Donald Trump has moved speedily since winning the US presidential election to set the foundations of his second term in the White House.

He has made his early priorities clear – and stunned some in Washington and around the world while doing so.

Here’s what we’ve learned from his rollercoaster first week as president-elect.

Trump started building his top team almost immediately, nominating cabinet picks for Senate approval and appointing White House advisers and other senior aides.

But that doesn’t tell the full story.

His selections make clear that he plans a radical shake up of government, eschewing more conventional and experienced picks for those who are loyal to him and share his vision for a second term that will upend the status quo in Washington.

His choice for defence secretary, for example, has called for a purge of military chiefs enacting “woke” policies. His nominee for health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has said he wants to “clear out corruption” at America’s health agencies and cut “entire departments” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

And that’s not to mention a promised new department helmed by advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which Trump says will focus on slashing regulations and historic cost-cutting.

The bigger picture is that Trump’s proposed team is almost universally loyal, and favour overhauling their respective government departments.

You can take a deeper look at who’s in the frame for his top team here.

Republicans have won control of the House as well as the Senate, giving the party a crucial (albeit narrow) majority in both chambers for at least the next two years, when there will be the usual midterm elections.

This is a major boost to Trump’s agenda. It means he will be more easily able to pass legislation and gives his policy priorities a friendly path to becoming law.

The Democratic Party will, naturally, be less able to block and resist his agenda too. And Trump should for now be able to avoid the kind of congressional investigations he faced in the second half of his first term.

Ultimately, Republican control of Congress could prove key in pushing through his big pledges such as mass deportations, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports and the rolling back of environmental protections.

It won’t always be smooth sailing for Trump in Congress, however, as our correspondent Gary O’Donoghue explains here.

Trump’s influence was put to the test earlier this week when Republicans in the Senate picked their new leader.

While he did not weigh-in on the race directly, there had been a concerted effort from the president-elect’s most vocal allies as well as favourable ‘Maga’ media outlets to get hard-line Trump loyalist Rick Scott elected.

But he was defeated in the first round and Republicans opted for a more orthodox pick in John Thune, who has had a more rocky relationship with Trump.

It’s worth noting that this was a secret ballot, so it was far from a public repudiation of Trumpworld.

There will be sterner tests of Trump’s power on Capitol Hill to come, notably when confirmation hearings are held for his more divisive cabinet picks.

Some Senate Republicans, for example, have already signalled their opposition to Trump’s shock choice of Matt Gaetz to lead the justice department.

While much of the focus was on the president-elect’s nominations and appointments, we also had a reminder that his legal troubles have been upended by his victory.

In New York specifically, his criminal fraud conviction in the hush-money case lives on for at least a few more days.

But it could soon be consigned to history. Earlier this week a judge delayed his decision as to whether Trump’s conviction should be thrown out because of a Supreme Court ruling in the summer that expanded presidential immunity.

That decision is now expected to come next week. And while it’s not clear whether the conviction will be tossed out, Trump’s scheduled sentencing on 26 November is likely to be delayed regardless.

Here’s a reminder of how Trump’s election win impacts his cases.

It’s no secret that Trump views the world differently to Biden, and could drastically shift US foreign policy over the next few years.

One clear theme that’s emerged in recent days is the prominence of China hawks in his proposed team – those who believe Beijing poses a serious threat to US economic and military dominance and want to challenge this more forcefully.

And they are present from the top down.

His nomination for secretary of state – America’s most senior diplomat – Marco Rubio, has described China as the “most advanced adversary America has ever faced”.

Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, has said the US is in a “cold war” with China. Other nominees such as his proposed ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik, have directly accused China of election interference.

During Trump’s first administration, relations with Beijing were tense, and they barely warmed under Biden. With tariffs, export controls and pointed rhetoric, the president-elect appears ready to take an even tougher stance this time around.

One of the innovations at this year’s Paris Olympics was supposed to be an electric flying taxi service.

Germany’s Volocopter promised its electric-powered, two-seater aircraft, the VoloCity, would be ferrying passengers around the city.

It never happened. Instead the company ran demonstration flights.

While missing that deadline was embarrassing, behind the scenes a more serious issue was playing out – Volocopter was urgently trying to raise fresh investment to keep the firm going.

Talks to borrow €100m (£83m; $106m) from the government failed in April.

Now hopes are pinned on China’s Geely, which is in talks to take an 85% stake in Volocopter in return for $95m of funding, according to a Bloomberg report. The deal could mean that any future manufacturing would be moved to China.

Volocopter is one of dozens of companies around the world developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft.

Their machines promise the flexibility of a helicopter, but without the cost, noise and emissions.

However, faced with the massive cost of getting such novel aircraft approved by regulators and then building up manufacturing capabilities, some investors are bailing out.

One of the most high-profile casualties is Lilium.

The German company had developed a radical take on the EVTOL theme.

Lilium’s aircraft uses 30 electric jets that can be tilted in unison to swing between vertical lift and forward flight.

The concept proved attractive, with the company claiming to have orders and memoranda of understanding for 780 jets from around the world.

It was able to demonstrate the technology using a remote controlled scale model. Construction had begun on the first full-sized jets, and testing had been due to begin in early 2025.

As recently as the Farnborough Airshow in July, Lilium’s COO Sebastian Borel was sounding confident.

“We are definitely burning through cash,” he told the BBC. “But this is a good sign, because it means we are producing the aircraft. We’re going to have three aircraft in production by the end of the year, and we have also raised €1.5bn”.

But then the money ran out.

Lilium had been attempting to arrange a loan worth €100m from the German development bank, KfW. However, that required guarantees from national and state governments, which never materialised.

In early November, the company put its main operating businesses into insolvency proceedings, and its shares were removed from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

For the moment, work on the new aircraft is continuing, as the company works with restructuring experts to sell the business or bring in new investment. However, getting the new e-jet into production is looking more challenging than ever.

The high-profile British player in the eVTOL market is Vertical Aerospace. The Bristol-based company was founded in 2016 by businessman Stephen Fitzpatrick, who also set up OVO Energy.

Its striking VX4 design uses eight large propellers mounted on slim, aircraft style wings to generate lift. Mr Fitzpatrick has made ambitious claims about the aircraft, suggesting it would be “100 times” safer and quieter than a helicopter, for 20% of the cost.

The company has made progress. After completing a programme of remote-controlled testing, it began carrying out piloted tests earlier this year. Initially, these were carried out with the aircraft tethered to the ground. In early November, it carried out its first untethered take-off and landing.

But there have also been serious setbacks. In August last year, a remotely-piloted prototype was badly damaged when it crashed during testing at Cotswold Airport, after a propeller blade fell off.

In May one of its key partners, the engineering giant Rolls Royce pulled out of a deal to supply electric motors for the aircraft.

Ambitions remain sky high. Vertical Aerospace says it will deliver 150 aircraft to its customers by the end of the decade. By then, it also expects to be capable of producing 200 units a year, and to be breaking even in cash terms.

Yet financial strains have been intensifying. Mr Fitzpatrick invested an extra $25m into the company in March. But a further $25m, due in August if alternative investment could not be found, has not been paid. As of September, Vertical had $57.4m on hand – but it expects to burn through nearly double that over the coming year.

Hopes for the future appear to be pinned on doing a deal with the American financier Jason Mudrick, who is already a major creditor through his firm Mudrick Capital Management.

He has offered to invest $75m into the business – and has warned the board of Vertical that rejecting his plan would inevitably lead to insolvency proceedings. But the move has been resisted by Mr Fitzpatrick, who would lose control of the company he founded.

Sources close to the talks insist an agreement is now very close. The company believes if a deal can be done, it will unlock further fundraising opportunities.

Amid the turbulence, one European project is quietly on track, says Bjorn Fehrm who has a background in aeronautical engineering and piloted combat jets for the Swedish Air Force. He now works for aerospace consultancy Leeham.

He says that the EVTOL project underway at Airbus is likely to survive.

Called the CityAirbus NextGen, the four-seater aircraft has eight propellers and a range of 80km.

“This is a technology project for their engineers, and they’ve got the money, and they’ve got the know how,” says Mr Fehrm.

Elsewhere in the world, other well funded start-ups stand a good change of getting their aircraft into production. That would include Joby and Archer in the US.

Once the aircraft are being produced, the next challenge will be to see if there’s a profitable market for them.

The first routes are likely to be between airports and city centres. But will they make money?

“The biggest problem area when it comes to the cost of operation is the pilot and the batteries. You need to change the batteries a couple of times per year,” points out Mr Fehrm.

Given all the uncertainty and expense, you might wonder why investors put money into new electric aircraft in the first place.

“No one wanted to miss out on the next Tesla,” laughs Mr Fehrm.

Ben Morris on BlueSky

Theo Leggett on BlueSky

All primary schools in Delhi will close due to worsening air pollution, officials have announced.

In a post on X, the Indian capital’s chief minister, Atishi Marlena Singh, said classes will move online until further notice due to a thick smog that has enveloped the city.

Delhi and nearby cities are experiencing pollution levels that are deemed hazardous to people’s health. On Thursday, fine particulate matter in the air was more than 50 times what is considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Delhi and northern states annually face smog during the winter due to a confluence of dropping temperatures, smoke, dust, low wind speeds, vehicle emissions and crop stubble burning.

According to IQAir, a Swiss-based Air Quality Index (AQI) monitoring group, Delhi had on average 254 pieces of fine particulate matter – or PM 2.5 – per cubic metre of air on Thursday. The WHO considers no more than 15 in a 24-hour period safe.

This is because fine particles can penetrate through lungs and affect organs. It can cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, while research shows it can also delay development in young children.

Levels of larger particulate matter – PM 10 – reached an average of 495, more than 10 times the daily amount considered safe by the WHO.

At the same time, monitoring by IQAir suggests the neighbouring cities of Gurugram and Noida had hazardous air pollution, as did the northern Indian city of Chandigarh.

Residents in Delhi have reported eye irritations and breathing issues, according to local media.

A study published in The Lancet in July found that 7.2% of daily deaths in the city could be attributed to fine particulate pollution.

Air pollution is expected to decrease in the coming days, but will remain at unhealthy levels.

Authorities in Delhi – which has an estimated population of more than 33 million – have already enacted measures aimed at tackling the pollution, including spraying roads with water containing dust suppressants.

Non-essential construction has also been banned, and citizens told to avoid burning coal.

But critics argue these measures have proven ineffective.

The smog is extensive enough to be visible from space. Recently, Nasa shared satellite imagery showing it stretching across northern India and into Pakistan.

Earlier in the month, air pollution in the Pakistani city of Lahore forced officials to temporarily close its primary schools.

Decades of caste discrimination have contributed to India having higher levels of child stunting rates than across Sub-Saharan Africa, new research has revealed.

The two regions together are home to 44% of the world’s under-five population but account for about 70% of stunted children globally – a key indicator of malnutrition.

But, while both have made significant strides in recent years, India’s rate stands at 35.7%, with the average across Sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 countries at 33.6%.

A child is considered stunted when they fall short of the expected height for their age – a clear sign of critical nutritional gaps.

However, the study by Ashwini Deshpande (Ashoka University) and Rajesh Ramachandran (Monash University, Malaysia) found that focusing only on the height gap – or why Indian children are shorter than children in Sub-Saharan Africa – overlooks an important factor: the crucial role of social identity, especially caste, in child malnutrition in India.

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, often called the “golden period”, are pivotal: by age two, 80% of the brain develops, laying the foundation for lifelong potential. In these early years, access to healthcare, good nutrition, early learning, and a safe environment profoundly shapes a child’s future.

India and Sub-Saharan Africa, both with rapidly growing middle classes, young populations and significant workforce potential, share longstanding comparisons. In 2021, the World Bank reported, “Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia [including India] account for over 85% of the global poor,” underscoring similar challenges in poverty and development.

Using official data, the authors looked at the most recent estimates of the stunting gaps between India and a sample of 19 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Official data shows that more than 35% of India’s 137 million children under five are stunted, with over a third also underweight. Globally, 22% of children under five are stunted.

Then they examined six broad socially disadvantaged groups in India. Among them are adivasis (tribespeople living in remote areas) and Dalits (formerly known as untouchables), who alone comprise more than a third of the under-five population.

The economists found that children from higher-ranked, non-stigmatised caste groups in India stood at 27% – markedly lower than the Sub-Saharan African rate.

They also found that children from higher-ranking caste groups in India are some 20% less likely to experience stunting compared with those from marginalised groups, who occupy the lowest tiers of the caste hierarchy.

This conclusion remains significant even after accounting for factors like birth order, sanitation practices, maternal height, sibling count, education, anaemia and household socio-economic status.

This difference is despite seven decades of affirmative action, India’s caste system – a four-fold hierarchy of the Hindu religion – remains deeply entrenched.

“This should not be surprising given that children from better-off groups in India have access to more calories and face a better disease environment,” the authors say.

The reasons behind high stunting rates among Indian children have sparked a complex debate over the years.

Some economists have argued that the differences are genetic – that Indian children are genetically disposed to lower heights.

Others believe that improved nutrition over generations has historically closed height gaps thought to be genetic.

Some studies have found that girls fare worse than boys and others just the opposite, using different global standards.

To be sure, stunting has decreased across social groups – a separate 2022 study found that improvements in health and nutrition interventions, household living conditions and maternal factors led to reduction in stunting in four Indian states. (More than half of India’s under-five children were stunted, according to a federal family health survey of 1992-93).

Children from marginalised groups like adivasis are likely to be more malnourished.

In Africa, the rate of stunting has also fallen since 2010, although the absolute number increased.

But what is clear is that children from poor families, with less-educated mothers, or from marginalised groups, are especially vulnerable to stunting in India.

“The debate on the height gap between Indian and Sub-Saharan African children has resulted in overlooking the role of social identity, especially caste status,” the authors say.

“This is a crucial dimension to understanding the burden of child nutrition in India.”

The United Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.

In a letter to the UN, senior figures say countries should not host the talks if they don’t support the phase out of fossil energy.

This week the Azerbaijani president told world leaders gathered in his country for COP29 that natural gas was a “gift from God” and he shouldn’t be blamed for bringing it to market.

That came days after the BBC reported that a senior Azerbaijani official appeared to have used his role at COP to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.

The UN’s climate talks have made significant progress in recent years, despite the fact that unanimous agreement is needed among almost 200 countries to take action.

The Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015, outlines a long-term plan to rein in rising temperatures, as countries strive to keep that rise under 1.5C this century.

They have also agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, and to treble renewable power by 2030.

But while the authors of this letter recognise these achievements, they feel that the slow-moving COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” in dealing with a fast-moving climate crisis.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity,” said its signatories. They include former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.

This year will likely be the warmest on record, with emissions of planet warming gases still rising, while the impacts of warming often outpace the ability of countries to cope.

“Planet Earth is in critical condition,” said leading climate scientist Johan Rockström, another signatory.

“There is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale,” Prof Rockström said.

The letter has been prompted by growing concerns about some of the countries chosen to host COP talks and their ability to deliver a significant advance in the fight against rising temperatures.

Just before the latest conference started, a secret recording showed the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

At the start of COP29, the country’s authoritarian leader, Ilham Aliyev, defended Azerbaijan’s current exports of gas and plans to expand production by a third in the next decade.

“It’s a gift of God,” he told an audience in Baku.

“Every natural resource whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources,” he said.

“And countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them, the people need them.”

The use of oil and gas are major causes of global warming, as they release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide when they are burned.

President Aliyev also hit out at France for carrying out colonialist “crimes” and “human rights violations” in overseas territories.

Such strongly expressed views are extremely rare from the leader of a COP host, where the aim is to build consensus on how to tackle rising temperatures.

The authors of the letter are also concerned by the selection process for hosting COPs. Azerbaijan followed on from another major oil producer, the United Arab Emirates, which held the conference in Dubai last year.

“At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations,” said former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

“We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”

The authors say that host countries “must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement.”

They also want smaller, more frequent COPs with clear accountability for the promises that countries make.

A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts.

Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year in the case involving the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange being hacked in 2016 and the theft of almost 120,000 bitcoin.

He laundered the stolen cryptocurrency with the help of his wife Heather Morgan, who used the alias Razzlekhan to promote her hip hop music.

At the time of the theft, the bitcoin was worth around $70m (£55.3m), but had risen in value to more than $4.5bn by the time of they were arrested.

The $3.6bn worth of assets recovered in the case was the biggest financial seizure in the DOJ’s history, deputy attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time.

“It’s important to send a message that you can’t commit these crimes with impunity, that there are consequences to them,” district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said.

Lichtenstein, who has been in prison since his arrest in February 2022, expressed remorse for his actions.

He also said that he hopes to apply his skills to fight cybercrime after serving his sentence.

Morgan also pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. She is due to be sentenced on 18 November.

According court documents, Lichtenstein used advanced hacking tools and techniques to hack into Bitfinex.

Following the hack, he enlisted Morgan’s help to launder the stolen funds.

They “employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques”, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement.

The methods included using fictitious identities, switching the funds into different cryptocurrencies and buying gold coins.

Lichtenstein, who was born in Russia but grew up in the US, would then meet couriers while on family trips and move the laundered money back home, prosecutors said.

Morgan’s Razzlekhan persona went viral on social media when the case emerged.

Even as the couple attempted to cover up the hack, she published dozens of expletive-filled music videos and rap songs filmed in locations around New York.

In her lyrics she called herself a “bad-ass money maker” and “the crocodile of Wall Street”.

In articles published in Forbes magazine, Morgan also claimed to be a successful technology businesswoman, calling herself an “economist, serial entrepreneur, software investor and rapper”.

The alliance of Sri Lanka’s new leader is headed for a landslide win in the country’s snap parliamentary elections, according to partial official results.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) coalition has so far won 97 seats. It needs 113 seats in the 225-member house to secure a majority.

Dissanayake, who was elected in September, needs a clear majority to deliver his promise to combat corruption and restore stability after the island’s worst-ever economic crisis.

The high cost of living was one of the key issues for many voters.

Analysts expect the NPP to do well in the elections but what remains to be determined is the margin of victory, and whether it gets the two-thirds majority it wants to be able to pass its ambitious reforms.

In the outgoing assembly, Dissanayake’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party, which now leads the NPP, had just three seats. More results are expected later on Friday.

“We believe that this is a crucial election that will mark a turning point in Sri Lanka,” the 55-year-old Dissanayake told reporters on Thursday after voting in the capital Colombo.

Nearly two-thirds of former MPs chose not to run for re-election, including prominent members of the former ruling Rajapaksa dynasty.

Sajith Premadasa, the man Dissanayake defeated in the presidential elections, led the opposition alliance.

Dissanayake called for snap elections shortly after he became president to seek a fresh mandate to pursue his policies. There was “no point continuing with a parliament that is not in line with what the people want”, he had said.

Out of 225 seats in the parliament, 196 MPs will be directly elected. The rest will be nominated by parties based on the percentage of votes they get in what is known as proportional representation.

High inflation, food and fuel shortages precipitated a political crisis in 2022 which led to the ousting of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His successor Ranil Wickremesinghe managed to negotiate a bailout package worth $3bn with the International Monetary Fund – but many Sri Lankans continue to feel economic hardship.

“We are still stuck with the problems we faced before. We still don’t have financial help even to fulfil our daily needs,” 26-year-old garment factory worker Manjula Devi, who works in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone near Colombo, told the BBC.

The number of people living below the poverty line in Sri Lanka has risen to 25.9% in the past four years. The World Bank expects the economy to grow by only 2.2% in 2024.

Disenchantment with established political players greatly helped the left-leaning Dissanayake during September’s election. His party has traditionally backed strong state intervention and lower taxes, and campaigned for leftist economic policies.

Dissanayake made history as Sri Lanka’s first president to be elected with less than 50% of the vote. Many observers think his alliance will do better this time.

How his alliance fares will be partly due to a fragmented opposition – with many leaders and parties breaking away into either smaller groups, or contesting as independent candidates.

Observers say the JVP-led alliance ran a more vibrant campaign than the opposition, which is likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the election.

What is clear is that whoever comes into power will be under massive pressure to perform and live up to their campaign promises.

Sri Lanka’s economic situation remains precarious – and the main focus is still on providing essential goods and services. How the country progresses from this point will be a real challenge for the new government.

A Chinese influencer, with a huge global following and the approval of the Communist Party, has returned to the internet after a three-year hiatus.

Famous for idyllic videos of life with her grandmother in a village in Sichuan province, the 34-year-old has released three videos since Tuesday – and they have millions of views already.

Li first rose to fame in 2016 when China’s fast-growing social media users found comfort in her slow-paced videos about cooking and traditional handicraft.

Her return, welcomed by fans around the world, comes amid a government crackdown on influencers whose content they deem “inappropriate”.

Li’s hiatus followed a dispute with the agency that managed her accounts. In late 2021, she filed a lawsuit against the company over rights to her brand and stopped uploading new videos. They settled in 2022, but Li didn’t return to the internet until Tuesday.

In recent months, several influencers disappeared from Chinese internet as officials stepped up efforts to “rectify” online culture by targeting those accused of tax evasion, spreading disinformation and flaunting wealth.

But Li is among those who has survived official censure. Her huge following on YouTube and TikTok, which are banned in China, has led to questions about whether her videos are akin to soft propoganda.

She certainly appears to have the approval of the Party. State-run Xinhua news agency released an interview with her the day after her return. It’s rare for state media to interview influencers.

In the interview, Li said she had spent the past three years “catching up on sleep” and taking her grandmother to see the “outside world”. Now she has “a higher goal”, she added, and would “try her best”.

Li has always been a darling of state media. Xinhua called her the “vlogger who amazes the world with China’s countryside life” and China Daily praised her for “spreading Chinese culture to the world”.

For Beijing, Li’s rose-tinted videos encourage tourism and echo President Xi Jinping’s call for a Chinese culture renaissance. A Chinese soup noodle dish known for its distinctive smell became a hit after it was featured in a video.

Her videos also offer a distraction from the realities of rural China, which is poorer and older than the country’s bustling cities.

Li shot to fame internationally during the pandemic, when China’s relationship with the West began to sour. Locked in their homes, millions of people abroad were fascinated with her videos. China’s lockdowns, while harsh and sweeping, were largely enforced in the cities.

As Li’s brand thrived, she began selling food and sauces under her name on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao. In 2020, local media reported that sales of her products exceeded 1.6bn yuan ($220m; £172m).

By 2021 then she had become the most popular Chinese-language vlogger on YouTube, where she has more than 20 million followers. Another three million follow her on TikTok.

On Tuesday, she announced her return with a 14-minute video on all her social media accounts – including Chinese platforms Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, as well as YouTube and TikTok.

The video, which shows her making a wardrobe for her grandmother using the traditional lacquering technique, has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube and more than three million times on TikTok.

“I missed you very much,” she told her fans in a post.

And they felt the same: “When the world needed her [the] most, she returned. Welcome back,” a top-liked YouTube comment reads.

Another comment liked more than 13,000 times on Weibo says: “We need the slow-paced Li Ziqi in this age of information explosion.”

“Did anyone else literally cry happy tears?,” says another comment. “I’m so glad to see her gran doing so well! So happy to see you back.”

Conor McGregor has admitted taking cocaine on the night it is alleged he raped a Dublin woman.

In court on Thursday, the Irish mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter replied “correct” when John Gordon SC stated he had cocaine in his car along with the alleged victim and another witness.

The court also heard Mr McGregor answered “no comment” to over 100 questions in his first police interview and said he did so under advice of his lawyer because he was in a state of “shock and fear”.

Dublin woman Nikita Hand has accused the sportsman of rape after a Christmas night out in December 2018. He denies all allegations.

The trial is a civil case in Dublin High Court after the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland refused to charge Mr McGregor criminally.

The interview, held in January 2019, saw Mr McGregor attend Dundrum Garda Station attend an interview with his solicitor and handed over a prepared written statement.

After this, Mr McGregor said “no comment” to such questions as if he and Nikita Hand were from the same area of Crumlin in Dublin.

The judge reminded the eight women and four men of the jury that no inference can be made by Mr McGregor’s refusal to comment. It is his legal right.

Mr McGregor said the statement was “to the point” when it was put to him it was “short”.

“I would have loved to go to a top of the mountain with a microphone and shout from the hilltops but because of the seriousness of the allegation I went to my lawyer and I took their advice,” he said.

Mr McGregor also said he had been “beyond petrified” during the garda interview, because it was the first time anything like that had happened to him.

“I feel I was as good, as cooperative, I took their advice, I put myself in their hands, this is alien to me, it’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me in my life.”

Later Mr McGregor added: “These allegations are false, I’m here to say my piece and my truth, these allegations are lies, they’re false.”

Mr McGregor claims Nikita Hand had consensual sex with him twice. He also claimed in court that Hand had sex with his associate and co-defendant James Lawrence. Nikita Hand says she never had sex with Mr Lawrence.

Mr McGregor said he had one of his staff book the Beacon Hotel

John Gordon SC representing Ms Hand later brought up evidence from Ms Hand’s gynaecological assessments.

Forceps were used to remove a tampon which had become wedged inside Ms Hand’s vagina.

Mr McGregor claims Ms Hand was not wearing a tampon while she had sex with him. When asked how he thought it got there, Mr McGregor said: “Not with me”.

Mr McGregor was also asked if he had paid Mr Lawrence’s legal fees.

“I believe I did,” he said.

Later, when asked under cross-examination whether Ms Hand had been in fear, Mr McGregor said there had been “no sign of distress, fear, anything other than enjoyment, elations and excitement”.

Ms Hand, a former hair colourist from Dublin, is seeking financial damages including loss of earnings for the distress she suffered as a result of the alleged sex attacks.

Giving evidence during earlier hearings, she claimed Mr McGregor placed her in a choke hold and choked her three times before raping her.

A paramedic who examined Ms Hand on the day after the alleged attacks told the court on Tuesday that she had not seen such bruising on a patient in a long time.

Mr McGregor’s co-defendant, Mr Lawrence took the stand on Thursday afternoon.

He claimed he had consensual sex with Ms Hand twice in the hotel room when Mr McGregor left the hotel.

Mr Lawrence said Ms Hand was flirtatious and initiated the sex.

He added that she was only upset in the room about one small bruise and what she was going to tell her boyfriend about it.

Ms Hand previously told the court she has no memory of ever having sex with Mr Lawrence, but remembered telling him that she had been raped by the MMA fighter and became distressed.

Her claim is that Mr Lawrence was shocked at her allegations and sought to comfort her at the time.

When asked if he was the “fall guy” for Mr McGregor, Mr Lawrence said “not in a million years”.

He added he has six sisters and nieces and would not defend such actions if they had occurred.

In a Republic of Ireland civil action – as opposed to a criminal case – neither the complainant nor the accused are entitled to automatic anonymity during the court proceedings.

An estimated 4,000 illegal gold miners are hiding underground in South Africa after the government cut off food and water in an effort to “smoke them out” and arrest them.

The miners have been in a mineshaft in Stilfontein, in the North West province, for about a month.

They have refused to cooperate with authorities as some are undocumented – coming from neighbouring countries like Lesotho and Mozambique – and fear being deported.

Illegal miners are called “zama zama” (“take a chance” in Zulu) and operate in abandoned mines in the mineral-rich country. Illegal mining costs the South African government hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales each year.

Many South African mines have closed down in recent years and workers have been sacked.

To survive, the miners and undocumented migrants go beneath the surface to escape poverty and dig up gold to sell it on the black market.

Some spend months underground – there is even a small economy of people selling food, cigarettes and cooked meals to the miners.

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Local residents have pleaded with the authorities to assist the miners, but they have refused.

“We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. We are not sending help to criminals. Criminals are not to be helped – they are to be persecuted [sic],” said Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni on Wednesday.

Police are hesitant to go into the mine as some of those underground may be armed.

Some are part of criminal syndicates or “recruited” to be in one, Busi Thabane, from Benchmarks Foundation, a charity which monitors corporations in South Africa, told the BBC’s NewsDay programme.

Without any access to supplies, conditions underground are said to be dire.

“It is no longer about illegal miners – this is a humanitarian crisis,” said Ms Thabane.

On Thursday, community leader Thembile Botman told the BBC that volunteers had used ropes and seat belts to pull a body out of the mine.

“The stench of decomposing bodies has left the volunteers traumatised,” he said.

It’s not clear how the person died.

Although the authorities have been blocking food and water, they have temporarily allowed local residents to send some supplies down by rope.

Mr Botman said they had been communicating with the miners by notes written on pieces of paper.

Police have blocked off entrances and exits in an effort to compel the miners to come out.

This is part of the Vala Umgodi, or “Close the Hole”, operation to curb illegal mining.

Five miners were pulled out on Wednesday by rope, but they were frail and weak. Paramedics attended to them, and then they were taken into police custody.

In the last week, 1,000 miners have emerged and been arrested.

Police and the army are still at the scene waiting to detain those who are not in need of medical care after resurfacing.

“It’s not as easy as the police make it seem – some of them are fearing for their lives,” said Ms Thabane.

Many miners spend months underground in unsafe conditions to provide for their families.

“For many of them it’s the only way they know how to put food on the table,” said Ms Thabane.

Local residents have also attempted to convince the miners to come out of the mineshaft.

“Those people must come out because we have brothers there, we have sons there, the fathers of our kids are there, our children are struggling,” local resident Emily Photsoa told AFP.

The South African Human Rights Commission says it will investigate the police for depriving the miners of food and water.

It said there is concern that the government’s operation could have an impact on the right to life.

Minister Ntshavheni’s remarks have provoked mixed reaction from South Africans, with some praising the government’s unyielding approach.

“I love this. Finally, our government is not tiptoeing on these serious matters. Decisiveness will help this country,” one person wrote on X.

While others felt the stance was inhumane.

“In my view, this kind of talk from the Minister in the Presidency is disgraceful and dangerous hate speech,” one user said.

Another wrote: “They are criminals but they have rights too.”

Illegal mining is a lucrative business across many of South Africa’s mining towns.

Since December last year, nearly 400 high-calibre firearms, thousands of bullets, uncut diamonds and money have been confiscated from illegal miners.

This is part of an intensive police and military operation to stop the practice that has severe environmental implications.

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Some football fans attending the European Nations League match in Paris between France and Israel whistled and booed as the Israeli anthem played at the start of the game.

Thursday’s match was played in front of scant crowds and heavy security a week after violence in Amsterdam between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and visiting Israeli fans.

Despite fears of a repeat of the Amsterdam violence, there were just a few brief scuffles in the stands during the first half of the game, which ended in a 0-0 draw.

President Emmanuel Macron – who attended the match with Prime Minister Michel Barnier – said beforehand that France would not give in to antisemitism.

Thousands of police were deployed to ensure security at the Stade de France in the northern Paris suburbs and on public transport, while an elite anti-terrorist police unit protected the visiting Israeli squad.

A reporter for France’s AFP news agency witnessed stewards intervening to stop clashes in the stands between rival fans.

According to Reuters news agency, some 100 Israel fans defied travel warnings from their government and sat in a corner of the 80,000-capacity stadium, which was barely a fifth full.

Waving yellow balloons, they chanted “Free the Hostages” in reference to Israelis held in Gaza by Hamas militants, the agency reports.

Before the match, several hundred demonstrators gathered in a square near the stadium to wave Palestinian, Lebanese and Algerian flags in protest at the war in Gaza.

“We don’t play with genocide,” one banner read.

Israel has denied allegations of genocide as baseless and grossly distorted.

It launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 43,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Politicians across Europe decried a “return of antisemitism” after Israeli fans were chased through the streets of Amsterdam.

Maccabi fans were themselves involved in vandalism, tearing down a Palestinian flag, attacking a taxi and chanting anti-Arab slogans, according to city authorities. They were then targeted by “small groups of rioters… on foot, by scooter or car”, the city said in a 12-page report.

Violence between Israel and its neighbours in the Middle East has the potential to spread to Europe.

France, Belgium and the Netherlands all have large Muslim populations of North African origin and they live beside far smaller Jewish populations, who in the main identify strongly with Israel.

To express solidarity with European Jews after Amsterdam, President Emmanuel Macron attended Thursday’s match along with Prime Minister Michel Barnier and former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Supporters were told to expect identity checks ahead of the game while bars and restaurants in the area were told to close from the afternoon.

The Stade de France was the scene of a dangerous breakdown in law and order at a Uefa Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in 2022. However since then the Rugby World Cup and Paris Olympics have both been peacefully staged there.

France’s far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party – which sides with Palestinians and Lebanese in the conflicts with Israel – called for Thursday’s match to be cancelled, or at least for Macron to refuse to attend.

• New arrests in Amsterdam over riots after Maccabi match

“We do not want our head of state honouring a country that commits genocide,” said LFI deputy David Guiraud.

But Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said it was out of the question to cancel or relocate the match. “France does not give way to those who sow hatred,” he said.

France and Israel are in the same group in the Uefa competition, alongside Italy and Belgium. In their first leg – played in Budapest – France beat Israel 4-1.

Pre-match tensions were already in evidence on the eve of the match after a pro-Israeli “gala” event was given the go-ahead in Paris, which the far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich was at one point expected to attend – although it was later thought his “presence” would be by video-link.

Several thousand pro-Palestinian and anti-racist organisations also staged protests in the capital to coincide with the event. Clashes broke out and police used tear gas as protesters targeted a McDonald’s on the Boulevard Montmartre.

Relations between Macron and Benyamin Netanyahu have come under severe strain in recent weeks, after Macron accused the Israeli prime minister of “spreading barbarism” in Gaza and Lebanon.

French Jews were also upset when Macron was quoted as saying that Netanyahu should accept United Nations calls for a ceasefire because “his country was itself created by a decision of the UN”. This was interpreted in Israel as an insult to Jews who had lost their lives in their country’s war of independence.

France in turn was angered when two French officials were briefly detained by Israeli authorities at a holy site in East Jerusalem that is under French administration.

Macron has been described as pursuing a zigzag in his approach to the Middle East, as in many other domains, flipflopping inconsistently between outspoken statements of support for Israel and then its Arab neighbours.

A man suspected of being a significant supplier of small boats equipment to people smugglers has been arrested in Amsterdam following a joint operation by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and Dutch and Belgian police.

The man is alleged to have supplied engines and boats to smugglers in northern France, according to the NCA.

The Turkish national, 44, was arrested at Schiphol Airport on Wednesday and will be extradited to Belgium to face charges of human smuggling.

NCA director general for operations Rob Jones called the arrest a milestone in one of the agency’s “most significant investigations into organised immigration crime”.

He said the man was thought to be a “major supplier” of “highly dangerous” boats and engines to smugglers operating in Belgium and northern France. The NCA said it has been investigating for several years.

Authorities said the man, who has not been named, shipped supplies from Turkey, stored them in Germany, then transported them to northern France.

He was arrested after authorities learned he was travelling from Turkey to the Netherlands.

The man is likely to face legal proceedings in Belgium because the offences he is suspected of committing took place there.

A spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office of West-Flanders said international cooperation is “crucial in the fight against human smuggling”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described the arrest as a “significant piece of the jigsaw” in tackling Channel crossings, but said he was “not pretending it [was] the silver bullet”.

“Criminal gangs have been getting away with this for far too long,” he added.

Earlier this month Sir Keir announced an extra £75m to police the UK’s borders, vowing to “treat people smugglers like terrorists”.

• How many people cross the Channel and how many claim asylum?

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the case demonstrated how important it was for UK agencies to work alongside international partners.

“The excellent work of the UK’s National Crime Agency has been critical to this. We will stop at nothing to root out criminal networks wherever we find them,” she said.

The NCA is leading some 70 investigations into networks or individuals in the top tier of organised immigration crime or human trafficking, the organisation said.

The arrest comes nearly a week after a man known as the “best smuggler”, who advertised small boat Channel crossings on Facebook, was jailed for 17 years.

Amanj Hasan Zada, a 34-year-old Iranian national living in Lancashire, ran “a sophisticated enterprise” which “for him it was all about profit”, the NCA said.

More than 50 people have died trying to cross the English Channel in 2024.

Over 32,000 people have made the crossing in 2024 so far – more than the total figure of 29,437 for 2023.

One of the key promises President-elect Donald Trump made while campaigning for the White House was to abolish the US Department of Education.

The federal agency, established in 1979, oversees funding for public schools, administers student loans and runs programmes to help low-income students.

Trump has accused the agency of “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material”.

But in order to scrap the department, the incoming Republican president would need congressional approval – an uphill battle.

On his own, no.

Not only would Trump need congressional approval, but he would also probably need a supermajority – 60 out of 100 senators.

While Republicans have a majority in the Senate, they do not have 60 members in the upper chamber, so they would need a few Democrats to vote to abolish the agency. There’s zero chance of that.

Even in the House of Representatives, Trump would struggle to gain necessary support.

A vote last year to abolish the education department – which was attached as an amendment to another bill – failed to pass as 60 Republicans joined all Democrats in the House to vote no. So Trump’s pledge could turn out to be largely symbolic.

The Department of Education oversees student loan programmes and administers Pell grants that help low-income students attend university.

The department also helps fund programmes to support students with disabilities and for students living in poverty.

And it enforces civil rights law that prevents race or sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools.

The department’s allocation was $238bn (£188bn) in fiscal year 2024 – under 2% of the total federal budget.

The idea has been floated by Republicans for decades. During Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, he pushed for it to be dismantled.

Republicans have accused the education department of pushing what they describe as “woke” political ideology on to children, including on gender and race. They want the agency’s authority handed to the US states, which run most education matters.

Conservatives also argue that other education department functions, such as administering loans, should be handled instead by the US Department of Treasury, and that civil rights infractions are the Department of Justice’s domain.

Trump’s allies also want to expand school choice, which would allow students and families to select alternatives to public schools.

For now, Mike Huckabee seems to be keeping his cards close to his chest.

Shortly after being announced as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Israel, the former Republican governor of Arkansas said: “I won’t make the policy. I will carry out the policy of the president.”

But he did give an indication of what he expected that policy to be, citing the previous Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and to recognise the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory – decisions as warmly welcomed by the Israeli right wing as they were categorically rejected by Palestinians.

“No-one has done more,” he told an Israeli radio station. “President Trump and I fully expect that will continue.”

What approach Trump will take to the Israel-Gaza war is still unclear. But the right wing of Israeli politics has welcomed the president-elect’s appointment of Huckabee, seeing it as predicting another term of American policy highly favourable to their longstanding aims of holding on to territory in the West Bank and expanding settlements.

The appointment was greeted with joy by two far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. On the social media platform X, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich messaged his congratulations to “a consistent and loyal friend”, while Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, wrote “Mike Huckabee” with heart emojis.

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Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have reason to be cheered by Huckabee’s appointment. He has been a consistent supporter of many Israelis’ ambitions to expand into territories that would form part of any future Palestinian state.

Holding a press conference in 2017, shortly after a cornerstone-laying ceremony at one of the biggest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Huckabee said: “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities.

“There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

The following year, he said: “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” using the name used by many in Israel for the area which became the occupied West Bank when it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

The previous Trump administration declared in 2019 that it did not consider Israeli settlements illegal under international law, contradicting decades of US policy. Other decisions, including a 2020 peace plan greenlighting the annexation of Israeli settlements, were seen as more favourable to the settlers than any previous administration.

The Israeli far right has indicated that it sees Huckabee’s appointment as a sign that it will be able to further advance its agenda, including annexation of the West Bank, during the next Trump term.

On Monday, Smotrich said that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty” in the West Bank, adding that he had instructed Israeli authorities to begin preparatory work for annexation of the occupied territory.

That happening is a genuine fear for Mustafa Barghouti, a West Bank-based veteran Palestinian politician who is leader of the Palestinian National Initiative political movement.

“You can imagine the reaction of other powerful countries in the world would be, when the idea of annexing occupied territories, obtained by war, becomes legal and acceptable,” he says. “So it’s not just about Palestinians and our suffering, it’s about the international order.”

Whether Smotrich will get his wish remains to be seen. Tal Schneider, a political correspondent at the Times of Israel, says it is not a foregone conclusion that a pro-settler US ambassador will result in pro-settler policies in Washington.

“Four years ago, some of the people that surrounded Trump were very much pro-settlements and pro-annexing, but it didn’t work like that last time. I predict it’s not going to work like that this time around.”

Huckabee was not the only appointee announced on Tuesday. The president-elect also said Steve Witkoff would serve as his special envoy to the Middle East.

As well as being a real estate developer, Witkoff is also a longtime golf buddy of Trump’s. The pair were playing together at the time of a second failed assassination attempt in September.

It is not clear what foreign policy experience Witkoff brings to the role, but he has previously praised Trump’s dealings with Israel.

In July, he argued that Trump’s “leadership was good for Israel and the entire region”.

“With President Trump, the Middle East experienced historic levels of peace and stability. Strength prevents wars. Iran’s money was cut off which prevented their funding of global terror,” he said.

Netanyahu’s decision to nominate a hardline settler leader for Israeli ambassador to Washington three days after Trump’s election also indicates that the prime minister believes the next administration will be receptive to right-wing arguments.

US-born Yechiel Leiter, who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff when he was finance minister, supports the annexation of the West Bank. According to the Haaretz newspaper, he was once active in the US-based Jewish Defence League, the organisation founded by far-right rabbi Meir Kahane. His son was killed fighting in Gaza.

He was also reported to support the Abraham Accords, Trump’s efforts to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, which had some success. However, advancing that process has been derailed by the ongoing war in Gaza and Arab anger over the suffering of the Palestinians.

Palestinians, already disillusioned with the US over Joe Biden’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza, say Trump’s pick for ambassador suggests the next president will make the prospect of an eventual two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict even more remote.

“Mr Huckabee has said things that are absolutely contradictory to international law,” says Mustafa Barghouti, a West Bank-based Palestinian politician.

“It will be really bad news for the cause of peace in this region.”

On election night, Donald Trump repeated the phrase: “Promises made, promises kept.”

Now, Republicans have officially taken control of Congress and his “promises” are a whole lot easier to keep.

In Washington political parlance, it’s called “a governing trifecta”, when the president’s party also controls both chambers of Congress – the House of Representatives and the Senate.

That control is what Donald Trump’s Republican Party now has.

Single-party control was once common, but in recent decades it has become rarer and shorter. Often, the party in power loses seats when midterm congressional elections roll around two years later.

Both Trump and Joe Biden enjoyed trifectas for their first two years in the White House, but they also saw that having such control is no guarantee a president can get their way.

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In his first two years, Trump passed a signature tax bill – reducing corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, and cutting some taxes on individuals.

But with some members of his own party resistant to his surprise ascent to the top in 2016, he struggled with other aims.

His plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) failed when a senator from his own party, John McCain, refused to vote for it. He also failed to pass an infrastructure bill as he had promised.

In his first two years, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, Biden succeeded in passing the American Rescue plan, the Investment and Jobs Act, and the Chips and Science Act. But he, too, had to significantly scale back his spending and investment plans – touted as the Build Back Better package – after opposition from one of his own senators.

A major impediment to total control for either party is that Senate bills require a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes, to bypass the filibuster, which enables senators to delay legislation by keeping debate open-ended. That means that when a party has a simple majority in the Senate, it needs to reach across the aisle to get a bill passed.

Even with a healthy majority in the Senate this time around, Trump will not have the magic 60 seats that would allow him to overcome opposition attempts to delay legislation.

And on Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate selected John Thune as their majority leader over Florida’s Rick Scott, the clear favourite in the Trump camp, in a sign some lawmakers may be reasserting their independence (Trump did not officially endorse Scott).

That said, a trifecta, if astutely managed, does open the way for the possibility of major legislative initiatives.

Trump’s power advantage could be key in pushing through his big promises such as the largest deportation of migrants in history, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, and the rolling back of environmental protections.

Using legislation to achieve these ends will make such plans much harder to overturn in the courts – something Donald Trump was plagued by in his first term when he extensively used executive orders that were regularly and often successfully challenged.

The judicial landscape also has changed in Trump’s favour.

The signature achievement of his first term was putting three conservatives on the Supreme Court – cementing a two-thirds majority for possibly decades to come.

He also named more than four dozen judges to the federal appeals courts, flipping several circuits to a more conservative bent.

The majority Republicans have in the Senate also provides a key advantage.

Trump will be able to get his nominees for administration posts approved more easily, something he struggled with back in 2017 when internal resistance to him in the Republican Party was still significant.

All this bodes for a busy and possibly turbulent next two years. But, as recent history indicates, these trifectas don’t last all that long. The incoming administration will want to get a move on.

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

Pete Hegseth has spent the past eight years on the couch of a Fox News morning show defending President-elect Donald Trump and advocating for a conservative cultural shift in the US military, and he could soon be directing that agenda from behind the top desk at the Pentagon.

The Republican president-elect announced on Wednesday that Hegseth, a television host and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was his nominee for defence secretary – a role typically filled by senior civil servants, experienced politicians and high-level executives.

While the 44-year-old has little of the traditional experience expected for such an important cabinet position – he would be the second-youngest person to serve in the office – he could aim to transform the Department of Defense if confirmed by the Senate.

Just last week, Hegseth said on a podcast that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – the US’s top military leader – should be fired, along with any “general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] woke [expletive]”.

He also said that women should not serve in combat roles because he argued it had not made the military “more effective” or “more lethal”.

“Over human history, men in those positions are more capable,” he said.

He has also reportedly called for the Defence Department to be renamed the War Department and for a 10-year ban on generals working as defence contractors after leaving the military.

Those views have earned Hegseth many conservative fans, particularly those close to the president-elect. But some also question whether he is capable of running an agency that is considered one of the world’s largest bureaucracies, with a budget of nearly $900bn (£708bn).

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Former Pentagon officials stressed that this role is one of the most critical appointments that the president could make, as the office-holder guides national security decisions and oversees the 2.9 million civilians and military service members who work for the Defence Department across the world.

“I’ve thought before that it was a harder job than the presidency,” Lincoln Bloomfield, who served in the Pentagon under Presidents George W Bush and Ronald Reagan, told the BBC.

“Hegseth’s not an old guy. He’s in his prime, so he has all the energy he needs,” added Bloomfield, who noted that the television host was well-educated and a combat veteran.

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“But the question is how much does experience help lead to finding solutions? This is a job where every morning there are at least a dozen kinds of fires burning.”

It is unclear how Hegseth will fare during his confirmation process in the Senate, when he is likely to faces hours of grilling in hearings.

Some officials anticipated a challenging path through the Senate given his short CV that does not include much work on national security or foreign policy issues.

“This is a job that will involve thousands of hours of advising the president and how, when and under what circumstances to use military force,” Mara Karlin, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration, said. “It will involve figuring out how to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars and the care of millions of members of the US military and civilians and their families.”

Some lawmakers in Washington DC appeared initially perplexed by Hegseth’s appointment to oversee one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world.

“I confess I didn’t know who he was until 20 minutes ago,” Representative Adam Smith, who serves as the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Wednesday. “And he certainly doesn’t seem to have any background whatsoever in (Department of Defence) policy.”

Other lawmakers were more blunt.

“Who?” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told NBC News when asked about the appointment. “I don’t know Pete. I just don’t know anything about him.”

A co-host of the Fox & Friends weekend show for eight years, Hegseth was reportedly considered for a post during Trump’s first administration. But several former military and Pentagon officials said that Hegseth was not a known quantity in the Washington defence community.

“There are different worlds that past secretaries have come from – political people, technocrats, some from Congress – but traditionally they have a pretty decent level of experience with defence, national security issues and foreign policy,” Ms Karlin said.

The Princeton and Harvard graduate served as an infantry platoon leader in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. He later deployed to Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency instructor in Kabul.

Many pointed to Hegseth’s military experience as a potential aid if he were to be confirmed.

“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice.

Others, meanwhile, raised issue with Hegseth’s close ties to the president-elect.

John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, told the BBC that the post of defence secretary should never be a “loyalty appointment”.

The person in the position should be willing to provide honest advice, Bolton said, even if it is unpopular.

“The question is: Will he be a yes man to Donald Trump or will he behave professionally and with courage the way he did when he was in uniform?” added Bolton, who has grown critical of the president-elect.

Hegseth has limited experience in politics beyond an unsuccessful run in 2012 for the Republican Senate nomination in Minnesota. Since then, he has largely turned to conservative activism and punditry.

He has advocated for privatising the US government’s agency that aids veterans, but his greatest political success in Washington was during Trump’s first term when he convinced the then-president to pardon several US service members accused of war crimes.

The two Army officers that Trump pardoned included one accused of killing a suspected Afghan bombmaker and another who was convicted of murder for directing men to fire upon three Afghans.

Still, Hegseth’s appointment to lead the Pentagon marks a departure from previous Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Leon Panetta, who served under former President Barack Obama, was a former CIA director and White House Chief of Staff. Robert Gates, who was appointed by President George W Bush and Obama, worked for the CIA for 27 years.

During his first term, Trump himself turned to those with more military and national security experience than Hegseth, such as Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper – who both served for decades in the military and were well known in Washington’s defence community.

President Joe Biden chose to appoint a retired four-star general, Secretary Lloyd Austin, who served as the commander of US Central Command and faced some criticism from lawmakers for not informing the White House about undergoing medical procedures while in office.

Given the experience of past secretaries, many were quick to argue that Hegseth lacked the necessary credentials.

“A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who leads the Senate military personnel panel. She urged her fellow senators not to confirm him.

Others, however, rushed to Hegseth’s defence.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said the conservative anchor was a “tireless advocate for America’s soldiers and veterans”.

“[H]e brings a fresh perspective to a Pentagon that has lost sight of its mission under Joe Biden. Pete is dedicated to ensuring that our military is focused on lethality and readiness, not woke ideology,” the speaker said.

New Zealand’s parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka, amid anger over a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with Māori people.

Opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke began the traditional ceremonial group dance after being asked whether her party supported the bill, which faced its first vote on Thursday.

At the same time, a hīkoi – or peaceful protest march – organised by a Māori rights group is continuing to make its way towards the capital, Wellington.

Thousands have already joined the 10-day march against the bill, which reached Auckland on Wednesday, having begun in the far north of New Zealand on Monday.

The country is often considered a leader in indigenous rights, but opponents of the bill fear those same rights are being put at risk by this bill.

Act, the political party that introduced the bill, argues there is a need to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which has been fundamental to race relations in New Zealand.

The core values of the treaty have, over time, been woven into New Zealand’s laws in an effort to redress the wrong done to Māori during colonisation.

But Act – a minor party in the ruling centre-right coalition – say this has resulted in the country being divided by race, and the bill will allow the treaty to be interpreted more fairly through parliament, rather than the courts. The party’s leader, David Seymour, has dismissed opponents as wanting to “stir up” fear and division.

Critics, however, say the legislation will divide the country and lead to the unravelling of much-needed support for many Māori.

The first reading passed on Thursday after a 30-minute break, backed by all parties from the ruling coalition. Maipi-Clarke was suspended from the house.

It is unlikely to pass a second reading, as Act’s coalition partners have indicated they will not support it.

But this has not placated those worried about the bill, and its impact, with the hikoi still making progress along its 1,000km (621-mile) route.

In Auckland, it took an estimated 5,000 marchers two hours to cross the harbour bridge. Officials had closed two lanes, the New Zealand Herald reported, to allow them to continue along the route.

Danielle Moreau, who is Māori, walked over the Harbour Bridge with her two sons, Bobby and Teddy, and told the BBC she “was hoping it [the hīkoi] would be big but it was much more epic than I expected”.

“I marched to make the point that Te Tiriti [the Treaty of Waitangi] is very important to our national identity,” said Winston Pond, who also took part in the march on Wednesday.

“We are a multi-cultural society built on a bicultural base – something that cannot be altered.”

Juliet Tainui-Hernández, from the Māori tribe Ngāi Tahu, and her Puerto Rican partner Javier Hernández, brought their daughter Paloma to the hīkoi.

Ms Tainui-Hernández said those who turned out in support did so “for the respectful and inclusive nation we want Aotearoa [New Zealand] to be for our tamariki mokopuna – our children and grandchildren”.

Kiriana O’Connell, who is also Māori, said that the current treaty principles were already a compromise for her people, and she would not support a “rewrite”.

Under the proposed legislation, the treaty principles that would be defined in law are:

• that the government has a right to govern and that parliament has the full right to make laws
• that the rights of Māori are respected by the Crown
• that everyone is equal before the law and is entitled to equal protection under it.

Act leader Seymour – who is also New Zealand’s associate justice minister – argues that because the principles have never been properly defined legally, the courts “have been able to develop principles that have been used to justify actions that are contrary to the principle of equal rights”.

He says these include “ethnic quotas in public institutions” that go against the spirit of fairness for all New Zealanders.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, however, has called the bill “divisive” – despite being part of the same coalition.

Meanwhile, the Waitangi Tribunal, which was set up in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, notes the bill “purposefully excluded any consultation with Māori, breaching the principle of partnership, the Crown’s good-faith obligations, and the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori rights and interests”.

It also said that the principles of the bill misinterpreted the Treaty of Waitangi and that this “caused significant prejudice to Māori”.

The tabling of the Treaty Principles Bill comes following a series of measures introduced by the government that have affected Māori.

They include the closure of the Māori Health Authority, which was set up under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government to help create health equity, and reprioritising English over Māori when it comes to the official naming of government organisations, for example.

While roughly 18% of New Zealand’s population consider themselves to be Māori, according to the most recent census, many remain disadvantaged compared with the general population when assessed through markers such as health outcomes, household income, education levels and incarceration and mortality rates. There remains a seven-year gap in life expectancy.

The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between the British and many, but not all, Māori tribes, which was signed in 1840.

It is contentious as it was written in both English and Māori – which had only been a spoken language until colonisation – and the two versions contain fundamental differences when it comes to issues such as sovereignty.

While the treaty itself is not enshrined in law, its principles have been adopted over time into various pieces of legislation.

The bill will now be sent to a select committee for a six-month public hearing process.

A brief yearly silence has once again enveloped South Korea, as half a million students across the country sit for the most important test of their lives.

Planes were grounded, construction work halted, and car honking discouraged as the Suneung, an eight-hour university placement exam billed as one of the toughest in the world, kicked off on Thursday.

But this year, there was one sound that students were especially scared of: “APT”.

The global hit by Blackpink’s Rosé and Bruno Mars emerged as a “forbidden” song among students who feared that its catchiness could cause them to lose focus during the test.

No distractions are too minor when it comes to the Suneung, which many see as a culmination of years of formal education – and a turning point that determines their university placements, careers, and social statuses.

“I’m worried that the song will play in my head even during the exam,” one student told Yonhap News of the chart-topper. “Adults might laugh and say, ‘Why stress over something like that?’ But for us, with such an important test ahead, it can feel unsettling.”

Suneung students have previously been encouraged to avoid other so-called earworms, with songs such as “Go Go” by BTS and “Ring Ding Dong” by SHINee repeatedly cited online as tracks that should be forbidden.

Ensuring that the exam runs smoothly is a nationwide effort. Shops and the stock market opened late on Thursday to reduce traffic congestion, and authorities adjusted public transport operating hours and put more than a dozen spare trains on standby in case of breakdowns.

More than 10,000 police officers were deployed, including some tasked to ferry students to school during emergencies.

Besides grounding planes to minimise noise disturbances during the 20-minute English listening test, authorities have also asked bus and taxi drivers to refrain from honking while the tests are taking place.

Disruptions to the Suneung are treated as a serious matter. Last December, dozens of students sued the government after teachers accidentally cut their test short by 90 seconds.

There are a record number of candidates retaking the exam this year, after authorities announced they would expand enrolment in medical schools – a move that was met with widespread protests among trainee doctors while being welcomed by aspiring medical students.

Holly was just 16 when someone asked her if she could have sex because she was disabled.

She has been asked many other questions over the years, such as if she “can have rough sex” or if it needs to be in a wheelchair.

“People think they’re doing you a favour, almost like a sacrifice. The worst thing is I’m not surprised or offended anymore.”

Holly, now 26, has chronic pain and hypermobility syndrome and is one of a number of disabled women who have spoken out to challenge negative stereotypes and stigma when it comes to dating and relationships.

Holly Greader said it was important that happy relationships for those who were disabled were represented.

She started dating her now husband James when she was a teenager, and has been with him for nine years, getting married earlier this year.

“Often in the media disabled people have miserable lives, we’re just a sad story,” she said.

She added she has always felt supported by him, but felt stereotyped by others.

“I was told by people when we first moved in together, that if my health declines he’d leave me.

“For being a burden or too much to handle.”

She said there were assumptions people made about her in school, which some asked to her face.

“When it comes to wheelchair users, it’s always without a doubt almost the first question, can that person have sex?”

She said the boys in her class at school would ask personal and intrusive questions.

“I got asked things like, can you only have sex in a wheelchair? Will your joints dislocate? If I wanted to have rough sex with you, would I be able to?”

Holly said people have also messaged her on social media about sex, an offer she was often made to feel she should be “lucky” for.

Holly would like to see better positive representation in the media, citing that the character Isaac Goodwin in the programme Sex Education was the only good example she has been aware of recently.

Nicola Thomas, 38, from Caerphilly, who is registered blind, said: “One of the more common things people will ask is, how do you have sex? It kind of takes your breath back, it’s such an invasive and personal question.”

Nicola has an auto immune disease – neuromyelitis optica – and she lost her sight in one eye 15 years ago and the other five years ago.

“A lot of people see barriers with blindness and I’m definitely one to break those down.”

Nicola’s hobbies include sailing, paddleboarding and travelling, and her next trip is to Hong Kong.

Nicola had a boyfriend when she lost her sight but the relationship broke down.

“I was treated like a burden, people would say you can’t be a carer for her, but I didn’t need a carer.”

She now has a boyfriend who is also visually impaired.

“Even though we’re both blind, we’ll navigate our way round a city, or go on a date on our own. Nothing holds us back.”

Nicola also said she feels stereotyped when people show an interest in her.

“People message on social media asking for dates, their attention shifts or acts differently when I tell them I’m blind.”

“You’re definitely treated like they’re doing you a favour. It puts you off instantly.”

Nicola added: “People do pigeon hole us. I want to breakdown that stereotype, I have a full and happy life.”

Kat Watkins said disabled people have a right to explore their sexual identity and develop relationships just like anybody else.

She is the access to politics project officer for Disability Wales.

“Why are sex and relationships such a taboo for disabled people? There is much more to us than just being able to eat and having a roof over our heads.”

“Living your life and enjoying yourself that’s just part of life, and it doesn’t get highlighted enough for people with disabilities.”

Kat said hearing examples of how people message disabled women was “sadly normalised.”

She said adaptable sex toys and aids can help give people confidence and would like to see them on more mainstream sex sites and outlets.

“You’ve got to be comfortable with yourself and understand your body, so you can tell others how it works. Self love is also really important.”

For more on this story, watch Wales Live on BBC iPlayer.

The boss of Tesla and the social media site X, Elon Musk, suggested last month at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City that it would be possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” from US government spending by eradicating “waste”.

Musk has now been appointed to co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency by the incoming US president, giving him an opportunity to try to put his plans into action.

In the most recent fiscal year (from October 2023 to September 2024) the US federal government spent $6.75 trillion (£5.3 trillion) according to the US Treasury.

This means Musk’s proposed cuts of $2 trillion would represent around a cut of around 30% of total federal government spending — also known as national spending in other countries.

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How realistic is that proposal?

To answer that, it’s helpful to break down the total spending figure.

Around $880bn (13% of total US government spending) goes on interest payments on the national debt, which means that line of expenditure cannot be reduced without putting the US government in default.

Around $1.46 trillion (22%) goes on Social Security, which primarily means pensions for Americans over the retirement age. This is a line of spending which is “mandatory”, meaning it must be spent by law on those eligible.

Other large mandatory lines of government expenditure include Medicare – a government-funded health insurance program primarily serving Americans aged over 65.

So-called “discretionary” US government spending – outlays that are not permanently enshrined in law but have to be voted on annually by US lawmakers – includes defence ($874bn, 13%), transportation ($137bn, 2%) and education, training, employment and social services ($305bn, 5%).

Altogether, discretionary spending accounted for around 25% of the total in the 2023 financial year according to the Congressional Budget Office, with more than half of that going to defence.

In theory, discretionary spending would be easier for the incoming Trump administration to cut than mandatory spending.

Donald Trump has said that Musk – and his co-head at the new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy – will achieve the savings from dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations and restructuring government agencies. In an interview with the BBC in April 2023 Musk claimed to have reduced the staff of Twitter (now X) from 8,000 to 1,500 after acquiring the social network in 2022.

Yet if all of the $2 trillion in US government expenditure savings now being targeted by Musk were to come from discretionary spending, analysts calculate that entire agencies – from transport, to agriculture, to Homeland Security – would have to be entirely closed down. Discretionary spending accounted for only $1.7 trillion in 2023.

Musk did not specify if he would aim to deliver $2 trillion in savings in a single year, or over a longer period, but many US public finance experts, including those who are in favour in principle of reductions in US government spending, are sceptical savings on such a scale can be found in the near term without either a collapse in the delivery of important government functions or sparking major public resistance.

After taking control of the House of Representatives in 2022, Republican lawmakers have struggled to pass legislation to deliver considerably smaller cuts of $130bn in discretionary government spending after meeting opposition from other Republicans.

It’s also important to note that Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of making Social Security more financially generous, not less, by removing the income tax payable on it. And, on defence, Trump said he would build an “iron dome missile defence shield” around America, implying greater spending in this area, not cuts.

Total US federal government spending as a share of the US economy in 2024 was around 23% according to the US Treasury.

That’s a considerably smaller share than national government spending in other developed countries.

However, a large share of government spending in the US, including almost all school spending, is done at a state rather than a federal level, and states are funded by local sales and property taxes.

The International Monetary Fund has projected that total US “general government expenditure”, which includes spending by individual states, will be around 37.5% of its GDP in 2024.

That compares with 43% in the UK, 48% in Germany and 57% in France.

The US government is currently running an annual deficit – a shortfall between its spending and tax revenues – equal to around 6% of its economy. And America’s national debt held by the public is currently equal to around 97% of the size of the economy.

The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) think tank has projected that this is currently set to climb to 125% by 2035.

The CRFB has projected that absent major spending reductions, Donald Trump’s planned tax cuts would considerably widen the US deficit in the coming decade and push up the US national debt to 143% by the middle of the next decade.

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Forty years after they began the task – and nearly four hundred years after receiving their first commission – sages in Paris have finally produced a new edition of the definitive French dictionary.

The full ninth edition of the was formally presented to President Macron this afternoon in the plush surroundings of the 17th century Collège des Quatre-Nations on the left bank of the Seine.

This is where the 40 wise men and women of the French Academy – so-called (immortals) chosen for their contributions to French language and literature – have met since the body was first created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635.

Their task at the start was to “give certain rules to our language, to render it pure and eloquent” – to which end they set about writing their first dictionary.

However, the job has proved so slow – the first book was not produced until 1694 and today it takes more than a year to get through a single letter of the alphabet – that the relevance of the enterprise is increasingly in question.

“The effort is praiseworthy, but so excessively tardy that it is perfectly useless,” a collective of linguists wrote in the Liberation newspaper on Thursday.

This ninth edition replaces the eighth, which was completed in 1935. Work started in 1986, and three previous sections – up to the letter R – have already been issued.

Today the end section (last entry Zzz) has been added, meaning the work is complete.

In its press release, the Academy said the dictionary is a “mirror of an epoch running from the 1950s up to today,” and boasts 21,000 new entries compared to the 1935 version.

But many of the “modern” words added in the 1980s or 90s are already out of date. And such is the pace of linguistic change, many words in current use today are too new to make it in.

Thus common words like, , and – which are all in the latest commercial dictionaries – do not exist in the Académie book. Conversely its “new” words include such go-ahead concepts as , , and (mini-supermarket).

For the latest R-Z section, the writers have included the new thinking on the feminisation of jobs, including female alternatives (which did not exist before) for positions such as and . However print versions of the earlier sections do not have the change, because for many years the Académie fought a rear-guard action against it.

Likewise the third section of the new dictionary – including the letter M – defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, which in France it no longer is.

“How can anyone pretend that this collection can serve as a reference for anyone?” the collective asks, noting that online dictionaries are both bigger and faster-moving.

Under its president, the writer Amin Maalouf, the dictionary committee meets every Thursday morning and after discussion gives its ruling on definitions that have been drawn up in preliminary form by outside experts.

Among the “immortals” is the English poet and French expert Michael Edwards, who told Le Figaro newspaper how he tried to get the Academy to revive the long-forgotten word (undeep).

“French needs it, because as every English student of French knows, there is no word for ‘shallow’,” he said. Sadly, he failed.

Discussions – lengthy ones — are already under way for the commencement of edition 10.

Floods and torrential rain returned to the Valencia region on Wednesday night, but this time they were ready for it, and the areas hit two weeks ago escaped further disaster.

More than 220 people died in this eastern coastal area at the end of October, and the town of Paiporta was hit hardest with the loss of 60 lives.

In the midst of despair the local population are understandably searching for beacons of hope, for example the remarkable story of what happened at the Whitby English language school.

As the whole road became engulfed in water, the college’s co-director, Daniel Burguet, repeatedly pounded against a door with a chair leg that he’d just picked up.

Filmed from a 3rd floor balcony across the street, Daniel is seen smashing constantly against the glass.

He is trapped with his 11-year-old daughter, Noa, and three younger children inside the school, unable to reach a higher floor.

Eventually, Danny breaks down the door of the next building along and, one by one, he pulls the children to safety.

“When I got through that door, I felt so relieved. Finally, we were safe,” Daniel tells me as he carries on repairs to the school.

In the quest for fragments of solace, it’s also perhaps understandable that when tales of bravery are found, they are celebrated unashamedly.

Local media have hailed Danny as the “Hero of Pairporta”.

“There are a lot of people who did the same thing that day, many ‘heroes’ like me, if you want to call us that,” he says.

“I feel good about it. I feel the love of people around here. I was the one who was filmed, but there were many other heroes.”

Rebuilding Spain’s shattered and traumatised communities will require an heroic effort that goes on for months.

The threat hasn’t gone away.

A fortnight after the worst floods to hit a single European country this century, Paiporta is still full of firefighters, police officers as well as the Red Cross and an army of daily volunteers.

But many residents feel the unofficial community-generated effort is not being matched by the authorities – either at the regional or national level.

“It was a tsunami,” declares Juan José Montane.

He shows me the video he took from his apartment as floating cars were hurled against the walls below him.

“It was only thanks to God that I survived,” he exclaims, furiously making the sign of the cross three times.

Divine intervention aside, it’s the lack of intervention from the Valencia and central government which is now infuriating him.

“This is shameful, we feel abandoned,” says Juan José.

“For four days we didn’t see the army coming to help. We need more troops here.”

His sister, Lourdes, fears for how the town will re-build with so much lost and now a severe lack of infrastructure.

“We feel imprisoned here. There are no roads, it is horrible,” she explains.

“We lost everything in this town, everything.”

Although the vast majority of houses are still standing, there is a lack of electricity, hot or drinking water in the streets that were the worst hit.

In Paiporta, piles of mangled cars have been created on roundabouts and at other places out of the way of traffic.

It’s estimated as many as 100,000 cars were destroyed during the floods.

Some abandoned vehicles that look pretty much intact, apart from a dented bonnet here or a flat tyre there, are not spared either.

Instead, they are grabbed by giant claw cranes that smash down through the windscreen and lift the vehicles away.

The loss of possessions has been immense in this region. The loss of life crushing.

And the trauma’s not over.

The mayor has urged people to stay inside, as the local population waits for the latest flood alert to subside.

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From his wheelchair, Michael Northey watches quietly over his father’s grave, and lays a flower for the very first time.

“This is the closest I’ve been to him in 70 years, which is ridiculous,” he jokes poignantly.

Born into a poor family in the backstreets of Portsmouth, Michael was still a baby when his father, the youngest of 13 children, left to fight in the Korean War. He was killed in action, his body never identified.

For decades, it lay in an unmarked grave in the UN cemetery in Busan, on Korea’s south coast, adorned with the plaque ‘Member of the British Army, known unto God’.

Now it bears his name – Sergeant D. Northey, died 24 April 1951, age 23.

Sergeant Northey, along with three others, are the first unknown British soldiers killed in the Korean War to be successfully identified, and Michael is attending a ceremony, along with the other families, to rename their graves.

Michael had spent years doing his own research, hoping to find out where his father was buried, but had eventually given up.

“I’m ill and don’t have a lot of time left myself, so I’d written it off. I thought I’d never find out,” he says.

But a couple of months ago, Michael received a phone call. Unknown to him, researchers at the Ministry of Defence had been conducting their own investigation. When he heard the news, he “wailed like a banshee for 20 minutes”.

“I can’t describe the emotional release,” he says, smiling. “This had haunted me for 70 years. The poor lady who phoned me, I felt sorry for her!”

The woman on the other end of the phone was Nicola Nash, a forensic researcher from the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre in Gloucester, who ordinarily works to identify victims from the First and Second World Wars.

Tasked for the first time with finding the Korean War dead, she had to start from scratch – by first compiling a list of the 300 British soldiers still missing, of whom 76 were buried in the cemetery in Busan.

Nicola went through their burial reports, and found just one man had been buried wearing sergeant stripes from the Gloucester Regiment, as well as one major.

After trawling the national archives and cross referencing eyewitness accounts, family letters and war office reports, Ms Nash was able to identify these men as Sergeant Northey and Major Patrick Angier.

Both were killed in the famous Battle of Imjin River, in April 1951, as the Chinese Army – which had joined the war on the North Korean side – tried to push the allied forces down the peninsula to retake the capital Seoul.

Despite being hugely outnumbered, the men held their position for three days, giving their comrades enough time to retreat and successfully defend the city.

The issue at the time, Ms Nash explains, is that because the battle was so bloody, most of the men were either killed or captured, leaving no one to identify them.

The enemy had removed and scattered their dog tags. It was not until the prisoners of war were released that they were able share their accounts of the battle. No one had thought to go back and piece the puzzles together – until now.

For Ms Nash, this has been a six-year “labour of love”, made slightly easier, she admits, by having some of the men’s children still alive to draw on, something that has also made the process more special.

“The children have spent their whole lives not knowing what happened to their fathers, and for me to be able to do this work and bring them here to their graves, to say their goodbyes and have that closure, means everything,” she says.

At the ceremony, the families sit on chairs amidst the long rows of small stone graves which mark the thousands of foreign soldiers who fought and died in the Korean War. They are accompanied by serving soldiers from their loved ones’ former regiments.

Major Angier’s daughter, Tabby, now 77, and his grandson Guy, stand to read excerpts of letters he wrote from the front line.

In one of his final letters, he writes to his wife: “Lots of love to our dear children. Do tell them how much Daddy misses them and will come back as soon as he has finished his work.”

Tabby was three years old when her father left for the war, and her memories of him are fractured: “I can remember someone standing in a room and canvas bags piling up, which must have been his equipment to go to Korea. But I can’t see his face,” she says.

At the time of her father’s death, people didn’t like to talk about wars, Tabby says. Instead, people in her small Gloucestershire village used to remark: “Oh, those poor children, they’ve lost their father.”

“I used to think that if he’s lost, they’re going to find him,” says Tabby.

But as the years passed, and she learnt what had happened, Tabby was told her father’s body would never be found. The last record of his whereabouts suggested his body had been left under an upturned boat on the battlefield.

Tabby had twice previously visited the cemetery in Busan, in an attempt to get as close to her father as she thought possible – not knowing his actual grave was here all along.

“I think it will take some time to sink in,” she says, from his newly-adorned graveside.

The shock has been even greater for 25-year-old Cameron Adair, from Scunthorpe, whose great, great uncle, Corporal William Adair, is one of two soldiers from the Royal Ulster Rifles identified by Ms Nash. The other is Rifleman Mark Foster, from County Durham.

Both men were killed in January 1951 as they were forced to retreat by a platoon of Chinese soldiers.

Corporal Adair did not have children, and when his wife died so did his memory, leaving Cameron and his family unaware of his existence.

Finding out his relative “helped bring freedom to so many people” has brought Cameron “a real sense of pride,” he says.

“Coming here and witnessing this firsthand has really brought it home”.

Now a similar age to his uncle when he was killed, Cameron feels inspired and says he would like to serve should the need arise.

Ms Nash is now gathering DNA samples from the relatives of the other 300 missing soldiers, in the hope she can give more families the same peace and joy she has brought to Cameron, Tabby and Michael.

“If there are still British personnel missing, we will keep trying to find them,” she says.

Hollywood actress Eva Longoria has revealed that her family no longer lives in the United States, and is splitting time between Mexico and Spain.

In an interview with French magazine Marie Claire for its November cover story, Longoria attributed the decision to the country’s “changing vibe” after the Covid-19 pandemic, homelessness and high taxation in California, and the re-election of Donald Trump.

She also acknowledged she was “privileged” enough to move, saying: “Most Americans aren’t so lucky. They’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country.”

The Desperate Housewives star is viewed as a power broker for women and Latinos in Democratic Party politics.

With a keen interest in immigration policy, she has been visibly involved with Democratic candidates at the national and local level since at least 2012.

She spoke at the Democratic National Convention and hit the campaign trail on behalf of Kamala Harris this year, with a tagline for the 2024 presidential candidate that adopted the Spanish translation of Barack Obama’s famed “Yes, we can” slogan (“Si se puede”) into the phrase “She se puede”.

In her Marie Claire interview, published on Thursday, Longoria described being dispirited at Trump’s victory over Harris last week.

“If he keeps his promises, it’s going to be a scary place,” she said.

She added that Trump’s win in 2016 had crushed her belief that “the best person wins” in politics.

“I had my whole adult life here,” Longoria said of Los Angeles, adding that “it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now”.

She said work now has her often spending time in Europe or South America.

Longoria is a ninth-generation Texan who moved to California in her twenties. In 2006, she earned a Golden Globe nomination in her starring role as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives.

More recently, she has hosted the CNN mini-series Searching for Mexico and Searching for Spain.

She is married to José “Pepe” Bastón, her third husband and the president of Mexican broadcaster Televisa.

The couple share a six-year-old boy, Santiago, while Bastón also has three children from a previous marriage.

The number of people dying because of the civil war in Sudan is significantly higher than previously reported, according to a new study.

More than 61,000 people have died in Khartoum state, where the fighting began last year, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group.

Of these, 26,000 people were killed as a direct result of the violence, it said, noting that the leading cause of death across the Sudan was preventable disease and starvation.

Many more people have died elsewhere in the country, especially in the western region of Darfur, where there have been numerous reports of atrocities and ethnic cleansing.

Aid workers say the 19-month conflict in Sudan has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with many thousands at risk of famine.

Until now, the UN and other aid agencies have been using the figure of 20,000 confirmed deaths.

Because of the fighting and chaos in the country, there has been no systematic recording of the number of people killed.

In May, US special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said that some estimates suggested up to 150,000 people had been killed.

The Sudan Research Group study comes as Amnesty International said French military technology was being used in the conflict, in violation of a UN arms embargo.

On Thursday, the rights group said the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, which is battling the army, was using vehicles in Darfur supplied by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that are fitted with French hardware.

“Our research shows that weaponry designed and manufactured in France is in active use on the battlefield in Sudan,” said Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.

The BBC has asked for comment from France and the UAE, which has previously denied arming the RSF.

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The Galix defence system – made in France by companies KNDS and Lacroix – is used for land forces to help counter close-range attacks.

Amnesty said the weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious rights violations, adding that the French government must ensure the companies “immediately stop the supply of this system to the UAE”.

The rights group shared images, which it said it had verified, of destroyed vehicles on the ground that had the Galix system visible on them.

It said that the UAE and France had a long-standing partnership in the defence sector and cited a parliamentary report indicating that French companies had delivered about 2.6bn euros ($2.74bn; £2.16bn) in military equipment to the UAE between 2014 and 2023.

It said the companies had a responsibility to respect human rights and to conduct “due diligence throughout their entire value chain”.

Amnesty says that it had contacted the affected companies and the French authorities regarding the use of the defence system but had received no response.

“If France cannot guarantee through export controls, including end user certification, that arms will not be re-exported to Sudan, it should not authorise those transfers,” it said.

The UN first imposed an arms embargo in Darfur in 2004, following allegations of ethnic cleansing against the region’s non-Arabic population.

Amnesty has called for the embargo to be expanded to the rest of Sudan, and to strengthen its monitoring mechanism following the outbreak of the civil war.

Amnesty has urged all countries to stop directly and indirectly supplying arms to Sudan’s fighting factions.

The paramilitary RSF, led by general Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has been at war with Sudan’s regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023 when the two former allies took up arms against each other in a ferocious power struggle.

The RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, which it has denied, blaming local militias.

Both parties have been accused of committing war crimes, with the ongoing fighting leaving thousands dead and millions displaced.

In August, a UN-backed committee of experts declared famine conditions in parts of Darfur.

The head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said starvation was “almost everywhere” following a visit to the country a month later.

“The situation in Sudan is very alarming… the massive displacement – it’s now the largest in the world, and, of course, famine,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus then told the BBC.

The confluence of war, hunger, displacement and disease in Sudan has however been overshadowed internationally by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The Sudan Research Group research found that 90% of the deaths in Khartoum were unrecorded, pointing to a potentially similar situation in other regions.

However, Mayson Dahab, the lead researcher, said they did not have sufficient data to estimate mortality levels in other parts of the country or determine how many deaths in all could be linked to the war.

• Watch: ‘They ransacked my home and left my town in ruins’
• Women raped in war-hit Sudan die by suicide, activists say
• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war
• Starvation in war-hit Sudan ‘almost everywhere’ – WHO
• Hundreds die from cholera as war rages in Sudan

Amazon has launched a new outlet called Haul which caps the price of products on sale at $20 (£15.79), in an effort to take on low-cost retailers Temu and Shein.

The online shopping giant unveiled Haul as a mobile-only experience available in its Shopping app for US customers on Wednesday.

It says shoppers can expect “crazy low prices” on Haul products that are “worth the wait” of up to two weeks for delivery.

Amazon’s Chinese e-commerce rivals have enjoyed rapid growth in recent years but also faced criticism over the environmental impact of making and shipping ever more cheap products.

“Temu and Shein have faced backlash both for taking advantage of import loopholes and for being wasteful and environmentally irresponsible,” Forrester retail analyst Sucharita Kodali told BBC News.

“This effort seems to have the same challenges,” she said of Amazon Haul.

Haul marks the platform’s long-awaited foray into the sale cheaper goods with lengthier shipping times – a business model which has spurred the rise of Temu and Shein.

But regulators around the world are showing growing wariness about the rise of platforms selling mass produced goods for very low cost prices.

The European Commission also launched action against Temu in October over concerns that it is failing to stop the sale of illegal products.

• How Temu is shaking up the world of online shopping

Amazon has made low prices central to its offer with Haul.

As well as a maximum price of $20, it said most would cost less than $10 (£7.90).

It cited examples such as a three-piece razor set and an “elegant necklace, bracelet, and earring set” available at just under three dollars each in a press release about the launch.

Free delivery will also be available for orders of $25 or over with one to two week delivery.

“Finding great products at very low prices is important to customers, and we continue to explore ways that we can work with our selling partners so they can offer products at ultra-low prices,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services.

The company says the “beta” Haul shopping experience will see all products sold backed by its product guarantees and provide confidence about their safety.

Mr Mehta said it was still “early days” for its new shopping vertical, and customer feedback would be listened to in order to “refine and expand it in the weeks and months to come”.

The BBC has asked Amazon if, and when, the service will be launched in the UK.

Ms Kodali added the project was not without risk for Amazon.

She told the BBC there was evidence consumers were “growing tired of poor quality goods and slow shipping.”

She said if the products were underwhelming for shoppers and unprofitable for Amazon “I don’t expect Haul to be long for the world.”

Anyone But You star Sydney Sweeney has said the idea of women supporting each other in the film and TV industry is “fake”.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the actress, who’s also known for Euphoria and White Lotus, said: “This entire industry, all people say is ‘women empowering other women’.

“None of it’s happening. All of it is fake and a front for all the other [stuff] that they say behind everyone’s back.”

Earlier this year, the star hit back at “shameful” comments made about her by a female Hollywood producer who said: “She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?”

Asked about the incident for the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Sweeney said: “It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down, especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard – hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have – and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done.”

Sweeney, one of Hollywood’s biggest breakout stars of recent years, went on to discuss why this might be the case.

“I’ve read that our entire lives, we were raised – and it’s a generational problem – to believe only one woman can be at the top,” she said.

“There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything.

“So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, let’s all lift each other up.

“I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m just trying my best over here. Why am I getting attacked?”

In April, Carol Baum, who produced films including Dead Ringers and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spoke about Sweeney after a film screening.

According to Variety, Baum had said: “There’s an actress who everybody loves now – Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [Anyone But You] because I wanted to watch it.

“I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie – sorry to people who love this… romantic comedy where they hate each other.”

Baum, who also teaches at the University of Southern California, added: “I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer.”

In response, Sweeney’s representative told Variety: “How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman.”

E.coli linked to slivered onions on some McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers in America has caused 104 people to become ill, according to US health officials.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in an update on Wednesday that 34 people had been hospitalised in connection to the outbreak and that one man had died in October.

McDonald’s supplier Taylor Farms recalled the onions in October after the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced E.coli – a type of bacteria that can cause serious stomach problems – in the onions were the “likely source”.

In a statement, McDonald’s said it had now found an alternative supplier and has started selling Quarter Pounders with onions again at the affected restaurants.

According to the CDC, start dates for when people became ill range from 12 September and 21 October.

The onions were directly distributed in many western and midwestern states, including Colorado, Iowa, and Kansas. Other areas were also affected, such as Oklahoma, Idaho, and New Mexico.

Onion and environmental samples from McDonald’s stores and distribution centres have been collected by the FDA, the Colorado Department of Agriculture, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Of those who have become ill, four people developed haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) – a rare kidney condition that can damage red blood cells.

The federal agency said that tests on the samples were ongoing, adding that it had completed onsite inspections at an onion grower in the state of Washington and at a Taylor Farms processing centre in Colorado.

In the FDA’s update, health officials said it was continuing to work with the food supplier and their customers.

“At this time, there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants,” the update said.

It added that it was “unlikely” the recalled onions were “sold to grocery stores or directly to consumers”.

McDonald’s suspended sales of the Quarter Pounder burger in October in about a fifth of its US restaurants in response to the outbreak.

Some consumers have taken legal action against the firm, including a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in October.

The firm said in October it had stopped working with the supplier of the onions and had removed them from its supply chain.

The fast food giant resumed sales of the burger in all of its restaurants in America after it said samples of its beef patties, taken by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, tested negative for the bacteria.

On 29 October, McDonald’s chief executive Chris Kempczinski apologised for the outbreak, saying the firm was “sorry for what our customers experienced”.

“We offer our sincere and deepest sympathies and we are committed to making this right,” he added.

McDonald’s said in a statement that it “identified an alternate supplier” for about 900 restaurants that had “temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions”.

“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” it said.

The statement added: “Food safety is something we will never compromise on, and we remain committed to doing the right thing.”

The BBC has contacted Taylor Farms for comment.

The British Museum is to receive what is believed to be the highest-value gift ever received by a UK museum with the acquisition of £1bn worth of Chinese ceramics.

Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation, which owns the works, are to donate 1,700 pieces following a 15-year loan to the London museum.

The charitable foundation represents the late British businessman, who collected the items in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China, before his death in 1964.

The director of the British Museum, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, said it was an “incomparable private collection”.

The works have been on loan to the museum since 2009 and on show in the specially designed bilingual Room 95.

Sir Percival David was born into a wealthy family in Bombay in 1892 and inherited a baronetcy from his father, as well as ownership of the family company.

The businessman moved to London in 1914 from where he began to collect large amounts of Chinese art and books.

Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation said he had wanted his private collection to be used to inform and inspire people.

Dr Cullinan said he was “humbled by the generosity of the trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation”.

He added: “These celebrated objects add a special dimension to our own collection and together offer scholars, researchers and visitors around the world the incredible opportunity to study and enjoy the very best examples of Chinese craftsmanship anywhere in existence.”

The donation will take the number of Chinese ceramics held by the British Museum to 10,000 pieces, making it one of the most important collections of such items of any public institution outside the Chinese-speaking world.

Highlights from the foundation’s donation include the David vases from 1351, which revolutionised the dating for blue and white ceramics with their discovery.

The collection also includes a chicken cup used to serve wine for the Chenghua emperor and Ru wares made for the Northern Song dynasty court around 1086.

The chairman of The Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, Colin Sheaf, said the donation achieved Sir Percival’s three main objectives.

He said these were to: “Preserve intact his unique collection, to keep every single piece on public display together, and to ensure the collection would remain an inspiration and education for future generations.”

Arts minister Sir Chris Bryant added: “I am thrilled these world-famous Chinese ceramics will now be displayed permanently in the British Museum, where the collection will educate and enlighten future generations for many years to come.

“I am immensely grateful for this phenomenal act of generosity and very much hope it will help set a trend for others.”

After the donation is completed, pieces will be lent to the Shanghai Museum in China and Metropolitan Museum in New York as part of the British Museum’s support of exhibitions worldwide.

The final transfer of ownership to the British Museum will be subject to the Charity Commission’s consent.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has recorded his own version of rap track Get Low alongside US star T-Pain, in tribute to his wife Priscilla Chan for their “dating anniversary”.

Zuckerberg sings with the help of Auto-Tune on an acoustic guitar reworking of the filthy floor-filler, which was originally a hit for Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz in 2003.

“Get Low was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,” the Meta boss explained on his own platform Instagram.

Zuckerberg, 40, perhaps ironically described the track as a “lyrical masterpiece”, and has released his rendition under the name Z-Pain.

In response, Chan described the gesture as “so romantic”, adding: “Can’t get quite as low anymore but more in love and grateful for that love than ever.”

Zuckerberg’s post included photographs of himself and T-Pain working on the song in a recording studio.

The singer-songwriter and producer, real name Faheem Najm, noted on his own social media how “Z-Pain has arrived”.

Zuckerberg leads the vocals on the uncensored take on the hip-hop tune, with his collaborator offering ad-libs, backing vocals and a verse.

The billionaire buisnessman’s version comes three months after Lil Jon gave a surprise performance of his song at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to mark Kamala Harris becoming the party’s presidential nominee.

Zuckerberg has a history of elaborote displays of affection for his other half.

In August, he unveiled a bizarre statue of Chan, apparently made of oxidised green copper and steel, by artist Daniel Arsham.

“Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife,” he wrote at the time.

Donald Trump has moved speedily since winning the US presidential election to set the foundations of his second term in the White House.

He has made his early priorities clear – and stunned some in Washington and around the world while doing so.

Here’s what we’ve learned from his rollercoaster first week as president-elect.

Trump started building his top team almost immediately, nominating cabinet picks for Senate approval and appointing White House advisers and other senior aides.

But that doesn’t tell the full story.

His selections make clear that he plans a radical shake up of government, eschewing more conventional and experienced picks for those who are loyal to him and share his vision for a second term that will upend the status quo in Washington.

His choice for defence secretary, for example, has called for a purge of military chiefs enacting “woke” policies. His nominee for health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has said he wants to “clear out corruption” at America’s health agencies and cut “entire departments” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

And that’s not to mention a promised new department helmed by advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which Trump says will focus on slashing regulations and historic cost-cutting.

The bigger picture is that Trump’s proposed team is almost universally loyal, and favour overhauling their respective government departments.

You can take a deeper look at who’s in the frame for his top team here.

Republicans have won control of the House as well as the Senate, giving the party a crucial (albeit narrow) majority in both chambers for at least the next two years, when there will be the usual midterm elections.

This is a major boost to Trump’s agenda. It means he will be more easily able to pass legislation and gives his policy priorities a friendly path to becoming law.

The Democratic Party will, naturally, be less able to block and resist his agenda too. And Trump should for now be able to avoid the kind of congressional investigations he faced in the second half of his first term.

Ultimately, Republican control of Congress could prove key in pushing through his big pledges such as mass deportations, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports and the rolling back of environmental protections.

It won’t always be smooth sailing for Trump in Congress, however, as our correspondent Gary O’Donoghue explains here.

Trump’s influence was put to the test earlier this week when Republicans in the Senate picked their new leader.

While he did not weigh-in on the race directly, there had been a concerted effort from the president-elect’s most vocal allies as well as favourable ‘Maga’ media outlets to get hard-line Trump loyalist Rick Scott elected.

But he was defeated in the first round and Republicans opted for a more orthodox pick in John Thune, who has had a more rocky relationship with Trump.

It’s worth noting that this was a secret ballot, so it was far from a public repudiation of Trumpworld.

There will be sterner tests of Trump’s power on Capitol Hill to come, notably when confirmation hearings are held for his more divisive cabinet picks.

Some Senate Republicans, for example, have already signalled their opposition to Trump’s shock choice of Matt Gaetz to lead the justice department.

While much of the focus was on the president-elect’s nominations and appointments, we also had a reminder that his legal troubles have been upended by his victory.

In New York specifically, his criminal fraud conviction in the hush-money case lives on for at least a few more days.

But it could soon be consigned to history. Earlier this week a judge delayed his decision as to whether Trump’s conviction should be thrown out because of a Supreme Court ruling in the summer that expanded presidential immunity.

That decision is now expected to come next week. And while it’s not clear whether the conviction will be tossed out, Trump’s scheduled sentencing on 26 November is likely to be delayed regardless.

Here’s a reminder of how Trump’s election win impacts his cases.

It’s no secret that Trump views the world differently to Biden, and could drastically shift US foreign policy over the next few years.

One clear theme that’s emerged in recent days is the prominence of China hawks in his proposed team – those who believe Beijing poses a serious threat to US economic and military dominance and want to challenge this more forcefully.

And they are present from the top down.

His nomination for secretary of state – America’s most senior diplomat – Marco Rubio, has described China as the “most advanced adversary America has ever faced”.

Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, has said the US is in a “cold war” with China. Other nominees such as his proposed ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik, have directly accused China of election interference.

During Trump’s first administration, relations with Beijing were tense, and they barely warmed under Biden. With tariffs, export controls and pointed rhetoric, the president-elect appears ready to take an even tougher stance this time around.

One of the key promises President-elect Donald Trump made while campaigning for the White House was to abolish the US Department of Education.

The federal agency, established in 1979, oversees funding for public schools, administers student loans and runs programmes to help low-income students.

Trump has accused the agency of “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material”.

But in order to scrap the department, the incoming Republican president would need congressional approval – an uphill battle.

On his own, no.

Not only would Trump need congressional approval, but he would also probably need a supermajority – 60 out of 100 senators.

While Republicans have a majority in the Senate, they do not have 60 members in the upper chamber, so they would need a few Democrats to vote to abolish the agency. There’s zero chance of that.

Even in the House of Representatives, Trump would struggle to gain necessary support.

A vote last year to abolish the education department – which was attached as an amendment to another bill – failed to pass as 60 Republicans joined all Democrats in the House to vote no. So Trump’s pledge could turn out to be largely symbolic.

The Department of Education oversees student loan programmes and administers Pell grants that help low-income students attend university.

The department also helps fund programmes to support students with disabilities and for students living in poverty.

And it enforces civil rights law that prevents race or sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools.

The department’s allocation was $238bn (£188bn) in fiscal year 2024 – under 2% of the total federal budget.

The idea has been floated by Republicans for decades. During Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, he pushed for it to be dismantled.

Republicans have accused the education department of pushing what they describe as “woke” political ideology on to children, including on gender and race. They want the agency’s authority handed to the US states, which run most education matters.

Conservatives also argue that other education department functions, such as administering loans, should be handled instead by the US Department of Treasury, and that civil rights infractions are the Department of Justice’s domain.

Trump’s allies also want to expand school choice, which would allow students and families to select alternatives to public schools.

Decades of caste discrimination have contributed to India having higher levels of child stunting rates than across Sub-Saharan Africa, new research has revealed.

The two regions together are home to 44% of the world’s under-five population but account for about 70% of stunted children globally – a key indicator of malnutrition.

But, while both have made significant strides in recent years, India’s rate stands at 35.7%, with the average across Sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 countries at 33.6%.

A child is considered stunted when they fall short of the expected height for their age – a clear sign of critical nutritional gaps.

However, the study by Ashwini Deshpande (Ashoka University) and Rajesh Ramachandran (Monash University, Malaysia) found that focusing only on the height gap – or why Indian children are shorter than children in Sub-Saharan Africa – overlooks an important factor: the crucial role of social identity, especially caste, in child malnutrition in India.

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, often called the “golden period”, are pivotal: by age two, 80% of the brain develops, laying the foundation for lifelong potential. In these early years, access to healthcare, good nutrition, early learning, and a safe environment profoundly shapes a child’s future.

India and Sub-Saharan Africa, both with rapidly growing middle classes, young populations and significant workforce potential, share longstanding comparisons. In 2021, the World Bank reported, “Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia [including India] account for over 85% of the global poor,” underscoring similar challenges in poverty and development.

Using official data, the authors looked at the most recent estimates of the stunting gaps between India and a sample of 19 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Official data shows that more than 35% of India’s 137 million children under five are stunted, with over a third also underweight. Globally, 22% of children under five are stunted.

Then they examined six broad socially disadvantaged groups in India. Among them are adivasis (tribespeople living in remote areas) and Dalits (formerly known as untouchables), who alone comprise more than a third of the under-five population.

The economists found that children from higher-ranked, non-stigmatised caste groups in India stood at 27% – markedly lower than the Sub-Saharan African rate.

They also found that children from higher-ranking caste groups in India are some 20% less likely to experience stunting compared with those from marginalised groups, who occupy the lowest tiers of the caste hierarchy.

This conclusion remains significant even after accounting for factors like birth order, sanitation practices, maternal height, sibling count, education, anaemia and household socio-economic status.

This difference is despite seven decades of affirmative action, India’s caste system – a four-fold hierarchy of the Hindu religion – remains deeply entrenched.

“This should not be surprising given that children from better-off groups in India have access to more calories and face a better disease environment,” the authors say.

The reasons behind high stunting rates among Indian children have sparked a complex debate over the years.

Some economists have argued that the differences are genetic – that Indian children are genetically disposed to lower heights.

Others believe that improved nutrition over generations has historically closed height gaps thought to be genetic.

Some studies have found that girls fare worse than boys and others just the opposite, using different global standards.

To be sure, stunting has decreased across social groups – a separate 2022 study found that improvements in health and nutrition interventions, household living conditions and maternal factors led to reduction in stunting in four Indian states. (More than half of India’s under-five children were stunted, according to a federal family health survey of 1992-93).

Children from marginalised groups like adivasis are likely to be more malnourished.

In Africa, the rate of stunting has also fallen since 2010, although the absolute number increased.

But what is clear is that children from poor families, with less-educated mothers, or from marginalised groups, are especially vulnerable to stunting in India.

“The debate on the height gap between Indian and Sub-Saharan African children has resulted in overlooking the role of social identity, especially caste status,” the authors say.

“This is a crucial dimension to understanding the burden of child nutrition in India.”

A Chinese influencer, with a huge global following and the approval of the Communist Party, has returned to the internet after a three-year hiatus.

Famous for idyllic videos of life with her grandmother in a village in Sichuan province, the 34-year-old has released three videos since Tuesday – and they have millions of views already.

Li first rose to fame in 2016 when China’s fast-growing social media users found comfort in her slow-paced videos about cooking and traditional handicraft.

Her return, welcomed by fans around the world, comes amid a government crackdown on influencers whose content they deem “inappropriate”.

Li’s hiatus followed a dispute with the agency that managed her accounts. In late 2021, she filed a lawsuit against the company over rights to her brand and stopped uploading new videos. They settled in 2022, but Li didn’t return to the internet until Tuesday.

In recent months, several influencers disappeared from Chinese internet as officials stepped up efforts to “rectify” online culture by targeting those accused of tax evasion, spreading disinformation and flaunting wealth.

But Li is among those who has survived official censure. Her huge following on YouTube and TikTok, which are banned in China, has led to questions about whether her videos are akin to soft propoganda.

She certainly appears to have the approval of the Party. State-run Xinhua news agency released an interview with her the day after her return. It’s rare for state media to interview influencers.

In the interview, Li said she had spent the past three years “catching up on sleep” and taking her grandmother to see the “outside world”. Now she has “a higher goal”, she added, and would “try her best”.

Li has always been a darling of state media. Xinhua called her the “vlogger who amazes the world with China’s countryside life” and China Daily praised her for “spreading Chinese culture to the world”.

For Beijing, Li’s rose-tinted videos encourage tourism and echo President Xi Jinping’s call for a Chinese culture renaissance. A Chinese soup noodle dish known for its distinctive smell became a hit after it was featured in a video.

Her videos also offer a distraction from the realities of rural China, which is poorer and older than the country’s bustling cities.

Li shot to fame internationally during the pandemic, when China’s relationship with the West began to sour. Locked in their homes, millions of people abroad were fascinated with her videos. China’s lockdowns, while harsh and sweeping, were largely enforced in the cities.

As Li’s brand thrived, she began selling food and sauces under her name on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao. In 2020, local media reported that sales of her products exceeded 1.6bn yuan ($220m; £172m).

By 2021 then she had become the most popular Chinese-language vlogger on YouTube, where she has more than 20 million followers. Another three million follow her on TikTok.

On Tuesday, she announced her return with a 14-minute video on all her social media accounts – including Chinese platforms Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, as well as YouTube and TikTok.

The video, which shows her making a wardrobe for her grandmother using the traditional lacquering technique, has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube and more than three million times on TikTok.

“I missed you very much,” she told her fans in a post.

And they felt the same: “When the world needed her [the] most, she returned. Welcome back,” a top-liked YouTube comment reads.

Another comment liked more than 13,000 times on Weibo says: “We need the slow-paced Li Ziqi in this age of information explosion.”

“Did anyone else literally cry happy tears?,” says another comment. “I’m so glad to see her gran doing so well! So happy to see you back.”

New Zealand’s parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka, amid anger over a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with Māori people.

Opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke began the traditional ceremonial group dance after being asked whether her party supported the bill, which faced its first vote on Thursday.

At the same time, a hīkoi – or peaceful protest march – organised by a Māori rights group is continuing to make its way towards the capital, Wellington.

Thousands have already joined the 10-day march against the bill, which reached Auckland on Wednesday, having begun in the far north of New Zealand on Monday.

The country is often considered a leader in indigenous rights, but opponents of the bill fear those same rights are being put at risk by this bill.

Act, the political party that introduced the bill, argues there is a need to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which has been fundamental to race relations in New Zealand.

The core values of the treaty have, over time, been woven into New Zealand’s laws in an effort to redress the wrong done to Māori during colonisation.

But Act – a minor party in the ruling centre-right coalition – say this has resulted in the country being divided by race, and the bill will allow the treaty to be interpreted more fairly through parliament, rather than the courts. The party’s leader, David Seymour, has dismissed opponents as wanting to “stir up” fear and division.

Critics, however, say the legislation will divide the country and lead to the unravelling of much-needed support for many Māori.

The first reading passed on Thursday after a 30-minute break, backed by all parties from the ruling coalition. Maipi-Clarke was suspended from the house.

It is unlikely to pass a second reading, as Act’s coalition partners have indicated they will not support it.

But this has not placated those worried about the bill, and its impact, with the hikoi still making progress along its 1,000km (621-mile) route.

In Auckland, it took an estimated 5,000 marchers two hours to cross the harbour bridge. Officials had closed two lanes, the New Zealand Herald reported, to allow them to continue along the route.

Danielle Moreau, who is Māori, walked over the Harbour Bridge with her two sons, Bobby and Teddy, and told the BBC she “was hoping it [the hīkoi] would be big but it was much more epic than I expected”.

“I marched to make the point that Te Tiriti [the Treaty of Waitangi] is very important to our national identity,” said Winston Pond, who also took part in the march on Wednesday.

“We are a multi-cultural society built on a bicultural base – something that cannot be altered.”

Juliet Tainui-Hernández, from the Māori tribe Ngāi Tahu, and her Puerto Rican partner Javier Hernández, brought their daughter Paloma to the hīkoi.

Ms Tainui-Hernández said those who turned out in support did so “for the respectful and inclusive nation we want Aotearoa [New Zealand] to be for our tamariki mokopuna – our children and grandchildren”.

Kiriana O’Connell, who is also Māori, said that the current treaty principles were already a compromise for her people, and she would not support a “rewrite”.

Under the proposed legislation, the treaty principles that would be defined in law are:

• that the government has a right to govern and that parliament has the full right to make laws
• that the rights of Māori are respected by the Crown
• that everyone is equal before the law and is entitled to equal protection under it.

Act leader Seymour – who is also New Zealand’s associate justice minister – argues that because the principles have never been properly defined legally, the courts “have been able to develop principles that have been used to justify actions that are contrary to the principle of equal rights”.

He says these include “ethnic quotas in public institutions” that go against the spirit of fairness for all New Zealanders.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, however, has called the bill “divisive” – despite being part of the same coalition.

Meanwhile, the Waitangi Tribunal, which was set up in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, notes the bill “purposefully excluded any consultation with Māori, breaching the principle of partnership, the Crown’s good-faith obligations, and the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori rights and interests”.

It also said that the principles of the bill misinterpreted the Treaty of Waitangi and that this “caused significant prejudice to Māori”.

The tabling of the Treaty Principles Bill comes following a series of measures introduced by the government that have affected Māori.

They include the closure of the Māori Health Authority, which was set up under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government to help create health equity, and reprioritising English over Māori when it comes to the official naming of government organisations, for example.

While roughly 18% of New Zealand’s population consider themselves to be Māori, according to the most recent census, many remain disadvantaged compared with the general population when assessed through markers such as health outcomes, household income, education levels and incarceration and mortality rates. There remains a seven-year gap in life expectancy.

The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between the British and many, but not all, Māori tribes, which was signed in 1840.

It is contentious as it was written in both English and Māori – which had only been a spoken language until colonisation – and the two versions contain fundamental differences when it comes to issues such as sovereignty.

While the treaty itself is not enshrined in law, its principles have been adopted over time into various pieces of legislation.

The bill will now be sent to a select committee for a six-month public hearing process.

The United Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.

In a letter to the UN, senior figures say countries should not host the talks if they don’t support the phase out of fossil energy.

This week the Azerbaijani president told world leaders gathered in his country for COP29 that natural gas was a “gift from God” and he shouldn’t be blamed for bringing it to market.

That came days after the BBC reported that a senior Azerbaijani official appeared to have used his role at COP to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.

The UN’s climate talks have made significant progress in recent years, despite the fact that unanimous agreement is needed among almost 200 countries to take action.

The Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015, outlines a long-term plan to rein in rising temperatures, as countries strive to keep that rise under 1.5C this century.

They have also agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, and to treble renewable power by 2030.

But while the authors of this letter recognise these achievements, they feel that the slow-moving COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” in dealing with a fast-moving climate crisis.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity,” said its signatories. They include former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.

This year will likely be the warmest on record, with emissions of planet warming gases still rising, while the impacts of warming often outpace the ability of countries to cope.

“Planet Earth is in critical condition,” said leading climate scientist Johan Rockström, another signatory.

“There is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale,” Prof Rockström said.

The letter has been prompted by growing concerns about some of the countries chosen to host COP talks and their ability to deliver a significant advance in the fight against rising temperatures.

Just before the latest conference started, a secret recording showed the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

At the start of COP29, the country’s authoritarian leader, Ilham Aliyev, defended Azerbaijan’s current exports of gas and plans to expand production by a third in the next decade.

“It’s a gift of God,” he told an audience in Baku.

“Every natural resource whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources,” he said.

“And countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them, the people need them.”

The use of oil and gas are major causes of global warming, as they release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide when they are burned.

President Aliyev also hit out at France for carrying out colonialist “crimes” and “human rights violations” in overseas territories.

Such strongly expressed views are extremely rare from the leader of a COP host, where the aim is to build consensus on how to tackle rising temperatures.

The authors of the letter are also concerned by the selection process for hosting COPs. Azerbaijan followed on from another major oil producer, the United Arab Emirates, which held the conference in Dubai last year.

“At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations,” said former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

“We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”

The authors say that host countries “must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement.”

They also want smaller, more frequent COPs with clear accountability for the promises that countries make.

An estimated 4,000 illegal gold miners are hiding underground in South Africa after the government cut off food and water in an effort to “smoke them out” and arrest them.

The miners have been in a mineshaft in Stilfontein, in the North West province, for about a month.

They have refused to cooperate with authorities as some are undocumented – coming from neighbouring countries like Lesotho and Mozambique – and fear being deported.

Illegal miners are called “zama zama” (“take a chance” in Zulu) and operate in abandoned mines in the mineral-rich country. Illegal mining costs the South African government hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales each year.

Many South African mines have closed down in recent years and workers have been sacked.

To survive, the miners and undocumented migrants go beneath the surface to escape poverty and dig up gold to sell it on the black market.

Some spend months underground – there is even a small economy of people selling food, cigarettes and cooked meals to the miners.

• WATCH: The dangerous world of illegal mining in South Africa
• South African miner feared for his life during ‘hostage situation’

Local residents have pleaded with the authorities to assist the miners, but they have refused.

“We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. We are not sending help to criminals. Criminals are not to be helped – they are to be persecuted [sic],” said Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni on Wednesday.

Police are hesitant to go into the mine as some of those underground may be armed.

Some are part of criminal syndicates or “recruited” to be in one, Busi Thabane, from Benchmarks Foundation, a charity which monitors corporations in South Africa, told the BBC’s NewsDay programme.

Without any access to supplies, conditions underground are said to be dire.

“It is no longer about illegal miners – this is a humanitarian crisis,” said Ms Thabane.

On Thursday, community leader Thembile Botman told the BBC that volunteers had used ropes and seat belts to pull a body out of the mine.

“The stench of decomposing bodies has left the volunteers traumatised,” he said.

It’s not clear how the person died.

Although the authorities have been blocking food and water, they have temporarily allowed local residents to send some supplies down by rope.

Mr Botman said they had been communicating with the miners by notes written on pieces of paper.

Police have blocked off entrances and exits in an effort to compel the miners to come out.

This is part of the Vala Umgodi, or “Close the Hole”, operation to curb illegal mining.

Five miners were pulled out on Wednesday by rope, but they were frail and weak. Paramedics attended to them, and then they were taken into police custody.

In the last week, 1,000 miners have emerged and been arrested.

Police and the army are still at the scene waiting to detain those who are not in need of medical care after resurfacing.

“It’s not as easy as the police make it seem – some of them are fearing for their lives,” said Ms Thabane.

Many miners spend months underground in unsafe conditions to provide for their families.

“For many of them it’s the only way they know how to put food on the table,” said Ms Thabane.

Local residents have also attempted to convince the miners to come out of the mineshaft.

“Those people must come out because we have brothers there, we have sons there, the fathers of our kids are there, our children are struggling,” local resident Emily Photsoa told AFP.

The South African Human Rights Commission says it will investigate the police for depriving the miners of food and water.

It said there is concern that the government’s operation could have an impact on the right to life.

Minister Ntshavheni’s remarks have provoked mixed reaction from South Africans, with some praising the government’s unyielding approach.

“I love this. Finally, our government is not tiptoeing on these serious matters. Decisiveness will help this country,” one person wrote on X.

While others felt the stance was inhumane.

“In my view, this kind of talk from the Minister in the Presidency is disgraceful and dangerous hate speech,” one user said.

Another wrote: “They are criminals but they have rights too.”

Illegal mining is a lucrative business across many of South Africa’s mining towns.

Since December last year, nearly 400 high-calibre firearms, thousands of bullets, uncut diamonds and money have been confiscated from illegal miners.

This is part of an intensive police and military operation to stop the practice that has severe environmental implications.

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One of Mohamed Al Fayed’s brothers also abused women who worked at the Harrods department store, according to three ex-employees who have made allegations including sexual assault and trafficking to the BBC.

The women allege that Salah Fayed abused them in London, the south of France and Monaco between 1989 and 1997. One woman believes she was raped by Salah after she was drugged.

All three women say they were also sexually assaulted or raped by Mohamed Al Fayed, then chairman of the company.

Harrods, which came under new ownership in 2010, said in a statement that the new claims point to the “breadth of abuse” by Al Fayed and “raise serious allegations” against his brother.

Salah Fayed, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2010, was one of three Fayed brothers who purchased the luxury Knightsbridge department store in 1985. Mohamed added the Arabic “Al” prefix to his surname some time in the 1970s.

One of the three women, Helen, has waived her right to anonymity. She was 23 and had been working at her “dream” job in Harrods for almost two years when Mohamed Al Fayed raped her in a Dubai hotel room.

Months later, when Mohamed offered her some personal assistant work with his younger brother, she saw it as an escape route – but instead she says she was drugged by Salah and believes she was then raped by him while unconscious.

“He [Mohamed Al Fayed] shared me with his brother,” she says.

Helen is speaking for the first time, after feeling silenced for 35 years, in part because of a Harrods non-disclosure agreement that she was told to sign.

“They’ve stolen a part of me,” she says. “It’s changed the course of my entire life.”

The BBC has also spoken independently to two other women who say they were abused by both Mohamed and Salah.

They say they were trafficked abroad and tricked by Salah into smoking crack cocaine.

“He was trying to get me hooked on crack so he could do whatever he wanted to me,” one of the women told the BBC.

Like many of the women who have told the BBC they were abused by Mohamed Al Fayed, Helen says she was spotted by him on one of his routine walks of the Harrods shop floor.

On a business trip to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in February 1989, she was unnerved to find she had been booked to travel alone with Al Fayed and to stay in his hotel suite, while the rest of his entourage were staying in a separate accommodation.

On the first evening, Helen was in her bathroom getting ready for bed when Mohamed Al Fayed appeared in the mirror behind her without warning.

“It was like out of a horror film,” Helen says. “I was in my nightie and he grabbed my hand, started pulling me out the bathroom. I was really trying to stop him, but I couldn’t.”

She says he took her into his room, pushed her onto the bed and climbed on top of her.

“He raped me that night,” she says.

Helen says she was terrified to find herself so far from home and unable to talk to anyone about what had happened.

She was told to sign a Harrods non-disclosure agreement two months after the trip – the BBC has seen this document. Helen says this, and the fear of reprisal, stopped her from speaking out for more than three decades.

Over the next few months, Helen began making plans to leave Harrods. “I didn’t want to see his face again,” she says.

So when Al Fayed asked her to do some filing work for his brother, Salah, at his Park Lane home, she saw it as a way out.

“I’d met Salah and he seemed really friendly, he didn’t seem in the slightest bit like his brother.”

After working for two days with Salah, Helen recalls him offering her a glass of champagne to thank her.

“Within a few sips I was starting to feel a bit groggy, but I can’t describe it as drunk. It was a really dizzy and weird feeling. I wasn’t feeling right.”

Salah began playing music and Helen felt “it was definitely time to go, he was getting too cozy”.

Helen says Salah pressured her to “just have one puff” of a bong containing crack cocaine. “This will make you feel better,” she remembers him telling her. “That’s the last thing I knew of that whole evening,” she says.

She recalls waking up lying on a settee in a completely different room, with double vision and her whole body shaking. Salah was sitting at her feet holding a glass of water and a tablet, looking “nervous and panicky”, she says.

• Watch the documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods
• Listen to the World of Secrets podcast on Al Fayed

As she got up, she noticed her jeans’ button was undone and her belt was missing.

Helen recalls feeling a sensation between her legs and discovering semen. “It wasn’t just in one place, it was in another.”

She adds: “I knew then what had happened. I knew.”

Helen says Salah Fayed then made a call to his brother, Mohamed, in front of her to let him know she would not be going to work at Harrods that day. Their conversation was in Arabic, and Helen says all she could hear “was them laughing to each other”.

Because she was still feeling the effects of the drugs, Helen says she needed help walking back to her own apartment. As Salah was walking her home, he suggested they make a stop to visit a friend.

The first thing Salah’s friend said to her, she recalls, was: “Hi Helen, how are you this morning?”

She says she did not know the man and when she looked at Salah quizzically, she says he told her: “He saw you last night.”

Helen decided to leave. “I just needed to be on my own. As I shut the door, I could hear those two men laughing.”

Helen now believes that Salah’s friend also raped her that night while she was unconscious and feels sure that she was raped vaginally and anally.

“That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say,” says Helen.

Shortly after, Helen resigned from Harrods.

Two other women working at Harrods say they believe the way they were brought to Monaco and the south of France to be abused by Salah would now be considered trafficking, because they were lured with deceptive offers of work and sexually exploited.

Rachael was 23 and working at Mohamed Al Fayed’s private office in 1994, when she was rung by the Harrods human resources team and offered a position as personal assistant to Salah.

On starting the job, Rachael says she was not given any personal assistant work to do and instead felt like a “companion”, attending dinners and “getting to know him”.

One night in Monaco, Rachael says she woke up “petrified” to find Salah getting into her bed. She lay awake frozen in fear all night and in the morning he left.

During her time working as his personal assistant, Rachael recalls being introduced to older men by Salah who she says “sexually propositioned” her. She now wonders: “Was I there to be passed around?”

She says Salah encouraged her to smoke “hubbly bubbly” – a hookah pipe used to smoke flavoured tobacco – but she later discover it contained crack cocaine.

Rachael says she felt his goal was to get her addicted to make it easier to abuse her.

If you’ve been affected by issues involving sexual abuse and violence, information and support is available at BBC Action Line.

She had been told that if the role with Salah did not suit her, she could return to Harrods. She went back, but Rachael says 18 months later she was lured to Mohamed Al Fayed’s Park Lane home where he sexually assaulted her.

A third woman, who we are calling Rebecca, says she was also sexually assaulted by Mohamed Al Fayed in Park Lane. It was 1997 and she was aged 19, working at Harrods.

She was later asked by him to go to Monaco to work as a personal assistant for his younger brother, Salah, but on her arrival, she found there was very little work to do.

In Monaco, she recalls, Salah put her on the phone to his brother, Mohamed, who she says asked: “Is my brother looking after you?” He ended the call by telling her to “just have fun”.

She remembers experiencing a “really uncomfortable feeling” in her stomach at that moment. “It’s like the penny was dropping, the expectation is that you’re there for a job, and actually you’re just there as a potential piece of meat.”

Rebecca says she was pressured to sit with Salah in a hot tub in his Monaco apartment where he sexually assaulted her.

She also told the BBC he had encouraged her to smoke what he told her was “tree resin” from a homemade bong. In fact, it was crack cocaine.

Harrods said: “We encourage these survivors to come forward and make their claims to the Harrods scheme, where they can apply for compensation, as well as support from a counselling perspective and through an independent survivor advocate.”

It said it hoped they are also looking at “every appropriate avenue to them in their pursuit of justice”, including the police “or the Fayed family and estate”.

In her final days at Harrods, Helen remembers a new girl starting who seemed “so young and naive”, like she once had been. Finishing a shift together away from the office, Helen says she confided in her and warned her about Mohamed Al Fayed.

Looking back, she says she is pleased she did what she could to try to dissuade her from staying.

“I told her he’d be trying to have sex with her, he’d be touching her, putting her under pressure. I did tell her that I’d been raped by him. She looked horrified but I don’t know to this day whether she stayed or left.”

Before she left, Helen says she was given cash which, at the time, she thought was a normal severance procedure – now she thinks it was to keep her quiet.

She says what she thought would be her dream job ended up leaving her with lifelong trauma.

“It’s taken 35 years to speak, that’s how frightened I’ve been of speaking,” she says. “I want to stand up for victims of abuse, whether corporate or domestic, to let them know that they can speak up too.”

• If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email MAFinvestigation@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts.

Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year in the case involving the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange being hacked in 2016 and the theft of almost 120,000 bitcoin.

He laundered the stolen cryptocurrency with the help of his wife Heather Morgan, who used the alias Razzlekhan to promote her hip hop music.

At the time of the theft, the bitcoin was worth around $70m (£55.3m), but had risen in value to more than $4.5bn by the time of they were arrested.

The $3.6bn worth of assets recovered in the case was the biggest financial seizure in the DOJ’s history, deputy attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time.

“It’s important to send a message that you can’t commit these crimes with impunity, that there are consequences to them,” district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said.

Lichtenstein, who has been in prison since his arrest in February 2022, expressed remorse for his actions.

He also said that he hopes to apply his skills to fight cybercrime after serving his sentence.

Morgan also pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. She is due to be sentenced on 18 November.

According court documents, Lichtenstein used advanced hacking tools and techniques to hack into Bitfinex.

Following the hack, he enlisted Morgan’s help to launder the stolen funds.

They “employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques”, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement.

The methods included using fictitious identities, switching the funds into different cryptocurrencies and buying gold coins.

Lichtenstein, who was born in Russia but grew up in the US, would then meet couriers while on family trips and move the laundered money back home, prosecutors said.

Morgan’s Razzlekhan persona went viral on social media when the case emerged.

Even as the couple attempted to cover up the hack, she published dozens of expletive-filled music videos and rap songs filmed in locations around New York.

In her lyrics she called herself a “bad-ass money maker” and “the crocodile of Wall Street”.

In articles published in Forbes magazine, Morgan also claimed to be a successful technology businesswoman, calling herself an “economist, serial entrepreneur, software investor and rapper”.

Conor McGregor has admitted taking cocaine on the night it is alleged he raped a Dublin woman.

In court on Thursday, the Irish mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter replied “correct” when John Gordon SC stated he had cocaine in his car along with the alleged victim and another witness.

The court also heard Mr McGregor answered “no comment” to over 100 questions in his first police interview and said he did so under advice of his lawyer because he was in a state of “shock and fear”.

Dublin woman Nikita Hand has accused the sportsman of rape after a Christmas night out in December 2018. He denies all allegations.

The trial is a civil case in Dublin High Court after the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland refused to charge Mr McGregor criminally.

The interview, held in January 2019, saw Mr McGregor attend Dundrum Garda Station attend an interview with his solicitor and handed over a prepared written statement.

After this, Mr McGregor said “no comment” to such questions as if he and Nikita Hand were from the same area of Crumlin in Dublin.

The judge reminded the eight women and four men of the jury that no inference can be made by Mr McGregor’s refusal to comment. It is his legal right.

Mr McGregor said the statement was “to the point” when it was put to him it was “short”.

“I would have loved to go to a top of the mountain with a microphone and shout from the hilltops but because of the seriousness of the allegation I went to my lawyer and I took their advice,” he said.

Mr McGregor also said he had been “beyond petrified” during the garda interview, because it was the first time anything like that had happened to him.

“I feel I was as good, as cooperative, I took their advice, I put myself in their hands, this is alien to me, it’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me in my life.”

Later Mr McGregor added: “These allegations are false, I’m here to say my piece and my truth, these allegations are lies, they’re false.”

Mr McGregor claims Nikita Hand had consensual sex with him twice. He also claimed in court that Hand had sex with his associate and co-defendant James Lawrence. Nikita Hand says she never had sex with Mr Lawrence.

Mr McGregor said he had one of his staff book the Beacon Hotel

John Gordon SC representing Ms Hand later brought up evidence from Ms Hand’s gynaecological assessments.

Forceps were used to remove a tampon which had become wedged inside Ms Hand’s vagina.

Mr McGregor claims Ms Hand was not wearing a tampon while she had sex with him. When asked how he thought it got there, Mr McGregor said: “Not with me”.

Mr McGregor was also asked if he had paid Mr Lawrence’s legal fees.

“I believe I did,” he said.

Later, when asked under cross-examination whether Ms Hand had been in fear, Mr McGregor said there had been “no sign of distress, fear, anything other than enjoyment, elations and excitement”.

Ms Hand, a former hair colourist from Dublin, is seeking financial damages including loss of earnings for the distress she suffered as a result of the alleged sex attacks.

Giving evidence during earlier hearings, she claimed Mr McGregor placed her in a choke hold and choked her three times before raping her.

A paramedic who examined Ms Hand on the day after the alleged attacks told the court on Tuesday that she had not seen such bruising on a patient in a long time.

Mr McGregor’s co-defendant, Mr Lawrence took the stand on Thursday afternoon.

He claimed he had consensual sex with Ms Hand twice in the hotel room when Mr McGregor left the hotel.

Mr Lawrence said Ms Hand was flirtatious and initiated the sex.

He added that she was only upset in the room about one small bruise and what she was going to tell her boyfriend about it.

Ms Hand previously told the court she has no memory of ever having sex with Mr Lawrence, but remembered telling him that she had been raped by the MMA fighter and became distressed.

Her claim is that Mr Lawrence was shocked at her allegations and sought to comfort her at the time.

When asked if he was the “fall guy” for Mr McGregor, Mr Lawrence said “not in a million years”.

He added he has six sisters and nieces and would not defend such actions if they had occurred.

In a Republic of Ireland civil action – as opposed to a criminal case – neither the complainant nor the accused are entitled to automatic anonymity during the court proceedings.