African country and beyond.

Many of the women filmed were wives and relatives of people close to the centre of power.

It appears some were aware they were being filmed having sex with Baltasar Ebang Mr Engonga, who is also known as “Bello” because of his good looks.

All this is hard to verify as Equatorial Guinea is a highly restricted society where a free press does not exist.

But one theory is that the leaks were a way to discredit the man at the centre of the storm.

Mr Engonga is a nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and one of those thought to be hoping to replace him.

Obiang is the world’s longest-serving president having been in power since 1979.

The 82-year-old has overseen an economic boom that has turned to bust as a result of the now-dwindling oil reserves.

There is a small, extremely wealthy elite, but many of the 1.7 million people in the country live in poverty.

Obiang’s administration is heavily criticised for its human rights record, including arbitrary killings and torture, according to a US government report.

It has also had its fair share of scandals – including the revelations about the lavish lifestyle of one of the president’s sons, now vice-president, who once owned a $275,000 (£210,000) crystal-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson.

Despite regular elections, there is no real opposition in Equatorial Guinea as activists have been jailed and exiled and those with designs on office are closely monitored.

Politics in the country is really about palace intrigue and this is where the scandal involving Mr Engonga fits in.

He was the head of the National Financial Investigation Agency, and worked on tackling crimes such as money laundering.

But it turned out he himself was under investigation.

He was arrested on 25 October accused of embezzling a huge sum of money from state coffers and depositing it in secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. He has not commented on the accusation.

Mr Engonga was then taken to the infamous Black Beach prison in the capital, Malabo, where it is alleged that opponents of the government are subjected to brutal treatment.

His phones and computers were seized and a few days later the intimate videos started appearing online.

The first reference the BBC has found to them on Facebook is from 28 October on the page of Diario Rombe, a news site run by a journalist in exile in Spain, which said that “social networks exploded with the leaking of explicit images and videos”.

A post on X the following day referred to a “monumental scandal shaking the regime” as “pornographic videos flood social media”.

But they are believed to have originally appeared one-by-one a few days earlier on Telegram, on one of the platform’s channels known for publishing pornographic images.

They were then downloaded on to people’s phones and shared among WhatsApp groups in Equatorial Guinea, where they caused a storm.

Mr Engonga was quickly identified along with some of the women in the videos, including relatives of the president and wives to ministers and senior military officials.

The government was unable to ignore what was going on and on 30 October Vice-President Teodoro Obiang Mangue (once owner of the Michael Jackson glove) gave telecoms companies 24 hours to come up with ways to stop the spread of the clips.

“We cannot continue to watch families fall apart without taking any action,” he wrote on X.

“In the meantime, the origin of these publications is being investigated to find the author or authors and make them answer for their actions.”

As the computer equipment was in the hands of the security forces, suspicion has fallen on someone there, who, perhaps, sought to trash Mr Engonga’s reputation ahead of a trial.

The police have called on women to come forward to open a case against Mr Engonga for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. One has already announced that she is suing him.

What is not clear is why Mr Engonga made the recordings.

But activists have put forward what could be other motives behind the explosive leak.

As well as being related to the president, Mr Engonga is the son of Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, the head of the regional economic and monetary union, Cemac, and very influential in the country.

“What we are seeing is the end of an era, the end of the current president, and there is a succession [question] and this is the internal fighting we are seeing,” said Equatoguinean activist Nsang Christia Esimi Cruz, now living in London.

Speaking to the BBC Focus on Africa podcast, he alleged that Vice-President Obiang was trying to politically eliminate “anyone who could challenge his succession”.

The vice-president, along with his mother, are suspected to be pushing aside anyone who threatens his path to the presidency, including Gabriel Obiang Lima (another son of President Obiang from a different wife), who was oil minister for 10 years and then moved to a secondary government role.

Those in the elite are thought to know things about each other that they would rather was not made public, and videos have been used in the past to humiliate and discredit a political opponent.

There are also frequent accusations of coup plotting, which further fuels paranoia.

But Mr Cruz also alleges that the authorities want to use the scandal as an excuse to crack down on social media, which is how a lot of information about what is really going on in the country gets out.

In July, the authorities temporarily suspended the internet after protests broke out on the island of Annobón.

For him, the fact that a high-ranking official was having sex outside of marriage was not surprising as it was part of the decadent lifestyle of the country’s elite.

The vice-president, who himself has been convicted of corruption in France and has had lavish assets seized in various countries, wants to be seen as the man cracking down on graft and wrong-doing at home.

Last year, for example, he ordered the arrest of his half-brother over allegations he sold a plane owned by the state airline.

But in this case, despite the vice-president’s efforts to stop the spread of the clips, they continue to be viewed.

This week, he tried to appear more resolute calling for the installation of CCTV cameras in government offices “to combat indecent and illicit acts”, the official news agency reported.

Saying that the scandal had “denigrated the image of the country” he ordered that any officials found engaging in sex acts at work would be suspended as this was a “flagrant violation of the code of conduct”.

He was not wrong that the story has attracted a lot of outside interest.

Judging by Google’s data, search enquiries that include the country’s name have shot up since the beginning of this week.

On Monday, on X, “Equatorial Guinea” was one of the top trending terms in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – surpassing at times interest in the US election.

This has left some activists who have been trying to tell the world about what is really going on in the country frustrated.

“Equatorial Guinea has much bigger problems than this sex scandal,” said Mr Cruz, who works for a rights organisation called GE Nuestra.

“This sex scandal for us is just a symptom of the illness, it’s not the illness itself. It just shows how corrupt the system is.”

• The president’s son who loves Bugattis and Michael Jackson
• World’s longest-serving president eyes re-election
• Equatorial Guinea country profile

Russia and Ukraine have carried out their largest drone attacks against each other since the start of the war.

Russia’s defence ministry said it intercepted 84 Ukrainian drones over six regions, including some approaching Moscow, which forced flights to be diverted from three of the capital’s major airports.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 145 drones towards every part of the country on Saturday night, with most shot down.

The barrages come amid expectations that US president-elect Donald Trump may put pressure on both sides to end the conflict.

Ukraine’s attempted strike on Moscow was also its biggest attack on the capital since the war began, and was described as “massive” by the region’s governor.

Most of the drones were downed in the Ramenskoye, Kolomna and Domodedovo districts, officials said.

In Ramenskoye, south-west of Moscow, five people were injured and four houses caught fire due to falling debris, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. It added that 34 drones had been shot down over the town.

In September, a woman was killed in a drone attack that hit Ramenskoye. In May last year, two drones were destroyed near the Kremlin in central Moscow and there were several drone attacks on the Moscow City business district.

In Ukraine, at least two people were injured after a drone hit the Odesa region. Images showed flames rising from some buildings, as well as aftermath damage.

The Ukrainian air force said 62 of Russia’s Iranian-made drones were shot down, while 67 were “lost”. A further 10 left Ukraine’s airspace heading back towards Russia, as well as neighbouring Belarus and Moldova, it added.

The drone barrages comes as Russian troops reportedly made their largest territorial gains in October since March 2022, according to analysis of Institute for the Study of War data by the AFP news agency.

However, Sir Tony Radakin, the UK’s army chief, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Russia had suffered its worst month for casualties since the start of the war.

Russian forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured “every single day” in October, he said.

There has been intense speculation about how Trump will approach the conflict since his election win in the US.

The president-elect regularly said in his election campaign that he could end the war “in a day”, but has not offered details on how he would do that.

A former adviser to Trump, Bryan Lanza, told the BBC that the incoming administration would focus on achieving peace rather than enabling Ukraine to gain back territory from Russia.

In response, a spokesperson for Trump distanced the president-elect from the remarks, saying Mr Lanza “does not speak for him”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke via state media on Sunday of “positive” signals from the incoming US administration.

He claimed that Trump spoke during his election campaign about wanting peace and not a desire to inflict defeat on Russia.

Trump has spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since his election win, a source telling the BBC that the conversation lasted “about half an hour”.

Zelensky has previously warned against conceding land to Russia and has said that without US aid, Ukraine would lose the war.

Donald Trump swept to victory on Tuesday by chipping away at groups of voters which Democrats once believed would help them win the White House for a generation.

After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, many triumphantly claimed that the liberal voting coalition which had elected the first black president was growing more powerful, as the makeup of America changed.

Older, white conservatives were reducing in number, and non-white Americans were projected to be in the majority by 2044. College-educated professionals, younger people, black Americans, Latinos and other ethnic minorities, and blue-collar workers were part of a “coalition of the ascendant”.

These voters were left-leaning on cultural issues and supportive of an active federal government and a strong social safety net. And they constituted a majority in enough states to ensure a Democratic lock on the Electoral College – and the presidency.

“Demography,” these left-wing optimists liked to say, “is destiny.” Sixteen years later, however, that destiny appears to have turned to dust.

• LIVE UPDATES: Trump projected to win Arizona

Cracks began forming when non-college educated voters slipped away from the Democrats in midterm elections in 2010 and 2014. They then broke en masse to Trump in 2016. While Joe Biden, with his working-class-friendly reputation built over half a century, won enough back to take the White House in 2020, his success proved to be only a temporary reprieve.

This year, Trump supplemented his gains with the blue-collar workers by also cutting into the Democratic margins among young, Latino and black voters. He has carved up the coalition of the ascendant.

According to exit polls, Trump won:

– 13% of the black vote in 2024 compared to Republican John McCain’s 4% against Obama

– 46% of the Latino vote this time, while McCain got 31% in 2008

– 43% of voters under 30 against the 32% for McCain

– 56% of those without a college degree – back in 2008, it was Obama who won a majority

Speaking on Thursday after his comeback victory, Trump celebrated his own diverse coalition of voters.

“I started to see realignment could happen because the Democrats are not in line with the thinking of the country,” the president-elect told NBC News.

Trump did it with a hard-line message on immigration that included border enforcement and mass deportations – policies that Biden and the Democrats recoiled from when they took power back from Trump in 2021, lest they anger immigrant rights activists in their liberal base.

Illegal border crossings reached record levels under the Biden administration, with more than eight million encounters with migrants at the border with Mexico.

“If you watch a video from Hillary Clinton back in 2008 in the primaries, she talks about making sure there’s wall-building, making sure that that immigrants who violate the law get deported, making sure everybody learns English,” said Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Republican commissioner in Miami-Dade County. “It’s funny how far to the left [the Democrats] have gone.”

This week, Trump became the first Republican since 1988 to win that heavily Latino county in Florida. He also won Starr County in south Texas, with its 97% Latino population, with 57% of the vote. In 2008, only 15% of the county voted for McCain, the Republican.

Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who specialises in Latino voting trends, told the BBC that the problem with “demography is destiny” was that it risked treating all non-white Americans as an “aggrieved racial minority”. “But that is not and nor has it ever been the way Latinos have viewed themselves,” he added.

“I hate that if you’re black, you’ve got to be a Democrat or you hate black people and you hate your community,” Kenard Holmes, a 20-year-old student in South Carolina, told the BBC during the presidential primaries earlier this year. He said he agreed with Republicans on some things and felt Democratic politicians took black voters for granted.

With some states still tabulating their results, Trump currently has improved on his electoral margins in at least 2,367 US counties, while slipping in just 240.

It wasn’t just the number of counties that Trump won that made a difference, either. Kamala Harris needed to post significant margins in the cities to offset Republican strength in rural areas. She consistently fell short.

In Detroit’s Wayne County, for example, which the latest US Census reports is 38% black, Harris won 63% of the vote – significantly lower than Joe Biden’s 68% in 2020 and Obama’s 74% in 2008.

Polls consistently suggested that the economy, along with immigration, were the two issues of highest importance to voters – and where polls indicated Trump had an advantage over Harris.

His economic message cut across racial divides.

“We’re just sick of hearing about identity politics,” said Nicole Williams, a white bartender with a black husband and biracial children in Las Vegas, Nevada – one of the key battleground states that Trump flipped this year.

“We’re just American, and we just want what’s best for Americans,” she said.

Democrats are already engaged in considerable soul-searching, as they come to grips with an election defeat that has delivered the White House, the Senate and, perhaps, the House of Representatives to Republican control.

Various elements within the party are offering their own, often conflicting, advice on the best path from the wilderness back to power.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders, who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, also criticised identity politics and accused the party of abandoning working-class voters.

Some centrist Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that the struggle to connect with voters goes beyond the economy and immigration. They point to how the Trump campaign was also able to use a cultural message as a wedge to fracture the Democratic coalition.

Among the positions that Republicans targeted in this year’s election were calls to shift funding away from law enforcement, decriminalise undocumented border-crossings and minor crimes like shoplifting, and provide greater protections for transgender Americans.

Many arose after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the resulting rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as other efforts to advance social justice and acknowledge darker parts of American history.

Within a few years, however, some of those positions proved a liability for Democrats when trying to win over persuadable voters and keep their coalition from fraying. Harris, for example, backed away from some positions she’d taken when she first ran for president in 2019.

In the last month of the presidential campaign, the Trump team made the vice-president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal prisoners and detained immigrants a central focus.

One advert ended with the line: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The Trump campaign spent more than $21m on transgender issue ads in the first half of October – about a third of their entire advertising expenditures and nearly double what they spent on spots on immigration and inflation, according to data compiled by AdImpact.

It’s the kind of investment a campaign makes if it has hard data showing an advert is moving public opinion.

After Trump’s convincing win, Congressman Seth Moulton, a moderate from Massachusetts, said his party needed to rethink its approach on cultural issues.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the New York Times. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterisation, and argue that standing up for the rights of minorities has always been a core value of the party. Congressman John Moran wrote on X in response: “You should find another job if you want to use an election loss as an opportunity to pick on our most vulnerable.”

Mike Madrid, the political strategist, has a brutal assessment of where the Democratic coalition is today.

“The Democratic Party was predicated on what really is an unholy alliance between working-class people of colour and wealthier white progressives driven and animated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. “The only glue holding that coalition together was anti-Republicanism.”

Once that glue came unstuck, he said, the party was ripe for defeat.

Future elections are sure to be held in a friendlier political environment for Democrats. And Trump, who has shown a unique ability to attract new and low-propensity voters to the polls, has run his last campaign.

But 2024’s results will provide plenty of fuel for Democratic angst in the days to come.

The Harris campaign itself believes she lost to Trump because she was facing a restive public angry over the economic and social turbulence in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

“You stared down unprecedented headwinds and obstacles that were largely out of our control,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a letter to her staff. “The whole country moved to the right, but compared to the rest of the country, the battleground states saw the least amount of movement in his direction. It was closest in the places we competed.”

Moses Santana, a Puerto Rican living in Philadelphia, is from a demographic which seemed reliably Democratic a decade or so ago. But when he spoke to the BBC this week, he was not so convinced the Democrats had delivered when in power – or that their message today connected with Americans like him.

“You know, Joe Biden promised a lot of progressive things, like he was going to cancel student debt, he was going to help people get their citizenship,” he said. “And none of that happened. Donald Trump is bringing [people] something new.”

• Seven things Trump says he will do in power
• When does he become president again?
• What happens to his legal cases now
• How he pulled off an incredible comeback

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.”

When dairy farmer Patrick Holden sat down at his kitchen table to read his emails one day in July, he couldn’t believe his luck. A buyer, who claimed to represent a French supermarket chain, wanted to buy 22 tonnes of Hafod, his specialist cheddar.

“It was the biggest order for our cheese we’ve ever received,” he recalls, “and, because it was from France, I thought, ‘finally, people on the continent are appreciating what we do’.”

The order had been made through Neal’s Yard Dairy, an upmarket cheese seller and wholesaler, and the first batch of Hafod arrived at its London base in September. It took up just one square metre on a pallet but represented two years of effort and had a wholesale value of £35,000.

“It’s one of the most special cheeses being made in the UK,” explains Bronwen Percival, a buyer at Neal’s Yard Dairy. Once bound in muslin cloth and sealed with a layer of lard, Hafod is aged for 18 months.

The farm didn’t have enough to fulfil the order, so 20 tonnes of Somerset cheddar was also provided by two other dairy farms to make it up; in all, this was £300,000-worth of some of the most expensive cheese made in the UK.

On 14 October, it was collected from Neal’s Yard’s warehouse by a courier and taken to a depot – and then, mysteriously, it disappeared.

There had, in fact, been no order. It came instead from someone impersonating the supposed buyer.

The theft made global headlines, and was nicknamed “the grate cheese robbery”. British chef Jamie Oliver warned his followers on X: “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”

In late October, a 63-year-old man was arrested in London, then released on bail. And there has been no news since. The 950 truckles of cheese – roughly the weight of four full-sized elephants – have disappeared without a trace.

“It is ridiculous,” says fellow cheesemaker Tom Calver, whose cheddar was part of the stolen consignment. “Out of all the things to steal in the world – 22 tonnes of cheese?”

And yet it isn’t as surprising as it at first seems – for this is far from the first theft of its kind.

Food-related crimes – which include smuggling, counterfeiting, and out-and-out theft – cost the global food industry between US $30 to 50 billion a year (£23-£38 billion), according to the World Trade Organisation. These range from hijackings of freight lorries delivering food to warehouses to the theft of 24 live lobsters from a storage pen in Scotland.

But a number of these food crimes have also targeted the cheese industry – and in particular luxury cheese.

Last year, in the run-up to Christmas, around £50,000 worth of cheese was stolen from a trailer in a service station on the M5 near Worcester. The problem isn’t a new one – as far back as 1998, thieves broke into a storeroom and took nine tonnes of cheddar from a family-run farm in Somerset.

It’s happening elsewhere in Europe, too: in 2016, criminals made off with £80,000 of Parmigiano Reggiano from a warehouse in northern Italy. This particular type of parmesan, which requires at least a year to mature, is created by following a process that has been in place, with little modification, for almost 1,000 years. At the time of the heist, Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium told CBS news that about $7 million (£5.4m) worth of cheese had been stolen in a two-year period.

The problem is only set to rise across the industry as cheese becomes more valuable. The overall price of food and non-alcoholic drinks in the UK rose around 25% between January 2022 and January 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics. Cheese, meanwhile, saw a similar price hike in the space of a single year.

“Cheesemaking is an energy-intensive business,” says Patrick McGuigan, a specialist in the dairy sector. This is because in the production process milk needs to be heated up and, once made, cheese is stored in energy-hungry refrigerators, meaning that fuel prices play a big part in the cost. “And so there was a big price increase following the disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

In 2024, overall food price inflation in the UK has fallen to 1.7 per cent, but less so for cheese. “The retail price of cheddar increased by 6.5 per cent up to May 2024,” adds McGuigan. “This is why we’re seeing security tags on blocks of cheddar in supermarkets. Based on price alone, cheese is one of the most desirable foods a criminal can steal.”

Yet it isn’t the easiest product to shift – particularly farmhouse cheese, most of which tends to be heavy and bulky and must be kept at specific temperatures. As such, transporting it can be a costly, complicated procedure that is beyond most criminals – unless, of course, they are organised.

But the question that remains is who exactly these organised criminals are – and where does the cheese end up?

“There is a long-established connection between food and organised crime,” says Andy Quinn of the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU), which was established in 2015 following the 2013 horse meat scandal. One example of this is the high proportion of illegal drugs smuggled through legal global food supply chains.

In September, dozens of kilograms of cocaine were found in banana deliveries to four stores of a French supermarket, with police unsure who the intended recipient was. For the drugs to reach the end of the food supply chain is highly unusual, but this method of transporting illegal items across borders in containers of food is common.

According to Quinn, once drug cartels and other criminal operators gain a foothold into how a food business operates, they spot other opportunities. “They will infiltrate a legitimate business, take control of its distribution networks and use it to move other illegal items, including stolen food.”

For criminal networks, food has other attractions. “They know crimes involving food result in less severe convictions than for importing drugs,” says Quinn, “but they can still make similar amounts of money.” Particularly if it’s a premium cheese.

The problem for the criminals is what to do with it. “There are few places to offload them,” says Jamie Montgomery, who runs the Somerset farm that was targeted in the 1998 heist. “Shifting that much artisan cheese is difficult.”

This is why people in the industry believe stolen cheese is often sent overseas to countries where there are thriving food black markets – and indeed cheese black markets.

Russia is one country where there is a thriving black market for cheese. Following the illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the EU and other states imposed economic sanctions on Russia. President Vladimir Putin responded by banning fresh produce from the countries behind the sanctions.

State television made a great show of the ban by broadcasting footage of foreign food being bulldozed, buried or burned, including huge cheeses being dumped and crushed.

Soon the so-called “fromagicide” was worldwide news.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have been further tightened and the availability of certain food from the West has become even more limited, among them Scottish whisky and Norwegian salmon. At the same time, the black market in Russia for high-end foods from the EU has been growing.

“Cheese and wine are two of the most common products being transported illegally into Russia,” says Professor Chris Elliott, founder of the Global Institute for Food Security and a senior scientific advisor to the UN, “and there are sophisticated routes across Europe’s borders through Belarus and Georgia”.

Many Russians feel that the quality of local cheese doesn’t compare to banned foreign goods, so there is wide demand. Indeed, after the ban, some resorted to extreme measures – one man was caught attempting to drive into Russia from Poland with 460kg of banned cheese on the backseat of his car.

Since 2014, expensive and complex varieties of cheese from countries that were not previously known for their cheese have appeared on shop shelves, such as Belarusian camembert and parmesan. Some companies import European cheese to Belarus or other CIS countries, where the label is swapped so that it can be sold legally in Russian shops.

There were also reports of corner shops becoming black market cheese dealers.

Corruption makes the movement of sanction-busting food possible, says Prof Elliott. “So much money is involved that officials, including border guards, can be paid off. Sanctioned goods are bought and sold through digital networks and these online orders also make it into shops.”

Paul Thomas spent years running cheesemaking courses in Russia. When he visited Moscow after the sanctions were tightened, he observed firsthand that banned cheeses were being displayed openly on the shelves of shops. “There was plenty of authentic Italian Parmigiano Reggiano and French Roquefort, all clearly labelled”.

He also observed that cheesemakers in Russia have been boosting production and attempting to emulate types of European cheese.

It’s not just Russia – in various parts of the Middle East, for example, food subsidies in one country can provide an incentive to smuggle ingredients into others where governments provide no support and prices are high. Counterfeiting, or creating a replica of an official type of cheese, is also common in the region.

And in the US, strict federal rules mean it’s illegal to produce or import unpasteurised cheeses aged for less than 60 days, leading to a black market for raw-milk products such as French classics Brie de Meaux and Mont d’Or. In 2015, a raw-milk trafficking gang was prosecuted for distributing unpasteurised cheeses.

Food counterfeiting also happens in the US – in some cases, cheap and even dangerous ingredients are being used to produce “fake” versions of expensive cheese, such as parmesan made using additives derived from wood pulp.

Andy Quinn explains: “Food chains are truly global. The same goes for the movement of illegal food.”

Now, many in the industry are fighting back, however. Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium – the cheesemakers behind the world’s most stolen cheese – have said that the black market for that variety is “robust”. This is partly down to the fact that it is hugely valuable, generating global sales of almost £3bn a year – and so they have come up with a unique way of protecting it.

In 2022, the consortium began introducing tracking chips, no larger than a grain of rice, as part of the label embedded in the hard rind of the cheese. This helps to reduce thefts, but also means counterfeit Parmigiano Reggiano can be identified, as each tiny chip contains a unique digital ID that can authenticate the cheese.

Buyers can now scan each wheel to check its authenticity or find out if it was stolen. The consortium is yet to release any figures showing whether the technology is cutting down levels of fraud.

Neal’s Yard Dairy says it plans to use a less high-tech approach to preventing future fraud, including visiting buyers in person when big cheese orders are made, rather than relying on digital contracts and emails.

As for what will become of the cheddar stolen in the October heist, there may be no swift solution: given that they could easily be stored for as long as two years, the cheese could still surface many months from now.

“A criminal could hide tonnes away and then pass them slowly, truckle by truckle, into supply chains,” says Ben Lambourne of the online retailer Pong Cheese.

For the cheesemakers, this isn’t just about a stolen food; the missing Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork represent ways of farming and food production that took thousands of years to evolve, shaped landscapes and became part of British culture, yet which have been all but lost in just a few generations.

Lancashire-based cheesemonger Andy Swinscoe says that at the beginning of the 20th Century, in the area surrounding his shop there were 2,000 farmhouse cheesemakers. Today, there are just five. There have been declines in Somerset with cheddar makers, in the East Midlands with Stilton and in the north-west with Cheshire cheese.

“It would be impossible for these small family farms to survive by selling liquid milk,” says Swinscoe – but they can add value by turning their milk into a farmhouse cheese.

Patrick Holden admits that the financial loss from this theft would have had a huge impact on his farm. “A fraud of this scale can easily spell the end of a farm and cheesemaking.” In this instance, Neal’s Yard paid its suppliers in full, describing the effect of the fraud on their business as “a significant financial blow”.

Unless crimes like this are stopped, however, other farms and businesses will suffer similar blows, particularly when luxury cheese remains sought-after and prized.

“Conflicts around the world, the cost-of-living crisis, even climate change, all increase the appeal for food fraud,” says the NFCU’s Andy Quinn. Until that changes, cheesemakers might need to tighten up their security – and think twice when an order seems too good to be true.

Qatar has suspended its work as a mediator in ceasefire and hostage release talks between Israel and Hamas, officials say.

The country said it would resume its work when Hamas and Israel “show their willingness” to negotiate.

It comes after senior US officials reportedly said Washington would no longer accept the presence of Hamas representatives in Qatar, accusing the Palestinian group of rejecting fresh proposals for an end to the war in Gaza.

Qatar said initial reports it had withdrawn from mediation talks and said that Hamas’s political office in Doha “no longer serves its purpose” were “inaccurate”.

“Qatar notified the parties 10 days ago during the last attempts to reach an agreement, that it would stall its efforts to mediate between Hamas and Israel if an agreement was not reached in that round,” a statement from the Qatari foreign ministry said.

“Qatar will resume those efforts… when the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war.”

Hamas has had a base in the Qatari capital since 2012, reportedly at the request of the Obama administration.

Several news agencies reported on Saturday that Qatar had agreed with the US to tell Hamas to close its political office in Doha due to “a refusal to negotiate a deal in good faith”.

But the foreign ministry said the reports were “inaccurate”. The claims have also been denied by Hamas officials.

The small but influential Gulf state is a key US ally in the region. It hosts a major American air base and has handled many delicate political negotiations, including with Iran, the Taliban and Russia.

Alongside the US and Egypt, the Qataris have also played a major role in rounds of so-far unsuccessful talks to broker a ceasefire in the year-long war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

But there is growing evidence of a shift in the relationship.

After the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Hamas held a two-hour mourning tent in Doha in a small hall, a stark contrast to the recent three-day mourning held for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which was conducted with official state oversight and security.

The latest round of talks in mid-October failed to produce a deal, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal. The group has always called for a complete end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

The Qatari foreign ministry statement said: “Media reports regarding the Hamas office in Doha is inaccurate.”

“The main goal of the office in Qatar is to be a channel of communication… [which] has contributed to achieving a ceasefire in previous stages.”

Israel has also been accused of rejecting deals. Days after being fired earlier this week, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of rejecting a peace deal against the advice of his security chiefs.

The call for Hamas to be expelled from Qatar appears to be an attempt by the outgoing Biden administration to force some sort of peace deal before the end of his term in January.

Were Hamas to be forced to leave Doha, it is unclear where they would base their political office. Key ally Iran would be an option, although the assassination of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July suggests they may be at risk from Israel if based there. It would also not give them anything close to the same diplomatic channels to the West.

A more likely option would be Turkey. As a Nato member but also a Sunni majority state, it would give the group a base from which to operate in relative safety. Last April President Erdogan hosted then Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his delegation in Istanbul, where they talked about “what needs to be done to ensure adequate and uninterrupted delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a fair and lasting peace process in the region”.

The move would also most likely be welcomed by Ankara, which has often sought to position itself as a broker between east and west.

Key Hamas figures such as Osama Hamdan, Taher al-Nunu, and others frequently featured on news outlets have been staying in Istanbul for over a month.

Their extended presence in Turkey marks a departure from past visits, which were typically limited to brief stays.

It is thought the personal safety of Hamas leadership is now a major concern for the group, which saw two leaders killed in less than four months. As well as Haniyeh’s death in July, in October Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the 7 October Hamas attack on southern Israel.

According to the European Council of Foreign Relations, “Hamas has adopted a temporary model of collective leadership to mitigate the effect of future Israeli assassinations”.

H A Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), told the BBC that nowhere “will give them protection from Israeli assassination attempts in the same way that being in Doha, where America has its largest military base in the region, did”.

The latest move comes as US officials appear increasingly frustrated with the approach the Israeli government has taken to ending the war. In October, the US Secretaries of State and Defense said if Israel did not allow more humanitarian aid into the territory by 12 November, they would face unspecified policy “implications”.

Last weekend a number of UN officials warned the situation in northern Gaza was “apocalyptic”. On Saturday the independent Famine Review Committee said there was a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas”.

The relationship between President Joe Biden and Netanyahu has deteriorated over the course of the war in Gaza, with increasing pressure from Washington to improve the humanitarian situation for the Palestinians and find some sort of negotiated settlement.

But, according to Dr Hellyer, US attempts at negotiation have been fatally flawed.

“By setting red lines and allowing Netanyahu to cross them without consequence, the Biden administration effectively encouraged further impunity. I don’t think any of this will change in the next 10 weeks,” he said.

Any overtures have been repeatedly rejected by Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, who will now also feel emboldened by the prospect of an incoming Donald Trump presidency.

While exactly what approach Trump will take to the region remains uncertain, he is thought to be more likely to allow Israel to act on its terms.

He has previously said Israel should “finish what they started” in Gaza. During his last term in the White House, he took a number of steps deemed highly favourable to Israel, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

It has also been reported, however, that Trump has told Netanyahu that he wants to see an end to the fighting by the time he takes office.

Either way, it seems likely that the current US administration will have less influence over the government in Jerusalem.

They may therefore believe the best way to force some sort of deal is to apply pressure on Hamas. Whether it pays off may depend on whether Qatar, so long a reliable ally, decides to go along with it.

A hologram of a young sex worker haunts Amsterdam’s red light district.

Dressed in faded denim hotpants, a leopard-print bra, with a tattoo snaking up her stomach and across her chest, the 3D computer-generated image reaches out and appears to knock on the window to attract attention.

She leans forward, breathes on the glass and writes the word “help”.

The hologram is designed to represent Bernadette “Betty” Szabo, a 19-year-old woman from Hungary who was murdered a few months after giving birth in 2009.

Her fatal stabbing has baffled police for 15 years. Dutch cold case detectives are using the innovative technology for the first time in an effort to solve the case.

The murdered teenager’s image is being projected from behind a window, alongside hundreds of young women who continue to make a living in this notoriously risky industry.

Investigators hope the lifelike hologram will help jog memories and draw attention to the unsolved murder.

Until now, Betty’s killer has eluded justice and cold case detective Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk is determined to change that: “A young woman, only 19, taken from life in such a horrific way.”

Szabo had a tough life and her story was one of hardship and resilience, according to the detective.

She had moved to Amsterdam aged 18 and became pregnant soon afterwards. She carried on working throughout her pregnancy, returning to the job shortly after her son was born.

It was in the early hours of 19 February 2009, when two sex workers went to check on the teenage mother during a break between clients, because they realised her usual music was not playing.

When they entered her brothel, a small room with a plastic-covered bed, vanity table and sink, they discovered Betty Szabo’s body.

She had been murdered three months after giving birth, the victim of a savage knife attack.

Her baby was placed in foster care and never got to know his mother – a fact that motivates detectives.

Although police immediately launched a murder investigation, her killer was never found. They combed through CCTV footage and questioned potential witnesses.

The majority of people eyeing the scantily dressed women behind the red neon windows are tourists. Police suspect the perpetrator came from abroad.

Now they are urging people who may have visited Amsterdam to think back, with a €30,000 reward to encourage witnesses to come forward.

As Amsterdam grapples with controversial plans to relocate its famous brothels to an out-of-town “erotic zone”, Betty Szabo’s hologram offers a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of sex workers in an area that, despite a range of security measures, remains perilous.

Sex workers have voiced concerns that removing the women who sell sex from public view could expose them to even greater danger.

The fact that such a violent crime could occur in one of the Netherlands’ busiest nightspots without witnesses coming forward continues to confound investigators.

In the historic red-light district where she once lived and worked, the teenage sex worker’s digital presence reminds passers-by that her case is yet to be solved.

The UK chief of defence staff Sir Tony Radakin has said the government should provide more money for defence.

Speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, he said his call would not be a “surprise” and that the person in his job would “always want more more for defence”.

Appearing on the same programme, Treasury minister Darren Jones said the government wanted to increase defence spending from 2.3% to 2.5% of the national income.

However, he did not say when the target would be reached or whether it would be met before the next election, which could be held in 2029, at the latest.

Jones said the government would not commit to a deadline until it had completed its strategic defence review.

The review – led by former Labour minister and Nato head George Robertson – is examining the current state of the armed forces, the threats the UK faces and the capabilities needed to address them. It is due to be completed in the spring.

Jones warned that increasing defence spending would mean “trade offs” with other areas of public spending.

A Whitehall source told the BBC it is a question of “when, not if” the government reaches the 2.5% target. They also said the election of Donald Trump as the next US president had “focused minds” on the need to increase military spending.

Trump has repeatedly urged European countries to increase defence spending and said he would let aggressors such as Russia do “whatever the hell it wants” to those that don’t.

Dame Priti Patel – who was appointed the Conservative’s shadow foreign secretary earlier this week – said the government should be aiming to meet the 2.5% target by 2030.

Asked if her party would accept cuts elsewhere in order to meet 2.5%, Dame Priti argued there were “efficiencies” that could be made as well as changes around the “performance of the civil service”.

She added that the government “could have done more in that Budget to put the pathway forward for 2.5% of GDP on defence”.

She said the increase was “essential” adding: “We are living in very insecure times geopolitically, and we do need to step up.”

Sir Tony said it was “crucial” for the government to “balance the ambition of the nation and the prime minister against the resources to match that ambition”.

He also said the Army needed “longer-term stability” and “clarity” around spending.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has intensified calls for a boost to the UK’s defence budget.

Assessing the conflict, Sir Tony said Russia had suffered its worst month for casualties since the start of the war in 2022.

He said Russia’s forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured “every single day” in October.

Russia does not disclose the number of its war dead, but Western defence officials have said October’s death toll was the heaviest so far.

Sir Tony said the Russian people were paying an “extraordinary price” for Putin’s invasion.

“Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,” said Sir Tony.

He said the losses were “for tiny increments of land”.

“There is no doubt that Russia is making tactical, territorial gains and that is putting pressure on Ukraine,” he said.

But he added that Russia is spending more than 40% of its public expenditure on defence and security, which he said was “an enormous drain” on the country.

While allies of the US’s president-elect Donald Trump insist that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have to cede territory to bring the conflict to an end, Sir Tony insisted that Western allies would be resolute for “as long as it takes”.

“That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky,” he told the programme.

Donald Trump made the first official hire of his incoming administration, announcing 2024 campaign co-chair Susan Summerall Wiles as his chief of staff.

The president-elect’s transition team is already vetting a series of candidates ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025.

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

The 78-year-old Republican is also surrounded by new allies who could fill his cabinet, staff his White House and take up other key roles across government.

Here is a closer look at names in the mix for the top jobs.

Susie Wiles and campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita were the masterminds behind Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris.

In his victory speech on Wednesday, he called her “the ice maiden” – a reference to her composure – and said she “likes to stay in the background”.

Wiles was confirmed the next day as the first appointee of his second term – as his White House chief of staff. She will be the first woman ever to hold that job.

Chief of staff is often a president’s top aide, overseeing daily operations in the West Wing and managing the boss’s staff.

Wiles, 67, has worked in Republican politics for decades, from Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign to turning businessman Rick Scott into Florida’s governor in just seven months back in 2010.

Republicans have said she commands respect and has an ability to corral the big egos of those in Trump’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

No personnel decision may be more critical to the trajectory of Trump’s second term than his appointee to lead the Department of Justice.

After uneven relationships with both Jeff Sessions and William Barr, the attorney generals during his first term, Trump is widely expected to pick a loyalist who will wield the agency’s prosecutorial power to punish critics and opponents.

Among the names being floated for the cabinet post are Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been both indicted and impeached like Trump; Matthew Whitaker, the man who took over for three months as acting attorney general after Sessions stepped down at Trump’s request; Mike Davis, a right-wing activist who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and has issued bombastic threats against Trump critics and journalists; and Mark Paoletta, who served in Trump’s budget office and argues there is no legal requirement for a president to stay out of justice department decisions.

The secretary of homeland security will take the lead in enforcing Trump’s promises of deporting undocumented migrants en masse and “sealing” the US-Mexico border, as well as leading the government response to natural disasters.

Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), stands out as the most likely pick.

Homan, 62, supported separating migrant children from their parents as a means to deter illegal crossings and has said politicians who support migrant sanctuary policies should be charged with crimes. Though he resigned in 2018, midway through the Trump presidency, he remains a proponent of the Trump approach on immigration.

Chad Wolf, who served as acting homeland secretary from 2019-20 until his appointment was ruled unlawful, and Chad Mizelle, the homeland department’s former acting general counsel, are also potential contenders.

Stephen Miller, widely considered to be the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, is expected once again to play a senior advisory role with the White House.

The US secretary of state is the president’s main adviser on foreign affairs, and acts as America’s top diplomat when representing the country overseas.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio – who was most recently under consideration to be Trump’s vice-president – is a major name being floated for the key cabinet post.

Rubio, 53, is a China hawk who opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary but has since mended fences. He is a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee and vice-chairman of the chamber’s select intelligence panel.

Other contenders for the job include Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien; Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty, who was previously Trump’s ambassador to Japan; and Brian Hook, the hawkish special envoy to Iran in Trump’s first term and the man who is leading the transition effort at the State Department.

A dark horse for the nomination, however, is Richard Grenell, a loyalist who served as ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and acting national intelligence chief. Grenell, 58, was heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and even sat in on his private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September.

Grenell’s combative style may make him a better fit for national security adviser – a position that does not require Senate confirmation – than secretary of state.

Also in line for major posts in a second Trump term are former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe; Keith Kellogg, a national security adviser to Trump’s first Vice-President Mike Pence; former defence department official Eldridge Colby; and Kash Patel, a loyalist who staffed the national security council and became chief of staff to the acting secretary of defence in Trump’s final months in office.

Patel, 44, who helped block the transition to the incoming Joe Biden administration in the latter role, is tipped to become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief.

Trump has also said he would fire Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) Director Chris Wray, who he nominated in 2017 but has since fallen out with. Jeffrey Jensen, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, is under consideration to replace Wray.

Two names being discussed are Michael Waltz, a Florida lawmaker who sits on the armed services committee in the US House of Representatives, and Robert O’Brien.

Trump has ruled out Mike Pompeo, who was an early favourite to head up the Pentagon.

Former CIA director Pompeo served as secretary of state during Trump’s first presidency, when he led the administration’s diplomatic blitz in the Middle East.

During Trump’s first term, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik transformed from a moderate to a vocal backer. The fourth-ranking House Republican leader has remained one of Trump’s most fiercely loyal defenders on Capitol Hill – which makes her a leading contender to represent him in unfriendly territory at the United Nations.

But she may find herself competing for the position with the likes of former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus; David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel; and Kelly Craft, who served as UN ambassador at the end of Trump’s term.

Trump is reportedly considering Robert Lighthizer, a free trade sceptic who led the tariff war with China as the US trade representative, as his chief financial officer.

But at least four others may be under consideration for the role, including Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has become a major fundraiser and economic adviser to the president-elect; John Paulson, another megadonor from the hedge fund world; former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton; and Fox Business Network financial commentator Larry Kudlow, who ran Trump’s national economic council during his first term.

The woman co-chairing Trump’s transition team, Linda McMahon, is tipped as a key contender to represent US businesses and job creation in his cabinet – after previously serving as small business administrator during his first term.

Others who could fill this vacancy include Brooke Rollins; Robert Lighthizer; and Kelly Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman who briefly served in the US Senate.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem – who was passed over to be Trump’s running mate over a bizarre admission that she killed her pet dog – could see her loyalty to him pay off with the leadership of the interior department, which manages public land and natural resources.

She may compete with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum for the role.

Doug Burgum is also a contender to lead the energy department, where he would implement Trump’s pledges to “drill, baby, drill” and overhaul US energy policy.

A software entrepreneur who sold his small company to Microsoft in 2001, Burgum briefly ran in the 2024 Republican primary before dropping out, endorsing Trump and quickly impressing him with his low-drama persona and sizeable wealth.

Former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also reportedly in the running.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, who impressed Trump as his campaign’s national press secretary, has already served as an assistant White House press secretary and may be a shoo-in to be the administration’s spokesperson.

RFK Jr, as he is known, is an environmental lawyer by trade, a vaccine sceptic by fame and the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

He is on a shortlist to run the heath and human services department, multiple people close to the president-elect’s campaign told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.

Despite having no medical qualifications to his name, Kennedy, 70, is expected to become a kind of “public health star” in the Trump administration.

Democratic Party attacks on Kennedy’s credentials are not likely to carry much weight, as control of the US Senate is in the hands of Republicans and confirming Kennedy to any cabinet-level post will not require Democratic support.

Besides a new job at the health and human services department, Kennedy could also influence policy at the agriculture department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Safety Administration (FDA).

The world’s richest man poured millions of dollars into re-electing Trump and critics say he will now have the power to shape the regulations that affect his companies Tesla, SpaceX and X.

Both he and Trump have focused on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs 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.

But Musk, 53, could also play a role in global diplomacy. He participated in Trump’s first call with Ukraine’s Zelensky on Wednesday.

The leader of a notorious gang of football hooligans in Argentina has been shot dead near his club’s stadium in Rosario.

Andrés Bracamonte, known as Pillín, had spent more than 20 years as head of the Rosario Central supporters’ gang and had a history of taking part in violent conflicts with rival hooligans.

He and his deputy, Daniel “Rana” Atardo, were just four blocks from the Gigante de Arroyito stadium when they were gunned down by a motorcyclist on Saturday.

Rosario Central had just played a league match, but Bracamonte did not attend it. He had been banned from matches because of previous incidents and had been accused of money-laundering and extortion by Argentine authorities.

The two men were taken to the local Centenario Hospital, but doctors were unable to save their lives.

Bracamonte’s killing was widely reported by Argentine media, who described it as a settling of scores.

Newspapers reported that Bracamonte had a long criminal record and had been the victim of frequent attacks.

The most recent was in August, when a bullet grazed his back while he was with his partner, who was also injured.

Bracamonte, who was 52, was also accused of having links with a drug cartel known as Los Monos and was under investigation for money-laundering as a result.