Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pledged to work with incoming President Donald Trump in his final meeting with current US leader Joe Biden.

The two met on Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Peru where they acknowledged “ups and downs” in relations over Biden’s four years in office.

But both highlighted progress in lowering tensions on issues such as trade and Taiwan.

Analysts say US-China relations could become more volatile when Trump returns to office in two months, driven by factors including a promise to raise tariffs on Chinese imports.

The president-elect has pledged 60% tariffs on all imports from China. He has also appointed prominent China hawks to top foreign and defence positions.

During his first term, Trump labelled China a “strategic competitor”. Relations worsened when the former president labelled Covid a “Chinese virus” during the pandemic.

Speaking on Saturday at the meeting held at his hotel in Lima, the Chinese president said Beijing’s goal of a stable relationship with Washington would remain unchanged.

“China is ready to work with the new US administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences,” Xi said.

Biden said strategic competition between the two global powers should not escalate into war.

“Our two countries cannot let any of this competition veer into conflict. That is our responsibility and over the last four years I think we’ve proven it’s possible to have this relationship,” he said.

Biden’s time in office did see flare-ups in relations with China, including a spy balloon saga and displays of Chinese military firepower around Taiwan triggered by the visit of a senior US official.

China says its claim to the self-ruling island is a red line.

However, the Biden administration aimed to “responsibly manage” rivalry with Beijing after Trump’s first term.

Beijing is likely to be most concerned about the president-elect’s unpredictability, analysts say.

“The Chinese are ready to negotiate and deal, and probably hope for early engagement with the Trump team to discuss potential transactions,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program.

“At the same time, however, they are ready to retaliate if Trump insists on imposing higher tariffs on China.”

She added that China may also be “likely worried that that they lack reliable back channels to influence Trump’s policy”.

Biden on Saturday acknowledged there had always been disagreements with Xi but added that discussions between him and the Chinese leader had been “frank” and “candid”.

The pair held three face-to-face meetings during Biden’s time in the White House, including a key summit last year in San Francisco where both sides came to agreements on combatting narcotics and climate change.

But Biden’s White House also continued Trump-era tariffs. His government imposed duties in May targeting China’s electric cars, solar panels and steels.

He also strengthened defence alliances across Asia and the Pacific to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the region. The outgoing president has also said the US would defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president.

Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation after his victory in the US presidential election.

He did not say whether Trump had made any demands regarding possible talks with Russia, but said he’d not heard anything from him that was contrary to Ukraine’s position.

Trump has consistently said his priority is to end the war – which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – and what he describes as a drain on US resources in the form of military aid to Kyiv.

Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives approved a $61bn (£49bn) military aid package.

The US has been the greatest supplier of arms to Ukraine. Between the start of the war and the end of June 2024, it delivered or committed to send weapons and equipment worth $55.5bn (£41.5bn), according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organisation.

But domestically, support for arming Ukraine appears to have waned somewhat since the war began – particularly among Republican voters, who Trump successfully courted.

During the US election campaign, the former president turned president-elect repeatedly pledged to end the war “in a day” – but has yet to divulge how he intends to do so.

• What Trump’s win means for Ukraine
• Zelensky gives ‘victory plan’ a hard sell in the US – did it fall flat?
• Ukraine war in maps

“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” Zelensky said in an interview with the Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne.

He added that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means”, with Russian forces making advances on the battlefield.

The front lines of the war have largely stagnated since Ukraine’s much-anticipated counter-offensive in 2023 failed to make the sweeping territorial gains it had aimed to.

Russian forces occupy entrenched positions in the east and south-east of the country, with fighting predominantly taking place in the eastern Donbas region.

On Friday, Russian forces made incremental advances along the eastern front line, with significant fighting taking place around the north-eastern city of Kupyansk and Vuhledar in the south-east, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington DC-based think tank.

Russian infantry also continued a “limited” offensive into the north-eastern Kharkiv region from the Russian border, the ISW said, citing Ukrainian military sources in the region.

In an apparent bid to stem the Russian advances, Ukrainian forces launched a break-out offensive into Russia’s Kursk region over the summer – becoming the first to occupy Russian territory since World War Two.

Zelensky has said the operation’s goal was to divert Russian troops away from the front lines in Ukraine, though it is unclear whether it has achieved this. Russia has been able to draw on hundreds of thousands of conscripts to bolster its ranks, while Ukraine’s much smaller army has relied on advanced Western-supplied weaponry.

But analysts say the territory Ukraine holds in Kursk may serve as a bargaining chip in any peace talks. Zelensky’s “victory plan”, revealed last month, said the offensive would continue to avoid the creation of “buffer zones” within Ukraine.

The renewed emphasis on a diplomatic solution comes amid concerns about growing fatigue over the war, both within Ukraine and abroad.

However, what such a solution may look like remains unclear – Zelensky has continually refused to cede any Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014.

Trump and Zelensky have long had a tumultuous relationship. Trump was impeached in 2019 over accusations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information on the family of US President Joe Biden.

Despite years of differences, Trump has insisted he had a very good relationship with Zelensky.

When the pair met in New York in September, Trump said he “learned a lot” from the meeting and said he would get the war “resolved very quickly”.

His Democratic opponents have accused him of cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to the war amounts to surrender for Ukraine that will endanger all of Europe.

Earlier this week, Russia denied reports that a call between Putin and Trump took place days after the latter’s election win, in which the president-elect is said to have warned against escalating the conflict further.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who spoke with Trump following the US election, told German media that the incoming US leader had a “more nuanced” position on the war than was commonly assumed.

The German leader was criticised by Zelensky over a phone call with Putin – the first in nearly two years – on Friday. Despite Scholz’s office saying he reiterated his call to end the war, Zelensky said it weakened the Russian leader’s isolation.

A potentially catastrophic super typhoon has made landfall in the Philippines – the sixth typhoon to hit the country in a month.

Man-Yi, known locally as Pepito, touched down at 21:40 local time (13:40 GMT) with maximum sustained wind speeds of 195 km/h (121mph) along the coast of the eastern Catanduanes island, the state forecaster said.

It has warned of a “life-threatening storm surge”, heavy rains and severe winds, and hundreds of thousands of people had been evacuated ahead of the storm’s arrival.

At least 160 people are known to have died in the five previous earlier storms.

Super Typhoon Man-Yi is expected to impact a large area, BBC Weather reports.

There will be widespread heavy rain in northern areas, with more than 300mm (11 inches) expected to fall on Saturday and Sunday – leading to potential flooding and increasing the risk of mudslides.

Winds of up to 270km/h are also expected, as are waves of up to 15m (49ft) in eastern coastal areas.

The capital, Manila, may be spared the worst of the winds as the storm tracks to its north, before crossing the island of Luzon – the largest and most populous island in the Philippines – and heading offshore by Monday.

Dozens of flights have been cancelled due to the incoming storm, according to local broadcaster ABS-CBN News.

More than 400,000 people heeded evacuation orders ahead of the storm, civil defence said. Its head, Ariel Nepomuceno, has urged everyone living in the storm’s projected path to comply these orders.

“It is more dangerous now for those in landslide-prone areas because the ground has been saturated by the consecutive typhoons,” Mr Nepomuceno said.

Glenda Llamas is among those who have had to leave their homes.

“We are terrified of the typhoon, as it may intensify and the waters can rise,” she told the AFP news agency from a shelter in the eastern Albay province.

“If we didn’t evacuate we wouldn’t be able to get out later, we don’t have anyone else in the house but us.”

“We already have a lot of phobia due to the previous calamities that happened here like floods, strong winds and other disasters,” said Melchor Bilay, who was evacuated to a school further south, in Sorsogon province.

While typhoons are not uncommon in the Philippines, forecasters say it is unusual to see so many tropical storms in the Pacific at the same time during the month of November.

Tropical Storm Trami dumped one month’s worth of rain over large swathes of the northern Philippines in late October, leaving dozens of people dead.

This was followed by Typhoon Kong-rey, in which at least three people were killed. It was also the biggest typhoon to directly hit Taiwan in nearly 30 years.

Typhoon Yinxing affected the north of the island of Luzon earlier this month, where it brought nearly 250mm (10in) of rain in some areas.

There has since been Typhoon Toraji and, earlier this week, Typhoon Usagi, which brought a three-metre storm surge and torrential rainfall exceeding 200mm (8 inches).

The United Nations’ climate change body, the IPCC, has said that while the number of tropical cyclones that happen globally is unlikely to increase due to a warning planet, it is “very likely” they will have higher rates of rainfall and reach higher top wind speeds.

This means a higher proportion would reach the most intense categories.

At least 10 newborns have died in a fire at a hospital in northern India after a blaze broke out in the neonatal ward.

Chaos and panic ensued as the fire spread, relatives of the infants have told local media, with parents breaking windows to enter the ward, scrambling to reach their children.

“The nurses were pushing people out, but those who managed to get in grabbed any child they could,” a grieving grandmother told ANI news agency.

Staff at the hospital in Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh state were able to rescue 44 infants, but at least 16 are in a critical condition, authorities said.

Three of the ten babies who died have yet to be identified, leaving some parents unsure about what happened to their children.

Santoshi, a new mother, is still looking for her 10-day-old baby.

“When the fire broke out, I couldn’t go inside to rescue my baby. How could I? When no one was able to get inside, how could anyone hand me my baby?” she told ANI news agency.

The blaze on Friday night at Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College Hospital is being blamed on an electrical fault.

Pictures from the scene showed anguished parents outside the hospital.

Indian media reported that the fire first sparked in the intensive care unit of the infants’ ward at around 22:30 local time (17:00 GMT).

Local officials believe an electrical short circuit or another fault in a machine used to increase the level of oxygen in the ward caused the fire.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a message online calling the deaths “heart-wrenching”.

“My deepest condolences to those who have lost their innocent children in this. I pray to God to give them the strength to bear this immense loss,” he wrote.

Officials from the Uttar Pradesh state government have announced compensation of 500,000 rupees (£4,600; $5,900) for the bereaved families.

State deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak said a safety review of the public hospital had been carried out in February, and a fire drill as recently as June.

This is the second prominent hospital fire in India in six months where newborns have been killed. In May, six babies were killed in a fire at a private neonatal facility in Delhi.

Komal’s morning view was of jagged, forbidding mountains, the rush of the river dozens of metres below the family home on the cliff. That was until the water became a torrent and tore the ground away beneath their feet.

“It was a sunny day,” says Komal, 18.

For generations, her family had lived among the orchards and green lands in the heart of the Hunza valley in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.

“In the morning everything was normal, I went to school,” Komal says, “but then my teacher told me that Hassanabad bridge had collapsed.”

Upstream, a glacial lake had formed, then suddenly burst – sending water, boulders and debris cascading down the valley and gathering speed. The ground trembled so violently some people thought there was an earthquake.

When the torrent hit the cement bridge that connected the two parts of the village, it turned it to rubble.

“By the time I came home, people were taking what they could out of their home,” Komal says. She grabbed books, laundry, anything she could carry, but remembers thinking that with their house so far above the water there was no way it could be affected.

That was until they received a phone call from the other side of the valley; their neighbours could see that the water was stripping away the hillside their home stood on.

Then the homes began to collapse.

“I remember my aunt and uncle were still inside their home when the flood came and washed out the whole kitchen,” she says. The family made it to safe ground, but their homes disappeared over the edge.

Today, walking through the grey rubble and dust, there are still coat hooks on the wall, a few tiles in the bathroom, a window with the glass long gone. It’s been two years, but nothing has grown on the crumbling cliff that used to be Komal’s garden in Hassanabad.

“This used to be all a green place,” she says. “When I visit this place I remember my childhood memories, the time I spent here. But the barren places, they hurt me, they make me feel sad.”

Climate change is altering the landscape across Gilgit-Baltistan and neighbouring Chitral, researchers say. This is just part of an area referred to by some as the Third Pole; a place which has more ice than any other part of the world outside the polar regions.

If current emissions continue, Himalayan glaciers could lose up to two-thirds of their volume by the end of this century, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

According to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), more than 48,000 people across Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral are considered to be at high risk from a lake outburst or landslide. Some, like the village of Badswat in the neighbouring district of Ghizer, are in such peril they are being evacuated entirely to relative safety, their homes rendered impossible to live in.

“Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of disasters across the region,” says Deedar Karim, programme co-ordinator for the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat.

“These areas are highly exposed. With the increase in temperature, there are more discharges (of water) and then more flooding. It’s causing damage to infrastructure, houses, agricultural lands; every infrastructure has been damaged by these increasing floods.

“The rainfall pattern is changing. The snowfall pattern is changing and then the melting of the glacier is changing. So it’s changing the dynamics of hazards.”

Moving populations is complicated; not only have many spent centuries on their land and are loath to leave it, but finding another location that is safe and has access to reliable water is complicated.

“We have very limited land and limited resources. We don’t have common lands to shift people to,” says Zubair Ahmed, assistant director of the Disaster Management Authority in Hunza and Nagar district.

“I can say that after five or 10 years, it will be very difficult for us to even survive. Maybe people will realise after a few years or decades, but by then it will be too late. So I think this is the right time, although we are still late, but even now this is the time to think about it.”

Pakistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, although it is only responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“We cannot stop these events, because this is a global issue,” Mr Ahmed says. “All we can do is mitigate and get our people prepared to face such events.”

In the village of Passu, just over an hour’s drive from Hassanabad, they are holding an evacuation drill; preparation for potential destruction. The population know that if there is an emergency, it may take days for outside help to arrive if the roads and bridges are blocked, damaged or swept away.

Trained in first aid, river crossing and high mountain rescue, they practise evacuating the village a few times a year, volunteers carrying the wounded on stretchers and bandaging mock injuries.

Ijaz has been a volunteer for the last 20 years, with many stories of rescuing lost walkers in the mountains. But he too is worried about the number of dangers and the increased unpredictability of the weather in the area he calls home.

“The weather now, we just can’t say what will happen,” he says. “Even five years ago, the weather didn’t change as much. Now after half an hour we can’t say what it will be.”

He knows too, that there’s only so much his team of volunteers can do.

“Unfortunately, if the flood comes and it’s a heavy flood we can’t do anything,” he says. “The area is totally washed out. If it’s small then we can help people survive and escape the flood areas.”

There are other mitigation measures across the region; stone and wire barriers to try to slow floodwater, systems to monitor glacier melt, rainfall and water levels, speakers installed in villages to warn the community if danger looks likely. But many who work here say they need more resources.

“We have installed early warning systems in some valleys,” says Mr Ahmed. “These were identified by the Pakistan Meteorological Department and they gave us a list of around 100 valleys. But because of limited resources, we are only able to intervene in 16.”

He says they are in discussions to expand this further.

A few houses along from Komal lives Sultan Ali, now in his 70s.

As we talk sitting on a traditional charpoy bed, his granddaughters bring us a plate of pears they’ve picked from their garden.

He knows that should another flood happen, his home could also disappear into the valley, but says he has nowhere to go.

“As I approach the end of my life, I feel helpless,” he tells me. “The children are very worried, they ask where will we live?

“We have no options. If the flood comes, it will take everything away and there’s nothing we can do about it. I can’t blame anyone; it’s just our fate.”

We watch his grandchildren play tag in the shade of the orchard. The seasons, the ice, the environment is changing around them. What will this land look like when they are older?

Komal too is not sure what the future will hold.

“I don’t think we will stay here forever,” she says. “The condition is clear already. But the question for us is we have no other place to go. Only this.”

In India, if you ask a pedestrian how many obstacles they’ve encountered on a footpath, they may not be able to count them – but they’ll certainly tell you that most footpaths are in poor condition.

This is what Arun Pai says he learnt when he started asking people about their experience walking on the streets of his city, Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), in southern India.

This month he set up a “fun challenge” – called the ‘world’s longest footpath run’ – which invited people to walk or jog on an 11km (8 miles) stretch of footpath and make a note of all the obstacles they encountered, like hawkers, garbage or broken slabs of concrete. Next, they were asked to rate the footpath on a scale of one to five.

“When you have specifics, it gets easier to ask the authorities to take action. Instead of telling your local politician “the footpaths are bad”, you can ask him or her “to fix specific spots on a street,” Mr Pai says.

Mr Pai, who is the founder of Bangalore Walks, a non-profit that promotes walking, is among several citizen activists who are pushing to make the country’s roads more pedestrian-friendly.

In India’s capital, a tour company called Delhi by Cycle has been advocating for making the city more cycle-friendly and walkable. These walking-enthusiasts are holding awareness walks, building walking apps and lobbying with politicians to make a change.

Even in India’s biggest cities, proper footpaths are few and far between and they are often overrun by hawkers and shops, parked vehicles and even cattle. In some places, they double up as homes for the poor.

Even footpaths that exist are often not built to standard or properly maintained. Navigating roads on foot through crowds and traffic can be a nightmare.

Last month, Walking Project, a citizen’s group in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, released a ‘pedestrian manifesto’ ahead of Maharashtra state elections to highlight the poor condition of the city’s roads and encourage local politicians to take action.

The manifesto included demands for better parking, designated hawking zones, pedestrian-friendly corridors on arterial roads and to make footpaths more accessible to those with mobility challenges.

“Government statistics show that almost 50% of the city’s population relies on walking, which is far greater than the 11% that uses private transport and the combined 15% that uses tuk-tuks and buses,” says Vendant Mhatre, convener of Walking Project.

“And yet, pedestrians are the most ignored group of users when it comes to framing policies around transport or road safety,” he adds.

According to the latest government estimates on road accidents, pedestrian fatalities were the second-highest after those of two-wheeler riders. In 2022, over 10,000 pedestrians lost their lives on national highways across the country, with around 21,000 more sustaining injuries in accidents.

“Authorities often resort to band-aid solutions like adding speed bumps or a signal to curb road accidents. But what is really needed is inter-connected footpaths that can accommodate high footfall,” Mr Mhatre says.

Studies have found that addressing the problems of this forgotten group of road users can reap benefits for multiple stakeholders.

In 2019, researchers in the southern city of Chennai studied the impact the construction of new footpaths on 100km (62 miles) of the city’s streets had on the environment, economy and the health and safety of citizens.

They found that the new footpaths encouraged 9% to 27% of the surveyed respondents to walk instead of using motorized transport, which led to a reduction in greenhouse gases and particulate matter. They also learned that the footpaths provided new opportunities for women and lower-income groups, helping them save money as well.

The survey highlighted how people with disabilities and women might have nuanced requirements from footpaths and that tailoring improvements to meet their needs could enhance accessibility and equity.

“Very often, people don’t have a benchmark for footpath quality, especially if they haven’t travelled abroad or been exposed to places that have good facilities for pedestrians,” Mr Mhatre says. He reasons that that’s why there isn’t enough outrage about the quality or absence of footpaths in the country.

He also points out that most people see walking as an activity performed for leisure or exercise. And so, the infrastructure they associate with walking stops at gardens or walking tracks. In reality, however, people walk to various destinations daily, so the scope of walking infrastructure is far broader.

“Walking is the most economical and environment-friendly way to navigate one’s city and it’s high time our leaders paid as much attention to walking infrastructure as they do to public transport,” Mr Mhatre says.

Geetam Tiwari, a professor of civil engineering, says that the main problem is that too much focus is given to solving the problem of car congestion on roads.

“To improve the flow of traffic, authorities often narrow down footpaths or eliminate them entirely,” she says. Ms Tiwari says that this approach is problematic because doing so makes it difficult for pedestrians to access public transport systems, like buses and metros, which can take the pressure off the roads.

“It might seem counter-intuitive, but allowing the congestion to persist and focussing on improving infrastructure for pedestrians will help solve the traffic problem in the long run,” she says.

Ms Tiwari also says that the federal government should make it mandatory for states to implement the guidelines issued by the Indian Road Congress – a national organisation that lays down designing standards for roads and highways.

She says that cities can also implement their own Non-Motorised Transport Policy (NMTP) to create better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.

“At the moment, only a handful of cities in India have experimented with a NMTP but its time more cities step up to the plate,” she adds.

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Standing on a podium in a Florida convention centre on the night of the election, a row of American flags behind him and a jubilant crowd looking on, Donald Trump declared: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”

This was one of the most striking themes of his election campaign – that he had been chosen by God. Yet even before the attempt on his life on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania, millions of Americans already felt guided by their faith to support the former, and now future, president.

Some cast the election in an apocalyptic light and likened Trump to a Biblical figure.

Last year, on the Christian show FlashPoint, TV evangelist Hank Kunneman described “a battle between good and evil”, adding: “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: it’s called the anointing.”

Jim Caviezel, an actor who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, proclaimed, albeit jokingly, that Trump was “the new Moses”. Then, in the months leading up to the election, many of his supporters referred to him as a “saviour”.

The question is why. What makes so many see this man, who isn’t known to have an especially strong faith, as sent from God?

And what does that say about Christianity more broadly in a country where the numbers of churchgoers is in rapid decline?

Reverend Franklin Graham is one of America’s best-known evangelists and the son of Billy Graham, arguably its most famous preacher. He is one of the Trump believers, convinced there is no doubt that the president-elect was chosen for this mission by God.

“The bullet that went through his ear missed his brain by a millimetre, and his head turned just at the last second when the gun was fired,” he says. “I believe that God turned his head and saved his life.”

The questions asked about Trump’s character – including accusations of sexual misconduct, and his alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels and associated hush-money trial – don’t dim Mr Graham’s view.

“Remember when Jesus told the crowd, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’ and that slowly, the entire audience began to disappear? All of us have sinned.”

Part of the reason some Christians may find it easier to look past questions of character is that during Trump’s first term in office he delivered on a particular promise: to appoint anti-abortion judges to the US Supreme Court.

Mr Graham points to this as evidence that the president-elect is a man of integrity.

“This is a big win for Christians, for evangelicals,” he says. “We believe the president will defend religious freedom where the Democrats would not.”

The selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel is already a hint that faith might shape some foreign policy. US evangelicals including Huckabee are among the country’s most fervent supporters of Israel.

Many of them believe that Jews should populate the whole of the area of biblical Israel, including what is now the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in order to precipitate events leading to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In the past Donald Trump had talked about having had a Presbyterian upbringing. But despite his strong support from Christians in last week’s election, he never tried hard to convince them in his most recent campaign that he was one of them.

“I think he realised it was going to be a bit of a stretch to argue that he himself is a religious man, but instead he adopted a quid pro quo approach,” says Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which has long tracked religious trends in the US.

That approach centred on changes in demographics and dwindling numbers of churchgoers.

In the early 1990s, about 90% of US adults identified as Christians – a figure that had fallen to 64% earlier this decade, with a large increase in the number of those unaffiliated to any faith, according to data from Pew Research Center.

This, says Dr Jones, was something Trump was able to draw upon.

“Trump’s message was: ‘I know you’re in decline, I know your numbers are waning. I know your children and grandchildren aren’t affiliated with your Churches anymore, but if you elect me, I’m going to restore power to the Christian Churches.”’

Not all Christians in the US were won over, however. For some, their faith has guided them to precisely the opposite impression of Trump.

In recent months, from the pulpit of Bible Ways Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia, Reverend Monte Norwood has been sharing a very different message to that of Franklin Graham.

He, for one, was dismayed at last week’s election result.

“Trump has demeaned and debased just about anybody he could, from immigrants to minorities to women to those who are disabled,” he says.

“White conservative Republican Christianity that ignores character is just hypocritical.”

He has long been opposed to the idea of a second Trump presidency, and he has voiced this on social media and through activism encouraging voter turnout – such as by helping other black voters to register to vote and access free rides to the polls.

“I am a Matthew chapter 25 kind of Christian – where Jesus said: ‘When I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.’”

PRRI’s research has looked into voting records in history, not just by religious practice and belief but also by race, and found that when it comes to political views, there has been a clear trend for decades.

“Almost without exception, white Christian groups have tended to vote Republican in presidential contests,” says Dr Jones. “Non-white Christian groups, non-Christian groups and religiously unaffiliated voters have tended to vote Democrat.”

This pattern dates back to the 1960s, he adds, when the Democratic party became associated with the civil rights movement and white Christian groups began migrating to the Republican Party.

Polling ahead of the 2024 election looking at voter intention suggested that for the most part this pattern held. “From our polling, we have a Republican party that is 70% white and Christian, and a Democratic party that’s only a quarter white and Christian.”

According to the PPRI’s survey of 5,027 adults, white evangelical Protestant voters were the strongest backers of Trump over Harris by 72% to 13%. White Catholic voters also backed Trump, with 55% supporting him and 34% aligned with Harris. White “mainline” non-evangelical Protestants showed a similar split.

By contrast 78% black Protestants supported Harris while just 9% backed Trump, according to the survey. Harris’s backers also included Jewish-Americans, the religiously unaffiliated and other non-Christian Americans, according to the PPRI.

When it came to the actual vote, there were signs of departures from familiar patterns.

The results from Michigan showed a clear lurch towards the Republican Party by Muslim voters in the state, likely the result of the Biden administration’s role in aiding Israel in its war in Gaza.

Analysis also shows that more Latino Catholics voted for Trump than expected, when previously they have tended to lean Democrat.

Economic hardship brought about by soaring inflation, among other factors, is likely to have resulted in “non-traditional” Republican voters being drawn to vote for Trump.

As for his appeal to traditionalist Christians, Dr Jones argues that there has been a faith component to the idea of “Making America Great Again”, with the promise of restoring the country’s Christian character.

“His has been a campaign of grievance and loss and nostalgia,” argues Dr Jones, “and that includes nostalgia from a faith perspective.”

For all his political strength, one thing that Trump cannot do is hold back the tide of demographic change in the US – including the move away from faith.

While the number who define themselves as “atheist” remains lower in the US than in most Western countries, those who say they are “religiously unaffiliated” is growing.

There is a generational component to that, along with the familiar trends of personal economics meaning that people have greater autonomy to move away from the accepted norms in their communities. But there are other reasons too.

A third of American atheists or agnostics say they disaffiliated from their childhood religion because of high-profile Church abuse scandals, according to a PPRI study.

In 2020 the Catholic Church released lists of living members of clergy in the US found to have been accused of abuses, including some linked to child pornography and rape. There were around 2,000 names.

Two years later, the Southern Baptist Conference collection of US Protestant Churches released a list of hundreds of Church leaders accused of child abuse between 2000 and 2019.

It shows the scale of the issue that Trump faces. Nevertheless, Franklin Graham is optimistic.

“Church attendance is not going to go up next week because President Trump has been elected – but what I think it does mean is that legislation that we might have seen coming down the road that that would make it very difficult for people of faith will not come,” he says, referring to the idea of more progressive legislation around, for example, abortion and gay and trans rights.

“He will protect people of faith, he will protect religious freedoms in this country. I don’t talk about just Christian religious freedoms… [but] all people of faith.”

As to whether he is right, Americans can only watch and wait. But just as some are revelling in the promise of governance influenced by Christianity, others are undoubtedly nervous.

Eight people have died and 17 others have been injured following a stabbing incident outside a school in eastern China.

A 21-year-old man was arrested at Wuxi Yixing Arts and Crafts Vocational and Technical College in the city of Wuxi at about 18:30 local time (10:30 GMT), according to a statement from local police.

The statement said he graduated from the school in 2024 and carried out the attack after “failing to obtain his diploma due to poor exam results” and that he was unhappy with his internship pay.

He confessed to his crime “without hesitation”, police said.

They added that an investigation was under way and efforts were being made to “manage the aftermath”.

The attack follows an incident on Monday where at least 35 people were killed when a driver ploughed a car into crowds at a stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai.

Police said the driver was unhappy with a divorce settlement, but the incident sparked questions about a recent spate of public violence in the country.

On social media, there have been discussions about the social phenomenon of “taking revenge on society”, where individuals act on personal grievances by attacking strangers.

For Anannyaa Gupta completing her studies in Australia has always been the “dream”.

“Their education system is one of the best in the world,” the 21-year-old, from the Indian city of Hyderabad, explains.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Melbourne’s Monash University in July, she applied for the master’s qualification she needs to become a social worker – the kind of skilled job Australia is desperate to fill amid labour shortages.

“I genuinely want to study here, offer my skills and contribute to society,” she says.

But Ms Gupta is among current and prospective international students who have been swept up in a panic caused by the Australian government’s plan to slash foreign student numbers.

The new cap – which would significantly reduce new enrolments – is needed to make the A$47.8bn (£24.6bn, $32bn) education industry more sustainable, the government says.

It is the most controversial of recent measures that have also imposed tougher English language requirements on student visa applicants, and greater scrutiny on those seeking further study. Non-refundable visa application fees have also been doubled.

However, the sector and its supporters say they weren’t properly consulted, and that the changes could ravage the economy, cause job losses and damage Australia’s reputation, all while punishing both domestic and international students.

“[It] sends out the signal that Australia is not a welcoming place,” says Matthew Brown, deputy chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8), a body which represents Australia’s top ranked universities.

Education is Australia’s fourth biggest export, trailing only mining products. Foreign students, who pay nearly twice as much as Australian students on average, prop up some institutions, subsidising research, scholarships, and domestic study fees. At the University of Sydney, for example, they account for over 40% of revenue.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is facing pressure to reduce record levels of migration, in the hope of improving housing affordability and easing a cost-of-living crisis, ahead of a federal election next year. And international students – who totalled 793,335 last semester – have become a target.

The government has proposed to cap new foreign enrolments at 270,000 for 2025, which it says is a return to pre-pandemic levels. An accurate comparison with previous years is not possible because publicly available data is inadequate, according to an education expert.

Education Minister Jason Clare says each higher education institution will be given an individual limit, with the biggest cuts to be borne by vocational education and training providers. Of the universities affected, those in capital cities will see the largest reductions.

The government says the policy will redirect students to regional towns and universities that need them, instead of overcrowded big cities.

It also says the changes aim to protect prospective students from “unethical” providers, alleging some accept students without sufficient language skills or academic standards and enrol people who intend to work instead of study.

“International education is extremely important, and these reforms are designed to make it better and fairer, and set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward,” Clare said.

Abul Rizvi, a former government official who shaped Australia’s skilled migration policy, says the “underfunded” sector has “long been chasing tuition revenue from overseas students and sacrificing learning integrity in the process”.

Institutions themselves are questioning whether they’re too reliant on international student income and how to fix it, Dr Brown says: “It’s a discussion that every university is having.”

But the caps announcement still drew a mostly furious response from the sector.

The Go8 has called the proposed laws “draconian”, while others accused the government of “wilfully weakening” the economy and of using international students as “cannon fodder in a poll-driven battle over migration”.

The government has not confirmed how long the caps will be in place, but Dr Brown says the Go8’s calculations indicate they will have a A$1bn impact on their members in the first year alone. The broader economy would suffer a A$5.3bn hit, resulting in the loss of 20,000 jobs, according to their research.

Australia’s Department of the Treasury has called those projections “doubtful” but has not released its own modelling on the economic impact of the changes.

Dr Brown also warned that the caps could see some universities rescind offers already made to foreign students, strangle vital research programmes, and may mean an increase in fees for some Australian students.

However a handful of smaller universities, for whom the caps are beneficial, welcomed the news.

La Trobe University’s Vice-Chancellor Theo Farrell said they supported “transparent and proportionate measures” to manage international student growth in Australia.

“We recognise that there is broad political and community support to reduce net migration levels,” he said.

But Dr Brown argues there is also a hit to Australia’s reputation which is harder to quantify, pointing to Canada as a warning. It introduced a foreign student cap this year, but industry bodies there say enrolments have fallen well below that, because nervous students would rather apply to study somewhere with more certainty.

“We need an international education system that has managed growth built in… it’s not for the minister to unilaterally decide on caps based on some formula which satisfies a political end.”

Mr Rizvi argues that instead of going ahead with the proposed caps in Australia, the government should consider introducing a minimum university entrance exam score.

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot… It won’t deter poor performing students but it will deter high performing students who have options,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile in parliament, the Greens have said the policy amounts to “racist dog-whistling”, and one of the government’s MPs has broken ranks to attack it too.

“A hard cap would be bad for Australia’s human capital and the talent pipeline, bad for soft power and bad for academic excellence and research,” Julian Hill told The Australian newspaper.

But despite the criticisms, the bill legislating the limits – set to be debated in parliament this week – is expected to pass, with the opposition’s support.

Clare has acknowledged that some service providers may face difficult budget decisions but said that any assertion the policy is “somehow tearing down international education is absolutely and fundamentally wrong”.

However, with less than two months until the changes are supposed to take effect, they are causing extreme anxiety and confusion among students.

In China and India – the two biggest international markets for Australia – the news is going down like a lead balloon.

“This is going to be very hard on students in India, most of whom come from middle-income backgrounds and spend years planning and preparing for their education abroad. Their dreams will be quashed,” Amritsar-based immigration consultant Rupinder Singh told the BBC.

Vedant Gadhavi – a Monash University student – says that some of his friends back home in Gujarat who had been hoping to come to Australia for their masters have been spooked.

“They seem to have changed their plans a bit because of the constant shift… They thought that it might be a bit difficult to plan their careers and life.”

Jenny – a senior high school student in China’s Anhui province – says she set her sights on Australia because getting a good quality education there is “easier” than getting into a fiercely competitive Chinese university.

“It’s all up in the air now,” she tells the BBC.

She adds that going to a lower-ranked university in a regional location is not an option for her or her peers: “We [just] won’t go to Australia at all.”

Rishika Agrawal, president of the Australian National University’s International Students’ Department, says the proposed laws have stoked other uneasy feelings.

“Definitely there are other students who think this is a sign of increased hostility towards immigrants in Australia from the government.”

And, she adds, with the contributions to society made by international students often overlooked, while their post-graduate employment options dry up, there’s growing resentment.

“They go back to their own countries, having spent a tremendous amount of money towards their education and not really reaping the rewards for it.

“They definitely do feel like cash cows.”

As the debate continues in parliament, there’s been some relief for Anannya. Shortly after she spoke to the BBC, and only weeks out from her course start date, she received the official masters enrolment certificate and new study visa she feared would never come.

But many other students still wait and worry.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d feel very helpless, very disappointed. It’s already taking away credibility that Australia used to hold,” Rishika says.

“I’m a veteran of the special military operation, I’m going to kill you!” were the words Irina heard as she was attacked by a man in Artyom, in Russia’s far east.

She had been returning from a night out when the man kicked her and beat her with his crutch. The force of the strike was so strong that it broke the crutch.

When the police arrived, the man showed them a document proving he had been in Ukraine and claimed that because of his service “nothing will happen to him”.

The attack on Irina is just one of many reported to have been committed by soldiers returning from Ukraine.

Verstka, an independent Russian website, estimates that at least 242 Russians have been killed by soldiers returning from Ukraine. Another 227 have been seriously injured.

Like the man who beat Irina, many of the attackers have previous criminal convictions and were released from prison specifically to join Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The BBC estimates that the Wagner mercenary group recruited more than 48,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine. When Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash last year, Russia’s defence ministry took over recruitment in prisons.

These cases have severely impacted Russian society, says sociologist Igor Eidman.

“This is a very serious problem, and it can potentially get worse. All the traditional ideas of good and evil are being turned upside down,” he told the BBC.

“People who have committed heinous crimes – murderers, rapists, cannibals and paedophiles – they not only avoid punishment by going to war, the unprecedented bit is that they are being hailed as heroes.”

There are numerous reasons why Russian soldiers lucky enough to return from the war would think they are above the law.

Official media call them “heroes,” and President Vladimir Putin has dubbed them Russia’s new “elite”. Those recruited into the army from prisons either had their convictions removed or they were pardoned.

It is not unheard of for released convicts return from the war in Ukraine, reoffend and then escape punishment for a second time by going back to the front.

This makes some police officers despair. “Four years ago, I put him away for seven years,” policeman Grigory told the Novaya Gazeta website.

“And here he is in front of me again, saying: ‘You won’t be able to do anything, officer. Now’s our time, the time of those who are shedding blood in the special military operation.'”

Russian courts have routinely used participation in the war against Ukraine as a reason to issue milder sentences.

But many cases don’t even reach court. Moscow has introduced a new law against “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” which has made some victims of crimes by veterans afraid to report them.

Olga Romanova, the head of prisoner rights NGO Russia Behind Bars, says a sense of impunity is driving up crime rates.

“The main consequence is the gap between crime and punishment in the public mind. If you commit a crime, it is far from certain that you are going to be punished,” she tells the BBC.

In 2023, the number of serious crimes registered in Russia rose by almost 10%, and in the first half of this year the number of military personnel convicted of crimes more than doubled compared to the same period a year before.

Sociologist Anna Kuleshova argues that violence is becoming more acceptable in Russian society, especially because criminals can now escape punishment by going to war.

“There is a tendency to legalise violence. The idea that violence is a kind of norm will probably spread – violence at school, domestic violence, violence in relationships and as a way to resolve conflicts.

“This is facilitated by the militarisation of society, the turn to conservatism and the romanticisation of war. Violent crimes committed within the country are being atoned by the violence of war.”

Venezuelan authorities have released more than 100 people arrested following July’s contested presidential election, according to a local rights group.

“Up to now, we have verified 107 political prisoners, due to the post-electoral situation, released in Venezuela,” said Alfredo Romero of NGO Foro Penal.

The group said more than 1,800 people were arrested for their role in mass protests after the July election.

Electoral authorities loyal to President Nicolás Maduro announced him the victor, but the claim has been widely rejected by the international community.

After Maduro claimed victory, anti-government protests erupted.

Hundreds have been charged with crimes including terrorism, incitement to hatred and resistance to authority, according to Human Rights Watch.

Foro Penal said prisoners had been released at four different prisons. Videos published on social media showed prisoners being released to cheers from onlookers.

Maduro is set to begin his third six-year term in January. Official results for July’s election published by the National Electoral Council (CNE) claimed Maduro, 61, won 52% of the vote to opposition candidate Edmundo González’s 43%.

The opposition, however, said it had evidence González had won by a comfortable margin, and uploaded detailed voting tallies to the internet which suggest González beat Maduro convincingly.

The CNE said it could not publish the voting records because the data had been corrupted by hackers.

González was granted political asylum in Spain in September.

California has reported the first US case of mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – that is part of a new outbreak.

The state’s department of health, the CDPH, said the new case was from the Clade I strain – different from the Clade II strain that has been in circulation in the US since 2022.

The person in question, who is now isolating at home, had recently travelled to Africa and the CDPH said their case was “related to the ongoing outbreak of Clade I mpox in Central and Eastern Africa”.

Mpox was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization earlier this year.

The CDPH said that while Clade I cases had tended to cause more severe illness than Clade II in the past, “recent infections from Clade I mpox may not be as clinically severe as in previous outbreaks”.

Mpox is caused by a virus in the same family as smallpox but is usually much less harmful.

It was originally transmitted from animals to humans but now also passes between humans.

Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, swellings, back pain and aching muscles. A rash can then develop, which can be extremely itchy or painful.

The infection can clear up on its own and lasts between 14 and 21 days, but in some cases has been fatal, particularly for vulnerable groups including small children.

Mpox is most common in remote villages in the tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa, in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where it has been seen for many years.

Hundreds of people died during an initial outbreak in DR Congo earlier this year, and the disease has since spread to areas of Central and East Africa.

Outbreaks can be controlled by preventing infections with vaccines, though these are usually only available for people at risk or those who have been in close contact with an infected person.

It didn’t take long for Elon Musk to be accused of meddling in Italy’s domestic affairs.

The tech billionaire’s declaration that “these judges need to go,” splashed across all of Italy’s front pages, came amidst increasing tension between Italy’s ruling coalition and the judiciary after a panel of Rome magistrates questioned the legality of a government initiative to detain asylum-seekers in Albania.

Musk prompted a highly unusual statement from Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who told him not to interfere in Italian affairs.

“Italy is a great democratic country and… knows how to take care of itself,” said Mattarella. “Anyone, particularly if, as announced, he is about to assume an important government role in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot take it upon himself to issue instructions.”

Musk, who owns Tesla and X, has recently been picked by Donald Trump to head up his planned new Department of Government Efficiency.

He has also developed close ties with Giorgia Meloni since she was elected over two years ago on the promise of cracking down on illegal migration.

Two processing centres in Albania, built and managed by the Italian government to help manage the migrant flow in the Mediterranean towards Italy, soon became the symbol of her hard stance on migration.

But delays in the project, legal hurdles and human rights concerns, as well as doubts about cost-effectiveness, have undermined its success so far.

Last week a Rome court ordered the transfer of seven Egyptian and Bangladeshi asylum seekers from one of the two centres to Italy.

The court had already ruled last month against the detention of other migrants from the same countries in Albania, a decision that the Italian prime minister had labelled “prejudicial”.

The two centres are currently empty, and Italian authorities are scaling back the number of staff on the ground.

Since then, the debate in Italy has become increasingly heated, with Meloni and other members of her government regularly attacking the country’s judiciary, until Musk also weighed in.

The legal controversy revolves around an October ruling by the EU’s Court of Justice (ECJ), stating that no country of origin can be deemed safe if any part of it is dangerous.

This poses further challenges Italy’s policy of repatriating migrants without visas.

While the ruling referred to a Czech case, it also applies to the entire EU and complicates Italy’s plans for detention centres in Albania meant to fast-track repatriations.

The Rome court has halted these actions pending further clarification from the ECJ.

The project has attracted the attention of several leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who are themselves seeking to stem illegal migration.

During an official visit last September, Starmer praised Meloni’s “remarkable progress” on tackling irregular arrivals by sea, while Meloni said her counterpart showed “great interest” in her country’s deal with Albania.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for the exploration of “return hubs” outside the EU. In a letter to European leaders on irregular migration, she cited the deal between Italy and Albania as a potential model.

Several observers, however, have raised concerns over the actual impact of these centres, should they ever start operating at full capacity.

“Aside from the delays in the implementation of the operation, I view the project as a distraction from more pressing issues that should be on the agenda, such as better allocation of funds and the creation of a functioning asylum system overall,” said Alberto-Horst Neidhardt, a senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.

“Regardless of whether it works or not, this is just a drop in the ocean.”

Italy’s incendiary political discourse shows no sign of dying down.

The judiciary here has been accused of obstructing government before.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was charged with violation of antitrust law, money laundering, and tax fraud and faced prosecution for several other crimes over the years, repeatedly attacked judges, calling them “communist”.

Meloni’s coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, echoed his words saying judges who twisted Italy’s laws should resign and go into politics with the “refounded communists”.

“Demonising those whose role is to ensure that the law is upheld could pose a real danger,” Neidhardt warned.

According to Italian reports, Meloni and Musk have since spoken about the controversy. Musk is said to have expressed his respect for the Italian president, a report confirmed by Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk in Italy.

Stroppa, however, added that Musk also “emphasises that freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment and the Italian constitution itself; therefore, as a citizen, he will continue to freely express his opinions”.

Donald Trump has named oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright as his pick to lead the US Energy Department.

He is expected to fulfil the president-elect’s promise to increase fossil fuel production – an aim summed by the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill”.

Wright is the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, which serves companies extracting oil and gas from shale fields in a process known as “fracking”.

Trump wrote in a statement: “Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fuelled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics.

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace.”

Wright is a climate change sceptic who previously said he does not care where energy comes from, “as long as it is secure, reliable, affordable and betters human lives”.

In a video posted to his LinkedIn profile last year, he said: “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”

Wright will also be appointed to a new Council of National Energy, the Trump campaign said.

The council will oversee “the path to US energy dominance by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy,” Trump said.

The Trump campaign cited Wright’s work with Pinnacle Technologies, a company he founded before Liberty Energy, as being critical to the US’s fracking boom, which has made the country the largest oil producer in the world.

Wright’s appointment is a win for the fossil fuel industry, which expects a boom under the next administration. Trump has pledged to increase production of US fossil fuels rather than investing in renewable energy sources such as wind power – a goal Wright will be instrumental in driving.

The president-elect has pledged to open areas such as the Arctic wilderness to oil drilling, which he argues would lower energy costs.

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

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can’t do on day one
• Trump team so far – who’s in and who might be coming
• Why Musk will find it hard to cut $2tn
• What Trump picks say about Mid East policy

Two top Senate Democrats have called for an investigation into Elon Musk’s reported contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides.

The lawmakers have urged the Pentagon and Justice Department to determine whether Musk’s alleged relations with a US adversary while holding major government contracts puts national security at risk.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the world’s richest person has had “multiple, high level conversations” with Putin since 2022, which the Kremlin has denied.

Musk wrote on his X platform on Friday that he’s “going to find out who’s making these accusations and nuke them”.

The two Democrats – Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Defence Department Inspector General Robert Storch raising “serious questions regarding Mr Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a [security] clearance holder”.

The multi-billionaire claims to hold a top-secret level clearance and his SpaceX company – one of the main contractors to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) – is deeply embedded in the federal government’s defence and intelligence infrastructure.

“Russia’s ambitions in the space domain pose a direct threat to US national security,” the senators wrote.

Reed and Shaheen noted that, unlike others with high-level security clearance, Musk does not appear to report his contacts with foreign government officials.

They pointed to Musk’s alleged communications with Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko.

The Justice Department has said that Kiriyenko and other top officials were involved in an effort to seed Kremlin propaganda on social media, including on the Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) platform to reducing international support for Ukraine and influence voters in the US presidential election.

Musk, who backed Trump’s successful 2024 election bid with millions of dollars, was picked by the president-elect earlier this week to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency.

He has also participated in the incoming president’s diplomatic efforts.

Musk joined Trump’s calls over the past week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, as well as a meeting with Argentinian President Javier Milei at Trump’s Florida home.

The BBC’s US partner, CBS News, reported on Friday that Musk recently visited the residence of Iran’s United Nations ambassador in New York.

It is not clear if Trump or his national security team were aware of the meeting.

Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran and Iran’s foreign minister denied on Saturday that any such meeting had taken place.

If personnel really does amount to policy, then we’ve learned a lot this week about how Donald Trump intends to govern in his second term.

More than a dozen major appointments, some of which will require Senate approval, offer a clearer picture of the team entrusted to drive his agenda as he returns to the White House.

On the outside they appear united by one thing – loyalty to the top man.

But beneath the surface, there are competing agendas.

Here are four factions that reveal both Trump’s ambition and potential tricky tests ahead for his leadership.

Who: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr

Their agenda: This trio have been among the most vocal politicians actively opposing US policies, particularly under President Biden. Choosing Gaetz as his attorney general nominee is possibly Trump’s most controversial pick.

Gaetz has represented Florida’s first congressional district since 2017. A graduate of William and Mary Law School, he led the removal of California congressman Kevin McCarthy as the sitting Speaker of the House in October 2023.

He has come under investigation by a House ethics committee for allegedly paying for sex with an underage girl, using illegal drugs and misusing campaign funds. He denies wrongdoing and no criminal charges have been filed.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Five takeaways from Trump’s first week

Tulsi Gabbard, picked to be Trump’s director of national intelligence, is a military veteran who served with a medical unit in Iraq. She is a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who switched parties to support Trump.

Gabbard has routinely opposed American foreign policy, blaming Nato for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – then casting doubt on US intelligence assessments blaming Assad for using chemical weapons.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee to oversee health, is a longtime lawyer and environmentalist. He also spread fringe theories – about vaccines and the effects of 5G phone signals.

What this tells us: Like Trump, Gaetz, Gabbard and Kennedy are aggressive challengers of the status quo. All three frequently tip over into conspiracy.

They may be among the most determined supporters of Trump’s plan to dismantle the bureaucratic “deep state”. The president-elect has picked particular fights in each of the areas they would oversee – law enforcement, intelligence and health.

But bomb-throwers can also make unruly subordinates. Kennedy wants stricter regulation across food and farming industries, which may collide with Trump’s government-slashing agenda.

Gaetz’s views on some issues – he favours legalisation of marijuana – are outside the Republican mainstream.

And Gabbard, a fierce critic of American power, will be working for a president who is not afraid to use it – for instance, against Iran.

• What RFK could do on vaccines, fluoride and drugs

Who: Tom Homan, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem

Their agenda: The three hardliners tasked with carrying out Trump’s border and immigration policies have vowed to strengthen security and clamp down on undocumented immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

Domestically, they – and the wider incoming Trump administration – have called for a drastic uptick in deportations, beginning with those considered national security or public safety threats, and a return to workplace “enforcement operations” that were paused by the Biden administration.

What it tells us: Aside from the economy, polls repeatedly suggested that immigration and the border with Mexico were primary concerns for many voters.

The possibility of increased deportations and workplace raids, however, could put Trump on a collision course with Democratic-leaning states and jurisdictions that may decide to push back or not co-operate. Some Republican states – whose economies rely, in part, on immigrant labour – may also object.

• How would mass deportations work?

Who: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy

Their agenda: Trump has named the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, to lead a cost-cutting effort dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency”.

He will share the role with 39-year-old investor-turned-politician Vivek Ramaswamy, who became an ardent Trump backer after bowing out as a candidate in the Republican primary.

The two men are among the loudest and flashiest tech bros, a group that swung towards Trump this year, seeking a champion to disavow “woke” political correctness and embrace a libertarian vision of small government, low taxes and light regulation.

Musk has floated a possible $2tn in spending cuts, vowing to send “shockwaves” through the government.

Ramaswamy, who has backed eliminating the tax-collecting agency, the IRS, and the Department of Education, among others, wrote after the announcement: “Shut it down.”

What it tells us: The appointments are an acknowledgment of the help Trump got on the campaign trail from Ramaswamy and Musk, the latter of whom personally ploughed more than $100m into the campaign.

But time will tell what power this faction goes on to have.

Despite its name, the department is not an official agency. The commission will stand outside the government to advise on spending, which is partly controlled by Congress.

Trump, who ran up budget deficits during his first term, has shown little commitment to cutting spending.

He has promised to leave Social Security and Medicare – two of the biggest areas of government spending – untouched, which could make cost-cutting difficult.

RFK Jr’s pledge to increase regulation of food additives and ultra-processed foods could also clash with Musk and Ramaswamy’s mandate to cut red tape.

Who: Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, John Ratcliffe.

Their agenda: These men will run Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. They are all hawks on China.

Rubio, nominee for secretary of state, is among Beijing’s harshest critics, having argued for travel bans on some Chinese officials and for the closure of Hong Kong’s US trade offices.

The three are likely to push through Trump’s pledge for much higher tariffs on Chinese imports. They see Beijing as the top economic and security threat to the US. Waltz – picked for national security adviser – has said the US is in a “Cold War” with the ruling communist party.

Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee for CIA director who served as an intelligence chief in his first term, has likened countering China’s rise to the defeat of fascism or bringing down the Iron Curtain.

What it tells us: While Trump often signals his own hawkish economic views on China, he has also vacillated – which could spark tensions with his top foreign policy team.

In his first term, Trump triggered a trade war with Beijing (attempts to de-escalate this failed amid the pandemic) and relations slumped further when he labelled Covid the “Chinese Virus”.

But he also heaped praise on President Xi Jinping as a “brilliant” leader ruling with an “iron fist”.

This unpredictability could make managing America’s most consequential strategic relationship even harder. Rubio might also clash with Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of intelligence, who previously criticised him on foreign policy, saying he “represents the neocon, warmongering establishment”.

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can’t do on day one
• Trump team so far – who’s in and who might be coming
• Why Musk will find it hard to cut $2tn
• What Trump picks say about Mid East policy

Donald Trump has announced that he will appoint Karoline Leavitt, his campaign spokeswoman, to serve as White House press secretary in his next administration.

At 27, Leavitt will be the youngest White House press secretary in US history.

The president-elect said in a statement that he was confident the one-time candidate for Congress – who also served in the White House press office during the first Trump administration – would “excel at the podium and help deliver our message to the American People as we Make America Great Again”.

“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said.

A native of New Hampshire, Leavitt studied communications and political science at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic college in her home state.

While still in school, she interned at Fox News and in Trump’s White House press office. She told Politico in 2020 that she gained her “first glimpse into the world of press” through these experiences. They led to her decision to pursue a career in press relations, she said.

Leavitt began working for the first Trump White House shortly after graduating in 2019, first as presidential speechwriter and later as assistant press secretary, according to the website for her 2022 run for Congress.

“I helped prepare Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for high-pressure briefings [and] fought against the biased mainstream media,” her website stated.

After leaving the White House, Leavitt served as the communications director for Elise Stefanik, a senior Republican congresswoman whom President-elect Trump has nominated to serve as United Nations ambassador.

Leavitt departed that role to run for Congress, winning the Republican nomination for New Hampshire’s first congressional district in 2022, only to lose in the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas.

The policy positions she listed on her campaign website largely align with many of Trump’s priorities. On the economy, she pledged to “CUT taxes” and “champion pro-growth, free market policies”.

She presented herself as a strong backer of law enforcement and strong borders, including “ZERO tolerance for illegal immigration” and said she would work to ensure the completion of the border wall.

In January 2024, she joined Trump’s third bid for the US presidency as his campaign press secretary.

Now, she’s been chosen to serve as the youngest White House press secretary in US history. Ron Ziegler was the previous record holder. In 1969, he was appointed to the position by Richard Nixon when he was 29.

The public will soon see Leavitt in the iconic spot behind the podium in the White House briefing room – a space that led to countless tense exchanges between members of the press and officials in Trump’s first administration.

Trump ran through multiple press secretaries during his first four-year term, including Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.

After departing the White House, Sanders went on to win the race for Arkansas governor.

Grisham resigned after the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot and has become a Trump critic. McEnany has continued to advocate for the president-elect as a Fox News personality.

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can’t do on day one
• Trump team so far – who’s in and who might be coming
• Why Musk will find it hard to cut $2tn
• What Trump picks say about Mid East policy

They fought the law for Donald Trump. Now, they will help him enforce it.

On Thursday, Trump announced he had chosen members of his defence team for senior justice department roles.

Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in multiple criminal cases, will be nominated for the second most powerful post at the Justice Department – deputy attorney general. Emil Bove, an attorney on Trump’s New York hush-money case, also will take on a high-ranking post in the department.

D John Sauer, who won Trump’s historic presidential immunity case in the US Supreme Court this year, will be his nominee for US solicitor general.

If they’re all confirmed, they would report to Trump’s pick for US attorney general, Matt Gaetz, a conservative who has been an unflinching supporter of the president-elect.

While Trump’s attorneys have more traditional experience than Gaetz, Trump’s stated intentions to remake the department and pursue “the enemy within,” along with the nominations, have raised questions among legal scholars about the future of the Justice Department.

“It’s quite a clear signal that he’s taking the justice department in a direction of loyalty to him rather than independence, which has been the tradition up until now,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School.

The three lawyers proved themselves to be creative and consistent advocates for Trump as he battled four separate criminal indictments last year.

Trump announced that Mr Blanche would set about “fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long.”

Both Mr Blanche and Mr Bove have previous justice department experience, passing through what is arguably its most prestigious jurisdiction: the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Mr Blanche rose to head violent crimes at the SDNY before heading to prestigious law firm WilmerHale then struck out on his own – only to take on America’s highest-profile criminal defendant.

“They certainly have relevant experience, certainly prosecutorial experience,” said Jonathan Nash, an Emory School of Law professor.

Mr Blanche, he added, would have managerial experience from his time at the SDNY, an asset to a deputy attorney general.

Mr Blanche adopted some of Trump’s bombastic posturing during the New York criminal trial earlier this year, openly attacking witnesses’ character and repeatedly sparring with the judge. Some experts believe these tactics may have contributed to Trump’s loss.

But in a few days, Mr Blanche could secure his biggest victory yet: overturning the sole criminal conviction against Trump in his hush-money trial. He and Mr Bove have argued that Trump’s conviction in New York should be overturned.

As US solicitor general, Mr Sauer would represent the government in Supreme Court cases. He previously held the solicitor general position in Missouri, and legal experts said that makes him an unsurprising choice.

Mr Sauer already secured one major win for Trump before the nation’s highest court as Trump sought to stymie federal prosecution of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Mr Sauer successfully argued to the Supreme Court that presidents should have immunity from criminal prosecution for certain “official acts” while in office.

More recently, Mr Sauer argued to a New York appeals court that Trump’s nine-figure fine in a civil fraud trial should be overturned. The court has yet to issue a decision.

It is not unheard of for US presidents to appoint close legal allies to the justice department and other judicial posts.

President John F Kennedy made his brother, Robert F Kennedy, US attorney general in the 1960s. President Lyndon B Johnson chose his former attorney Abe Fortas for the Supreme Court.

Since the Watergate era, however, the justice department has sought to position itself as mostly independent from the president.

But Trump tested that norm. During his first term, he fired one attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The second, William Barr, resigned after pushing back against Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

For Anannyaa Gupta completing her studies in Australia has always been the “dream”.

“Their education system is one of the best in the world,” the 21-year-old, from the Indian city of Hyderabad, explains.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Melbourne’s Monash University in July, she applied for the master’s qualification she needs to become a social worker – the kind of skilled job Australia is desperate to fill amid labour shortages.

“I genuinely want to study here, offer my skills and contribute to society,” she says.

But Ms Gupta is among current and prospective international students who have been swept up in a panic caused by the Australian government’s plan to slash foreign student numbers.

The new cap – which would significantly reduce new enrolments – is needed to make the A$47.8bn (£24.6bn, $32bn) education industry more sustainable, the government says.

It is the most controversial of recent measures that have also imposed tougher English language requirements on student visa applicants, and greater scrutiny on those seeking further study. Non-refundable visa application fees have also been doubled.

However, the sector and its supporters say they weren’t properly consulted, and that the changes could ravage the economy, cause job losses and damage Australia’s reputation, all while punishing both domestic and international students.

“[It] sends out the signal that Australia is not a welcoming place,” says Matthew Brown, deputy chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8), a body which represents Australia’s top ranked universities.

Education is Australia’s fourth biggest export, trailing only mining products. Foreign students, who pay nearly twice as much as Australian students on average, prop up some institutions, subsidising research, scholarships, and domestic study fees. At the University of Sydney, for example, they account for over 40% of revenue.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is facing pressure to reduce record levels of migration, in the hope of improving housing affordability and easing a cost-of-living crisis, ahead of a federal election next year. And international students – who totalled 793,335 last semester – have become a target.

The government has proposed to cap new foreign enrolments at 270,000 for 2025, which it says is a return to pre-pandemic levels. An accurate comparison with previous years is not possible because publicly available data is inadequate, according to an education expert.

Education Minister Jason Clare says each higher education institution will be given an individual limit, with the biggest cuts to be borne by vocational education and training providers. Of the universities affected, those in capital cities will see the largest reductions.

The government says the policy will redirect students to regional towns and universities that need them, instead of overcrowded big cities.

It also says the changes aim to protect prospective students from “unethical” providers, alleging some accept students without sufficient language skills or academic standards and enrol people who intend to work instead of study.

“International education is extremely important, and these reforms are designed to make it better and fairer, and set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward,” Clare said.

Abul Rizvi, a former government official who shaped Australia’s skilled migration policy, says the “underfunded” sector has “long been chasing tuition revenue from overseas students and sacrificing learning integrity in the process”.

Institutions themselves are questioning whether they’re too reliant on international student income and how to fix it, Dr Brown says: “It’s a discussion that every university is having.”

But the caps announcement still drew a mostly furious response from the sector.

The Go8 has called the proposed laws “draconian”, while others accused the government of “wilfully weakening” the economy and of using international students as “cannon fodder in a poll-driven battle over migration”.

The government has not confirmed how long the caps will be in place, but Dr Brown says the Go8’s calculations indicate they will have a A$1bn impact on their members in the first year alone. The broader economy would suffer a A$5.3bn hit, resulting in the loss of 20,000 jobs, according to their research.

Australia’s Department of the Treasury has called those projections “doubtful” but has not released its own modelling on the economic impact of the changes.

Dr Brown also warned that the caps could see some universities rescind offers already made to foreign students, strangle vital research programmes, and may mean an increase in fees for some Australian students.

However a handful of smaller universities, for whom the caps are beneficial, welcomed the news.

La Trobe University’s Vice-Chancellor Theo Farrell said they supported “transparent and proportionate measures” to manage international student growth in Australia.

“We recognise that there is broad political and community support to reduce net migration levels,” he said.

But Dr Brown argues there is also a hit to Australia’s reputation which is harder to quantify, pointing to Canada as a warning. It introduced a foreign student cap this year, but industry bodies there say enrolments have fallen well below that, because nervous students would rather apply to study somewhere with more certainty.

“We need an international education system that has managed growth built in… it’s not for the minister to unilaterally decide on caps based on some formula which satisfies a political end.”

Mr Rizvi argues that instead of going ahead with the proposed caps in Australia, the government should consider introducing a minimum university entrance exam score.

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot… It won’t deter poor performing students but it will deter high performing students who have options,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile in parliament, the Greens have said the policy amounts to “racist dog-whistling”, and one of the government’s MPs has broken ranks to attack it too.

“A hard cap would be bad for Australia’s human capital and the talent pipeline, bad for soft power and bad for academic excellence and research,” Julian Hill told The Australian newspaper.

But despite the criticisms, the bill legislating the limits – set to be debated in parliament this week – is expected to pass, with the opposition’s support.

Clare has acknowledged that some service providers may face difficult budget decisions but said that any assertion the policy is “somehow tearing down international education is absolutely and fundamentally wrong”.

However, with less than two months until the changes are supposed to take effect, they are causing extreme anxiety and confusion among students.

In China and India – the two biggest international markets for Australia – the news is going down like a lead balloon.

“This is going to be very hard on students in India, most of whom come from middle-income backgrounds and spend years planning and preparing for their education abroad. Their dreams will be quashed,” Amritsar-based immigration consultant Rupinder Singh told the BBC.

Vedant Gadhavi – a Monash University student – says that some of his friends back home in Gujarat who had been hoping to come to Australia for their masters have been spooked.

“They seem to have changed their plans a bit because of the constant shift… They thought that it might be a bit difficult to plan their careers and life.”

Jenny – a senior high school student in China’s Anhui province – says she set her sights on Australia because getting a good quality education there is “easier” than getting into a fiercely competitive Chinese university.

“It’s all up in the air now,” she tells the BBC.

She adds that going to a lower-ranked university in a regional location is not an option for her or her peers: “We [just] won’t go to Australia at all.”

Rishika Agrawal, president of the Australian National University’s International Students’ Department, says the proposed laws have stoked other uneasy feelings.

“Definitely there are other students who think this is a sign of increased hostility towards immigrants in Australia from the government.”

And, she adds, with the contributions to society made by international students often overlooked, while their post-graduate employment options dry up, there’s growing resentment.

“They go back to their own countries, having spent a tremendous amount of money towards their education and not really reaping the rewards for it.

“They definitely do feel like cash cows.”

As the debate continues in parliament, there’s been some relief for Anannya. Shortly after she spoke to the BBC, and only weeks out from her course start date, she received the official masters enrolment certificate and new study visa she feared would never come.

But many other students still wait and worry.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d feel very helpless, very disappointed. It’s already taking away credibility that Australia used to hold,” Rishika says.

After 10 weeks, the mass rape trial that has shocked France is moving on to the final phase of closing statements.

The case focuses on a formerly married couple, Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, pensioners who are now in their early 70s.

Ms Pelicot’s legal team will give their final statements on Tuesday, and the defence will then follow, ahead of a verdict from a panel of five judges expected on 20 December.

Dominique Pelicot went on trial with 50 other men in the southern city of Avignon in September.

Every chapter of this case has played out in the full glare of publicity because Ms Pelicot has waived her anonymity, making the whole trial open to the media and the public.

In France, it has become known as the , after the village near Avignon where the Pelicots lived.

In November 2020, Dominique Pelicot admitted drugging his then-wife for almost a decade and recruiting dozens of men online to rape her in their home when she was unconscious.

Police tracked down his co-accused from thousands of videos they found on Mr Pelicot’s laptop, although they were unable to identify an additional 21 men. Investigators said they have evidence of around 200 rapes carried out between 2011 and 2020.

The majority of the defendants deny the charges of rape, arguing that they cannot be guilty because they did not realise Ms Pelicot was unconscious and therefore did not “know” they were raping her.

That line of defence has sparked a nationwide discussion on whether consent should be added to France’s legal definition of rape, currently defined as “any act of sexual penetration committed against another person by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”.

The trial has also shone a light on the issue of chemical submission – drug-induced sexual assault.

Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, who were both born in 1952, married in 1973 and had three children. She worked as a manager in a large French company, while he – a trained electrician – started several ultimately unsuccessful businesses.

The Pelicots lived in the Paris region until 2013, when they retired to the picturesque southern village of Mazan. They had a big house with a swimming pool and often used to entertain their extended family during the summer holidays.

By all accounts, they were a happy, close-knit couple. “We shared holidays, anniversaries, Christmases… All of that, for me, was happiness,” Ms Pelicot has said.

Between 2011 and 2020, Ms Pelicot experienced unsettling symptoms she took to be signs of Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, and underwent extensive medical exams. The blackouts and memory loss were, in fact, side-effects of the drugs her husband was giving her without her knowledge.

Ms Pelicot divorced her husband soon after his crimes came to light. She is only using her married name for the purposes of the trial.

Dominique Pelicot has been in jail since November 2020. He will be sentenced next month, alongside the other 50 defendants.

In September 2020, Dominique Pelicot was spotted filming under women’s skirts by a security guard in a supermarket in southern France.

Police detained him and confiscated his electronic devices. They noticed suspicious chats on his Skype account, then found thousands of videos of men having sex with a seemingly unconscious woman – Mr Pelicot’s wife, Gisèle.

Investigators worked for weeks to gather enough evidence to take Mr Pelicot into custody and eventually arrested him in November 2020. He immediately admitted all the charges.

When Ms Pelicot was questioned by police and shown photos and videos in which she appeared unconscious, it became clear she had no knowledge of what had happened to her. She denied ever giving her consent to having sex with other men and realised her husband had drugged her for almost a decade.

Fifty men – aged between 26 and 72 years old – are on trial alongside Mr Pelicot.

They hail from all walks of life: among them are a fireman, a carpenter, a nurse and a journalist. Many are married with children. Most lived within a 60km (37 miles) distance of the Pelicots’ residence.

A handful have admitted to raping Ms Pelicot.

The majority, however, reject the charges. Their defence hinges on the fact they did not believe what they were doing was rape, because they were not aware that she was unconscious and therefore could not give her consent.

Mr Pelicot has repeatedly denied this was the case, insisting that when he recruited men on the internet he made it abundantly clear that his wife would be asleep. “They all knew, they cannot say the contrary,” he has said.

It was Gisèle Pelicot who decided to waive her anonymity – highly unusual in cases of rape. Her legal team also insisted for the videos of the alleged rapes to be shown in court.

Ms Pelicot has said that she hopes her decision will empower other survivors of sexual violence to speak out: “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too. I don’t want them to be ashamed any longer.”

She has forcefully hit back at “humiliating” suggestions by the defence that she may have been drunk or pretending to be asleep during the alleged rapes, stating that she was never interested in partner-swapping or threesomes.

Ms Pelicot has also, however, spoken candidly about the devastation that her husband’s abuse and lies have wreaked on her life. “People may see me and think: that woman is strong,” she said. “The facade may be solid, but behind it lies a field of ruins.”

The horror of Dominique Pelicot’s actions, the sheer number of men implicated in the case and Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to push for an open trial has meant that the proceedings have garnered significant attention.

Dozens of members of the public attend court in Avignon each day to back Ms Pelicot, meeting her with applause and handing her flowers.

Murals have appeared across the country depicting her distinctive look of a short bob and round sunglasses, and demonstrations have taken place all over France in her support.

Above all, she is credited by many with sparking a conversation on rape culture, misogyny and chemical submission.

Several feminist groups are now pushing for the government to amend its definition of rape to include consent, as is already the case in many European countries.

“Society has already accepted the fact that the difference between sex and rape is consent,” said Greens senator Mélanie Vogel, who proposed a consent-based rape law last year. “Criminal law, however, has not.”

With her signature shawl draped over her shoulders and silver hair pulled back from her face, Jane Goodall exudes serenity – even over our slightly blurry video call.

In a Vienna hotel room, a press team and a small group of filmmakers, who are documenting her latest speaking tour, fuss around her.

The famous primatologist and conservationist settles into a high-backed chair that dwarfs her slender frame.

On my screen I can see that behind her, on a shelf, is her toy monkey, Mr H.

The toy was given to her nearly 30 years ago by a friend and has travelled the world with her. Dr Goodall is now 90 years of age, and she and Mr H are still travelling.

“I am a little bit exhausted,” she admits. “I’ve come here from Paris. And after here I go to Berlin, then Geneva. I’m on this tour talking about the danger to the environment and some of the remedies,” she says.

One of the remedies she wants to talk about today is a tree-planting and habitat restoration mission that her eponymous foundation and non-profit technology company, Ecosia, are carrying out in Uganda. Over the past five years, with the help of local communities and smallholder farmers, the organisations have planted nearly two million trees.

“We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction,” Dr Goodall tells me during our interview for BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science. “The more we can do to restore nature and protect existing forests, the better.”

The primary aim of this project is to restore the threatened habitat of Uganda’s 5,000 chimpanzees. Dr Goodall has studied and campaigned to protect the primates for decades. But the activist also wants to highlight the threat that deforestation poses to our climate.

“Trees have to grow to a certain size before they can really do their work,” she says. “But all this [tree-planting] is helping to absorb carbon dioxide.”

This week, world leaders have gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29 – the latest round of UN climate talks.

And Dr Goodall says taking action to slow down the warming of our planet is more urgent than ever.

“We still have a window of time to start slowing down climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Dr Goodall says. “But it’s a window that’s closing.”

Destruction of forests, and other wild places, she points out, is intrinsically linked to the climate crisis.

“So much has changed in my lifetime,” she says, recalling that in the forests of Tanzania where she began studying chimps more than 60 years ago, “you used to be able to set your calendar by the timing of the two rainy seasons”.

“Now, sometimes it rains in the dry season, and sometimes it’s dry in the wet season. It means the trees are fruiting at the wrong time, which upsets the chimpanzees, and also the insects and the birds.”

Over the decades that she has studied and campaigned to protect the habitat of wild chimpanzees, she says she has seen the destruction of forests across Africa: “And I’ve seen the decrease in chimpanzee numbers.

“If we don’t get together and impose tough regulations on what people are able to do to the environment – if we don’t rapidly move away from fossil fuel, if we don’t put a stop to industrial farming, that’s destroying the environment and killing the soil, having a devastating effect on biodiversity – the future ultimately is doomed.”

Hearing her speak in this way gives me a glimpse of a toughness that belies her well-spoken, gentle demeanour. When Jane Goodall began observing and studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, she was a trailblazer. Her research, now considered groundbreaking, was controversial.

She was the first person to witness and document chimpanzees making and using tools – the primates prepared sticks to fish for termites. Prior to her observations, that was a trait that was thought to be uniquely human.

She revealed that the animals form strong family bonds – and even that they engage in warfare over territory.

But her approach – associating so closely with the animals she studied, naming them and even referring to them as “my friends” was scoffed at by some (mostly male) scientists.

Her supervisor and mentor, Professor Louis Leakey, though, saw the value in her technique: “He wanted somebody whose mind wasn’t messed up by the reductionist attitude of science to animals,” Dr Goodall explains.

“You don’t have a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a horse and not give them a name. It’s the same as when I studied squirrels in my garden as a little girl – they all had names.”

Her methods – and her sense of closeness to the primates she has dedicated her life to – have given her a unique perspective.

She tells me about a “wonderful moment” with a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard, the male chimp who she first witnessed making and using tools to catch termites. “He was the first to lose his fear of me,” she recalls.

“I sat down near him and, lying on the ground, was the ripe red fruit of an oil palm. I held it out towards him and he turned his head away. Then I put my hand closer and he turned and looked into my eyes, reached out and very gently squeezed my fingers.

“That is how chimpanzees reassure each other. We understood each other perfectly – with a gestural language that obviously predates human speech.”

Dr Goodall’s career has often been challenging. She has written about the early years of her work for Professor Leakey, who was a renowned scientist, and who had enormous influence over her career. He repeatedly declared his love for her, putting pressure on her in a way that, today, might be viewed as sexual harassment.

But she spurned his advances and kept her focus on her work and her beloved chimpanzees. Now, having turned 90 this year, she does not appear to be slowing down.

So what keeps Dr Goodall going? On this she is emphatic – charmingly affronted by the question: “Surely people want a future for their children. If they do, we have to get tougher about [environmental] legislation.

“We don’t have much time left to start helping the environment. We’ve done so much to destroy it.”

In India, if you ask a pedestrian how many obstacles they’ve encountered on a footpath, they may not be able to count them – but they’ll certainly tell you that most footpaths are in poor condition.

This is what Arun Pai says he learnt when he started asking people about their experience walking on the streets of his city, Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), in southern India.

This month he set up a “fun challenge” – called the ‘world’s longest footpath run’ – which invited people to walk or jog on an 11km (8 miles) stretch of footpath and make a note of all the obstacles they encountered, like hawkers, garbage or broken slabs of concrete. Next, they were asked to rate the footpath on a scale of one to five.

“When you have specifics, it gets easier to ask the authorities to take action. Instead of telling your local politician “the footpaths are bad”, you can ask him or her “to fix specific spots on a street,” Mr Pai says.

Mr Pai, who is the founder of Bangalore Walks, a non-profit that promotes walking, is among several citizen activists who are pushing to make the country’s roads more pedestrian-friendly.

In India’s capital, a tour company called Delhi by Cycle has been advocating for making the city more cycle-friendly and walkable. These walking-enthusiasts are holding awareness walks, building walking apps and lobbying with politicians to make a change.

Even in India’s biggest cities, proper footpaths are few and far between and they are often overrun by hawkers and shops, parked vehicles and even cattle. In some places, they double up as homes for the poor.

Even footpaths that exist are often not built to standard or properly maintained. Navigating roads on foot through crowds and traffic can be a nightmare.

Last month, Walking Project, a citizen’s group in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, released a ‘pedestrian manifesto’ ahead of Maharashtra state elections to highlight the poor condition of the city’s roads and encourage local politicians to take action.

The manifesto included demands for better parking, designated hawking zones, pedestrian-friendly corridors on arterial roads and to make footpaths more accessible to those with mobility challenges.

“Government statistics show that almost 50% of the city’s population relies on walking, which is far greater than the 11% that uses private transport and the combined 15% that uses tuk-tuks and buses,” says Vendant Mhatre, convener of Walking Project.

“And yet, pedestrians are the most ignored group of users when it comes to framing policies around transport or road safety,” he adds.

According to the latest government estimates on road accidents, pedestrian fatalities were the second-highest after those of two-wheeler riders. In 2022, over 10,000 pedestrians lost their lives on national highways across the country, with around 21,000 more sustaining injuries in accidents.

“Authorities often resort to band-aid solutions like adding speed bumps or a signal to curb road accidents. But what is really needed is inter-connected footpaths that can accommodate high footfall,” Mr Mhatre says.

Studies have found that addressing the problems of this forgotten group of road users can reap benefits for multiple stakeholders.

In 2019, researchers in the southern city of Chennai studied the impact the construction of new footpaths on 100km (62 miles) of the city’s streets had on the environment, economy and the health and safety of citizens.

They found that the new footpaths encouraged 9% to 27% of the surveyed respondents to walk instead of using motorized transport, which led to a reduction in greenhouse gases and particulate matter. They also learned that the footpaths provided new opportunities for women and lower-income groups, helping them save money as well.

The survey highlighted how people with disabilities and women might have nuanced requirements from footpaths and that tailoring improvements to meet their needs could enhance accessibility and equity.

“Very often, people don’t have a benchmark for footpath quality, especially if they haven’t travelled abroad or been exposed to places that have good facilities for pedestrians,” Mr Mhatre says. He reasons that that’s why there isn’t enough outrage about the quality or absence of footpaths in the country.

He also points out that most people see walking as an activity performed for leisure or exercise. And so, the infrastructure they associate with walking stops at gardens or walking tracks. In reality, however, people walk to various destinations daily, so the scope of walking infrastructure is far broader.

“Walking is the most economical and environment-friendly way to navigate one’s city and it’s high time our leaders paid as much attention to walking infrastructure as they do to public transport,” Mr Mhatre says.

Geetam Tiwari, a professor of civil engineering, says that the main problem is that too much focus is given to solving the problem of car congestion on roads.

“To improve the flow of traffic, authorities often narrow down footpaths or eliminate them entirely,” she says. Ms Tiwari says that this approach is problematic because doing so makes it difficult for pedestrians to access public transport systems, like buses and metros, which can take the pressure off the roads.

“It might seem counter-intuitive, but allowing the congestion to persist and focussing on improving infrastructure for pedestrians will help solve the traffic problem in the long run,” she says.

Ms Tiwari also says that the federal government should make it mandatory for states to implement the guidelines issued by the Indian Road Congress – a national organisation that lays down designing standards for roads and highways.

She says that cities can also implement their own Non-Motorised Transport Policy (NMTP) to create better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.

“At the moment, only a handful of cities in India have experimented with a NMTP but its time more cities step up to the plate,” she adds.

In the autumn of 1971, a group of men came together who would carry out one of the most astonishing bank raids in history.

Skill, audacity and patience, criminal connections, a fair amount of luck, and inspiration from a Sherlock Holmes story culminated in a weekend of high drama and barely believable farce.

A weekend in which a gang tunnelled into a secure vault and made off with the contents of hundreds of secure deposit boxes, while all the time being listened to by an amateur radio operator who was trying to tune in to pirate radio.

A weekend in which police officers were on one side of the vault’s door while the gang were on the other, and nobody thought to check inside.

As Lloyds Bank announces the upcoming closure of its Baker Street branch in central London, this is the story of how one of the most secure locations in the country was plundered – and even now, remains partly unsolved.

On a Friday night in September 1971, a group of men, clutching sandwiches and flasks of tea, made their way into SAC, a leather goods shop on Baker Street.

The previous May, the lease for the shop came up for sale and was duly bought by Benjamin Wolfe, a man in his 60s.

He had been especially keen on the premises because it was two doors down from Lloyds Bank and it had a basement the same depth as the bank’s vault.

Before even that, in December 1970, an apparently well-to-do man opened an account at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds and put £500 (about £6,000 today) into it.

Later, he rented a safety deposit box at the branch.

Like many wealthy clients, he made frequent visits to his box in the vault.

Unlike many wealthy clients, he used the time to measure the room with his umbrella.

Other circumstances played into the hands of the group.

The summer had seen a number of roadworks in the area. The vibrations caused by the work led to businesses’ trembler alarms repeatedly going off.

So the businesses disabled their trembler alarms.

Originally thought to have been organised by a Brian Reader, who was later involved in both the Brinks-Mat heist and the Hatton Garden raid, the personnel of the gang has never been fully established.

Reader, who died aged 84 last year with an estimated fortune of £22m garnered from his string of high-risk burglaries, denied he took part.

Four people, including Wolfe and Anthony Gavin, a protégé of Reader’s, were jailed in 1973.

It’s thought at least another four, including a woman, slipped away.

Other unanswered questions include how much was taken. It was reported that it could be anything between £500,000 and £3m (today’s equivalent of £6m and £40m).

Only a fraction was recovered, and the rest went untracked.

There were rumours involving government suppression of the story, for reasons unknown.

And records about it officially sealed at the national archives until 2071.

And is there any truth to the claim that one box contained photographs of Princess Margaret in an intimate clinch?

Gavin allegedly came up with the scheme after reading a Sherlock Holmes story, The Red-Headed League.

In it, Arthur Conan-Doyle’s hero waits in a vault for burglars planning to tunnel in.

Alongside Wolfe, Gavin recruited Reginald Tucker (who was the umbrella-wielder) and Thomas Stephen.

Two others, Bobby Mills and Mickey Gervaise, were thought to be on board – although afterwards they disappeared into “thin air”, the police investigation found.

Tea flasks and sandwiches were not the only items carted inside the leather shop.

Stephen, recruited for his ability to provide the necessary tools, had produced a 100-tonne jack, explosives, and a thermal lance, which heats and melts steel with pressurized oxygen to create very high temperatures.

Months of weekends were spent digging the 40ft tunnel, with debris being taken away in plastic boxes under cover of darkness.

When it was time for the raid, Mills, furnished with a walkie-talkie, mounted a nearby roof to keep an eye out as the others went through the tunnel and worked on breaking into the vault.

The jack didn’t work, and nor did the thermal lance.

It would have to be the gelignite.

Timing the explosion to coincide with traffic to conceal the noise, they managed to break through.

They were in.

Meanwhile, in his attempt to tune into Radio Luxembourg, Robert Rowlands was picking up the gang’s walkie-talkie conversations on his ham radio.

The 35-year-old was listening to them in real time as they co-ordinated their movements and the rooftop lookout beefed about how cold he was.

Mr Rowlands heard the group discuss whether to take a break as their exploits had left the vault full of fumes, smoke and dust.

One tunneller requested a cup of tea and a sandwich.

They also mentioned how many “thousands” they had and what they would go back for.

Mr Rowlands assumed they were burgling a tobacco shop and the numbers referred to cigarettes.

Local police were not interested. A few hours later Mr Rowlands called Scotland Yard, where detectives were indeed interested.

They called in a detection van from the Post Office in an attempt to trace the walkie-talkie signal.

But they didn’t do this until Sunday afternoon, when it was all over.

The Times reported the following day: “Bank managers and caretakers were roused from their beds and brought from weekend holiday retreats to open their premises.

“Police, accompanied by security men, went into the bank, but after being assured that the strong room was intact, they left.

“As they closed the front door of the Lloyds premises, the thieves, some of them crouching behind the strong room doors, breathed a sigh of relief.

“The slightest gasp might have given away their position.

“Soon afterwards the thieves crawled back along the 40ft tunnel. They escaped through a back window leaving eight tons of rubble from the tunnel behind.”

Or, as bank staff said, with remarkable understatement when they opened the branch on Monday morning: “We found the vault in some disorder.”

Cdr Robert Huntley, of Scotland Yard, said: “Inevitably, we have come in for some criticism, from people who say we were slow to move off the mark.

“When we were able to visit the bank with Lloyds security staff we were assured that the strong room was still intact. No one suspected that the gang had come up through the floor on the other side.”

It was the biggest robbery ever carried out in the Metropolitan Police district, with 120 detectives working on the case.

“We are getting information about who are the real brains behind this gang”, Cdr Hunt said.

“We think that the ‘Mr Big’ is probably a faceless commuter. I do not know him.”

Gavin – whose tunnel-digging was described at the Old Bailey as “a magnificent piece of engineering” – Tucker and Stephen all pleaded guilty to entering the bank as a trespasser, stealing cash and jewellery and possessing explosives.

Wolfe was found guilty of the same charges.

Passing sentence, Judge Sutcliffe QC, said: “Each one of you must have known that the reward for success would be very high and the penalty for failure would be high as well.”

Wolfe was given eight years in jail, while the others received 12.

Judge Sutcliffe told Wolfe he was passing a lesser sentence on him only because of his great age.

“I am not going to have on my conscience the sentencing of a man for so long that he has little chance of leaving prison alive.”

(Wolfe was 64).

The aftermath of the case saw an undignified bout of finger-pointing.

Scotland Yard said it was let down by the security staff of Lloyds Bank, who in turn said they had been assured their alarms were “foolproof”.

The Post Office complained it could have caught the gang if it had been called in earlier.

There were also questions as to why police did not check the leather shop, which would not only have revealed the tunnel leading straight into the vault, but the men inside, busily opening 286 safety deposit boxes.

The heist was the inspiration for a 2008 film, The Bank Job. It includes a plotline in which the British Security Services want to retrieve some compromising photographs of Princess Margaret, allegedly held in a security box by Trinidadian militant gangster Michael X.

The obvious solution was to get a gang to tunnel into the vault.

The storyline boosted a rumour that appeared in newspapers, in which an anonymous “friend” said Reader was definitely involved in the heist and had told him he found photos showing a leading politician abusing children.

Reader apparently left the images “scattered on the floor of the vault” for the police to find.

There has been no evidence this was true.

Another rumour was that the government imposed a “D-notice” – now called a DSMA-notice – on the story.

This hinges on a lack of coverage of the story, with many claiming it disappeared from the news agenda.

A DSMA-notice is issued to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations.

It is not usually used to silence news stories about bank jobs that have already happened.

The lack of published stories, though, isn’t quite true. Naturally, interest died down, but the raid was still being reported in national and regional papers throughout the decade.

The rumour may gave started with radio ham Mr Rowlands, who said police had snatched a phone out of his grasp while he spoke to a newspaper about his part in the case.

He said the officer had told the editor he wasn’t allowed to publish anything.

Years later, Mr Rowlands suggested the police were trying to cover up what appeared to be their own incompetence.

The only mystery that remains is what is in the 800 pages of sealed documents at the National Archives. They are due to be released in 47 years time.

So what did Lloyds Bank say about the whole event?

It advised customers to insure valuables kept in their safety boxes and denied any liability.

After all, it said: “It is a little unusual for raiders to come up through the floor.”

A robotic dog named “Spot” made by Boston Dynamics is the latest tool in the arsenal of the US Secret Service.

The device has lately been spotted patrolling the perimeter of President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

They do not have weapons – and each can be controlled remotely or automatically – as long as its route is pre-programmed.

Passers-by are warned by a sign on each of Spot’s legs: “DO NOT PET.”

“I don’t know that anyone is tempted to pet these robot dogs. They do not look cuddly,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist at Menlo College.

Video of Spot strutting around the property has gone viral on TikTok – where reactions range from calling them cool and cute, to creepy – and become fodder for jokes on American late night television. But its mission is no laughing matter.

“Safeguarding the president-elect is a top priority,” said Anthony Guglielmi, US Secret Service chief of communications, in a statement to the BBC.

In the months leading up to the US presidential election, Trump was the target of two apparent assassination attempts. The first took place at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania and the other occurred at the Mar-a-Lago golf course in September.

Citing “concern for operational security,” the Secret Service declined to answer the BBC’s specific questions about the use of robotic dogs in Trump’s security detail, including when the agency began deploying the device at his primary residence.

Boston Dynamics also declined to answer specific questions, although it confirmed the Secret Service was deploying its Spot robot.

So why might the Secret Service be using them now?

Ron Williams, a former Secret Service agent who is now CEO of the security and risk management firm Talon Companies, suspects the assassination attempts against Trump added urgency to the agency’s push “to upgrade the technology that can enhance the ability to detect and deter,” Williams said.

At Mar-a-Lago, where so much of the property is exposed, Williams said robotic dogs are long overdue. “They can cover a lot more area” than humans alone, Williams said of the dogs, which he expects will become more of a common sight over time.

And it’s not just the Secret Service. Williams said robotic dogs have increasingly become a tool used by militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world.

A bomb squad in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania that purchased Spot in the spring deploys the device to inspect potential explosives, according to Boston Dynamics promotional materials.

Last year, the New York Police Department moved forward with adding the robotic canines to its force despite complaints of “a dystopian overreach of police power,” according to Wired.

On the other side of the globe, Ukraine has used them to conduct reconnaissance in the ongoing conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion in 2022, the Kyiv Post reports.

Spot is known for its agility. It can walk up and down stairs and navigate tight spaces. It can even open doors.

But its ability to reveal potential threats ranks high among the reasons that so many agencies appear willing to pay up to $75,000 (£59,000) for the device.

Secret Service communications chief Guglielmi said the robotic dogs were “equipped with surveillance technology, and an array of advanced sensors that support our protective operations”.

The device comes outfitted with multiple cameras that generate a 3D map of its surroundings, according to Boston Dynamics marketing materials, and can also have extras such as thermal sensing.

But none of this happens without a human master.

“They basically have a joystick controlling the robot dog as it walks around,” said Missy Cummings, an engineering professor at George Mason University who runs the university’s Autonomy and Robotics Center. Spot can also move automatically along predefined routes.

Unlike their human and real canine counterparts, robotic dogs aren’t distracted by visuals, sounds or smells they encounter.

But despite their many impressive features, the devices can be taken down.

“You just have to spray it with Aqua Net hairspray in its ‘face’,” Cummings said. “And that would be enough to stop the cameras from working correctly.”

While the robotic dog seen at Mar-a-Lago is not armed, she says competitors appear to be experimenting with models that are.

“People are trying to weaponise these dogs,” Cummings adds, citing a Chinese model with an attached rifle which she learned about at a robotics meeting this week.

They aren’t about to replace humans, says Melissa Michelson, who likens the devices to assisted-driving technology in some vehicles.

“We don’t have a lot of faith in the ability of cars to drive by themselves,” Michelson said.

Secret Service agents at Mar-a-Lago have been seen patrolling alongside Spot.

“We still do need those humans behind the scenes to use human judgment and be able to jump in if there’s a technology breakdown,” she says.

Described as a virtual singer powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Mya Blue says: “I am not the enemy, I am just a music lover exploring the different sounds of the world.”

Her Instagram account, where she makes this statement, has the tag line: “I may not be human but I sing from my soul” – and is the creation of Nigerian musician and producer Eclipse Nkasi.

She features in his recently released remix of Joromi, a classic tune by the late Nigerian highlife artist Sir Victor Uwaifo.

She and her creator want to calm the fears that many musicians the world over have about the impact of AI on the music industry.

Earlier this year, for example, high-profile artists such as Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj called for a halt to the “predatory” use of AI tools which they say steal artists’ voices.

And given a lack of understanding about AI throughout Africa, and the fact that AI tends to rely on data sources collated in the West, there are concerns about how African music and cultural heritage will be affected.

But there are many African artists and industry professionals who are excited about the possibilities this emerging technology offers.

Indeed Nkasi says the fact that AI is in its infancy in Africa may be a boon for the continent.

“There is a huge threat, but just saying: ‘Let’s abolish AI’ is not going to work – there are too many countries and people invested,” he told the BBC.

“The best thing we can do is figure out better ways to use it.”

The 33-year-old is determined to be that pioneer and last year also produced the continent’s first AI-powered music album Infinite Echoes.

Nkasi says he has intentionally taken a manual and creative approach to using AI in his music, primarily using it to generate samples.

“My biggest drive with AI is its application, finding healthy ways to apply it. With each project it was important to find something that it did that moved the needle forward,” he says.

But while Nkasi is happy to experiment with the new technology, some see it as a threat to African culture.

For Kenyan musician and producer Tabu Osusa, it heralds the risk of cultural appropriation – with AI passing off African sounds without acknowledging their source.

This is because AI is able to quickly create new compositions by learning from existing music.

“My problem with AI is the ownership. Once you have taken some music from Ghana or Nigeria, who owns that music? How would you find out where the original creators are and ensure they are credited? It’s theft for me through the backroom,” Osusa told the BBC.

“Due to unregulated sampling methods by musicians, AI will enable recording company moguls in the West to make colossal sums of money while leaving some creatives in African villages to languish in abject poverty.”

This fear is reflected in a report released last year by Creatives Garage, a Kenya-based arts platform which worked in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation to study the impact of AI on the East African nation’s creative communities.

It revealed that most Kenyan musicians were anxious that AI could lead to others benefitting from their creativity, says Bukonola Ngobi, research consultant at Creatives Garage.

The study also warned that AI’s power to store data might sound the death knell for the culture around traditional music.

One musician even questioned whether recording and storing traditional sounds for AI to replicate might be a disincentive for local artists to continue to learn traditional instruments, Ngobi says.

Osusa goes even further: “In Africa we mostly don’t study music, we are born with it. We live it. It’s very spiritual. Music in Africa is always alive. It’s so dynamic. That shouldn’t be taken away from us.”

Yet the report did show that for those with access to tech devices, AI not only provided creative music development but also the chance to develop cheaper marketing and design services.

Although this would be no help for emerging artists from Africa’s poorer communities – and might raise the barrier to pursuing a music career, warned Ngobi.

“If you don’t have a laptop to start off with or you’re a musician in an environment where there is no internet connectivity then how will you participate?” she told the BBC.

For those wanting to innovate, one of the problems Africa faces is the lack of data from the continent to dictate algorithms. Searches are often shaped by Western biases which decrease the accuracy and quality of work produced by AI for African musicians.

For example, when Nkasi created Mya Blue using AI, he faced issues with her imagery – the artist presents as a Gen Z American girl with blue hair.

“AI is very limited in how it understands and perceives my space,” he says.

But the Nigerian musician views this as an opportunity for human contribution: “The limits we Africans experience with AI can be a good thing.

“One can argue that right now, while AI can’t give the very detailed African sound, there’s still room for the guy who can play it. So I’m not sure what we’re really fighting for when we consider that a problem.”

Fellow Nigerian Emmanuel Ogala, the boss of AI-powered company Josplay, definitely sees the opportunities for Africa.

His company uses AI models to collate detailed metadata and intelligence to create archives of the continent’s diverse music heritage.

“African music is really complex and it’s one of the most understudied types of music,” he told the BBC.

This was reflected at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, when South African musician Tyla won the award for the Best Afrobeats song for her hit Water.

During her acceptance speech she hit out against the tendency of Western award bodies to group all African artists under the umbrella of “Afrobeats” – a genre of music more associated with Nigeria and West Africa.

“African music is so diverse,” she said. “It’s more than just Afrobeats. I come from South Africa. I represent amapiano. I represent my culture.”

Ogala feels AI would address such homogenisation and benefit African musicians by revealing to the world more of the continent’s cultural diversity.

“A lot of the academics we speak to have knowledge that is very specific about a very small area of African music. You have to build for an African audience taking note of how fragmented our listening culture is. You just cannot humanly do that,” he says.

As AI continues to develop, there is consensus among African music artists, producers and researchers that there needs to be better financing.

“We need investment in the data infrastructure for the opportunities it presents to really be leveraged by people,” says Ngobi.

Ogala agrees and says that raising funds to develop his digital archive AI tool is difficult.

“We, the founders, have been funding the project out of our pockets because of our belief in the industry. If we put in place the fundamental building blocks, the industry will be a lot more viable than it is now.”

Added to this are the uncertainties around copyright legislation written for a pre-AI era which will need to be renegotiated. Copyright is already a huge issue for African artists whose music is often pirated, sold and played on the continent without them earning anything.

These challenges aside, there is a growing realisation that unless the African music industry embraces the new technology, it is in danger of losing control of its talent and heritage.

And Nkasi’s Mya Blue certainly has big ambitions.

During a Q&A on her Instagram, replying to a question about whether she could win a Grammy, she said: “Who knows. As an AI [artist], I don’t dream of trophies, but of resonating with hearts through music. But wouldn’t it be fun to see a virtual artist on that stage?”

• Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj want stop to ‘predatory’ music AI
• The Nigerian AI artist reimagining a stylish old age
• Tyla’s racial identity: South African singer sparks culture war

A grandmother in rural Zambia has become an style icon and internet sensation – after agreeing to play dress-up and swapping outfits with her fashionista granddaughter.

Margret Chola, who is in her mid-80s, is known to the world as “Legendary Glamma” – and adored by 225,000 Instagram followers for her striking and playful fashion photographs.

“I feel different, I feel new and alive in these clothes, in a way that I’ve never felt before,” Ms Chola tells the BBC. “I feel like I can conquer the world!”

The fortnightly Granny Series was created in 2023 by her granddaughter Diana Kaumba, a stylist who is based in New York City.

She came up with the idea when she was visiting Zambia to mark the second anniversary of the death of her father – the person she says inspired her passion for fashion because he always dressed well.

During that visit Ms Kaumba had not worn all her carefully curated outfits, so she asked her grandmother – or “Mbuya” in the Bemba language – if she wanted to try them on.

“I wasn’t doing anything at the time, so I just said: ‘OK. If that’s what you want to do let’s do it – why not?'” Ms Chola said.

“You will miss me when I die and at least this way you will be remembering me.”

Ms Kaumba wore Mbuya’s top and “chitenge” – a piece of patterned cloth wrapped around the waist. And Mbuya’s first outfit was a silver pantsuit.

“I thought it would be nice to dress up Mbuya in high fashion and then take photographs of her in her natural habitat,” Ms Kaumba tells the BBC.

That natural habitat is a farm in the village of 10 Miles, just north of the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

Most often Ms Chola is photographed in all her glamour outside – often sitting on an elegant wooden chair or lounging on a leather sofa.

In the background are exposed brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs, ploughed fields, mango trees and maize crops.

“I was so nervous when I posted that first photo. I left my phone for 10 minutes and in those 10 minutes there were 1,000 likes,” Ms Kaumba says.

“My mind was blown. The comments were flying in and people were asking for more.”

It was in April 2024 that the Granny Series really took off – after Ms Kaumba posted a series of photos of her grandmother in a red Adidas dress, several chunky, golden necklaces and a glittering jewelled crown.

“It surprised me to hear that so many people around the world love me,” Ms Chola says – who does not know her exact age because she does not have a birth certificate.

“I didn’t know I could make such an impact at this age.”

Ms Chola poses in clothes that are a mix of vibrant colours, textures and styles.

From a green American football jersey, combined with a layered frilly red dress styled as a skirt – in the colours of the Zambian flag to pay homage to 60 years of independence.

To a blue, black and green sequined top, complete with a golden snake necklace and bracelet.

And Mbuya’s personal favourite – jeans, a graphic T-shirt with her image on the front and a blonde wig.

“I had never worn jeans or a wig before – so I was happy, and I was dancing.”

Ms Kaumba, who has been a stylist since 2012, says that her grandma has “courage, grace – and nails every look”.

All the looks reflect her maximalist-chic aesthetic – which celebrates the joy of excess, eclectic combinations, the big and the bold, and clashing patterns and colours.

At the heart of it all are eye-catching accessories – bold sunglasses, oversized hats, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, rings, gloves, bags, blonde wigs, crowns.

That influence has come directly from her grandmother, who has “always been a lover of pearls and bangles”.

In one particularly playful scene called GOAT – short for greatest of all time – Ms Chola appears with a goat – that is decked out in Mbuya’s beloved pearls.

Other accessories also reflect Chola’s personality and story.

In some shots Mbuya is holding the beloved radio that she carries around all day and takes to bed with her.

Or she’s clutching an “ibende” – a long wooden stick that over the years she has used to pound millet or cassava or maize.

She is smoking a pipe or holding a metal cup full of tea, and hanging off the edge of the chair arm is an “mbaula” or charcoal brazier that Zambians often use for cooking – especially now that the country is plagued by severe power cuts.

Ms Kaumba hopes that the Granny Series will highlight that older people still have a lot to offer – and making memories together is an important way to “leave footprints for the next generation”.

“Do not write them off, love them just the same till the end because remember we will be just like them one day.”

As a result of Mbuya’s photo shoots, Ms Kaumba’s been hired by four granddaughters to style their grandmothers – aged between 70 and 96.

Ms Chola hopes that the Granny Series will inspire people “to live their lives and not worry about being judged by society”.

She urges people to “always forgive yourself for whatever mistakes you made. You can never change your past – but you can change your future”.

The photo shoots have brought granddaughter and grandmother closer – and through their special bond Ms Kaumba has learnt so much more about her Mbuya’s often difficult life.

Ms Chola was raised by her grandparents, went to school until she was 12 or 13 and then, because of economic reasons, was forced to marry a man in his 30s.

She had three children, ended up drinking heavily and eventually escaped the marriage.

That trauma still haunts her – but her unexpected global fame has given her a new lease on life.

“I’m now able to wake up with a purpose knowing that people around the world love to see me,” Chola says.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US health secretary, a post that oversees everything from medical research to food safety and public welfare programmes.

Speaking in an NPR interview this week, Kennedy said Trump had given him three “instructions”: to remove “corruption” from health agencies, to return these bodies to “evidence-based science and medicine”, and “to end the chronic disease epidemic”.

Some of Kennedy’s own stated aims for government are bound up with misinformation – and many medical experts have expressed serious concerns about his nomination, citing his views on vaccines and other health matters.

On other matters he has more support, for example in scrutinising the processing of food and the use of additives.

Kennedy said in his NPR interview that vaccines were “not going to be taken away from anybody”.

He says he wants to improve the science on vaccine safety which he believes has “huge deficits” and that he wants good information so people “can make informed choices“.

But his critique of the vaccine safety regime has been roundly dismissed by experts.

While Kennedy has denied on several occasions that he is anti-vaccination and said he and his children are vaccinated, he has repeatedly stated widely debunked claims about vaccine harm.

One of his main false claims – repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News, was that “autism comes from vaccines”.

This theory was popularised by discredited UK doctor Andrew Wakefield.

But Wakefield’s 1998 study was later retracted by the Lancet medical journal. Multiple studies since, across many countries, have concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism.

Dr David Elliman, a consultant in community child health at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said RFK Jr has perpetuated myths around vaccination with “an utter disregard for the evidence”.

“If he is appointed and continues in the same mode, I fear not just for the vaccination programme in the US, but similar programmes around the world, and for healthcare in general,” says Dr Elliman.

“Vaccination has probably saved more lives and is better researched than most, if not all, aspects of healthcare. RFK Jr could set this back and be responsible for the death and disability of myriads of people, particularly children.”

• What RFK could do on vaccines, fluoride and drugs

Fluoride – a naturally occurring mineral recognised to protect teeth against decay – is added to water supplies in many countries, including the US, where around 63% of the population have fluoridated water.

Kennedy has long campaigned against the practice, and claimed in a recent post on X that Trump, as president, would be advising ”all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water”.

The president-elect told the NBC network: “Well, I haven’t talked to [Kennedy] about it yet, but it sounds OK to me. You know, it’s possible.”

In his post on X, Kennedy said fluoride was “associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease”.

But Prof Avijit Banerjee, chair of cariology and operative dentistry at King’s College London, said “the potential harmful effects of fluoride cited have not been associated with the very low levels of fluoride used in water fluoridation programmes”.

Kennedy cited a September 2024 ruling by a judge in California recommending further investigation into potential harms following the publication of a report suggesting possible links between exposure to higher levels of fluoride to lower IQ in children.

But that report has proved highly controversial. Dr Ray Lowry of the British Fluoridation Society notes that the ruling “was not an outright condemnation of fluoride; rather, it suggested that the EPA could investigate further to ensure an adequate safety margin.”

• Listen: Should fluoride be added to drinking water?

Kennedy has been outspoken about his concerns about additives in foods, and how big a part ultra-processed foods (UPFs) play in many people’s diets.

In October he said in a post on X that “ultra-processed food is driving the obesity epidemic.”

Kennedy has also linked UPFs with a range of medical conditions including cancers in young adults and mental health conditions.

There is a growing body of evidence that these foods aren’t good for us, and although recent research shows many pervasive health problems, including cancers, obesity and depression are associated with diet, there’s no clear evidence as yet that they are caused by UPFs.

Dr Nerys Astbury, a diet and obesity expert at the Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences at the University of Oxford, says that “while improving the diet and reducing body weight of the population will undoubtedly reduce the number of people who develop conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, the role of food processing in a healthy diet… is not clear”.

Dr David Nunan, from the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) says “multiple factors, including broader lifestyle, socioeconomic determinants, and healthcare access, need to be considered. Studies to date cannot reliably separate out the individual impact of UPFs from these other factors”.

A vocal critic of restrictions to limit the spread of Covid-19, Kennedy said at press event last year in a video posted by the New York Post that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Health specialists say these claims are false and that the virus does not target any specific ethnic group.

“The claims of Robert F Kennedy Jr are very damaging given they do not follow scientific evidence,” says Prof Melinda Mills at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Population Health.

“As many credible peer-reviewed Covid-19 studies have shown, differences in Covid infections and deaths between socioeconomic and ethnic groups is related to inequalities, deprivation and living in larger or intergenerational households.”

Following widespread criticism of his remarks, Kennedy posted on X that he does not “believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered”, and cited a study, claiming it supported his comments about genetic factors influencing immunity.

But one of the report authors responded by strongly rejecting this interpretation of the study and that its findings “never supported” Kennedy’s claims.

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Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing.

“Prolific, brutal and horrific” – these words sum up four decades of abuse meted out by John Smyth and affecting scores of boys in the UK and Africa.

It was the description chosen by the independent review commissioned by the Church of England to investigate how Smyth was able to groom and abuse children at Christian camps and in schools for so long.

Almost as shocking is the church’s repeated lack of curiosity and inaction when people tried to warn about what he was doing, also described in the report. Smyth’s position within the church gave him a veneer of trustworthiness that opened doors for him to abuse.

• Listen to Alison read this article on BBC Sounds

One survivor, Mark Stibbe, told BBC Newsnight how he was groomed and beaten relentlessly by Smyth after joining his school’s Christian Forum in 1977. On the shelf in front of him during the abuse were adult nappies used to stem blood, alongside a leather-bound Bible.

It is a horrifying account of the power of an abuser in a trusted role and the damage that is done when opportunities to stop them are brushed aside. But abuse is not limited to the church.

“Most sexual abuse happens in domestic and family settings,” says Tom Squire, head of clinical engagement at The Lucy Faithful Foundation. “But some abusers gravitate to places where they know they will have an opportunity to have contact with children – places like churches, sports organisations and schools.”

In the UK and abroad, there have been major controversies in football, swimming and gymnastics clubs, where allegations of physical, sexual and emotional abuse have been made against coaches by young athletes. One of of the most famous cases was that of Larry Nassar, a former doctor to the elite athletes of USA Gymnastics who was convicted of sexual assault in 2017. A judge handed him a 175 year jail sentence after hearing testimonies from more than 150 women and girls.

Separately, an independent review into British gymnastics found that physical and emotional abuse were “systemic”. The review, which focused on the period from 2008 to 2020, came after several gymnasts spoke out about bullying – with allegations of athletes being punished for needing the toilet. British Gymnastics said it wholeheartedly apologised.

Last year, several swimmers told the BBC they had suffered bullying, emotional abuse and body-shaming. A review commissioned by Swim England found that a toxic environment in swimming clubs had enabled abusive training practices and bullying to exist for years. The governing body has apologised.

Then there are scandals that have emerged involving boarding schools and children’s homes – the closed environments making children easy prey.

In 2018, an inquiry into Ampleforth College, a Roman Catholic boarding school in Yorkshire, found it had been the scene of decades of sexual abuse, with a report finding it “prioritised monks and their own reputations over the protection of children”.

Nine serious allegations of abuse were also recorded at the school as recently as between 2014 and 2016. The school says it has since put rigorous safeguarding measures in place.

But similar reports elsewhere date back decades. Earlier this year, Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, wrote about his experiences of abuse at Maidwell Hall School in Northamptonshire in the 1970s.

Child abuse also went on unchecked at Gordonstoun, the Scottish school where King Charles was educated, between the 1960s and 1990s, an inquiry has ruled. One former physics teacher was described as a “predatory paedophile”. The school has since apologised.

Hundreds of allegations have been made against the Scouts too, with most dating back to the 1960s to 1990s. In all more than £6 million has been paid in compensation over the last decade, with some 166 cases settled in that time.

Other large institutions such as the BBC and the NHS have held major inquiries into the abuse carried out over decades by the television and radio personality, Jimmy Savile. He died before his crimes were made public. All these organisations promised change and overhauled their safeguarding policies in the wake of the scandals.

Part of the reason we are hearing about these scandals is because people are more willing to speak up and campaign. Investigations then follow.

Even so, many big institutions remain slow to react – the question that remains is why?

Jane Chevous, co-founder of Survivors Voices, which ensures that survivors are listened to, says that in many institutions there may be people trying to do the right thing, but too often there is a failure to listen to and protect vulnerable people.

She learnt this, in part, from personal experience. As a young adult she was sexually abused by two Church of England priests over a ten-year period. It only stopped when she moved away. She went on to have a mental breakdown. This was not only because of the abuse, she says, but also the lack of the support from the church that she trusted.

Her religion added a layer of complexity to what happened, she explains. She was groomed by someone who she believed was doing God’s work. “You are told this is God’s calling and this is what he wants,” she says.

In 2001, ten years after the abuse ended, she reported it to two bishops. “It was absolutely terrifying. I found it hard to hold any hope that I would be believed.”

One bishop suggested she meet her abuser to try to sort it out “because that is the Christian thing to do”. The other, she says, told her to go to the police because he couldn’t do anything. Afterwards her mental health deteriorated.

In 2019, she reported it again. This time there was a police investigation, during which time one of her alleged abusers died. She says the police concluded there was not enough evidence to take the case further. She is among a number of survivors who have asked the church to review their cases.

In the wake of the report into the abuse by John Smyth, the church has said that it and its associated organisations must implement “robust safeguarding procedures …that are governed independently.” It also said “there is never a place for covering up abuse.”

Jane has since been appointed to the Church of England National Safeguarding Panel. “The church has struggled to choose survivors,” she says, “instead it has chosen to protect the institution.”

This, she argues, is similar to other areas. “You are sacrificed for the good of the wider community.”

Joanna Nicolas, an independent social worker, has her own take on this. She has spent more than 30 years in child protection and adult safeguarding, and believes that people’s readiness to forgive or explain away what happened is one of the main reasons that abuse “gets swept under the carpet”.

Over the years she has worked with schools, churches, financial organisations, Parliament, as well as theatres, including the Old Vic. She is also called in to assess people in positions of trust in schools and churches when an allegation of historic abuse – whether sexual or emotional – has been made, including cases where there hasn’t been enough evidence to lead to police charges.

“People will often say to me ‘he is such a good egg’ and they will want to give me character references,” she explains.

Part of her role is to weigh up whether or not the person accused is safe to continue in their role.

“You have to be black-and-white about child abuse,” she continues. “I say to the alleged perpetrator, ‘It doesn’t matter if you have done 50 brilliant things, if you have abused a child’.

“You always go in with an open mind,” she adds. “And in emotional abuse cases, sometimes a teacher, for instance, is not aware of the power they have.”

Understanding and unpicking power structures is key to combatting sexual abuse and the secrecy that allows it to thrive, argues Tom Squire. “That means swimming against that power dynamic.”

If concerns aren’t acted on with “diligence and robustness,” that could, in his view, “potentially be interpreted by abusers as a bit of a green light”.

Overall, he believes that child protection has improved over the years but there is no room for complacency. “We need to open our eyes and our ears to what children and young people are telling us and to be curious.”

Joanna Nicolas agrees there have been improvements, pointing to boarding schools, which she believes have generally created more open cultures to keep pupils safe. But she also observes that many organisations have a long way to go – in tackling bullying and emotional abuse too.

One priority is ensuring that staff feel safer and able to report bad behaviour. “If you are in a big arts organisation or theatre and you have a visiting star who is being vile to young people, is anyone going to stop them?” she says.

“They are the person with the power who brings in the money.”

Speaking about this conundrum, she recalls “a lightbulb moment” at a financial company she worked with. One of the bosses had told her about a senior staff member who brought in lots of money, but was described as “handsy”. “Rather than addressing it, young female employees were warned away from him,” she recalls.

Only when a senior leader at the company found himself again telling young staff to avoid the man, did he suddenly think, “What am I saying? What am I doing?”

They decided things had to stop. The man left and the company culture began changing.

“Culture is incredibly important,” says Christian McMullen, director of professional services at the NSPCC. One of the difficulties for large organisations, he has found, is that “they have their own social structures or social norms which can have an impact when they need to take action”.

Contrary to the idea that a large company will have greater resources to tackle abuse, he says that its bureaucracy can sometimes get in the way, slowing down decision-making and making it harder to know who is accountable. But change starts at the top.

“The senior leadership team sets the right culture,” says Mr McMullen. “If staff don’t feel supported then they may hesitate to make a safeguarding referral.”

That hesitation can also mean children aren’t listened to. “It is so easy to blame the child,” says 19-year-old Poppy.

She was 11 when she found the words to tell her mother that she had been abused by her grandfather. Her parents believed her and eventually her grandfather was convicted and jailed.

She has spoken out about what happened in the hope that this would remove some of the stigma that prevents children asking for help. But many abuse survivors she has spoken to told her they weren’t believed.

“When you tell someone, you need to feel believed. It changes everything,” she says today. “[But] I’m the exception. And the impact on people who aren’t believed is huge.”

Along with her mother Miranda, Poppy has been working on a campaign to change the law so there is a mandatory duty for those working or volunteering with children to report it if they are told that a child is being abused.

At present there is no such law. It was one of the recommendations made in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was published in October 2022.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who resigned over the church response to the Smyth report, said he was “convinced that we need to move to mandatory reporting”.

It is argued that this removes any doubt about what to do if a concern is raised about the safety of a child.

A Home Office spokesperson told the BBC: “We are working across government to identify where progress can be made against the recommendations, including mandatory reporting, and will provide further detail in due course.”

Miranda understands how reporting abuse can “turn lives upside down” and why people may find it easier to ignore what they are being told. But she insists: “we’ve got to stop kidding ourselves and pretending abuse doesn’t happen.”

For Poppy there is a straightforward calculation: “If we are not reporting abuse as a society, we are actively supporting it.

“It causes damage down the generations and if we don’t stop it now, it will keep going.”

The family of murdered black civil rights activist Malcolm X is suing the FBI, the CIA and the New York police department (NYPD) for $100m (£79m), accusing them of a having role in his death.

The lawsuit says the agencies were involved in the plot and failed to stop the killing.

“We believe that they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th Century,” Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family, said at a news conference.

Malcolm X was killed in 1965 when three armed men shot him 21 times as he was preparing to speak in New York.

The lawsuit alleges that a “corrupt, unlawful and unconstitutional” relationship between law enforcement and the “ruthless killers” allowed for the murder.

A link between the agencies and the killers “went unchecked for many years and was actively concealed, condoned, protected and facilitated by government agents”, the lawsuit says.

It says the NYPD, coordinating with the agencies, also detained members of Malcolm X’s security team days before the shooting and intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where he was shot.

Federal agents, including undercover operatives, were in the ballroom during the assassination and took no steps to intervene, the lawsuit alleges.

The family announced their intention to sue last year.

The NYPD said it “will decline comment on pending litigation” and the CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FBI told the Associated Press that it was its “standard practice” not to comment on litigation.

Malcolm X was a lead spokesman for the Nation of Islam – which advocated separatism for black Americans – before his acrimonious split from the organisation. He was 39 when he was killed.

One man, a Nation of Islam member, confessed to killing him.

In 2021, two other men convicted of killing him had their convictions thrown out after a New York state judge declared there had been a miscarriage of justice.

The two men were later fully exonerated after New York’s attorney general found prosecutors had withheld evidence that would have probably cleared them of the murder.

Family of the wrongly convicted men sued and won $26m from New York City and $10m from New York state.

The taoiseach has paid tribute to the Irish writer, comedian and actor Jon Kenny following his death.

He was best known for his work opposite Pat Shortt in the comedy duo D’Unbelievables.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Shortt said he is devastated, adding that he feels lucky to have spent “so many years touring with Jon and learning from him”.

The 66-year-old had been receiving treatment for cancer and heart failure.

The County Limerick-born star also had many screen credits to his name including Father Ted, The Van, Les Misérables (1998), Angela’s Ashes, and The Banshees of Inisherin, in which he reunited with Pat Shortt.

Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Simon Harris said he learnt of Jon’s death with “utmost sadness” and said he had the “ability, that very few people possess, to make his audiences crack up laughing with a glance or a single word”.

“Behind that seemingly effortless talent to joke, there was a gifted performer and an extremely deep thinker,” Harris said in a statement.

“Jon was an interesting and thoughtful person, he had some stunning dramatic performances on stage and on screen and the country is still in stitches from the magic that was D’Unbelievables.”

Kenny was also an acclaimed singer, poet, and solo stand-up performer.

In a tribute, Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Micheál Martin described Kenny as “one of our most iconic actors and comedians”.

“Deeply saddened at the passing of Jon Kenny,” Mr Martin said in a statement.

“Through the D’Unbelievables, and his appearances on stage & on screen, Jon made us smile. He was an entertainer to his core.”

Jon, along with his comedy soulmate Pat Shortt, formed D’Unbelievables in the late 1980s in Limerick.

Their sketches featured day-to-day life in the Republic of Ireland.

Perhaps their most memorable featured the pair as two bumbling Garda (Irish police) officers appealing for the public’s help on Crimebusters.

Pat played Garda Tom Walsh and Jon played Garda PJ Moloney.

The actor also had a memorable cameo as a blustering television host in the Eurovision episode of Channel 4′s Father Ted, which introduced him to an international audience.

Jon was diagnosed in his 40s with Non-Hodgkin’s Disease in 2000, which brought to an end the duo’s time together in the D’Unbelievables.

Speaking on The Oliver Callan Show on RTÉ Radio 1 in April, he said the diagnosis had left him with no choice but to “not do anything”.

“Over the space of two years I was on different forms of treatment,” he said.

“That went on for two years, and I got a stem cell transplant, thanks be to God, in James’s (hospital), and they sorted me out, and I motored on for another while.”

However, he told Oliver Callan that his cancer had returned.

“I had it there again; it came back again about three years ago, four years ago,” he said.

“So I had some operation to remove some of my left lung, and that was good – good luck to that.

“I’ve been lucky now because my chemo is working, so I’ve been grand, you know?

“But just in the middle of it all, just for the craic of it – you know when you’re getting on with things? – and after I had my second chemo, I had heart failure.

“Throw that in the mix, like. A nice little cocktail of things there to be getting on with.”

As well as his career on television and in films, Jon also was highly regarded as a stage actor.

He appeared in John B Keane’s The Matchmaker, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at The Abbey Theatre, and Katie Holly’s dark comedy Crowman, a one-man show in which he portrayed 10 characters.

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

“I’m a veteran of the special military operation, I’m going to kill you!” were the words Irina heard as she was attacked by a man in Artyom, in Russia’s far east.

She had been returning from a night out when the man kicked her and beat her with his crutch. The force of the strike was so strong that it broke the crutch.

When the police arrived, the man showed them a document proving he had been in Ukraine and claimed that because of his service “nothing will happen to him”.

The attack on Irina is just one of many reported to have been committed by soldiers returning from Ukraine.

Verstka, an independent Russian website, estimates that at least 242 Russians have been killed by soldiers returning from Ukraine. Another 227 have been seriously injured.

Like the man who beat Irina, many of the attackers have previous criminal convictions and were released from prison specifically to join Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The BBC estimates that the Wagner mercenary group recruited more than 48,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine. When Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash last year, Russia’s defence ministry took over recruitment in prisons.

These cases have severely impacted Russian society, says sociologist Igor Eidman.

“This is a very serious problem, and it can potentially get worse. All the traditional ideas of good and evil are being turned upside down,” he told the BBC.

“People who have committed heinous crimes – murderers, rapists, cannibals and paedophiles – they not only avoid punishment by going to war, the unprecedented bit is that they are being hailed as heroes.”

There are numerous reasons why Russian soldiers lucky enough to return from the war would think they are above the law.

Official media call them “heroes,” and President Vladimir Putin has dubbed them Russia’s new “elite”. Those recruited into the army from prisons either had their convictions removed or they were pardoned.

It is not unheard of for released convicts return from the war in Ukraine, reoffend and then escape punishment for a second time by going back to the front.

This makes some police officers despair. “Four years ago, I put him away for seven years,” policeman Grigory told the Novaya Gazeta website.

“And here he is in front of me again, saying: ‘You won’t be able to do anything, officer. Now’s our time, the time of those who are shedding blood in the special military operation.'”

Russian courts have routinely used participation in the war against Ukraine as a reason to issue milder sentences.

But many cases don’t even reach court. Moscow has introduced a new law against “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” which has made some victims of crimes by veterans afraid to report them.

Olga Romanova, the head of prisoner rights NGO Russia Behind Bars, says a sense of impunity is driving up crime rates.

“The main consequence is the gap between crime and punishment in the public mind. If you commit a crime, it is far from certain that you are going to be punished,” she tells the BBC.

In 2023, the number of serious crimes registered in Russia rose by almost 10%, and in the first half of this year the number of military personnel convicted of crimes more than doubled compared to the same period a year before.

Sociologist Anna Kuleshova argues that violence is becoming more acceptable in Russian society, especially because criminals can now escape punishment by going to war.

“There is a tendency to legalise violence. The idea that violence is a kind of norm will probably spread – violence at school, domestic violence, violence in relationships and as a way to resolve conflicts.

“This is facilitated by the militarisation of society, the turn to conservatism and the romanticisation of war. Violent crimes committed within the country are being atoned by the violence of war.”

For Anannyaa Gupta completing her studies in Australia has always been the “dream”.

“Their education system is one of the best in the world,” the 21-year-old, from the Indian city of Hyderabad, explains.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Melbourne’s Monash University in July, she applied for the master’s qualification she needs to become a social worker – the kind of skilled job Australia is desperate to fill amid labour shortages.

“I genuinely want to study here, offer my skills and contribute to society,” she says.

But Ms Gupta is among current and prospective international students who have been swept up in a panic caused by the Australian government’s plan to slash foreign student numbers.

The new cap – which would significantly reduce new enrolments – is needed to make the A$47.8bn (£24.6bn, $32bn) education industry more sustainable, the government says.

It is the most controversial of recent measures that have also imposed tougher English language requirements on student visa applicants, and greater scrutiny on those seeking further study. Non-refundable visa application fees have also been doubled.

However, the sector and its supporters say they weren’t properly consulted, and that the changes could ravage the economy, cause job losses and damage Australia’s reputation, all while punishing both domestic and international students.

“[It] sends out the signal that Australia is not a welcoming place,” says Matthew Brown, deputy chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8), a body which represents Australia’s top ranked universities.

Education is Australia’s fourth biggest export, trailing only mining products. Foreign students, who pay nearly twice as much as Australian students on average, prop up some institutions, subsidising research, scholarships, and domestic study fees. At the University of Sydney, for example, they account for over 40% of revenue.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is facing pressure to reduce record levels of migration, in the hope of improving housing affordability and easing a cost-of-living crisis, ahead of a federal election next year. And international students – who totalled 793,335 last semester – have become a target.

The government has proposed to cap new foreign enrolments at 270,000 for 2025, which it says is a return to pre-pandemic levels. An accurate comparison with previous years is not possible because publicly available data is inadequate, according to an education expert.

Education Minister Jason Clare says each higher education institution will be given an individual limit, with the biggest cuts to be borne by vocational education and training providers. Of the universities affected, those in capital cities will see the largest reductions.

The government says the policy will redirect students to regional towns and universities that need them, instead of overcrowded big cities.

It also says the changes aim to protect prospective students from “unethical” providers, alleging some accept students without sufficient language skills or academic standards and enrol people who intend to work instead of study.

“International education is extremely important, and these reforms are designed to make it better and fairer, and set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward,” Clare said.

Abul Rizvi, a former government official who shaped Australia’s skilled migration policy, says the “underfunded” sector has “long been chasing tuition revenue from overseas students and sacrificing learning integrity in the process”.

Institutions themselves are questioning whether they’re too reliant on international student income and how to fix it, Dr Brown says: “It’s a discussion that every university is having.”

But the caps announcement still drew a mostly furious response from the sector.

The Go8 has called the proposed laws “draconian”, while others accused the government of “wilfully weakening” the economy and of using international students as “cannon fodder in a poll-driven battle over migration”.

The government has not confirmed how long the caps will be in place, but Dr Brown says the Go8’s calculations indicate they will have a A$1bn impact on their members in the first year alone. The broader economy would suffer a A$5.3bn hit, resulting in the loss of 20,000 jobs, according to their research.

Australia’s Department of the Treasury has called those projections “doubtful” but has not released its own modelling on the economic impact of the changes.

Dr Brown also warned that the caps could see some universities rescind offers already made to foreign students, strangle vital research programmes, and may mean an increase in fees for some Australian students.

However a handful of smaller universities, for whom the caps are beneficial, welcomed the news.

La Trobe University’s Vice-Chancellor Theo Farrell said they supported “transparent and proportionate measures” to manage international student growth in Australia.

“We recognise that there is broad political and community support to reduce net migration levels,” he said.

But Dr Brown argues there is also a hit to Australia’s reputation which is harder to quantify, pointing to Canada as a warning. It introduced a foreign student cap this year, but industry bodies there say enrolments have fallen well below that, because nervous students would rather apply to study somewhere with more certainty.

“We need an international education system that has managed growth built in… it’s not for the minister to unilaterally decide on caps based on some formula which satisfies a political end.”

Mr Rizvi argues that instead of going ahead with the proposed caps in Australia, the government should consider introducing a minimum university entrance exam score.

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot… It won’t deter poor performing students but it will deter high performing students who have options,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile in parliament, the Greens have said the policy amounts to “racist dog-whistling”, and one of the government’s MPs has broken ranks to attack it too.

“A hard cap would be bad for Australia’s human capital and the talent pipeline, bad for soft power and bad for academic excellence and research,” Julian Hill told The Australian newspaper.

But despite the criticisms, the bill legislating the limits – set to be debated in parliament this week – is expected to pass, with the opposition’s support.

Clare has acknowledged that some service providers may face difficult budget decisions but said that any assertion the policy is “somehow tearing down international education is absolutely and fundamentally wrong”.

However, with less than two months until the changes are supposed to take effect, they are causing extreme anxiety and confusion among students.

In China and India – the two biggest international markets for Australia – the news is going down like a lead balloon.

“This is going to be very hard on students in India, most of whom come from middle-income backgrounds and spend years planning and preparing for their education abroad. Their dreams will be quashed,” Amritsar-based immigration consultant Rupinder Singh told the BBC.

Vedant Gadhavi – a Monash University student – says that some of his friends back home in Gujarat who had been hoping to come to Australia for their masters have been spooked.

“They seem to have changed their plans a bit because of the constant shift… They thought that it might be a bit difficult to plan their careers and life.”

Jenny – a senior high school student in China’s Anhui province – says she set her sights on Australia because getting a good quality education there is “easier” than getting into a fiercely competitive Chinese university.

“It’s all up in the air now,” she tells the BBC.

She adds that going to a lower-ranked university in a regional location is not an option for her or her peers: “We [just] won’t go to Australia at all.”

Rishika Agrawal, president of the Australian National University’s International Students’ Department, says the proposed laws have stoked other uneasy feelings.

“Definitely there are other students who think this is a sign of increased hostility towards immigrants in Australia from the government.”

And, she adds, with the contributions to society made by international students often overlooked, while their post-graduate employment options dry up, there’s growing resentment.

“They go back to their own countries, having spent a tremendous amount of money towards their education and not really reaping the rewards for it.

“They definitely do feel like cash cows.”

As the debate continues in parliament, there’s been some relief for Anannya. Shortly after she spoke to the BBC, and only weeks out from her course start date, she received the official masters enrolment certificate and new study visa she feared would never come.

But many other students still wait and worry.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d feel very helpless, very disappointed. It’s already taking away credibility that Australia used to hold,” Rishika says.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pledged to work with incoming President Donald Trump in his final meeting with current US leader Joe Biden.

The two met on Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Peru where they acknowledged “ups and downs” in relations over Biden’s four years in office.

But both highlighted progress in lowering tensions on issues such as trade and Taiwan.

Analysts say US-China relations could become more volatile when Trump returns to office in two months, driven by factors including a promise to raise tariffs on Chinese imports.

The president-elect has pledged 60% tariffs on all imports from China. He has also appointed prominent China hawks to top foreign and defence positions.

During his first term, Trump labelled China a “strategic competitor”. Relations worsened when the former president labelled Covid a “Chinese virus” during the pandemic.

Speaking on Saturday at the meeting held at his hotel in Lima, the Chinese president said Beijing’s goal of a stable relationship with Washington would remain unchanged.

“China is ready to work with the new US administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences,” Xi said.

Biden said strategic competition between the two global powers should not escalate into war.

“Our two countries cannot let any of this competition veer into conflict. That is our responsibility and over the last four years I think we’ve proven it’s possible to have this relationship,” he said.

Biden’s time in office did see flare-ups in relations with China, including a spy balloon saga and displays of Chinese military firepower around Taiwan triggered by the visit of a senior US official.

China says its claim to the self-ruling island is a red line.

However, the Biden administration aimed to “responsibly manage” rivalry with Beijing after Trump’s first term.

Beijing is likely to be most concerned about the president-elect’s unpredictability, analysts say.

“The Chinese are ready to negotiate and deal, and probably hope for early engagement with the Trump team to discuss potential transactions,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program.

“At the same time, however, they are ready to retaliate if Trump insists on imposing higher tariffs on China.”

She added that China may also be “likely worried that that they lack reliable back channels to influence Trump’s policy”.

Biden on Saturday acknowledged there had always been disagreements with Xi but added that discussions between him and the Chinese leader had been “frank” and “candid”.

The pair held three face-to-face meetings during Biden’s time in the White House, including a key summit last year in San Francisco where both sides came to agreements on combatting narcotics and climate change.

But Biden’s White House also continued Trump-era tariffs. His government imposed duties in May targeting China’s electric cars, solar panels and steels.

He also strengthened defence alliances across Asia and the Pacific to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the region. The outgoing president has also said the US would defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China.

When news a rare American songbird had been spotted in a sleepy West Yorkshire cul-de-sac eager ornithologists converged on the quiet street faster than a falcon in free fall.

But for the long term residents of Shelf – previously only known as the home of Blue Peter presenter John Noakes and interior designer Linda Barker – the arrival of a scarlet tanager brought a spotlight on the village and a “crazy” influx of visitors.

While some complained about the parking and disruption to the bin round, others said they were excited to see the village put on the map.

“There’s been more strange people on this road in two days than in the whole of the 30 years,” Peter Flesher told me.

The 82-year-old, who has lived on Bridle Dene for three decades, said most of the visitors had been respectful, though he described the excitement as “a pain in the whatsit”.

“To be fair, they’ve been nice people and they’ve not caused us any trouble,” he said.

“We have two granddaughters who live over there and they were a bit perturbed by having 200 people staring at their house. But no, they were very good.”

News of the arrival of the scarlet tanager – more usually found in the forests of North America – broke last weekend, sending birdwatchers into a state of excitement.

According to some reports the sighting in West Yorkshire is the first in the UK in 10 years and only the eighth recorded in this country.

Mr Flesher said he had been out to speak to some of the bird watchers and had met people from as far away as Glasgow.

“I can’t believe these people. They have come up from Kent, Cornwall and one chap said he had come from Cambridge.

“The whole road was full.”

Another long-term resident, Tony Gregson, 90, has lived on the road for 40 years.

He said he first spotted the bird in his garden way back in September.

“It’s been here weeks,” he said.

“It was on the bird feeder and I said to my sister ‘what’s that bird?’ – it must have been five or six weeks since and everybody turned up.”

Mr Gregson says he has had people knocking on his door and asking to try to catch a glimpse from his garden, but felt that was a step too far.

“They wanted to come into the back garden and I said ‘no’ because you don’t know what they’re doing. But they’ve been alright.

“They were very friendly really. Very nice people.”

Among those to make the pilgrimage to West Yorkshire was Stewart Short from Cambridgeshire.

He said his visit to Shelf on Thursday was his second trip up and a second attempt to see one of his bucket-list birds.

“I heard about it last weekend,” he said

“I was here on Tuesday but I’ve not seen the bird, that’s why I’m back.”

But great adventures come with their own challenges – where does a twitcher go to the toilet for instance?

“Going to the toilet is sometimes difficult,” said Mr Short. “It’s a question of finding the right tree.”

Pauline, a birdwatcher from Gargrave, said it was more difficult for women.

“I watch out for places before we get anywhere – Tesco is good,” she told me.

Despite only travelling 25 miles for today’s outing, Pauline has been as far as Devon for her birdwatching trips.

“We were looking for a Merlin. We didn’t see it though,” she said.

Julie King, 78, who has lived in Shelf for 19 years, said the village had been “hectic” with traffic and parking the main problems.

“I’ve heard more car horns going – there might be more of that,” she said.

But, she thinks the visitors will be off again soon. And the road is much quieter than it was on Monday when between 200-300 people flocked to the scene.

“I thought it had gone,” she said.

“I can’t see it flying all the way back to America though.”

Matthew and his wife have lived in Shelf for two years. They pass through Bridle Dene while walking their two dogs.

Despite saying he is “not a twitcher by any means”, he has brought along his binoculars and did catch a glimpse of the scarlet tanager earlier in the week.

The couple live on the other side of the village, so the crowds of people have not bothered them too much, but Matthew said he had heard rumblings of discontent from other residents.

“The car park has been full every day. Certainly the last few days it’s been crazy, much busier than normal.

“It’s a sleepy little village and not much goes on really.

“There’s obviously been some people who are excited that this bird’s been in town, and it’s great to see all these people, whereas other people have not really enjoyed the disruption.

“It’s been interesting for a sleepy little village like Shelf. To see Shelf on the national news is crazy.”

West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds

After 10 weeks, the mass rape trial that has shocked France is moving on to the final phase of closing statements.

The case focuses on a formerly married couple, Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, pensioners who are now in their early 70s.

Ms Pelicot’s legal team will give their final statements on Tuesday, and the defence will then follow, ahead of a verdict from a panel of five judges expected on 20 December.

Dominique Pelicot went on trial with 50 other men in the southern city of Avignon in September.

Every chapter of this case has played out in the full glare of publicity because Ms Pelicot has waived her anonymity, making the whole trial open to the media and the public.

In France, it has become known as the , after the village near Avignon where the Pelicots lived.

In November 2020, Dominique Pelicot admitted drugging his then-wife for almost a decade and recruiting dozens of men online to rape her in their home when she was unconscious.

Police tracked down his co-accused from thousands of videos they found on Mr Pelicot’s laptop, although they were unable to identify an additional 21 men. Investigators said they have evidence of around 200 rapes carried out between 2011 and 2020.

The majority of the defendants deny the charges of rape, arguing that they cannot be guilty because they did not realise Ms Pelicot was unconscious and therefore did not “know” they were raping her.

That line of defence has sparked a nationwide discussion on whether consent should be added to France’s legal definition of rape, currently defined as “any act of sexual penetration committed against another person by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”.

The trial has also shone a light on the issue of chemical submission – drug-induced sexual assault.

Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, who were both born in 1952, married in 1973 and had three children. She worked as a manager in a large French company, while he – a trained electrician – started several ultimately unsuccessful businesses.

The Pelicots lived in the Paris region until 2013, when they retired to the picturesque southern village of Mazan. They had a big house with a swimming pool and often used to entertain their extended family during the summer holidays.

By all accounts, they were a happy, close-knit couple. “We shared holidays, anniversaries, Christmases… All of that, for me, was happiness,” Ms Pelicot has said.

Between 2011 and 2020, Ms Pelicot experienced unsettling symptoms she took to be signs of Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, and underwent extensive medical exams. The blackouts and memory loss were, in fact, side-effects of the drugs her husband was giving her without her knowledge.

Ms Pelicot divorced her husband soon after his crimes came to light. She is only using her married name for the purposes of the trial.

Dominique Pelicot has been in jail since November 2020. He will be sentenced next month, alongside the other 50 defendants.

In September 2020, Dominique Pelicot was spotted filming under women’s skirts by a security guard in a supermarket in southern France.

Police detained him and confiscated his electronic devices. They noticed suspicious chats on his Skype account, then found thousands of videos of men having sex with a seemingly unconscious woman – Mr Pelicot’s wife, Gisèle.

Investigators worked for weeks to gather enough evidence to take Mr Pelicot into custody and eventually arrested him in November 2020. He immediately admitted all the charges.

When Ms Pelicot was questioned by police and shown photos and videos in which she appeared unconscious, it became clear she had no knowledge of what had happened to her. She denied ever giving her consent to having sex with other men and realised her husband had drugged her for almost a decade.

Fifty men – aged between 26 and 72 years old – are on trial alongside Mr Pelicot.

They hail from all walks of life: among them are a fireman, a carpenter, a nurse and a journalist. Many are married with children. Most lived within a 60km (37 miles) distance of the Pelicots’ residence.

A handful have admitted to raping Ms Pelicot.

The majority, however, reject the charges. Their defence hinges on the fact they did not believe what they were doing was rape, because they were not aware that she was unconscious and therefore could not give her consent.

Mr Pelicot has repeatedly denied this was the case, insisting that when he recruited men on the internet he made it abundantly clear that his wife would be asleep. “They all knew, they cannot say the contrary,” he has said.

It was Gisèle Pelicot who decided to waive her anonymity – highly unusual in cases of rape. Her legal team also insisted for the videos of the alleged rapes to be shown in court.

Ms Pelicot has said that she hopes her decision will empower other survivors of sexual violence to speak out: “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too. I don’t want them to be ashamed any longer.”

She has forcefully hit back at “humiliating” suggestions by the defence that she may have been drunk or pretending to be asleep during the alleged rapes, stating that she was never interested in partner-swapping or threesomes.

Ms Pelicot has also, however, spoken candidly about the devastation that her husband’s abuse and lies have wreaked on her life. “People may see me and think: that woman is strong,” she said. “The facade may be solid, but behind it lies a field of ruins.”

The horror of Dominique Pelicot’s actions, the sheer number of men implicated in the case and Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to push for an open trial has meant that the proceedings have garnered significant attention.

Dozens of members of the public attend court in Avignon each day to back Ms Pelicot, meeting her with applause and handing her flowers.

Murals have appeared across the country depicting her distinctive look of a short bob and round sunglasses, and demonstrations have taken place all over France in her support.

Above all, she is credited by many with sparking a conversation on rape culture, misogyny and chemical submission.

Several feminist groups are now pushing for the government to amend its definition of rape to include consent, as is already the case in many European countries.

“Society has already accepted the fact that the difference between sex and rape is consent,” said Greens senator Mélanie Vogel, who proposed a consent-based rape law last year. “Criminal law, however, has not.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president.

Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation after his victory in the US presidential election.

He did not say whether Trump had made any demands regarding possible talks with Russia, but said he’d not heard anything from him that was contrary to Ukraine’s position.

Trump has consistently said his priority is to end the war – which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – and what he describes as a drain on US resources in the form of military aid to Kyiv.

Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives approved a $61bn (£49bn) military aid package.

The US has been the greatest supplier of arms to Ukraine. Between the start of the war and the end of June 2024, it delivered or committed to send weapons and equipment worth $55.5bn (£41.5bn), according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organisation.

But domestically, support for arming Ukraine appears to have waned somewhat since the war began – particularly among Republican voters, who Trump successfully courted.

During the US election campaign, the former president turned president-elect repeatedly pledged to end the war “in a day” – but has yet to divulge how he intends to do so.

• What Trump’s win means for Ukraine
• Zelensky gives ‘victory plan’ a hard sell in the US – did it fall flat?
• Ukraine war in maps

“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” Zelensky said in an interview with the Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne.

He added that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means”, with Russian forces making advances on the battlefield.

The front lines of the war have largely stagnated since Ukraine’s much-anticipated counter-offensive in 2023 failed to make the sweeping territorial gains it had aimed to.

Russian forces occupy entrenched positions in the east and south-east of the country, with fighting predominantly taking place in the eastern Donbas region.

On Friday, Russian forces made incremental advances along the eastern front line, with significant fighting taking place around the north-eastern city of Kupyansk and Vuhledar in the south-east, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington DC-based think tank.

Russian infantry also continued a “limited” offensive into the north-eastern Kharkiv region from the Russian border, the ISW said, citing Ukrainian military sources in the region.

In an apparent bid to stem the Russian advances, Ukrainian forces launched a break-out offensive into Russia’s Kursk region over the summer – becoming the first to occupy Russian territory since World War Two.

Zelensky has said the operation’s goal was to divert Russian troops away from the front lines in Ukraine, though it is unclear whether it has achieved this. Russia has been able to draw on hundreds of thousands of conscripts to bolster its ranks, while Ukraine’s much smaller army has relied on advanced Western-supplied weaponry.

But analysts say the territory Ukraine holds in Kursk may serve as a bargaining chip in any peace talks. Zelensky’s “victory plan”, revealed last month, said the offensive would continue to avoid the creation of “buffer zones” within Ukraine.

The renewed emphasis on a diplomatic solution comes amid concerns about growing fatigue over the war, both within Ukraine and abroad.

However, what such a solution may look like remains unclear – Zelensky has continually refused to cede any Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014.

Trump and Zelensky have long had a tumultuous relationship. Trump was impeached in 2019 over accusations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information on the family of US President Joe Biden.

Despite years of differences, Trump has insisted he had a very good relationship with Zelensky.

When the pair met in New York in September, Trump said he “learned a lot” from the meeting and said he would get the war “resolved very quickly”.

His Democratic opponents have accused him of cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to the war amounts to surrender for Ukraine that will endanger all of Europe.

Earlier this week, Russia denied reports that a call between Putin and Trump took place days after the latter’s election win, in which the president-elect is said to have warned against escalating the conflict further.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who spoke with Trump following the US election, told German media that the incoming US leader had a “more nuanced” position on the war than was commonly assumed.

The German leader was criticised by Zelensky over a phone call with Putin – the first in nearly two years – on Friday. Despite Scholz’s office saying he reiterated his call to end the war, Zelensky said it weakened the Russian leader’s isolation.

• Listen to Aleem read this article

Standing on a podium in a Florida convention centre on the night of the election, a row of American flags behind him and a jubilant crowd looking on, Donald Trump declared: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”

This was one of the most striking themes of his election campaign – that he had been chosen by God. Yet even before the attempt on his life on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania, millions of Americans already felt guided by their faith to support the former, and now future, president.

Some cast the election in an apocalyptic light and likened Trump to a Biblical figure.

Last year, on the Christian show FlashPoint, TV evangelist Hank Kunneman described “a battle between good and evil”, adding: “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: it’s called the anointing.”

Jim Caviezel, an actor who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, proclaimed, albeit jokingly, that Trump was “the new Moses”. Then, in the months leading up to the election, many of his supporters referred to him as a “saviour”.

The question is why. What makes so many see this man, who isn’t known to have an especially strong faith, as sent from God?

And what does that say about Christianity more broadly in a country where the numbers of churchgoers is in rapid decline?

Reverend Franklin Graham is one of America’s best-known evangelists and the son of Billy Graham, arguably its most famous preacher. He is one of the Trump believers, convinced there is no doubt that the president-elect was chosen for this mission by God.

“The bullet that went through his ear missed his brain by a millimetre, and his head turned just at the last second when the gun was fired,” he says. “I believe that God turned his head and saved his life.”

The questions asked about Trump’s character – including accusations of sexual misconduct, and his alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels and associated hush-money trial – don’t dim Mr Graham’s view.

“Remember when Jesus told the crowd, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’ and that slowly, the entire audience began to disappear? All of us have sinned.”

Part of the reason some Christians may find it easier to look past questions of character is that during Trump’s first term in office he delivered on a particular promise: to appoint anti-abortion judges to the US Supreme Court.

Mr Graham points to this as evidence that the president-elect is a man of integrity.

“This is a big win for Christians, for evangelicals,” he says. “We believe the president will defend religious freedom where the Democrats would not.”

The selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel is already a hint that faith might shape some foreign policy. US evangelicals including Huckabee are among the country’s most fervent supporters of Israel.

Many of them believe that Jews should populate the whole of the area of biblical Israel, including what is now the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in order to precipitate events leading to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In the past Donald Trump had talked about having had a Presbyterian upbringing. But despite his strong support from Christians in last week’s election, he never tried hard to convince them in his most recent campaign that he was one of them.

“I think he realised it was going to be a bit of a stretch to argue that he himself is a religious man, but instead he adopted a quid pro quo approach,” says Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which has long tracked religious trends in the US.

That approach centred on changes in demographics and dwindling numbers of churchgoers.

In the early 1990s, about 90% of US adults identified as Christians – a figure that had fallen to 64% earlier this decade, with a large increase in the number of those unaffiliated to any faith, according to data from Pew Research Center.

This, says Dr Jones, was something Trump was able to draw upon.

“Trump’s message was: ‘I know you’re in decline, I know your numbers are waning. I know your children and grandchildren aren’t affiliated with your Churches anymore, but if you elect me, I’m going to restore power to the Christian Churches.”’

Not all Christians in the US were won over, however. For some, their faith has guided them to precisely the opposite impression of Trump.

In recent months, from the pulpit of Bible Ways Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia, Reverend Monte Norwood has been sharing a very different message to that of Franklin Graham.

He, for one, was dismayed at last week’s election result.

“Trump has demeaned and debased just about anybody he could, from immigrants to minorities to women to those who are disabled,” he says.

“White conservative Republican Christianity that ignores character is just hypocritical.”

He has long been opposed to the idea of a second Trump presidency, and he has voiced this on social media and through activism encouraging voter turnout – such as by helping other black voters to register to vote and access free rides to the polls.

“I am a Matthew chapter 25 kind of Christian – where Jesus said: ‘When I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.’”

PRRI’s research has looked into voting records in history, not just by religious practice and belief but also by race, and found that when it comes to political views, there has been a clear trend for decades.

“Almost without exception, white Christian groups have tended to vote Republican in presidential contests,” says Dr Jones. “Non-white Christian groups, non-Christian groups and religiously unaffiliated voters have tended to vote Democrat.”

This pattern dates back to the 1960s, he adds, when the Democratic party became associated with the civil rights movement and white Christian groups began migrating to the Republican Party.

Polling ahead of the 2024 election looking at voter intention suggested that for the most part this pattern held. “From our polling, we have a Republican party that is 70% white and Christian, and a Democratic party that’s only a quarter white and Christian.”

According to the PPRI’s survey of 5,027 adults, white evangelical Protestant voters were the strongest backers of Trump over Harris by 72% to 13%. White Catholic voters also backed Trump, with 55% supporting him and 34% aligned with Harris. White “mainline” non-evangelical Protestants showed a similar split.

By contrast 78% black Protestants supported Harris while just 9% backed Trump, according to the survey. Harris’s backers also included Jewish-Americans, the religiously unaffiliated and other non-Christian Americans, according to the PPRI.

When it came to the actual vote, there were signs of departures from familiar patterns.

The results from Michigan showed a clear lurch towards the Republican Party by Muslim voters in the state, likely the result of the Biden administration’s role in aiding Israel in its war in Gaza.

Analysis also shows that more Latino Catholics voted for Trump than expected, when previously they have tended to lean Democrat.

Economic hardship brought about by soaring inflation, among other factors, is likely to have resulted in “non-traditional” Republican voters being drawn to vote for Trump.

As for his appeal to traditionalist Christians, Dr Jones argues that there has been a faith component to the idea of “Making America Great Again”, with the promise of restoring the country’s Christian character.

“His has been a campaign of grievance and loss and nostalgia,” argues Dr Jones, “and that includes nostalgia from a faith perspective.”

For all his political strength, one thing that Trump cannot do is hold back the tide of demographic change in the US – including the move away from faith.

While the number who define themselves as “atheist” remains lower in the US than in most Western countries, those who say they are “religiously unaffiliated” is growing.

There is a generational component to that, along with the familiar trends of personal economics meaning that people have greater autonomy to move away from the accepted norms in their communities. But there are other reasons too.

A third of American atheists or agnostics say they disaffiliated from their childhood religion because of high-profile Church abuse scandals, according to a PPRI study.

In 2020 the Catholic Church released lists of living members of clergy in the US found to have been accused of abuses, including some linked to child pornography and rape. There were around 2,000 names.

Two years later, the Southern Baptist Conference collection of US Protestant Churches released a list of hundreds of Church leaders accused of child abuse between 2000 and 2019.

It shows the scale of the issue that Trump faces. Nevertheless, Franklin Graham is optimistic.

“Church attendance is not going to go up next week because President Trump has been elected – but what I think it does mean is that legislation that we might have seen coming down the road that that would make it very difficult for people of faith will not come,” he says, referring to the idea of more progressive legislation around, for example, abortion and gay and trans rights.

“He will protect people of faith, he will protect religious freedoms in this country. I don’t talk about just Christian religious freedoms… [but] all people of faith.”

As to whether he is right, Americans can only watch and wait. But just as some are revelling in the promise of governance influenced by Christianity, others are undoubtedly nervous.

Komal’s morning view was of jagged, forbidding mountains, the rush of the river dozens of metres below the family home on the cliff. That was until the water became a torrent and tore the ground away beneath their feet.

“It was a sunny day,” says Komal, 18.

For generations, her family had lived among the orchards and green lands in the heart of the Hunza valley in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.

“In the morning everything was normal, I went to school,” Komal says, “but then my teacher told me that Hassanabad bridge had collapsed.”

Upstream, a glacial lake had formed, then suddenly burst – sending water, boulders and debris cascading down the valley and gathering speed. The ground trembled so violently some people thought there was an earthquake.

When the torrent hit the cement bridge that connected the two parts of the village, it turned it to rubble.

“By the time I came home, people were taking what they could out of their home,” Komal says. She grabbed books, laundry, anything she could carry, but remembers thinking that with their house so far above the water there was no way it could be affected.

That was until they received a phone call from the other side of the valley; their neighbours could see that the water was stripping away the hillside their home stood on.

Then the homes began to collapse.

“I remember my aunt and uncle were still inside their home when the flood came and washed out the whole kitchen,” she says. The family made it to safe ground, but their homes disappeared over the edge.

Today, walking through the grey rubble and dust, there are still coat hooks on the wall, a few tiles in the bathroom, a window with the glass long gone. It’s been two years, but nothing has grown on the crumbling cliff that used to be Komal’s garden in Hassanabad.

“This used to be all a green place,” she says. “When I visit this place I remember my childhood memories, the time I spent here. But the barren places, they hurt me, they make me feel sad.”

Climate change is altering the landscape across Gilgit-Baltistan and neighbouring Chitral, researchers say. This is just part of an area referred to by some as the Third Pole; a place which has more ice than any other part of the world outside the polar regions.

If current emissions continue, Himalayan glaciers could lose up to two-thirds of their volume by the end of this century, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

According to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), more than 48,000 people across Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral are considered to be at high risk from a lake outburst or landslide. Some, like the village of Badswat in the neighbouring district of Ghizer, are in such peril they are being evacuated entirely to relative safety, their homes rendered impossible to live in.

“Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of disasters across the region,” says Deedar Karim, programme co-ordinator for the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat.

“These areas are highly exposed. With the increase in temperature, there are more discharges (of water) and then more flooding. It’s causing damage to infrastructure, houses, agricultural lands; every infrastructure has been damaged by these increasing floods.

“The rainfall pattern is changing. The snowfall pattern is changing and then the melting of the glacier is changing. So it’s changing the dynamics of hazards.”

Moving populations is complicated; not only have many spent centuries on their land and are loath to leave it, but finding another location that is safe and has access to reliable water is complicated.

“We have very limited land and limited resources. We don’t have common lands to shift people to,” says Zubair Ahmed, assistant director of the Disaster Management Authority in Hunza and Nagar district.

“I can say that after five or 10 years, it will be very difficult for us to even survive. Maybe people will realise after a few years or decades, but by then it will be too late. So I think this is the right time, although we are still late, but even now this is the time to think about it.”

Pakistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, although it is only responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“We cannot stop these events, because this is a global issue,” Mr Ahmed says. “All we can do is mitigate and get our people prepared to face such events.”

In the village of Passu, just over an hour’s drive from Hassanabad, they are holding an evacuation drill; preparation for potential destruction. The population know that if there is an emergency, it may take days for outside help to arrive if the roads and bridges are blocked, damaged or swept away.

Trained in first aid, river crossing and high mountain rescue, they practise evacuating the village a few times a year, volunteers carrying the wounded on stretchers and bandaging mock injuries.

Ijaz has been a volunteer for the last 20 years, with many stories of rescuing lost walkers in the mountains. But he too is worried about the number of dangers and the increased unpredictability of the weather in the area he calls home.

“The weather now, we just can’t say what will happen,” he says. “Even five years ago, the weather didn’t change as much. Now after half an hour we can’t say what it will be.”

He knows too, that there’s only so much his team of volunteers can do.

“Unfortunately, if the flood comes and it’s a heavy flood we can’t do anything,” he says. “The area is totally washed out. If it’s small then we can help people survive and escape the flood areas.”

There are other mitigation measures across the region; stone and wire barriers to try to slow floodwater, systems to monitor glacier melt, rainfall and water levels, speakers installed in villages to warn the community if danger looks likely. But many who work here say they need more resources.

“We have installed early warning systems in some valleys,” says Mr Ahmed. “These were identified by the Pakistan Meteorological Department and they gave us a list of around 100 valleys. But because of limited resources, we are only able to intervene in 16.”

He says they are in discussions to expand this further.

A few houses along from Komal lives Sultan Ali, now in his 70s.

As we talk sitting on a traditional charpoy bed, his granddaughters bring us a plate of pears they’ve picked from their garden.

He knows that should another flood happen, his home could also disappear into the valley, but says he has nowhere to go.

“As I approach the end of my life, I feel helpless,” he tells me. “The children are very worried, they ask where will we live?

“We have no options. If the flood comes, it will take everything away and there’s nothing we can do about it. I can’t blame anyone; it’s just our fate.”

We watch his grandchildren play tag in the shade of the orchard. The seasons, the ice, the environment is changing around them. What will this land look like when they are older?

Komal too is not sure what the future will hold.

“I don’t think we will stay here forever,” she says. “The condition is clear already. But the question for us is we have no other place to go. Only this.”

In India, if you ask a pedestrian how many obstacles they’ve encountered on a footpath, they may not be able to count them – but they’ll certainly tell you that most footpaths are in poor condition.

This is what Arun Pai says he learnt when he started asking people about their experience walking on the streets of his city, Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), in southern India.

This month he set up a “fun challenge” – called the ‘world’s longest footpath run’ – which invited people to walk or jog on an 11km (8 miles) stretch of footpath and make a note of all the obstacles they encountered, like hawkers, garbage or broken slabs of concrete. Next, they were asked to rate the footpath on a scale of one to five.

“When you have specifics, it gets easier to ask the authorities to take action. Instead of telling your local politician “the footpaths are bad”, you can ask him or her “to fix specific spots on a street,” Mr Pai says.

Mr Pai, who is the founder of Bangalore Walks, a non-profit that promotes walking, is among several citizen activists who are pushing to make the country’s roads more pedestrian-friendly.

In India’s capital, a tour company called Delhi by Cycle has been advocating for making the city more cycle-friendly and walkable. These walking-enthusiasts are holding awareness walks, building walking apps and lobbying with politicians to make a change.

Even in India’s biggest cities, proper footpaths are few and far between and they are often overrun by hawkers and shops, parked vehicles and even cattle. In some places, they double up as homes for the poor.

Even footpaths that exist are often not built to standard or properly maintained. Navigating roads on foot through crowds and traffic can be a nightmare.

Last month, Walking Project, a citizen’s group in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, released a ‘pedestrian manifesto’ ahead of Maharashtra state elections to highlight the poor condition of the city’s roads and encourage local politicians to take action.

The manifesto included demands for better parking, designated hawking zones, pedestrian-friendly corridors on arterial roads and to make footpaths more accessible to those with mobility challenges.

“Government statistics show that almost 50% of the city’s population relies on walking, which is far greater than the 11% that uses private transport and the combined 15% that uses tuk-tuks and buses,” says Vendant Mhatre, convener of Walking Project.

“And yet, pedestrians are the most ignored group of users when it comes to framing policies around transport or road safety,” he adds.

According to the latest government estimates on road accidents, pedestrian fatalities were the second-highest after those of two-wheeler riders. In 2022, over 10,000 pedestrians lost their lives on national highways across the country, with around 21,000 more sustaining injuries in accidents.

“Authorities often resort to band-aid solutions like adding speed bumps or a signal to curb road accidents. But what is really needed is inter-connected footpaths that can accommodate high footfall,” Mr Mhatre says.

Studies have found that addressing the problems of this forgotten group of road users can reap benefits for multiple stakeholders.

In 2019, researchers in the southern city of Chennai studied the impact the construction of new footpaths on 100km (62 miles) of the city’s streets had on the environment, economy and the health and safety of citizens.

They found that the new footpaths encouraged 9% to 27% of the surveyed respondents to walk instead of using motorized transport, which led to a reduction in greenhouse gases and particulate matter. They also learned that the footpaths provided new opportunities for women and lower-income groups, helping them save money as well.

The survey highlighted how people with disabilities and women might have nuanced requirements from footpaths and that tailoring improvements to meet their needs could enhance accessibility and equity.

“Very often, people don’t have a benchmark for footpath quality, especially if they haven’t travelled abroad or been exposed to places that have good facilities for pedestrians,” Mr Mhatre says. He reasons that that’s why there isn’t enough outrage about the quality or absence of footpaths in the country.

He also points out that most people see walking as an activity performed for leisure or exercise. And so, the infrastructure they associate with walking stops at gardens or walking tracks. In reality, however, people walk to various destinations daily, so the scope of walking infrastructure is far broader.

“Walking is the most economical and environment-friendly way to navigate one’s city and it’s high time our leaders paid as much attention to walking infrastructure as they do to public transport,” Mr Mhatre says.

Geetam Tiwari, a professor of civil engineering, says that the main problem is that too much focus is given to solving the problem of car congestion on roads.

“To improve the flow of traffic, authorities often narrow down footpaths or eliminate them entirely,” she says. Ms Tiwari says that this approach is problematic because doing so makes it difficult for pedestrians to access public transport systems, like buses and metros, which can take the pressure off the roads.

“It might seem counter-intuitive, but allowing the congestion to persist and focussing on improving infrastructure for pedestrians will help solve the traffic problem in the long run,” she says.

Ms Tiwari also says that the federal government should make it mandatory for states to implement the guidelines issued by the Indian Road Congress – a national organisation that lays down designing standards for roads and highways.

She says that cities can also implement their own Non-Motorised Transport Policy (NMTP) to create better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.

“At the moment, only a handful of cities in India have experimented with a NMTP but its time more cities step up to the plate,” she adds.

A woman whose body was found inside the boot of a car has been named by police.

Harshita Brella, 24, from Corby, Northamptonshire, was found by officers in the early hours of Thursday in a vehicle on Brisbane Road, Ilford, east London.

Northamptonshire Police had been contacted on Wednesday regarding concerns for Ms Brella’s welfare, which led to the discovery of her body and the launch of a murder investigation.

Det Ch Insp Johnny Campbell, from the East Midlands Special Operations Major Crime Unit (EMSOU), said: “Although we believe Harshita was attacked by someone known to her, we are keeping an open mind.”

After receiving a call about concerns over her welfare, Northamptonshire Police went to Ms Brella’s address in Skegness Walk, Corby.

Officers received no answer and launched a missing person investigation, with further inquiries leading them to find her body.

Det Ch Insp Campbell said: “She was a young woman in her early 20s with her whole life ahead of her and it is absolutely tragic that her life has been cut short in this way.

“Detectives from EMSOU and Northamptonshire Police are working around the clock to establish the circumstances behind her death, including the exact location and timeframe in which it took place.

“Although we believe Harshita was attacked by someone known to her, we are keeping an open mind, and would appeal to anyone who knew her to contact us with any relevant information they may have.”

The force said it believed there was no wider risk to the public but extra patrols would be taking place in Corby.