US President Joe Biden has given the green light for Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by the US to strike Russia.

A US official has confirmed the move, a major change of US policy, to the BBC’s US partner CBS.

For months, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging that the restrictions on the missiles, known as ATACMS, be lifted – allowing Kyiv to strike outside its own borders.

On Sunday he reacted to the reports, saying “such things are not announced, missiles speak for themselves”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously warned Western nations against such a move, saying it would represent the Nato military alliance’s “direct participation” in the Ukraine war.

He was yet to comment on Sunday’s reports although other senior Kremlin politicians described it as a serious escalation.

Washington’s decision on ATACMS is couched in terms of being limited to the defence of Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a surprise incursion in August.

In effect, the Biden administration is telling Ukraine that it will support its efforts to hold onto the small chunk of Russian territory it currently occupies, as a powerful bargaining chip for any possible negotiations in the future.

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Serhiy Kuzan, chairman of the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre, told the BBC that Joe Biden’s decision was “very important” to the country.

“It’s not something that will change the course of the war, but I think it will make our forces more equal.”

ATACMS can reach up to 300km (186 miles). Unnamed US officials have told the New York Times and the Washington Post that Biden’s approval of Ukraine’s use of the ATACMS came in response to Russia’s decision to allow North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Kuzan said Sunday’s decision had come ahead of what was an expected assault by Russian and Korean troops, designed to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region. The offensive was expected within days.

Ukraine had earlier estimated there to be 11,000 North Korean soldiers in Kursk.

President Biden’s decision will also finally enable Britain and France to grant Ukraine permission to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia.

Neither the UK nor France has yet responded to Biden’s decision.

Last month, Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine had used US-supplied long-range missiles for the first time to strike Russian targets in the country’s east.

For months, Ukraine has been battling to push back Russian troops who have been slowly advancing in the eastern Donetsk region towards the key city of Pokrovsk – a major supply hub for Ukrainian forces.

Moscow has also massively increased its number of drone strikes on Ukraine. More than 2,000 were launched in October, according to Ukraine’s general staff – a record number in the war.

Overnight on Saturday, Russia launched what is thought to be its biggest co-ordinated assault in months, killing at least 10 people. Around 120 missiles and 90 drones were launched, according to Zelensky.

Attacks continued on Sunday evening, with officials in Sumy region – near the Russian border – reporting another eight killed, including two children, after a missile hit a residential building.

Russian officials in the border region of Bryansk reported a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday night but said its defences had shot down 26 drones.

Ukraine had for months argued that its allies had not provided the country with enough support to allow it to effectively defend itself.

Joe Biden, who will leave the White House in January, has been seeking to expedite further aid to Ukraine.

There are concerns that his successor, Donald Trump, will slow or halt any further support. He has described the military support as a drain on US resources and has signalled he will end the war, without explaining how this would happen.

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.

The US has for the first time allowed Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

The outgoing Biden administration has told Kyiv it can use US-made ATACMS missiles for limited strikes inside Russia, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

Washington had previously refused to allow such strikes because it feared they would escalate the war.

The major policy reversal comes two months before President Joe Biden hands over power to Donald Trump, who is sceptical of US military aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine has been using the Army Tactical Missile System, more commonly known as ATACMS, on Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory for more than a year.

It has used ATACMS to strike airbases in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and military positions in the Zaporizhzhia region.

But the US has never allowed Kyiv to use the long-range missiles inside Russia – until now.

The Lockheed Martin ballistic missiles are some of the most powerful so far provided to Ukraine, capable of travelling up to 300km (186 miles).

Ukraine had argued that not being allowed to use such weapons inside Russia was like being asked to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

The change in policy reportedly comes in response to the recent deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia in the Kursk border region, where Ukraine has occupied territory since August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has yet not confirmed the move. But he said on Sunday: “Strikes are not made with words … The missiles will speak for themselves.”

• Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with missiles

Ukraine will now be able to strike targets inside Russia, most likely around the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold over 1,000 kmsq of territory.

US officials say Kyiv will be able to use ATACMS to defend against an expected counter-offensive by Russian and North Korean troops, which may begin within days with the aim of regaining Russian territory.

Ukrainian forces will be able to hit Russian positions in Kursk, including troops, infrastructure and ammunition storage.

The supply of ATACMS will probably not be enough to turn the tide of the war. Russian military equipment, such as jets, has already been moved to airfields further inside Russia in anticipation of such a decision.

But the weapons may grant Ukraine some advantage at a time when Russian troops have been gaining ground in the country’s east and morale is low.

“I don’t think it will be decisive,” a Western diplomat in Kyiv told the BBC, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“However, it’s an overdue symbolic decision to raise the stakes and demonstrate military support to Ukraine.”

“It can raise the war cost for Russia.”

There are also questions over how much ammunition will be provided, said Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence in the Obama administration.

“The question is of course how many missiles do they have? We have heard that the Pentagon has warned there aren’t that many of these missiles that they can make available to Ukraine.”

Farkas added that the ATACMS could have a “positive psychological impact” in Ukraine if they are used to strike targets such as the Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to mainland Russia.

The US authorisation will also have a further knock-on effect: enabling the UK and France to grant Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia. Storm Shadow is a Franco-British long-range cruise missile with similar capabilities to the American ATACMS.

The Biden administration had for months refused to authorise Ukraine to hit Russia with long-range missiles, fearing escalation of the conflict.

Vladimir Putin had warned against allowing Western weapons to be used to hit Russia, saying Moscow would view that as the “direct participation” of Nato countries in the war in Ukraine.

“It would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” Putin said. “This will mean that Nato countries, the USA and European states, are fighting with Russia.”

Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.

Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato, said: “By restricting the range of Ukraine’s use of American weapons, the US was unjustifiably imposing unilateral restrictions on Ukraine’s self-defence.”

He added that the decision to limit the use of ATACMS was “completely arbitrary and done out of fear of ‘provoking’ Russia.”

“However, it is a mistake to make such a change public, as it gives Russia advance notice of potential Ukrainian strikes.”

The elephant in the room is that Biden is a lame-duck president, with just two months left in office before he hands power to President-elect Donald Trump.

It is unknown whether Trump would continue with such a policy. But some of his closest allies have already expressed criticism of the decision.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr wrote on social media: “The military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get World War Three going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.”

Trump has not spelled out what policy he will take on the war in Ukraine, beyond having vowed to end the conflict within a day, though never specifying how he would do so. Democratic opponents have also accused him of cosying up to Putin, whom he has repeatedly expressed admiration for.

Many of Trump’s top officials, such as Vice-President-elect JD Vance, say the US should not provide any more military aid to Ukraine.

But others in the next Trump administration hold a different view. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz has argued that the US could accelerate weapons deliveries to Ukraine to force Russia to negotiate.

Which way the president-elect will go is unclear. But many in Ukraine fear that he will cut off weapons deliveries, including ATACMS.

“We are worried. We hope that [Trump] will not reverse [the decision],” Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, told the BBC.

Washington’s highest-ranking Republican has said that President-elect Donald Trump is tapping “disruptors” to lead his incoming administration.

“They are persons who will shake up the status quo,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think that’s by design.”

Trump continues to announce officials who he wants to fill high-ranking positions in his administration, seeming to favour close allies over those with related policy experience.

Some of those picks have sent shockwaves through Washington and caused bipartisan concern. But those close to Trump say there are back-up plans in place if these nominees can’t muster the support needed to be approved.

Trump’s defence secretary pick Pete Hegseth has denied a sexual assault allegation and his potential attorney general Matt Gaetz is at the centre of an ethics scandal. His health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is under scrutiny for his vaccine scepticism.

The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr, defended his father’s nominees on Sunday, saying on Fox News that “we know who the good guys and bad guys are”.

“It’s about surrounding my father with people who are competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises,” he said. “They are not people who think they know better as unelected bureaucrats.”

He noted some of the nominees are “controversial” and appeared to acknowledge some could face problems in the Senate, which is tasked with vetting thousands of presidential nominees and voting on their appointments.

“We do have back-up plans, but we’re obviously going with the strongest candidates first,” the president-elect’s son said. “You know some of them are going to be controversial because they’ll actually get things done.”

One of Donald Trump’s latest picks is oil executive Chris Wright, nominated as energy secretary.

Wright, the founder and CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, is expected to work toward fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to increase fossil fuel production – an aim summed by the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill”.

He 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”.

He has no government experience but 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 world’s largest oil producer.

Wright’s appointment is a win for the fossil fuel industry. 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.

His appointment came as Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, on Sunday, as he touted his climate legacy.

Biden took take an aerial tour over part of the Amazon and met with local and Indigenous leaders working to preserve the region’s ecosystem before making a brief appearance in Manaus, a large city nestled in the centre of the rainforest.

There, Biden described the battle against climate change as “a defining cause of my presidency” and touted the landmark climate legislation passed under his administration.

The Democrat also pledged new financial assistance to protect the Amazon, including an additional $50m (£40m)contribution to the Amazon Conservation Fund bringing the US commitment to $100m.

And while he did not mention Trump by name, Biden seemed to make reference to his successor, saying that while “some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that is underway in America… nobody, nobody can reverse it”.

“The question now,” he said, “is which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity.”

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Australian lawmakers have voted to censure an Aboriginal senator who heckled King Charles during his visit to Canberra last month, to express their “profound disapproval” of her protest.

Lidia Thorpe shouted “you are not my King” and “this is not your land” shortly after the King addressed the Great Hall of Parliament, in an effort to highlight the impacts of British colonisation.

The Senate’s censure, which passed 46-12, described Thorpe’s actions as “disrespectful and disruptive” and said they should disqualify her from representing the chamber as a member of any delegation.

A censure motion is politically symbolic but carries no constitutional or legal weight.

Shortly after the Senate vote on Monday, Thorpe told reporters she had been denied her right to respond in the chamber due to a flight delay.

“The British Crown committed heinous crimes against the first peoples of this country… I will not be silent,” the independent senator said.

Her protest last month drew immediate ire from across the political aisle, as well as from some prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders.

But it also drew praise from some activists who argued that it highlighted the plight of Australia’s first inhabitants, who endured colonial violence and still face acute disadvantages in terms of health, wealth, education, and life expectancy compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

Despite the protest, the King was warmly greeted by Australian crowds during his five-day tour alongside Queen Camilla.

“You have shown great respect for Australians, even during times when we have debated the future of our own constitutional arrangements and the nature of our relationship with the crown. Nothing stands still,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an official address.

Thorpe has a history of Indigenous activism which has, at times, grabbed global headlines.

During her swearing in ceremony in 2022, the Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman referred to the Queen Elizabeth II as a coloniser – and was asked to retake her oath after facing criticism.

Last year, Australia decisively rejected a proposal to grant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people constitutional recognition and allow them to establish a body to advise parliament on issues impacting their communities.

The referendum – known as the Voice – became ensnared in a bruising campaign, and both sides of politics have sought to move on swiftly, leaving uncertainty over future policy.

While the data suggests a majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people voted ‘Yes’, support wasn’t unanimous. Thorpe herself was a leading ‘No’ campaigner, having criticised the measure as tokenistic.

A “massive” Russian missile and drone attack has targeted power infrastructure across Ukraine, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

At least 10 people were killed in the strikes, which hit the capital, Kyiv, as well as multiple targets in several regions including Donetsk, Lviv and Odesa.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said its thermal energy plants had suffered “significant damage”, resulting in blackouts.

The country’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, says it will enforce “restriction measures” for the whole of Ukraine on Monday.

The co-ordinated assault overnight on Saturday was largest of its kind since early September, according to authorities and local media.

In total, around 120 missiles and 90 drones were launched, Zelensky said on Telegram.

“Peaceful cities, sleeping civilians” and “critical infrastructure” were targeted, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said.

The Russian defence ministry reported that it had hit all its targets, saying that its attack was on “essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.

“Russian terrorists once again want to scare us with cold and lack of light,” was how President Zelensky put it.

Of course, anything that seeks to deny power to factories producing weaponry inevitably harms civilians too – indirectly, through the loss of electricity and frequently water, and directly, as missiles or fragments of missiles rain down from the sky.

The governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said there had also been disruptions to heat and water supplies, although the latter was gradually being restored. Hospitals and other critical infrastructure were operating using generators.

Further east, the city of Mykolaiv was also hit. The region’s leader, Vitaliy Kim, told the BBC that the people were resilient there, despite being attacked regularly.

“People are in a good shape and want to defend themselves. We do not want to lose our homes,” he said.

In Kyiv, fragments from intercepted missiles and drones fell in several places, but there were no reports of injuries.

The attack was the eighth large-scale one targeting Ukraine’s energy facilities this year, DTEK said in a statement, adding that its plants had been attacked more than 190 times since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials fear the most recent strike could signal another concerted Russian attempt to deplete the power grid as winter arrives.

Having already endured two-and-a-half bitter winters since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainians are bracing themselves for another.

“Here we go again” were the words of an official at one of Ukraine’s private energy companies, summing up the mood across the country on Sunday.

Through ingenuity and sheer determination, Ukraine has managed to survive each winter assault so far. There is every chance it will again, although its generation capacity is now less than a half of what it was in February 2022.

Poland, Ukraine’s neighbour to the west, scrambled fighter jets to patrol its own airspace as a security precaution.

“Due to a massive attack by Russia, which is carrying out strikes using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones against sites located, among other places, in western Ukraine, operations by Polish and allied aircraft have begun,” Poland’s Operational Command said.

Hungary, which neighbours both Ukraine and Poland, was also on alert after drone attacks struck the westernmost Subcarpathian region – about 20km (12 miles) from the Hungarian border.

The country’s defence minister said the “situation is being monitored continuously”.

These latest attacks come as both Ukraine and Russia continue to try to anticipate how US President-elect Donald Trump will act once his administration takes power in January.

Trump has consistently said his priority is to end the war and what he describes as a drain on US resources in the form of military aid to Kyiv. He has not said how.

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.

There are fears in Kyiv that it may come under pressure to negotiate an end to the war that may favour Russia’s advances – Moscow continues to control a large swathe of Ukrainian territory.

Zelensky has said he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have under the new Trump presidency.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently told Russian state media of “positive” signals from the incoming US administration. But Russia has denied that a phone call took place in which Donald Trump reportedly warned the Russian president against escalating the war.

However, for all the talk of the possible changes coming when Donald Trump enters the White House, Sunday’s attacks seem to indicate that, for now at least, the war’s grim realities are not changing.

Meanwhile, the leader of Germany – another Ukrainian ally – has defended a phone call he had with Putin on Friday, something Kyiv criticised as an attempt at appeasement.

“It was important to tell him [Putin] that he should not count on the support of Germany, Europe and many others in the world for Ukraine waning, but that it is now also up to him to ensure that the war comes to an end,” Olaf Scholz said on Sunday.

He added that the Russian president had given no indication of a shift in his thinking on the war.

For a harrowing week in August, Ruchika Tandon, a 44-year-old neurologist at one of India’s top hospitals, was ensnared in what felt like a high-stakes federal crime investigation.

Yet, it was an elaborate scam – a web of deceit spun by scammers who manipulated her every move and drained her and her family’s life savings.

Under the pretence of “digital arrest”- a term fabricated by her perpetrators – Dr Tandon was coerced to take leave from work, surrender her daily freedoms, and comply with nonstop surveillance and instructions from strangers on the phone, who convinced her she was at the centre of a grave investigation.

The “digital arrest” scam involves fraudsters impersonating law enforcement officials on video calls, threatening victims with arrest over fake charges, and pressuring them to transfer large sums of money.

In Dr Tandon’s case, they stripped her and her family of nearly 25m rupees ($300,000; £235,000) across bank accounts, mutual funds, pension funds, and life insurance – years of savings lost in a manufactured nightmare.

She is not alone. Indians lost over 1,200m rupees to “digital arrest” hoaxes between January and April this year, according to official figures. These figures only scratch the surface, as many victims don’t report such crimes. Stolen funds are often funnelled into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency wallets. More than 40% of the scams have been traced back to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, according to officials.

Things are so bad that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about the scam in his monthly radio talk in October.

“Whenever you receive such a call, don’t be scared. You should be aware that no investigative agency never inquires like this through a phone call or a video call,” he said.

India faces a range of cyber crimes, from fake investment and trading to dating scams. But the “digital arrest” scam stands out as especially elaborate and sinister – meticulously planned, relentless, and invasive to every part of a victim’s life.

Sometimes scammers reveal themselves during video calls, while other times they remain hidden, relying solely on audio. The plot could be straight out of an outlandish Bollywood thriller – except it is carefully choreographed.

On that fateful first day, scammers posing as officials from India’s telecom regulator called Lucknow-based Dr Tandon, claiming her number would be disconnected due to “22 complaints” of harassing messages sent from it.

Moments later, a man claiming to be a senior police officer took over. He accused her of using a joint bank account with her mother to launder money for women and child trafficking.

In the background, a jarring chorus of voices echoed, “Arrest her, arrest her!”

“The police will be coming in five minutes to arrest you. All police stations have been alerted,” the man warned.

“I was angry and frustrated. I kept saying this can’t be true,” Dr Tandon recalls.

The officer seemed to soften, but with a catch. He said India’s federal detective agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), would take over as it was a “matter of national secrecy”.

“I will try to talk and persuade them not to put you in physical custody. But you have to be in digital custody,” he insisted.

Dr Tandon used a feature phone that lacked video calling, making it impossible for the scammers to proceed. So they forced her to drive to a store and buy a smartphone.

Over the next six days, three men and a woman, posing as police officers and a judge, kept her under constant surveillance on Skype, with her phone camera running nonstop.

They made her wake up her students at night to buy extra data packs to keep the scam going. She was required to place the phone throughout the house – while cooking, sleeping, and even outside the bathroom – tracking her every move.

She was also forced to lie to her hospital and relatives, claiming she was too ill to work or meet anyone. When an uncle visited, they ordered her to hide under a bed, with the phone camera running.

For a full week, Dr Tandon endured more 700 questions on her life and work, a staged trial, falsified court documents, and promises of a digital “bail” in exchange for her life savings. In the fake court she was ordered to dress in white to “show respect to the judge”. The callers had switched off their video, leaving only their fake names and authentic-looking badges displayed on blank screens.

At one point, during the ordeal, the scammers even talked to Dr Tandon’s 70-year-old mother, urging her to stay silent “for her daughter’s sake”.

When the doctor repeatedly broke down on camera, the scammers told her: “Take a deep breath and relax. You have not committed a murder. You have just laundered money.”

In a desperate bid for freedom, she transferred her entire savings from half-a-dozen different bank accounts to accounts controlled by the scammers, believing she would be refunded after “government verification”. Instead, she lost everything. The callers disconnected the line after transfer was completed.

Back at work after a week, exhaustion drove Dr Tandon to search terms like “digital custody” and “new CBI investigation methods” on the internet.

This led to newspaper stories detailing similar “digital arrest” scams across the country. She still had refused to accept she was a victim of an elaborate hoax, and had rushed to the police station, hoping that “the police station and officers were real”.

Dr Tandon says she approached the police station, anxious.

“I’ve been receiving strange calls for days,” she started, trying to explain.

Before she could say more, a woman officer interrupted sharply, “Have you transferred any money?”

At another police station, “the moment they heard my case, they began laughing”, Dr Tandon recalls.

“This is very common now,” a policeman said.

Over 500km (310 miles) away in Delhi, author and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay narrowly escaped the scam in July.

He endured 28 hours under “digital arrest,” as scammers claimed that his defunct bank account had been used to launder money. Mr Mukhopadhyay’s suspicions aroused when a caller asked him why he hadn’t redeemed his mutual funds – not a question a police officer would usually ask on the phone.

Mr Mukhopadhyay slipped from his study, where scammers were surveilling him on his desktop, and confided briefly with his wife. Friends, alerted by his message, quickly asked her to disconnect his modem, freeing him from their grip.

“I became a digital slave until my friends exposed the scam,” says Mr Mukhopadhyay. “I had moved my funds into my account, ready to transfer it all to them. I felt like a fool when it was over.”

Progress on catching these scammers remains unclear, with many victims frustrated by slow moving complaint processes.

Dr Tandon, however, has seen some success: police have arrested 18 suspects, including a woman, from across India. About a third of the stolen money has been recovered in cash and seized in different bank accounts. She has received only 1.2m of the 25m rupees of her looted money so far – that was the cash recovered.

Investigating officer Deepak Kumar Singh says the scammers were running an elaborate operation.

“The scammers are educated men and women – fluent in English and various Indian languages – including engineering graduates, cyber security experts, and banking professionals. Most operate through Telegram channels,” Mr Singh, a senior police official, told the BBC.

The scammers were clever, using targeted information from their victims’ social media, investigators believe.

“They track you, gather personal information, and identify your weaknesses,” says Mr Singh. “Then they strike quickly, using a hit-and-run approach with potential victims.”

The scammers knew Mr Mukhopadhyay was a journalist and writer – author of a biography on Prime Minister Modi. They knew Dr Tandon was a doctor and had attended a conference in Goa. They had their biometric national identity numbers. Mr Mukhopadhyay wonders if they were aware he was among the journalists whose house was raided by Delhi police in October 2023 as part of an investigation into the funding of NewsClick (Critics had deplored the move as an attack on press freedom, a charge the government denied.)

They also made errors. Mr Mukhopadhyay’s caller was unaware of how long it typically took to redeem funds, which raised his suspicions. Dr Tandon’s fake judge, called himself Judge Dhananjay and displayed a fake insignia with a picture of the recently retired Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud. Yet, overwhelmed by the moment, she missed the clue.

Dr Tandon says she still lives in a haze, struggling to separate reality from the nightmare that overtook her life. Even when she filed the police complaint, she wondered, “Was the police station also fake?”

Every phone call stirs fresh anxiety.

“At work, I sometimes go blank, filled with fears. Days are better, but after dusk, it becomes hard. I get nightmares.”

A bullet failed to silence her, now Malala Yousafzai is lending her voice to the women of Afghanistan.

In just a few years since the Taliban retook control of the country, women’s rights have been eroded to the point where even singing is banned.

Malala has a personal history with the Taliban across the border in Pakistan, after a gunman from the hardline Islamist group shot her as she sat on a school bus.

The speed of change in Afghanistan, if not the brutality, has surprised Malala, who since that near-fatal shooting in 2012 has campaigned for equality.

“I never imagined that the rights of women would be compromised so easily,” Malala tells BBC Asian Network.

“A lot of girls are finding themselves in a very hopeless, depressing situation where they do not see any way out,” the 27-year-old Nobel Prize Winner says.

“The future looks very dark to them.”

In 2021, the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

In the three-and-a-half years since Western forces left the country, “morality laws” have meant women in Afghanistan have lost dozens of rights.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they’re related by blood or marriage.

“The restrictions are just so extreme that it does not even make sense to anybody,” says Malala.

The United Nations (UN) says the rules amount to “gender apartheid” – a system where people face economic and social discrimination based on their sex and something human rights group Amnesty International wants recognised as crime under international law.

But the rules have been defended by the Taliban, which claims they’re accepted in Afghan society and that the international community should respect “Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies”.

“Women lost everything,” says Malala.

“They [the Taliban] know that to take away women’s rights you have to start with the foundation, and that is education.”

The UN says since the takeover more than a million girls are not in school in Afghanistan – about 80% – and in 2022 about 100,000 female students were banned from their university courses.

It’s also reported a correlation between the lack of access to education and a rise in child marriage and deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.

“Afghan women live in very dark times now,” Malala says.

“But they show resistance.”

The Pakistan-born activist, who became the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize, is an executive producer on an upcoming film, Bread & Roses, that documents the lives of three Afghan women living under the Taliban regime.

The documentary follows Zahra, a dentist forced to give up her practice, activist Taranom, who flees to the border, and government employee Sharifa, who loses her job and her independence.

But the film isn’t just about the stories of three women, Malala says.

“It’s about the 20 million Afghan girls and women whose stories may not make it to our screens.”

Bread & Roses was directed by Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani and US actress Jennifer Lawrence was also brought on board as a producer.

Sahra tells Asian Network her mission was “to tell the story of a nation under the Taliban dictatorship”.

“How slowly, all the rights have been taken away.”

Sahra managed to flee Afghanistan after the US-backed government collapsed following the withdrawal of troops in August 2021.

But she kept in touch with women back home, who would share videos which she then collected and archived.

“It was very important to find young, modern, educated women that have talent they were ready to dedicate to society,” says Sahra.

“They were ready to build the country but now they have to sit at home and almost do nothing.”

Even though the film hasn’t been released yet, Sahra believes the situation in Afghanistan has already deteriorated to the point where it would be impossible to make if she started now.

“At that time, women could still go out and demonstrate,” she says.

“Nowadays, women are not even allowed to sing… the situation is getting more difficult.”

The first-hand footage shows the women at protests – they kept the cameras rolling while being arrested by the Taliban.

And Sahra says the project only got harder over time as more of their rights were stripped away.

“We were really honoured that these women trusted us to share their stories,” she says.

“And it was really important for us to put their security in our priorities.

“But when they were out in the street asking for their rights, it was not for the documentary.

“It was for them, for their own life, for their own freedom.”

Malala says that, for women in Afghanistan, “defiance is extremely challenging”.

“Despite all of these challenges, they’re out on their streets and risking their lives to hope for a better world for themselves.”

All three of the women featured in the film are no longer living in Afghanistan and Sahra and Malala are hopeful the film will raise awareness of what women who remain endure.

“They are doing all that they can to fight for their rights, to raise their voices,” Malala says.

“They’re putting so much at risk. It’s our time to be their sisters and be their supporters.”

Malala also hopes the documentary prompts more international pressure on the Taliban to restore women’s rights.

“I was completely shocked when I saw the reality of the Taliban take over,” she says.

“We really have to question what sort of systems we have put in place to guarantee protection to women in Afghanistan, but also elsewhere.”

And as much as Bread & Roses deals with stories of loss and oppression, the film is also about resilience and hope.

“There’s so much for us to learn from the bravery and courage of these Afghan women,” says Malala.

“If they are not scared, if they are not losing that courage to stand up to the Taliban, we should learn from them and we should stand in solidarity with them.”

The title itself was inspired by an Afghan saying.

“Bread is a symbol of freedom, earning a salary and supporting the family,” Sahra says.

“We have a saying in my language that the one who gave you bread is the one who orders you.

“So if you find your bread, that means you are the boss of you.”

That’s exactly the future she hopes to see for the women of Afghanistan and, based on what she’s seen, one she believes they will achieve in the end.

“Women in Afghanistan, they keep changing the tactic,” she says.

“They keep searching for a new way to keep fighting back.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

Veteran Australian broadcaster and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones has been arrested after an investigation into a series of sexual abuse allegations.

New South Wales (NSW) Police said detectives from the Child Abuse Squad took an 83-year-old man into custody at an apartment in Sydney’s Circular Quay early on Monday morning, before searching the property.

A strike force was set up in March to investigate several indecent assaults and sexual touching incidents between 2001 and 2019, they said in a statement.

Mr Jones is one of Australia’s most influential media figures, and has previously denied allegations of abuse, first published by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2023.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said officers had been working “tirelessly” on what has been a “very complex”, “protracted” and “thorough” investigation.

She added that police expect other alleged victims may come forward, as often happens in cases like this.

“There’s no such thing as a matter that’s too old to be investigated.

“There is no better time to come forward than now and you will be listened to, and we will take your matter seriously,” she said.

A former teacher, Mr Jones coached Australia’s national rugby union team between 1984 and 1988, before pivoting to a radio career.

He also, at times, worked as a speechwriter and advisor for Liberal Party figures – including former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser – and launched several failed bids to represent the party in both state and federal politics.

A staple of Sydney airwaves on local station 2GB for decades, Mr Jones juggled those duties with TV commentary gigs before he retired from full time work in 2020 citing health issues.

The broadcaster is a polarising figure, for years boasting one of the nation’s biggest audiences but often courting controversy.

He made headlines in 2012 for suggesting that then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father had “died of shame”, and in 2019 faced a massive advertiser boycott after saying someone should “shove a sock” down the throat of New Zealand’s leader at the time, Jacinda Ardern.

Mr Jones has also been successfully sued for defamation many times.

Police are expected to update the media on their investigation later on Monday.

Hezbollah’s media chief Mohammed Afif has been killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut, the Lebanese militant group has confirmed.

A strike hit the headquarters of the Baath political party in the densely populated Ras al-Naba neighbourhood on Sunday, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.

The country’s health ministry said four people were killed, but did not name the victims.

Afif, one of the few remaining public faces of the group, was last seen on Monday, when he gave a press conference in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group is based.

Hezbollah confirmed the death on Sunday evening, several hours after it was first reported.

Most of the headquarters of the Lebanese branch of the Syrian Baath party was destroyed in the strike, as rescue and civil defence teams rushed to aid a number of people trapped under the rubble, the National News Agency reported.

The health ministry said 14 people were injured as well as the four killed.

The Lebanese Baath Party is a branch of the Syrian Baath Party, headed by President Bashar Al-Assad, and a long-time Hezbollah ally.

Its Lebanese headquarters are located by a busy central intersection connecting western and eastern Beirut with the city centre and the airport road, which passes through the southern suburbs.

BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab said the development raised concern that Israel was expanding attacks beyond Hezbollah military officials. Hezbollah is also a political party with representatives in parliament and ministers in government.

“That is really sending alarm to people, that there are no signs of de-escalating this situation or finding a solution, but rather further escalation and widening Israeli targets against Hezbollah in Lebanon,” she told BBC’s news channel.

Later on Sunday, another strike in central Beirut on Mar Elias Street killed two people and wounded 13 more, the Lebanese health ministry said.

The BBC has reached out to the IDF about the second strike in central Beirut.

Earlier on Sunday, the IDF said it had conducted strikes on six Hezbollah military targets in the southern suburbs.

In the past week, the Israeli military has intensified its attacks on Beirut, amid renewed efforts led by the US for a ceasefire in the war.

Israel already killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders and senior officials in Beirut strikes in late September, when Israel launched an offensive against the Iran-backed group.

Israel said it wanted to return tens of thousands of displaced residents to the country’s north nearly a year after Hezbollah stepped up rocket attacks in support of Palestinians after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including at least 2,600 since Israel launched a intense air campaign followed by a ground invasion in the south in late September, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Another 1.2 million people have been displaced.

When 18-year-old John Morris stood for the first time on the Pacific’s Christmas Island in 1956, he had no idea that the destructive forces of nature he would witness, harnessed for military power, would hang like a mushroom cloud over his life forever.

Now 86, Mr Morris is one of the last few of 22,000 personnel who witnessed the UK’s nuclear bomb tests – and those that are able to are still fighting to find out what it did their bodies.

A BBC film, to be broadcast this Wednesday, details their battles for what the dwindling band of men believe is a hidden truth: that the UK’s military knew at the time it was subjecting them to radiation that would damage them and their descendants forever.

Thousands of the men have suffered cancers and other conditions that other nuclear states have recognised as probably linked to the now-banned testing.

But not the UK. It has paid no compensation at all.

In Mr Morris’s case, as the film reveals, he believes the death of his first child, Steven, in 1962, was the result of the radiation damage he suffered during Operation Grapple – the name given to a series of British nuclear weapons tests.

Steven was four months old when he died in his cot. The coroner suspected the baby’s lung had not properly formed. Why? Nobody knows.

“The death certificate said he died of pneumonia,” says Mr Morris.

“If that little baby got pneumonia when we put him to bed that night we would have known.

“The only time I really, really understood was when the undertaker came with his coffin. A little white box. It was the hardest day of my life.

“I blame the Ministry of Defence and the experiments they did on us for Steven’s death – and I always will.”

John Morris’s story is one of many testimonies in the film, which also covers what happened to Indigenous communities who lived in the nuclear bomb test areas in Australia.

All of them believe they were lab rats, subjected to live human experimentation as the British raced to join the USA and Russia as a nuclear power.

And they are appealing to Sir Keir Starmer to meet them – to make good on what they believe was a pledge made by the Labour party.

The campaign for disclosure and damages for ill health began decades ago as the veterans linked health conditions, cancers and birth defects in children to the nuclear testing that began in 1952.

But in 2012, the Supreme Court ended the campaign for damages, saying the men could not prove the link – and they had also long run out of time.

The campaign, however, was relaunched last year thanks to potentially crucial new evidence discovered in what is known as the “Gledhill memo”.

The 1958 report from Christmas Island to the nuclear programme’s secret UK headquarters says that there were blood tests for Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill showing “gross irregularity”.

The memo, says the campaign, is proof that blood tests were being taken from personnel – and that there was a continuing but secret plan to monitor them.

The circumstantial evidence has grown since. This year, 4,000 pages of documents from the Atomic Weapons Establishment were declassified after a long Freedom of Information fight.

Those documents are still being analysed but the campaign says they show there were standing orders for repeated blood and urine tests of military personnel and Indigenous communities at the test sites.

The language in some of the documents is unambiguous. One, from 1957, says that “all personnel selected for duty at Maralinga [the Australian test site] may be exposed to radiation”.

Many of the men have obtained their personnel and medical files – but say they have gaps that correspond to when they were stationed on the operations.

John Morris’s military medical file, for instance, is missing regular blood tests from Christmas Island that he says were part of the regime.

Then the campaign discovered, again by chance, what could be an official order to destroy medical records.

The widow of one veteran who had died of multiple cancers obtained her late husband’s personnel records, hoping the medical records would help with her claim for a war pension.

The bundle she received included a slip of paper, dated 1959, which marks where officials had removed pages. That was when her husband had been part of the testing programme.

And the slip says the material had been removed under a “special directive regarding prompt disposal”, on the then orders of the ministerial office for the Royal Air Force.

What was that “special directive”? Nobody knows.

So was there a cover-up decades ago?

A 2008 government filing, in one part of the then legal battle, shows officials assured their in-house lawyers that “no individual monitoring of servicemen” had taken place during the tests.

But that does not make sense given the Gledhill memo shows personnel were being tested – and men remember it, too.

Another government document, from the 1990s, shows officials discussing their “concerns” that judges at the European Court of Human Rights had been told that there were no classified records concerning the monitoring of personnel.

The men say something stinks, and they have relaunched their legal fight, but time – and age – is against them.

The men’s lawyers believe they have a case for a failure to disclose medical records and, at worst, may have had glimpses of a cover-up locked in the bowels of military archives.

If they sue, the case could take years that the men do not have. So they have proposed an alternative time-limited one-off tribunal to find answers.

And that is why the men now want to meet Sir Keir Starmer – to get it done.

In 2019, the Labour Party, then led by Jeremy Corbyn, pledged £50,000 for each surviving British nuclear-test veteran.

Sir Keir met the veterans in 2021 but made no promises – and the 2019 offer was not in the 2024 manifesto.

But the prime minister has pledged to introduce the so-called “Hillsborough law” that places a duty on public officials to come completely clean when faced with an allegation of cover-up or misconduct.

That law could be in force within a year and it could help the men get answers, assuming they are there to be found.

“Keir Starmer, meet us,” says John Morris. “All I want is to meet him and get a pathway forward. They have let me down for 70 years.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said it recognised the “huge contribution” of the veterans and the government was committed to working with them and “listening to their concerns”.

“Ministers are looking hard at the issue – including the question of records,” said the spokesperson.

“They will continue to engage with the individuals and families affected and as part of this engagement, the Minister of Veterans Alistair Carns has already met with parliamentarians and a Nuclear Test Veteran campaign group to discuss their concerns further.”

Both Labour and Conservatives governments have maintained no records have been withheld from the veterans, including from the court cases.

The MoD says research has found no link between the nuclear tests, ill health and genetic defects in children. That’s contradicted by a respected study from New Zealand that showed its personnel suffered genetic damage from attending the British tests.

Whatever the government chooses to do, the impact of what the men witnessed will be with them forever.

When John Folkes was 19 years old, he was on board a plane ordered to fly through four atomic bomb mushroom clouds.

It was like being “microwaved”, he tells the BBC film, as his body was exposed to the raw power of a nuclear weapon. And he has suffered ever since from PTSD and a permanent tremble.

Some 14 months of his medical records are missing, despite him remembering radiation tests.

“It’s weighed heavily on my conscience,” the 89-year-old tells the BBC’s film.

“I’m a part of something that should never have happened.

“There exists within our society some dark forces that suppress the truth. I firmly believe that we’ve been betrayed. Shamefully betrayed.”

A super typhoon has made second landfall on the Philippines’ main island of Luzon, with forecasters warning of “life-threatening storm surge”, heavy rains and severe winds.

Man-Yi, known locally as Pepito, first touched down on the country’s eastern Cantanduanes island at 21:40 local time (13:40 GMT) on Saturday, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 195 km/h (121mph), the state forecaster said.

More than a million people have been ordered to evacuate since warnings were first issued.

Man-Yi is the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines in a month, with at least 160 people known to have died in the five previous storms.

The super typhoon already ripped through Cantanduanes, where it uprooted trees, damaged some buildings and pulled down power lines.

The storm did not lose any strength as it made landfall in the province of Aurora and began traversing the island of Luzon, the Philippines News Agency reported, with some gusts peaking at 305 km/h (189 mph).

Further widespread heavy rain from Man-Yi is forecast in northern areas of the main island. At least 200mm (7.8 inches) is expected to fall into Monday, leading to potentially “life-threatening” flooding and catastrophic mudslides, putting millions at risk from storm surges, the government said.

The country’s capital Manila, where about 15 million people live, is not forecast to be in the typhoon’s path.

Earlier on Sunday, dozens of flights were cancelled due to the incoming storm, according to local broadcaster ABS-CBN News.

More than 500,000 people heeded evacuation orders ahead of the storm, the civil defence said. Its head, Ariel Nepomuceno, urged everyone living in the storm’s projected path to comply with 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 was among those who 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 Luzon province of Albay on Saturday.

“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).

Storms in the Philippines have become more frequent and more intense, a problem greatly exacerbated by climate change.

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.

On Monday, millions of Swedes will start receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or other unexpected crises.

“If crisis or war comes” has been updated from six years ago because of what the government in Stockholm calls the worsening security situation, by which it means Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The booklet is also twice the size.

Neighbouring Finland has also just published its own fresh advice online on “preparing for incidents and crises”.

And Norwegians have also recently received a pamphlet urging them to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war and other threats.

In a detailed section on military conflict, the Finnish digital brochure explains how the government and president would respond in the event of an armed attack, stressing that Finland’s authorities are “well prepared for self defence”.

Sweden joined Nato only this year, deciding like Finland to apply after Moscow expanded its war in 2022. Norway was a founder member of the Western defensive alliance.

Unlike Sweden and Norway, the Helsinki government has decided not to print a copy for every home as it “would cost millions” and a digital version could be updated more easily.

“We have sent out 2.2 million paper copies, one for each household in Norway,” said Tore Kamfjord, who is responsible for the campaign of self-preparedness at the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB).

Included in the lists of items to be kept at home are long-life foods such as tins of beans, energy bars and pasta, and medicines including iodine tablets in case of a nuclear accident.

Oslo sent out an earlier version in 2018, but Kamfjord said climate change and more extreme weather events such as floods and landslides had brought increased risks.

For Swedes, the idea of a civil emergency booklet is nothing new. The first edition of “If War Comes” was produced during World War Two and it was updated during the Cold War.

But one message has been moved up from the middle of the booklet: “If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.”

It was not long ago that Finland and Sweden were still neutral states, although their infrastructure and “total defence system” date back to the Cold War.

Sweden’s Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said last month that as the global context had changed, information to Swedish households had to reflect the changes too.

Earlier this year he warned that “there could be war in Sweden”, although that was seen as a wake-up call because he felt that moves towards rebuilding that “total defence” were progressing too slowly.

Because of its long border with Russia and its experience of war with the Soviet Union in World War Two, Finland has always maintained a high level of defence. Sweden, however, scaled down its infrastructure and only in recent years started gearing up again.

“From the Finnish perspective, this is a bit strange,” according to Ilmari Kaihko, associate professor of war studies at the Swedish Defence University. “[Finland] never forgot that war is a possibility, whereas in Sweden, people had to be shaken up a bit to understand that this can actually happen,” says Kaihko, who’s from Finland.

Melissa Eve Ajosmaki, 24, who is originally from Finland but studies in Gothenburg, says she felt more worried when the war broke out in Ukraine. “Now I feel less worried but I still have the thought at the back of my head on what I should do if there was a war. Especially as I have my family back in Finland.”

The guides include instructions on what to do in case of several scenarios and ask citizens to make sure they can fend for themselves, at least initially, in case of a crisis situation.

Finns are asked how they would cope without power for days on end with winter temperatures as low as -20C.

Their checklist also includes iodine tablets, as well as easy-to-cook food, pet food and a backup power supply.

The Swedish checklist recommends potatoes, cabbage, carrots and eggs along with tins of bolognese sauce and prepared blueberry and rosehip soup.

Swedish Economist Ingemar Gustafsson, 67, recalls receiving previous versions of the pamphlet: “I’m not that worried about the whole thing so I take it pretty calmly. It’s good that we get information about how we should act and how we should prepare, but it’s not like I have all those preparations at home”.

One of the most important recommendations is to keep enough food and drinking water for 72 hours.

But Ilmari Kaihko wonders whether that is practical for everyone.

“Where do you stash it if you have a big family living in a small apartment?”

Pop star Charli XCX has revealed how her parents drove her to raves where she was performing, at the age of just 15.

She added that she managed to persuade them to do that by telling them she had “swim practice… At 2:00 A.M.”

The singer’s album Brat inspired a cultural phenomenon in the summer, with many people adopting the “brat” way of life.

It has built momentum since its release in June this year, through not only its original tracks, but remixes too.

The British singer, who is now 32, delivered an opening monologue while hosting Saturday Night Live (SNL) on NBC in the US.

In it, Charli, whose real name is Charlotte Aitchison, told viewers how she got to where she is now.

“I actually started performing when I was really young, and I played at my first rave when I was 15 years old,” she said.

“My parents actually drove me there. And, if you’re wondering how did I get my parents to drive me to a rave? Well, I just told them, ‘guys, I’ve got swim practice. At 2:00 A.M.'”

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She went on to joke that she has come “a long way” and now considers herself “a triple threat, which in England means I sing, I drink, and I smoke”.

Charli’s sixth studio album inspired millions of posts on social media, plenty of dance moves and even reached the heights of American politics, with US presidential candidate Kamala Harris giving her social media a brat rebrand in an attempt to attract younger voters.

During her appearance on SNL, the British pop star defined exactly what brat means to her.

“So many people have asked me, what is brat, and honestly, it’s just like an attitude, it’s a vibe,” she said.

“I have to say brat summer has been a crazy experience,” she added.

In attempting to define the word on SNL, she cited an incident where US businesswoman Martha Stewart had mistakenly claimed a journalist who covered her legal proceedings was dead.

“Martha gets mad about an old magazine article and she says that she’s glad the journalist who wrote it is dead – that is brat,” she said.

“And then last Friday, when that exact journalist responded and said, ‘Hey, ‘I’m alive…’ – that is extremely brat.”

Charli, who was also a musical guest on the show, went on to say: “Honestly though, anyone can be brat.”

“Keeping it real is very brat, it is all about being vulnerable, so truly, this is a dream come true,” she said.

“I am so excited to be here, and I’m not used to being out this early on a Saturday night but for you guys, it’s worth it.”

Charli has previously defined brat as a girl who “has a breakdown, but kind of like parties through it”, who is honest, blunt, “a little bit volatile”.

She told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast that someone brat might have “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.

Creating an aesthetic has been something popularised on TikTok, with Charli’s brat girl summer seen as a rejection of other trends such as the “clean girl” who looks feminine and well kept.

Brat was crowned Collins Dictionary word of the year earlier this month, with lexicographers defining it as someone with a “confident, independent and hedonistic attitude”.

Gabriela entered the United States more than two decades ago, gasping for breath under a pile of corn stalks in the boot of a smuggler’s car.

Now a housekeeper in Maryland, the Bolivian national is one of at least 13 million undocumented migrants living in the US – an umbrella term that includes those who entered the US illegally, overstayed their visas or have protected status to avoid deportation.

Across the US, migrants like Gabriela are grappling with what the incoming Trump administration’s vow to conduct mass deportations could mean for their future.

In over a dozen interviews, undocumented immigrants said it was a topic of heated discussion in their communities, WhatsApp groups and social media.

Some, like Gabriela, believe it won’t impact them at all.

“I’m not scared at all, actually,” she said. “That’s for criminals to worry about. I pay taxes, and I work.”

“In any case, I’m undocumented,” she added. “[So] how would they even know about me?”

In an election campaign where immigration loomed large as a major concern of US voters, Trump frequently pledged to deport migrants en masse from US soil from his first day in office if he were to return to the presidency.

But nearly two weeks after his sweeping election win, it remains unclear what exactly these immigration enforcement operations will look like.

The president-elect has insisted cost won’t be an issue, but experts have cautioned that his promises may run into enormous financial and logistics challenges.

His newly appointed “border tsar”, Tom Homan, has said that undocumented migrants deemed to be national security or public safety threats will be a priority. And he has suggested workplace raids – a practice ended by the Biden administration – could return.

Speaking to Fox News on Saturday, the former acting director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term challenged the notion that “those who enforce the law are the bad guys and those who break the law are the victims”.

“What member of Congress, what governor or what mayor is against taking public safety threats out of their community?” he asked, adding that the new administration would “follow through on the mandate that American people gave President Trump”.

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US authorities deporting migrants is nothing new. More than 1.5 million people have been expelled under President Joe Biden, in addition to millions swiftly turned away from the border during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the eight-year administration of Barack Obama – whom some dubbed the “deporter-in-chief” – about three million people were deported, with a focus on single men from Mexico that could easily be deported from border regions.

Trump’s promised plans, however, are more wide-ranging and aggressive, including enforcement operations in the US far from the border. Officials are reportedly also mulling using the National Guard and military aircraft to detain and ultimately deport people.

JD Vance, Trump’s running mate and incoming vice-president, has said that the deportations could “start” with one million people.

Still, some undocumented migrants believe that they will benefit from a Trump presidency instead of being kicked out.

“A lot of Latinos, those who can vote, did so because they think he [Trump] can improve the economy. That would be very good for us too,” said Carlos, an undocumented Mexican who lives in New York City. His son is a US citizen.

According to the American Immigration Council – a non-partisan organisation that conducts research and advocates for an overhaul of the US immigration system – there are more than five million Americans who were born to undocumented parents and have the security of US citizenship.

Carlos says he is “a little” worried about getting swept up in immigration raids. But that fear is tempered by the possibility of an improved economy under Trump and more work.

“Things may be a bit tense right in our communities right now, but being worried isn’t a solution,” he said. “The best thing to do is avoid problems and not commit any crimes.”

There are many others who don’t share in this optimism, and are living in fear.

Among them is California resident Eric Bautista, a so-called “Dreamer”, who benefits from a longstanding programme that protects from deportation those who were brought illegally into the US as children.

At 29, Mr Bautista has only fleeting memories of life in Mexico, the country in which he was born and left at the age of seven.

For the last four years, he has taught US history to high schoolers – including details of how waves of immigrants from Italy, Ireland, China, Japan and Mexico settled in the country, and often faced xenophobia.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way, even after more than 20 years here,” Mr Bautista told the BBC. “It feels like we’re at a turning point, a new wave of nativism like those I teach about.

“It’s just a future of fear and uncertainty for us.”

Advocates and legal experts said there was no guarantee that undocumented migrants without criminal convictions would not be ensnared in ramped-up deportation efforts.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said that he foresaw an uptick in “collateral arrests” – a term used in the first Trump administration to describe immigrants swept up during enforcement actions even though they may not have been the original targets.

“Let’s say they go after somebody with a criminal record, and that person lives in a house with four other [undocumented] people,” he said. “We saw with the first Trump administration, they’ll arrest those people as well.”

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In a recent interview with CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Homan was asked about a hypothetical situation in which a grandmother was caught up in a “targeted” enforcement operation going after criminals.

When asked if she would be deported, Homan responded “it depends”.

“Let the judge decide,” he said. “We’re gonna remove people that a judge has ordered deported.”

The arrest and potential removal of such collateral arrests would mark a drastic departure from the Biden administration, which has focused on public safety threats and deporting people soon after their apprehension at the border.

While Homan recently dismissed suggestions that there could be “a mass sweep of neighbourhoods” or large detention camps set up, the stock prices of companies that could be involved in building detention facilities have jumped by as much as 90% since the election. They include publicly traded prison firms GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Undocumented migrants are employed throughout the US economy – from agricultural fields to warehouses and construction sites.

Mr Reichlin-Melnick said operations targeting such workplaces could lead to “indiscriminate” detentions.

“I don’t think that being a person with no criminal record [who] pays taxes protects anybody,” he said. “One of the first things that Trump will do is get rid of the Biden administration’s enforcement priorities. And we’ve seen that when there are no priorities, they will go after whoever are the easiest targets.”

The possibility of becoming “an easy target” has worried many migrants – particularly those from families with mixed legal statuses. Their biggest fear is finding themselves separated.

Brenda, a 37-year-old Mexico-born “Dreamer” in Texas, is currently protected from deportation but her husband and her mother are not.

Her two children were born in the US and are American citizens.

While Brenda told the BBC she does not believe that “good people” would be the first targets for deportation, she can’t escape the thought that her husband could be sent back to Mexico.

“It’s important for us that we see our sons grow up,” she said. “Of course, the thought of being separated leaves one frightened.”

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Donald Trump celebrated his election victory at the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in New York alongside Elon Musk and some of his cabinet picks.

Trump entered the arena to loud music and cheers from the UFC 309 crowd at Madison Square Garden. He hugged the US podcaster Joe Rogan and spent most of the night sitting between UFC president Dana White and Tesla CEO Musk.

Two of Trump’s key cabinet picks, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, plus Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency with Musk, were also in attendance.

Donald Trump has made several contentious hires in his new administration, notably in the health, defence and justice departments.

Ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025, the president-elect named Florida congressman Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general.

He has named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and military veteran, as his pick for defence secretary. And he wants RFK Jr to be health secretary.

Marco Rubio is a safer pick as the next secretary of state. And billionaire supporter Elon Musk will play a role in cost-cutting.

Here is a closer look at the posts he’s named replacements for, and the names in the mix for the top jobs yet to be filled.

We will start with the Cabinet roles – these require approval from the Senate. If four Republican senators and all the Democrats disagree to any individual then that nomination will fail.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been picked for US secretary of state, the president’s main adviser on foreign affairs who acts as America’s top diplomat when representing the country overseas.

Rubio, 53, takes a hawkish view of China. He opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary but has since mended fences.

He has long been courting the job of the nation’s top diplomat and if approved, he will be the first Latino secretary of state in US history.

• Marco Rubio: America’s nominee for top diplomat, in his own words

Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host who has never held political office, has been nominated to be the next defence secretary.

His appointment is one of the most highly anticipated in Trump’s cabinet as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza rage on.

“Nobody fights harder for the troops,” Trump said.

• Trump defence pick surprises Washington, here’s why

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

After tumultuous relationships with both Jeff Sessions and William Barr, the attorneys general during his first term, Trump was widely expected to pick a loyalist who will wield the agency’s prosecutorial power in the manner of an “attack dog”.

He did just that with Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, whose confirmation is likely to be difficult, as members of both US parties are not fans of him.

• Trump picking Gaetz to head justice department stuns

Trump announced during a speech at Mar-a-Lago that he would ask Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, to lead the Department of the Interior.

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

If confirmed, Burgum will oversee an agency that is responsible for the management and conservation of federal lands and natural resources.

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RFK Jr, as he is known, an environmental lawyer, vaccine sceptic and the nephew of former President John F Kennedy, is Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Despite having no medical qualifications, Kennedy, 70, would have broad remit over US federal health agencies – including those that oversee approval of vaccines and pharmaceuticals.

There has been speculation about his inability to pass a background check for security clearance due to past controversies, including dumping a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park.

Former Georgia congressman Doug Collins has been chosen to lead the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform.

Collins was a Trump loyalist when he served in Congress from 2013-21. He was an outspoken advocate for the president-elect during both impeachment hearings.

An Iraq war veteran who now serves as a chaplain in the US Air Force Reserve, Collins left Congress for an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in his home state of Georgia.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been nominated for the key role of overseeing US security, including its borders, cyber-threats, terrorism and emergency response.

The agency has a $62bn (£48bn) budget and employs thousands of people. It incorporates a wide variety of agencies under its umbrella, ranging from Customs and Border Protection to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

• Trump lining up Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem for top jobs

Oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright will lead the Energy Department, where he is expected to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill” and maximise US energy production.

Wright, the founder-CEO of Liberty Energy, has called climate activists alarmist and likened Democrats’ push for renewables to Soviet-style communism.

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.”

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

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

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

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

Outside of the 15 department heads who make up the core of the Cabinet, there are several other roles that are often given Cabinet-rank, like the FBI director and the head of the Environment Protection Agency.

These roles will also require the nominees to be confirmed by the Senate.

However, there will be other key roles in the Trump administration that will not require Senate confirmation and the people filling these roles (like Elon Musk) will not have to be vetted in the same way.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tapped to lead what Trump has termed a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) alongside one-time presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.

The department – known as “Doge” in a nod to a cryptocurrency promoted by Musk – will serve in an advisory capacity to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies”, Trump said.

It is unclear what approval process will be necessary for these roles.

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This is a critical job because it includes responsibility for Trump’s mass deportations of millions of undocumented migrants, which was a central campaign pledge.

Homan is a former police officer who was acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Trump’s first term and has advocated a zero-tolerance stance on the issue.

“I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” he said in July.

• How would mass deportations work?
• How will Trump’s new ‘border tsar’ approach immigration?

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, has agreed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, both he and Trump said. The Senate will still need to confirm his appointment.

He will be in charge of tackling America’s climate policy in this role.

While serving in congress from 2015 to 2023, Zeldin voted against expanding a number of environmental policies. He has already said he plans to “roll back regulations” from day one.

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has been tapped to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations.

Stefanik has made national headlines with her sharp questioning in congressional committees.

Certain political appointments in the US – including the UN ambassador job – require the approval of the US Senate. But Trump has demanded that the next Senate leader let him make appointments without traditional confirmation votes.

• Who is Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for UN ambassador?

Trump has chosen his former director of national intelligence, ex-Texas congressman John Ratcliffe, to serve as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director.

There are other yet-to-be-appointed key positions running intelligence agencies, including the FBI and director of national intelligence.

Trump has said he would fire FBI Director Chris Wray, whom he nominated in 2017, but has since fallen out with. Jeffrey Jensen, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, has been under consideration to replace Wray.

• John Ratcliffe: Trump picks lawmaker again for US spy boss

Trump has named former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard, as director of national intelligence.

The former US Army Reserve officer once campaigned with Senator Bernie Sanders and ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, but has turned toward the Republicans in recent years.

She campaigned with Trump in 2024 and served on his transition team.

Florida congressman Michael Waltz has been selected by President-elect Donald Trump as the next national security adviser.

In a statement on Tuesday announcing Waltz’s appointment, Trump noted that Waltz is the first Green Beret – or member of the US Army Special Forces – to be elected to Congress.

Waltz will have to help navigate the US position on the wars in Israel, and in Ukraine and Russia.

Trump has picked real estate investor and philanthropist Steve Witkoff for the role of special envoy to the Middle East.

Witkoff is a close friend of Trump’s who was with the former president when a man allegedly tried to assassinate him at his Palm Beach golf club in September.

Trump has described him as a “highly respected leader in business and philanthropy, who has made every project and community he has been involved with stronger and more prosperous”.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will be US ambassador to Israel, as Trump pledges to end the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years,” the president-elect said in a statement.

Huckabee is a staunchly pro-Israel official who has previously rejected the idea of a two-state solution to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

• Trump’s pick of Huckabee and Witkoff a clue to Middle East policy

Trump selected Dean John Sauer to be US solicitor general to supervise and conduct government litigation in the US Supreme Court.

Sauer previously served as solicitor general for the Missouri state Supreme Court for six years and worked as a clerk for former US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Sauer represented Trump earlier this year in several of his court cases, including his US Supreme Court immunity case.

Brendan Carr is a current member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcast and internet use. A longtime establishment Republican, in recent years he has embraced Trump’s priorities and emerged as a supporter of regulation of Big Tech.

“Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have played central roles in the censorship cartel,” he wrote on X. “The censorship cartel must be dismantled.”

Trump has previously vowed to strip TV channels he considers biased of their broadcasting licenses.

These jobs are in the West Wing – his key advisers.

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

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

Wiles, 67, has worked in Republican politics for decades, from Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign to electing Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis as governors of Florida.

• Who is Susie Wiles, new chief of staff?
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Stephen Miller, who has been Trump’s close adviser and speechwriter since 2015, is Trump’s choice for White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

He will likely shape any plans for mass deportations – and pare back both undocumented and legal immigration.

During Trump’s first term, Miller was involved in developing some of the administration’s strictest immigration policies.

Republican lawyer William McGinley will take on the role of White House counsel, Trump has said.

“Bill is a smart and tenacious lawyer who will help me advance our America First agenda while fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement,” he said in a statement.

McGinley served as White House cabinet secretary during part of Trump’s first term and was the Republican National Committee’s counsel for election integrity in 2024.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, will become the youngest person to serve as White House press secretary in US history when Donald Trump returns to office.

She ran for Congress, winning the Republican nomination for New Hampshire in 2022, only to lose in the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas.

Leavitt also served in the White House press office during the first Trump administration, including as an assistant press secretary, according to the website for her run for Congress.

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.

• Karoline Leavitt to become youngest White House press secretary

Steven Cheung joined Trump’s team in 2016 as his campaign spokesman, and will soon take on a top communications role in the White House.

Raised by Chinese immigrant parents in California, Cheung started out as an intern under then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has also been the spokesman for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Cheung became known for his fierce, and often offensive, attacks towards Trump’s opponents. He has said Joe Biden “slowly shuffles around like he has a full diaper in his pants” and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis walks like a girl who “discovered heels for the first time.”

During his first administration, Trump had an unusually high turnover of communications directors – six different people. Anthony Scaramucci infamously only lasted 11 days in the role.

Sergio Gor is a business partner of Donald Trump Jr. He is the president and co-founder of the younger Trump’s publishing company, Winning Team Publishing, which has published a book by the president-elect.

“Steven Cheung and Sergio Gor have been trusted advisers since my first presidential campaign in 2016, and have continued to champion America First principles,” Trump said in a statement.

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
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• 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

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.

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 bullet failed to silence her, now Malala Yousafzai is lending her voice to the women of Afghanistan.

In just a few years since the Taliban retook control of the country, women’s rights have been eroded to the point where even singing is banned.

Malala has a personal history with the Taliban across the border in Pakistan, after a gunman from the hardline Islamist group shot her as she sat on a school bus.

The speed of change in Afghanistan, if not the brutality, has surprised Malala, who since that near-fatal shooting in 2012 has campaigned for equality.

“I never imagined that the rights of women would be compromised so easily,” Malala tells BBC Asian Network.

“A lot of girls are finding themselves in a very hopeless, depressing situation where they do not see any way out,” the 27-year-old Nobel Prize Winner says.

“The future looks very dark to them.”

In 2021, the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

In the three-and-a-half years since Western forces left the country, “morality laws” have meant women in Afghanistan have lost dozens of rights.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they’re related by blood or marriage.

“The restrictions are just so extreme that it does not even make sense to anybody,” says Malala.

The United Nations (UN) says the rules amount to “gender apartheid” – a system where people face economic and social discrimination based on their sex and something human rights group Amnesty International wants recognised as crime under international law.

But the rules have been defended by the Taliban, which claims they’re accepted in Afghan society and that the international community should respect “Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies”.

“Women lost everything,” says Malala.

“They [the Taliban] know that to take away women’s rights you have to start with the foundation, and that is education.”

The UN says since the takeover more than a million girls are not in school in Afghanistan – about 80% – and in 2022 about 100,000 female students were banned from their university courses.

It’s also reported a correlation between the lack of access to education and a rise in child marriage and deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.

“Afghan women live in very dark times now,” Malala says.

“But they show resistance.”

The Pakistan-born activist, who became the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize, is an executive producer on an upcoming film, Bread & Roses, that documents the lives of three Afghan women living under the Taliban regime.

The documentary follows Zahra, a dentist forced to give up her practice, activist Taranom, who flees to the border, and government employee Sharifa, who loses her job and her independence.

But the film isn’t just about the stories of three women, Malala says.

“It’s about the 20 million Afghan girls and women whose stories may not make it to our screens.”

Bread & Roses was directed by Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani and US actress Jennifer Lawrence was also brought on board as a producer.

Sahra tells Asian Network her mission was “to tell the story of a nation under the Taliban dictatorship”.

“How slowly, all the rights have been taken away.”

Sahra managed to flee Afghanistan after the US-backed government collapsed following the withdrawal of troops in August 2021.

But she kept in touch with women back home, who would share videos which she then collected and archived.

“It was very important to find young, modern, educated women that have talent they were ready to dedicate to society,” says Sahra.

“They were ready to build the country but now they have to sit at home and almost do nothing.”

Even though the film hasn’t been released yet, Sahra believes the situation in Afghanistan has already deteriorated to the point where it would be impossible to make if she started now.

“At that time, women could still go out and demonstrate,” she says.

“Nowadays, women are not even allowed to sing… the situation is getting more difficult.”

The first-hand footage shows the women at protests – they kept the cameras rolling while being arrested by the Taliban.

And Sahra says the project only got harder over time as more of their rights were stripped away.

“We were really honoured that these women trusted us to share their stories,” she says.

“And it was really important for us to put their security in our priorities.

“But when they were out in the street asking for their rights, it was not for the documentary.

“It was for them, for their own life, for their own freedom.”

Malala says that, for women in Afghanistan, “defiance is extremely challenging”.

“Despite all of these challenges, they’re out on their streets and risking their lives to hope for a better world for themselves.”

All three of the women featured in the film are no longer living in Afghanistan and Sahra and Malala are hopeful the film will raise awareness of what women who remain endure.

“They are doing all that they can to fight for their rights, to raise their voices,” Malala says.

“They’re putting so much at risk. It’s our time to be their sisters and be their supporters.”

Malala also hopes the documentary prompts more international pressure on the Taliban to restore women’s rights.

“I was completely shocked when I saw the reality of the Taliban take over,” she says.

“We really have to question what sort of systems we have put in place to guarantee protection to women in Afghanistan, but also elsewhere.”

And as much as Bread & Roses deals with stories of loss and oppression, the film is also about resilience and hope.

“There’s so much for us to learn from the bravery and courage of these Afghan women,” says Malala.

“If they are not scared, if they are not losing that courage to stand up to the Taliban, we should learn from them and we should stand in solidarity with them.”

The title itself was inspired by an Afghan saying.

“Bread is a symbol of freedom, earning a salary and supporting the family,” Sahra says.

“We have a saying in my language that the one who gave you bread is the one who orders you.

“So if you find your bread, that means you are the boss of you.”

That’s exactly the future she hopes to see for the women of Afghanistan and, based on what she’s seen, one she believes they will achieve in the end.

“Women in Afghanistan, they keep changing the tactic,” she says.

“They keep searching for a new way to keep fighting back.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

Petrol production at Nigerian business tycoon Aliko Dangote’s $20bn (£15.5bn) state-of-the-art oil refinery ought to be some of the best business news Nigeria has had in years.

But many Nigerians will judge its success on two key questions – firstly: “Will I get cheaper petrol?”

Sorry, but probably no – unless the international price of crude drops.

And secondly: “Will I still have to spend hours watching my hair turn grey in a hypertension-inducing fuel queue?”

Hopefully those days are gone but it might partly depend on the behaviour of what Mr Dangote calls “the oil mafia”.

For much of the time since oil was first discovered in Nigeria in 1956, the downstream sector, which includes the stage when crude is refined into petrol and other products, has been a cesspit of shady deals with successive governments heavily involved.

It has always been impossible to follow the money, but you know there is something dreadfully wrong when the headline “Nigeria’s state-owned oil firm fails to pay $16bn in oil revenues”, pops up on your news feed, as it did in 2016.

It is only in the last five years that the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has been publishing accounts.

The Africa head at the Eurasia Group think-tank, Amaka Anku, hails the Dangote refinery, in which the NNPC has a 7% stake, as “a very significant moment” for the West African state.

“What you had in the downstream sector was an inefficient, corrupt monopoly,” she says.

“What the local refinery allows you to do is have a truly competitive downstream sector with multiple players who will be more efficient, profit making and they’ll pay taxes.”

To put it bluntly, the population of this oil-rich nation has been conned on a colossal scale for many years.

Oil revenue accounts for nearly 90% of Nigeria’s export earnings but a relatively small number of business people and politicians have gorged themselves on the oil wealth.

Aspects of the business model have been baffling, including that of Nigeria’s four previously existing oil refineries.

Built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, they have fallen into disrepair.

Last year Nigeria’s parliament reported that over the previous decade the state had spent a staggering $25bn trying and failing to fix the moribund facilities.

So Africa’s largest oil producer has been exporting its crude which is then refined abroad, much to the delight of some well-connected traders.

It would be like a bakery with a broken oven. But rather than fix it, the owner sends balls of dough to another firm that shoves them in a working oven and sells the loaves back to the baker.

The NNPC swaps Nigeria’s crude oil for the refined products, including petrol, which are shipped back home.

Exactly how much money changes hands and who benefits from these “oil swaps” is just one of the unknowns in these deals.

“No-one has been able to nail down who exactly has benefited. It’s almost like a beer parlour gossip about who is getting what,” says Toyin Akinosho of the Africa Oil+Gas Report.

The NNPC began subsidising the price of petrol in the 1970s to cushion the blow when global prices soared. Every year it clawed this money back by depositing lower royalty payments – the money it received for every barrel pumped out of the ground – with the Nigerian treasury.

In 2022 the subsidy cost the government $10bn, more than 40% of the total money it collected in taxes.

On his second day in office Nigeria’s Vice-President Kashim Shettima referred to “the fuel subsidy scam” being “an albatross around the neck of the economy”.

Nigerian oil expert Kelvin Emmanuel says in 2019 the country’s official petrol consumption “jumped by 284% to 70m litres per day without empirical evidence to justify such a sharp increase in demand”.

Parliament has previously reported that – at least on paper – importers were being paid to bring in far more petrol than the country consumed. There was a lot of money to be made exporting some of the subsidised petrol to neighbouring countries where prices were far higher.

The NNPC earned billions of dollars a year from the crude oil production. But for many years, under previous governments, some of its profits never reached the treasury as it was accused by state governors and federal lawmakers of including these inflated subsidy costs on its balance sheet.

The NNPC did not respond to a request for an interview or a response to these allegations but in June denied it had ever “inflated its subsidy claims with the federal government”.

It may have been the main source of revenue for successive governments but for decades, until 2020, the board did not disclose its audited accounts. Its press release from March this year promised more transparency and accountability.

After coming to power in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu said the subsidy was unsustainable and suddenly cut it – pump prices immediately tripled.

He also stopped the policy of artificially propping up the value of the local currency, the naira, and let market forces determine its value.

When he took over, the exchange rate was 460 naira to the US dollar. In November 2024 it was over 1,600.

The triple shock of higher fuel prices, sporadic shortages of supply and a depreciating currency has been a tough body blow for people across the country, many of whom are forced to run generators to keep the lights on and phones charged.

“Beyond the financial burden, the uncertainty and stress of constantly dealing with fuel shortages have added a layer of anxiety to everyday tasks,” is how one Lagos resident summed it up.

“I feel like I’m always navigating through crisis mode. It’s exhausting.”

As the naira plunged and pump prices increased several times, the government, aware of the potential danger of protests, continued to pipette some medicine to the masses.

In a move which could be likened to swallowing half a paracetamol for acute appendicitis, the government made sure people were paying slightly less than the market rate for a litre of petrol.

In other words, the NNPC was selling at a loss and the subsidy was still alive.

But with two recent increases in October, Nigerians are now paying market prices for fuel for the first time in three decades. In the main city Lagos it went up from 858 naira ($0.52) to 1,025 naira per litre.

One of the major factors in Nigeria’s economic crisis has been a limited supply of foreign currency. The country does not export enough products and services to bring in the dollars.

But lots of people, including fuel traders, have been chasing the same limited supply of foreign currency, which leads to the naira losing even more value.

The good news is that Mr Dangote’s facility is going to buy crude and sell refined fuels in Nigeria in the local currency, which will leave more dollars available for everyone else.

The bad news for those hoping this will mean cheaper fuel is that the price Mr Dangote pays for a barrel of local crude will still be the naira equivalent of the international cost in dollars.

So if the price of crude goes up on the world market, Nigerians will still be forced to fork out more naira. Refining locally will mean less freight costs but that’s a relatively small saving.

It is hoped that the arrival of Mr Dangote’s oil refinery will help bring a measure of transparency to the sector.

He knew he would be upsetting some of those who benefit from the murky status quo when the $20bn project began. But, he says, he underestimated the challenge.

“I knew there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs,” Mr Dangote told an investment conference in June.

“They don’t want the trade to stop. It’s a cartel. Dangote comes along and he’s going to disrupt them entirely. Their business is at risk,” says Mr Emmanuel, the oil expert.

The fact that there have been some public disagreements with the regulator has only fuelled that suspicion.

Mr Dangote’s refinery near Lagos is thirsty, with a capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude a day.

You would have thought being located in Nigeria would make supply easy but then up pops this headline: “Nigeria’s Dangote buys Brazilian crude”.

It follows a row over supply and pricing. The regulatory authority has complained about Mr Dangote’s negotiating tactics.

Nigeria’s crude oil is low in sulphur and, as one of the most prized in the world, fetches a higher price than many of its competitors.

When discussions over price began, Farouk Ahmed, the chief executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), accused Mr Dangote of “wanting a Lamborghini for the price of a Toyota”.

Mr Dangote has complained of not being allocated as much crude as earlier agreed but even when the price issue is resolved, he will still need to import some crude.

“NNPC doesn’t have enough crude for Dangote. Despite all this instruction to give ample supply of crude to the refinery, NNPC can’t supply Dangote with more than 300,000 barrels per day,” says Mr Akinosho of the Africa Oil+Gas Report.

He says this is partly because the NNPC has pre-sold millions of barrels of oil for loans.

In August 2023 it secured a $3bn loan from the Afreximbank financial institution. In return it is due to supply 164 million barrels of crude.

In September the NNPC admitted it was significantly in debt. It was reported to be owing its suppliers around $6bn for fuel brought into the country.

Nigeria’s oil production has plummeted in recent years from around 2.1 million barrels per day in 2018 to around 1.3 million barrels per day in 2023.

The NNPC has been stressing oil theft as the number one reason why production has dropped.

It says in just one week – from 28 September to 4 October – there were 161 incidents of oil theft across the Niger Delta and 45 illegal refineries were “discovered”.

But Ms Anku believes that “the theft problem is overrated by the NNPC and the oil sector”.

“It’s a convenient excuse,” she adds.

She points to other contributing factors causing the drop in production, including international oil companies selling their on-shore oil fields – some of which may no longer be viable having pumped oil for 60 years.

The 66-year-old Dangote, who is listed by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the second wealthiest person in Africa, made his fortune in cement and sugar.

He has always denied the suggestion that his empire benefitted from links to politicians in power who helped ensure he had a monopoly.

Today there are those who are critical of Mr Dangote’s tactics and amid tension with the regulatory authorities, the same accusation has resurfaced when it comes to the supply of fuel in Nigeria.

“Mr Dangote asked me to stop issuing licences for importation and that everyone should buy from him. To which I said ‘No’ because it’s not good for the market. We have energy security interests,” says Mr Ahmed of the regulatory authority.

Mr Dangote has not commented on the accusation but has said it makes business sense for the traders to buy from his refinery rather than from outside.

A feud between the regulator and Mr Dangote over supplies and pricing has rumbled on and morphed into another row with local fuel traders refusing to buy from the new refinery.

The mud slinging has also included allegations that some traders have been buying up substandard fuel from Russia which is then blended with other products before being shipped into Nigeria.

But not everyone is worried or surprised by the disagreements.

Ms Anku points to lessons learnt from US businessmen back in the 19th Century.

“The JP Morgans and the Stanfords – they didn’t have it easy either. That’s why they had to go and get government support and subsidies to build their railways and so on.

“I see the drama as a very normal process as you’re changing the structure of the economy. There are losers, they lash out. There’s no chance they’ll stop the refinery from working or selling its products to the Nigerian markets… in my view.”

The modern, local refinery has also led to a debate over the quality of fuel on the market. It is an important issue given the vast number of generators belching out fumes across Nigeria as a result of the woeful power supply.

“Every day I wake up to the smell of what I’m sure [could] kill me. It’s because of the quality of the diesel,” says Mr Akinosho.

He sees Mr Dangote’s refinery as a real opportunity for higher quality petroleum products in Nigeria which would be better for both car engines and people’s lungs.

But right now, Nigerians being hit hard in the pocket may find it difficult to be optimistic.

Arguments between officials at the Dangote refinery, the oil marketers and the regulators are batted back and forth in the media. All sides have been accused of hiding some facts and figures which leaves people guessing what is going on inside this still somewhat opaque industry.

“Everyone is a villain. There are no heroes here,” concludes Mr Akinosho.

• Nigeria’s illegal oil refineries: Dirty, dangerous, lucrative
• Living with Nigeria’s blackouts – six weeks, no power
• Slapping MP shows generational change may not end abuse of power
• Africans at the cutting edge of interior design

The parents of a British teenager who took his own life after becoming a victim of sextortion have made a direct appeal to criminals in Nigeria to stop “terrorising” the vulnerable.

Murray Dowey, from Dunblane, was only 16 when he ended his life last year.

It is thought he had been tricked by criminals in West Africa into sending intimate pictures of himself and then blackmailed.

Murray’s mother and father also condemned social media companies for not doing enough to protect young people, saying they have “blood on their hands.”

Sextortion often involves victims being sent a nude picture or video before being asked to send their own in return.

They then receive threats the material will be shared with family and friends unless they meet the blackmailer’s demands – pressure it is believed led Murray to take his own life.

Mark and Ros Dowey have now recorded a video message regarding the “cruel” crime.

They said: “You’re abusing children. You’ve ended Murray’s life.

“How would they feel if it was their child or their little brother or their friend? I mean, it’s so cruel, and this is children, and it’s abuse”.

“You’re terrorising people, children, for some money, and I don’t think in any society that is in any way acceptable”.

Sextortion has become big business in Nigeria involving thousands of young men nicknamed “yahoo boys”.

Guides on how to get involved in the crime are openly for sale online, as a BBC News investigation revealed earlier this year.

BBC News spent months communicating with a man in Nigeria actively involved in sextortion, persuading him to give an insight into this world.

He spoke to our colleagues in Lagos on condition of anonymity.

He told them: “I know that it’s bad, but I just call it survival of the fittest”

He described sextortion as like an “industry” and admitted he treats it like a game.

He added: “It depends on the fish you catch. You might throw the hook in the sea. You might catch small fish or big fish.”

However he was then played Ros and Mark’s recorded message and appeared shocked by it.

He said he was “almost crying” and felt “very bad”.

However Murray’s parents don’t only blame the criminals for their son’s death.

They hold tech companies responsible too.

Sextorters find their victims by targeting individuals on social media then using their list of friends and followers in their blackmail attempts.

Ros told BBC News: “I think they’ve got blood on their hands. The technologies are there for them to stop so many of these crimes.”

Mark believes Silicon Valley could do more but that they won’t as it would cost them money.

He added: “It will stop them making more billions than they’re making”.

Analysis by the UK’s National Crime Agency found that all age groups and genders are being targeted, but that a large proportion of victims are boys and aged between 14 and 18.

Police believe there is underreporting of the crime because victims are too scared or embarrassed to come forward.

Mark told the BBC his son was “a really lovely kid” and that his parents had no idea anything was wrong.

He said: “He went up to his room, and he was absolutely fine. And you know, we found him dead the next morning”.

His mother Ros added: “We had no chance to intervene, to notice there was something wrong and try and help and fix it”.

The Dowey family will be involved in a campaign launch in Edinburgh later, warning young people about the dangers of sextortion.

As well as telling them about the risks of sharing intimate images online, the campaign – which will bring together Police Scotland, Crimestoppers and the Scottish government – will offer advice on what to do and where to go for help if someone is targeted by criminals.

Mark and Ros told BBC News they had a message for any young person who finds themselves a victim of sextortion.

The couple stated: “There’s nothing that is worth taking your own life for so if something happens to you, put that phone down and go and get somebody you trust and tell them it’s happened.”

“We can’t have this happening to more children, what happened to Murray.”

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 the 44 years since Beckhoff Automation opened for business, owner Hans Beckhoff says he hasn’t seen an economic crisis like this one.

“You can usually expect a crisis about once every five to eight years,” says Mr Beckhoff. “This time it’s a formidable crash, a really deep one.”

A German company, Beckhoff Automation makes automated control systems for a wide range of industries, including manufacturing and the energy sector.

It belongs to Germany’s famous Mittelstand, the often highly specialised small and medium-sized enterprises that make up 99% of German companies, provide around 59% of German jobs, and are considered the “hidden champions” of the German economy.

The Mittelstand’s ability to take a long view on business performance rather than scrambling for annual dividends is part of what has made German manufacturing so robust. However, the global economy is shifting rapidly, and pressure is mounting.

“We’re still doing well, though the economic situation has really slowed down,” says Frederike Beckhoff, corporate development manager at Beckhoff Automation and Hans’ daughter. “This year’s results won’t be anywhere close to what we achieved over the past three years.”

German firms have been hit by a number of problems in recent years. These include the steep energy price hikes that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, rising general inflation, and increased competition from China.

Companies also complain about rundown German infrastructure, such as the country’s much criticised rail network, bridges and roads, all three of which state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Wells describes as “aging and crumbling”.

Other businesses highlight what they see as a heavy bureaucratic burden at both national and European levels, inconsistent government decision-making from Berlin, plus higher labour costs and staff shortages.

“The last three years have not been easy in Germany,” says Joachim Ley, chief executive at Ziehl-Abegg, a manufacturer of ventilation, air conditioning, and engineering systems.

“What we really need is reliable [government] decision making instead of 180-degree turns. Even if you don’t like decisions, you can at least plan and adjust if the decision is reliable. This back and forth is putting a lot of burden on companies in Germany.”

Germany’s coalition government fell apart earlier this month, and a general election is now set for 23 February, with a confidence vote before that on 16 December.

U-turns the government has made in recent years include walking back subsidy programmes for heat pumps and electric vehicles. This hit both domestic sales and net-zero targets. Berlin declined to comment.

But while political flip-flopping hasn’t helped German companies, many look to China as the key strain, especially on Germany’s carmakers, which have been hit by two problems.

Domestic demand for vehicles has cooled in China, and China now has a strong car industry of its own, with an aggressive export policy.

“Since the start of 2021, the Chinese export of electric vehicles has gone up by 1,150%,” says Dr Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank.

“That’s only EV [electric vehicles]. If you take all cars, including those running on fossil fuels, then you still get an increase of Chinese exports of 600%. During the same period, German exports increased by 60%. So there is obviously a shift in market shares happening here.”

The result of this is Volkswagen, Germany’s largest private-sector employer, threatening domestic plant closures for the first time in its 87-year history. It could result in tens of thousands of German job losses.

In October, the car manufacturer reported a 64% drop in third-quarter profits compared with a year earlier, primarily blaming a slump in demand from China, traditionally a key market for Germany’s premium car brands.

Mercedes-Benz reported a 54% decline over the same period, and BMW has also issued profit warnings, both also citing reduced Chinese orders.

Ms Beckhoff says that carmakers and the wider German manufacturing sector need to increase their competitiveness. “I really do think that productivity is something we have to take really seriously,” she says.

“The wealth we enjoy here in most parts of Germany and Europe, we can’t take it for granted.”

German manufacturers that require low-cost margins may struggle, says Mr Ley, but he believes there is hope for high-quality products with innovative features that rely on world-class engineering and intellectual property.

Dr Klaus Günter Deutsch, head of industrial and economic policy research at the Federation of German Industries (BDI), believes “much will depend on whether we are able to pull the innovation levels much faster, better and more consistently across Europe”.

There is no doubt that job losses and restructuring on their home soil will be a painful process for German manufacturers such as Volkswagen, and chemicals firm BASF, which has also warned of cuts.

However, Mr Beckhoff believes this reality check may be healthy in the longer term. “I think it is good for German industry that Volkswagen is running into some problems because it will increase motivation,” he says.

“It’s finally understood that we really have to do something. What is it that Winston Churchill said? Never waste a good crisis!”

So while there is hope for a positive transformation in the manufacturing sector in the longer term, the shorter-term outlook will continue to be challenging. Whoever forms the next German government will have to make some difficult calls.

“I am still optimistic,” says economist Dr de la Rubia, who says that the need to upgrade Germany’s infrastructure is now “so obvious” that whoever forms the country’s next government will have to take action.

“I think they will say, ‘okay, the crisis is really there and now we will make a big leap’. That is my hope and my conviction.”

And many agree that this crisis may be just what Germany needs. In the post-war years, the country proved it had the capacity to produce an “economic miracle” against the odds.

The circumstances now may be different, but it’s not unthinkable that, with concerted action, it could do so again.

Dozens of people descended on a Chicago park on Saturday, vying to be crowned best Jeremy Allen White lookalike.

Contestants – including a toddler – donned chef’s aprons and white t-shirts in the style of White’s character Carmen Berzatto from the hit TV series The Bear.

Others dressed as his character Phillip in Shameless, another TV show set in Chicago.

Hundreds of spectators cheered as each contender stepped forward to show their resemblance.

Based on levels of applause, the accolade went to a 37-year-old mental health therapist, Ben Shabad.

“I didn’t really plan on winning – especially when I saw all these guys that looked like Jeremy Allen White – but the energy here is so exciting,” Mr Shabad told the Chicago Tribune.

As a prize, Mr Shabad received $50 and a pack of cigarettes – a nod to Berzatto’s heavy smoking in the series.

The show, now in its third season, follows a young chef from the fine dining world, Carmy, as he returns to the family-run sandwich shop in Chicago after his brother’s suicide.

The show won six prizes, including three for acting, at the 2024 Emmy Awards, drawing with Succession for the most accolades.

The lookalike competition was organised by Chicago roommates Kelsey Cassaro and Taylor Vaske. The pair were inspired by the success of similar events in recent weeks for other celebrities including Dev Patel and Paul Mescal.

In October, Timothée Chalamet stunned fans after turning up to a lookalike competition for the actor in New York.

It appears the celebrity doppelganger craze is not yet over, with Saturday’s event just the latest in a string of competitions across the country.

“People were online saying, ‘Why doesn’t Chicago have one?’ said Ms Cassaro, speaking with the Chicago Sun-Times.

“I was like, ‘I think it should be Jeremy Allen White if we do it.’ And I also think a lot of Chicago dudes look like him,” she added.

Cassaro and Vaske originally planned the event as a joke, posting details on social media and flyers in areas of Chicago. Once buzz picked up online about it, they decided to organise it officially.

Unlike Chalamet, White did not show up to the competition. But that didn’t dampen his doppelgangers’ spirits.

“I’m just impressed by [White’s] acting ability, and the shows that he’s been in have been really good, so I take it as a compliment that people think I look like him,” said Mr Shabad.

The first time Azaan made the jump across the wall, he broke his arm.

Braving the 20ft (6m) drop into a wide trench below is, for many Afghans, the only way to cross into Turkey from Iran – and yet hundreds risk it each day.

“I was in severe pain,” the former Afghan army officer told the BBC.

“Several others had broken limbs. The smuggler left us here and told us to run in the direction of the lights of Van city. Many of us were fading out of hunger. I fainted.”

The wall – which stretches for nearly 300km (185 miles) – was built to prevent illegal crossings, and is patrolled constantly by Turkish border forces.

Jumping off it is among the first of a series of extraordinary risks Afghan migrants take as they cross continents, countries and seas to reach the UK and other countries in Europe.

Over the past year, fleeing their country has become more perilous than ever before for Afghans, because Pakistan, Iran and Turkey have intensified their crackdown on illegal migration from Afghanistan along their borders, and have also carried out mass deportations.

Azaan couldn’t continue. He was in pain, and had barely eaten in days. The migrants were given just one boiled egg every morning and a cup of rice in the evening by smugglers who’d charged them nearly $4,000 (£3,150) for the journey to Europe.

“I had two friends – we had made a promise to not leave each other,” he says. His friends tied scarves around him, hoisted him up the wall, back into Iran. Iranian police deported him to Afghanistan.

It was Azaan’s second failed attempt. The first time he returned from the Afghanistan-Iran border because he’d taken his wife and young children along, and he realised they wouldn’t be able to endure the journey.

Azaan didn’t give up. Roughly a year later, once his arm had healed, he made a third attempt.

“I had sold my house earlier. This time I sold my wife’s jewellery,” he says.

In exchange for the money, migrants like Azaan are promised a route to Europe, handed over from one people smuggler to another along the way.

Back at the wall, the smuggler placed a ladder on the Iranian side, and cut the razor wire at the top to create a path for migrants.

“There were 60 to 70 of us,” Azaan recalls. “We climbed to the top and then the smuggler told us to jump.”

For the law and politics graduate, who served his country and led a dignified, comfortable life until August 2021 when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, it is a humiliating situation to be in.

In its three years in power, the Taliban government has imposed increasing, brutal restrictions on women. According to the UN, a third of the country’s people don’t know where their next meal will come from. And those who worked for the former military fear reprisal.

“The people I fought against for 20 years are now in power,” he explains. “Our lives are in danger. My daughter won’t be able to study once she turns 13. And I have no work. I’ll continue to try to leave even if it costs me my life.

“Here we are dying every moment. It’s better to die once, for good.”

Azaan is now back in Kabul with his family. The third attempt to flee ended with a beating and deportation.

“They beat me with the butt of a gun. One boy was hit on his genitals. He was in a terrible state. An old man’s leg was broken. There was a corpse in the trenches in Turkey. This is what I saw. But Iran is also treating us badly. I know Afghans have been severely beaten in Iran too,” he says.

After weeks of digging through people smuggling networks, the BBC established contact with an Afghan smuggler in Iran, aiming to get an insight into the increased dangers Afghans are facing.

“Iranian police are shooting a lot at the border with Afghanistan. One of my friends was killed recently,” the smuggler says, speaking to us over the phone from Iran.

In October, Iran was accused of firing indiscriminately at Afghans crossing over into Iran’s Sistan province from Balochistan in Pakistan. The UN has raised concerns and called for an investigation. The BBC has seen and verified videos of the dead and injured.

Sistan-Balochistan is one of the major routes taken by Afghan migrants to enter Iran, but given the increased risks as well as Pakistan’s mass deportation of Afghans, many are now opting for other routes, in particular, Islam Qala in Afghanistan’s Herat province.

Once in Iran, migrants move to Tehran before going towards the Macu or Khoy counties, to attempt the crossing into Turkey, handed over from one smuggler to another.

The Afghan smuggler says he hides migrants near the border wall, and then they wait until there’s less patrolling of a portion of the border wall to take a shot at the “game”. He carries a ladder, and a wire cutter to cut the razor wire at the top of the wall and make a path for migrants. He says crossings have become extremely challenging in recent months.

“The Turkish police catch 100 to 150 migrants every night. They have no mercy on them. They break their arms and legs,” he says.

The BBC has put the allegations to the governments of Turkey and Iran but has not yet received a response.

We asked the smuggler how he can justify his illegal business which endangers the lives of Afghans, while charging them thousands of dollars.

“We don’t force people to take these risks. We tell them that whether they get to their destination is 99% in God’s hands, and they could get killed or imprisoned. I don’t believe I’m guilty. What are we supposed to do when people tell us their family is going hungry in Afghanistan?” the smuggler says.

Those who make it past Turkish security forces move from Van towards Kayseri city and then to the Izmir, Canakkale or Bodrum coasts – the next point of peril on the migrant trail.

In Kabul, an elderly father took us to the grave of his son. In his twenties, Javid was a former soldier. Fearing for his life in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, he fled the country in an attempt to make it to the UK.

In March this year, he was among 22 people killed after the rubber dinghy they were in sank in the Aegean sea near Canakkale in Turkey, as they attempted to get to Greece. His pregnant wife was also among the 46 people squeezed on to the boat. They both managed to swim to the shore, but he died of hypothermia.

“From Istanbul, smugglers took us to Esenyurt. From there we were packed into cars like animals. We were dropped off in a forested area. We walked through it for four hours and then we reached the coast from where we were put on the boat,” Javid’s wife says, speaking to us over the phone from Turkey where she’s still living.

In Kabul, Javid’s father broke down inconsolably as he showed us photos of the young man with short black hair wearing track pants and a sweatshirt, posing on a park bench.

“Even now when I remember him the grief is such that it’s only with God’s blessing that I survive the torment,” he says.

He believes that foreign countries which fought in Afghanistan bear responsibility for what is happening to Afghans like his son.

“We fought alongside them in the war against terrorism. If we had known we would be betrayed and abandoned, no one would have agreed to join hands with foreign forces.”

According to the UN, Afghans are among the top asylum seekers in the world, and in the UK they are the second largest group arriving in the country in small boats, another journey fraught with peril.

The UK has two resettlement schemes for Afghans. One is for Afghans who worked directly for the British military and British government, and under the second scheme – the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) – those who assisted the UK efforts in Afghanistan, stood up for values of democracy, women’s freedoms and people at risk can be eligible for relocation.

But after the first phase of evacuation in 2021-22, progress has been extremely slow.

This means women like Shahida, who worked in the former parliament of Afghanistan and participated in street protests against the Taliban after they seized power, could not find timely legal routes out of the country. Shahida feared the threat of detention and torture by the Taliban government in Afghanistan every day.

She arrived in the UK in a small boat in May this year, having begun the journey out of Afghanistan more than two years ago. Now in Liverpool, she has applied for asylum.

“I come from a well-known and well-respected family. I’ve never done anything illegal in my life. When authorities would apprehend us during the journey, I would look down out of shame,” she says.

Shahida describes how she crossed the English Channel on an inflatable dinghy, packed in with 64 people. This year has been the deadliest year for migrant crossings across the Channel. More than 50 people have died.

“There was water up to my waist. And because our guide lost the way we floated for hours. I thought this was going to be the end of my life. I’m diabetic so I had to urinate sitting there. And because I was thirsty I had to drink the water I had urinated in. Can you imagine? In Kabul I had everything. My whole life has been taken away from me because the Taliban took over,” she says.

Back in Kabul, Azaan, the former military officer, now wants to sell a small patch of land, the only asset he has left, to gather money to make another attempt.

“This is the only purpose of my life now, to get myself to a safer place.”

As the world waits to see how the return of Donald Trump will reshape relations between Washington and Beijing, China has just taken decisive action to entrench its position in Latin America.

Trump won the US presidential election on a platform that promised tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese-made goods. Further south, though, a new China-backed megaport has the potential to create whole new trade routes that will bypass North America entirely.

President Xi Jinping himself attended the inauguration of the Chancay port on the Peruvian coast this week, an indication of just how seriously China takes the development.

Xi was in Peru for the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (Apec). But all eyes were on Chancay and what it says about China’s growing assertiveness in a region that the US has traditionally seen as its sphere of influence.

As seasoned observers see it, Washington is now paying the price for years of indifference towards its neighbours and their needs.

“The US has been absent from Latin America for so long, and China has moved in so rapidly, that things have really reconfigured in the past decade,” says Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

“You have got the backyard of America engaging directly with China,” she tells the BBC. “That’s going to be problematic.”

Even before it opened, the $3.5bn (£2.75bn) project, masterminded by China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping, had already turned a once-sleepy Peruvian fishing town into a logistical powerhouse set to transform the country’s economy.

China’s official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, called it “a vindication of China-Peru win-win co-operation”.

Peru’s President Dina Boluarte was similarly enthusiastic, describing the megaport as a “nerve centre” that would provide “a point of connection to access the gigantic Asian market”.

But the implications go far beyond the fortunes of one small Andean nation. Once Chancay is fully up and running, goods from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and even Brazil are expected to pass through it on their way to Shanghai and other Asian ports.

China already has considerable appetite for the region’s exports, including Brazilian soybeans and Chilean copper. Now this new port will be able to handle larger ships, as well as cutting shipping times from 35 to 23 days.

However, the new port will favour imports as well as exports. As signs grow that an influx of cheap Chinese goods bought online may be undermining domestic industry, Chile and Brazil have scrapped tax exemptions for individual customers on low-value foreign purchases.

As nervous US military hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can accommodate ultra-large container vessels, it can also handle Chinese warships.

The most strident warnings have come from Gen Laura Richardson, who has just retired as chief of US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

She has accused China of “playing the ‘long game’ with its development of dual-use sites and facilities throughout the region”, adding that those sites could serve as “points of future multi-domain access for the [People’s Liberation Army] and strategic naval chokepoints”.

Even if that prospect never materialises, there is a strong perception that the US is losing ground in Latin America as China forges ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Outgoing US President Joe Biden was among the leaders at the Apec summit, on his first and last visit to South America during his four-year term. Media commentators remarked that he cut a diminished figure next to China’s Xi.

Prof Álvaro Méndez, director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics, points out that while the US was taking Latin America for granted, Xi was visiting the region regularly and cultivating good relations.

“The bar has been set so low by the US that China only has to be a little bit better to get through the door,” he says.

Of course, Latin America is not the only part of the world targeted by the BRI. Since 2023, China’s unprecedented infrastructure splurge has pumped money into nearly 150 countries worldwide.

The results have not always been beneficial, with many projects left unfinished, while many developing countries that signed up for Beijing’s largesse have found themselves burdened with debt as a result.

Even so, left-wing and right-wing governments alike have cast aside their initial suspicions of China, because “their interests are aligned” with those of Beijing, says the Peterson Institute’s Ms de Bolle: “They have lowered their guard out of sheer necessity.”

Ms de Bolle says the US is right to feel threatened by this turn of events, since Beijing has now established “a very strong foothold” in the region at a time when president-elect Trump wants to “rein in” China.

“I think we will finally start to see the US putting pressure on Latin America because of China,” she says, adding that most countries want to stay on the right side of both big powers.

“The region doesn’t have to choose unless it’s put in a position where they are forced to, and that would be very dumb.”

Looking ahead, South American countries such as Peru, Chile and Colombia would be vulnerable to pressure because of the bilateral free trade agreements they have with the US, which Trump could seek to renegotiate or even tear up.

They will be watching keenly to see what happens to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is up for review in July 2026, but will be subject to negotiations during 2025.

Whatever happens, Prof Méndez of the LSE feels that the region needs more co-operation.

“It shouldn’t be that all roads lead to Beijing or to Washington. Latin America has to find a more strategic way, it needs a coherent regional strategy,” he says, pointing to the difficulty of getting 33 countries to agree a joint approach.

Eric Farnsworth, vice-president at the Washington-based Council of the Americas, feels that there is still much goodwill towards the US in Latin America, but the region’s “massive needs” are not being met by its northern neighbour.

“The US needs to up its game in the region, because people would choose it if there was a meaningful alternative to China,” he tells the BBC.

Unlike many others, he sees some rays of hope from the incoming Trump administration, especially with the appointment of Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

“Rubio has a real sense of a need to engage economically with the Western Hemisphere in a way that we just haven’t done for a number of years,” he says.

But for successive US leaders, Latin America has been seen primarily in terms of illegal migration and illegal drugs. And with Trump fixated on plans to deport record numbers of immigrants, there is little indication that the US will change tack any time soon.

Like the rest of the world, Latin America is bracing itself for a bumpy four years – and if the US and China start a full-blown trade war, the region stands to get caught in the crossfire.

Miss Nigeria, Chidimma Adetshina, has spoken of her pride at coming second in the Miss Universe competition, as well as being named Miss Africa and Oceania.

“I’m so proud of myself and I just made history,” she said, shortly after losing out to Miss Denmark, Victoria Kjær Theilvig.

Adetshina originally competed in the Miss South Africa contest, as she was born and grew up in the country, however she was subjected to trolling and xenophobic abuse because her father is Nigerian.

Last month, the South African authorities said they would strip her of her identity papers, following allegations that her mother, who has Mozambican roots, had committed identity fraud to gain South African nationality.

Neither Adetshina nor her mother have commented on the allegations. South African authorities pointed out that Adetshina could not have participated in any alleged fraud as she was an infant at the time.

After the furore in South Africa, and the doubts about her nationality, she competed in the Miss Nigeria competition, which she won to qualify for the Miss Universe contest held in Mexico City.

The eventual winner of Miss South Africa, Mia le Roux, pulled out of Miss Universe last week citing an undisclosed medical condition. She was the first deaf woman to become Miss South Africa.

In September, Adetshina, a law student, told the BBC that she still saw herself as “proudly South African” and “proudly Nigerian”.

But after Miss Universe South Africa tweeted to congratulate her on her second place, along with both South African and Nigerian flags, some South Africans responded by saying she did not represent them.

In her BBC interview, Adetshina said she would be seeking therapy to help her deal with the trauma following the abuse she was subjected to.

She is the highest placed black African woman in Miss Universe since South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi won the competition in 2019.

• Adetshina to seek therapy over xenophobic abuse
• Beauty contest sparks row over who counts as South African
• Mia le Roux: ‘I never thought someone like me could become Miss South Africa’

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

But president Xi also took the opportunity to state China’s objectives in what appears to be a message to Donald Trump and the next administration in Washington.

In a robust readout of the meeting released afterwards, Beijing said President Xi had underscored that “a new Cold War should not be fought and cannot be won. Containing China is unwise, unacceptable and bound to fail”.

Xi also said a stable relationship between China and the United States was “critical to both parties and the world”.

• Megaport opens up Latin America to Chinese trade as US looks on
• What Trump’s win means for Ukraine, Middle East and China

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.

Speaking at Saturday’s meeting, which was held at President Xi’s hotel in Lima, the leader said that if the US and China “treat each other as opponents or enemies, engage in vicious competition and mutual harm, China-US relations will suffer setbacks or even regressions”.

He added that Beijing’s goal of a stable relationship with Washington would remain unchanged and that he would work with the new US administration “to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences.”

Biden, meanwhile, 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.

Both leaders 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 Beijing a “strategic competitor”. Relations worsened when he labelled Covid a “Chinese virus” during the pandemic.

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 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.

Netflix says 60 million households worldwide tuned in live to see Mike Tyson take on Jake Paul, in the streaming giant’s first foray into live boxing.

The event, which was free for subscribers, is being hailed by the tech giant as a “record breaking night”.

However, fans hoping to watch have expressed their anger and disappointment after some reported Netflix crashed repeatedly throughout the fight.

But there was also criticism from those who were able to tune in, with many saying they found the boxing match lacklustre.

In the bout, which took place at the AT&T Stadium in Texas, former world heavyweight champion Tyson, 58, was beaten by YouTuber-turned-fighter Paul, 27.

The fight attracted a huge amount of media coverage. Tyson is one of the most famous boxers on the planet, while Paul drew in a younger audience.

There was a star-studded ringside audience including Charlize Theron, Ralph Macchio, Joe Jonas and Hasan Minhaj.

Paul says 120 million viewers watched it live globally on Netflix, while the tech firm later stated “60 million households” around the world tuned in. It said it will reveal further viewing figures early next week.

But some viewers reported experiencing buffering issues on the site, and some said they simply couldn’t get onto it.

The fight was “unwatchable,” wrote one X user. Another said she was “furious”, while a third complained he “did an all-nighter for nothing”.

Netflix declined to comment on the technical glitches.

Brendan Ashford, who lives in Devon, told BBC News he stayed up late to watch the fight, which took place in the early hours of Saturday morning UK time.

“I was interested to see how Mike Tyson, at 58, would perform against a much younger guy,” he said.

“I’m not in the habit of staying up late, but I thought it was worth it.”

He tried signing in on Netflix at around 04:00 GMT, and says initially it loaded 25%, and then it got to 75%, but after that it got stuck.

“I knew I had a good connection, so then I looked on social media and saw others were also experiencing issues,” he said.

“It was really disappointing. I kept trying for a good hour before I gave up.”

Mr Ashford said it made him wonder how Netflix would fare with future live sports events, given the problems people encountered this time.

“It can’t be good for their reputation,” he said.

On social media, there was a similar reaction from fans, who vented their frustrations.

Many also posted pictures and videos of the fight failing to load, while some said the service failed at the key moments during the event.

“Had all my friends over to watch the Tyson vs. Paul fight. Not loading,” wrote one X user.

“Shame on Netflix for not being able to handle the streaming of the Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul fight,” wrote another.

“The lagging is so bad the fights are unwatchable to long time subscribers like me and other people I know at home with friends, family, snacks, and drinks but no fights.”

Another person simply asked, “did Netflix not have enough time to prepare for the Tyson / Paul fight?”

This isn’t the first time Netflix has had issues with live streaming.

Last year, it apologised after a much-publicised livestream of its hit dating show, the Love is Blind reunion, was delayed due to a glitch.

The technical reason for the delay was unclear but the streaming giant said it was “incredibly sorry”.

No reason has been given for these latest issues, but Chris Stokel-Walker, a tech reporter, said that the huge demand to watch the fight was “Netflix’s undoing”.

“Netflix has done live broadcasting before,” he said.

“What’s different, was that this fight was so hyped.

“There were so many viewers that were wanting to watch this, given the personalities involved – Jake Paul with his huge following, Mike Tyson returning to the ring for the first time in decades.

“Even people who aren’t major boxing fans wanted to tune in because of all the coverage.

“As a result, there was additional demand well above and beyond your average live event, like a comedy special, or the live golf tournament they previously broadcast.”

Mr Stokel-Walker said that with Netflix intending to move towards more live sports in future, including a new deal with WWE from next year, it “needs to get this fixed”.

“They have to expect that if they’re going to get into this world, they’re going to have to get used to this volume of people coming,” he said.

“The Tyson vs Paul fight was one of the most high profile examples of an event they’ve done live, so it’s really not ideal.

“People will be watching this and wondering can they cope.”

US President Joe Biden has given the green light for Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by the US to strike Russia.

A US official has confirmed the move, a major change of US policy, to the BBC’s US partner CBS.

For months, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging that the restrictions on the missiles, known as ATACMS, be lifted – allowing Kyiv to strike outside its own borders.

On Sunday he reacted to the reports, saying “such things are not announced, missiles speak for themselves”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously warned Western nations against such a move, saying it would represent the Nato military alliance’s “direct participation” in the Ukraine war.

He was yet to comment on Sunday’s reports although other senior Kremlin politicians described it as a serious escalation.

Washington’s decision on ATACMS is couched in terms of being limited to the defence of Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a surprise incursion in August.

In effect, the Biden administration is telling Ukraine that it will support its efforts to hold onto the small chunk of Russian territory it currently occupies, as a powerful bargaining chip for any possible negotiations in the future.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

Serhiy Kuzan, chairman of the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre, told the BBC that Joe Biden’s decision was “very important” to the country.

“It’s not something that will change the course of the war, but I think it will make our forces more equal.”

ATACMS can reach up to 300km (186 miles). Unnamed US officials have told the New York Times and the Washington Post that Biden’s approval of Ukraine’s use of the ATACMS came in response to Russia’s decision to allow North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Kuzan said Sunday’s decision had come ahead of what was an expected assault by Russian and Korean troops, designed to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region. The offensive was expected within days.

Ukraine had earlier estimated there to be 11,000 North Korean soldiers in Kursk.

President Biden’s decision will also finally enable Britain and France to grant Ukraine permission to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia.

Neither the UK nor France has yet responded to Biden’s decision.

Last month, Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine had used US-supplied long-range missiles for the first time to strike Russian targets in the country’s east.

For months, Ukraine has been battling to push back Russian troops who have been slowly advancing in the eastern Donetsk region towards the key city of Pokrovsk – a major supply hub for Ukrainian forces.

Moscow has also massively increased its number of drone strikes on Ukraine. More than 2,000 were launched in October, according to Ukraine’s general staff – a record number in the war.

Overnight on Saturday, Russia launched what is thought to be its biggest co-ordinated assault in months, killing at least 10 people. Around 120 missiles and 90 drones were launched, according to Zelensky.

Attacks continued on Sunday evening, with officials in Sumy region – near the Russian border – reporting another eight killed, including two children, after a missile hit a residential building.

Russian officials in the border region of Bryansk reported a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday night but said its defences had shot down 26 drones.

Ukraine had for months argued that its allies had not provided the country with enough support to allow it to effectively defend itself.

Joe Biden, who will leave the White House in January, has been seeking to expedite further aid to Ukraine.

There are concerns that his successor, Donald Trump, will slow or halt any further support. He has described the military support as a drain on US resources and has signalled he will end the war, without explaining how this would happen.

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.

The US has for the first time allowed Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

The outgoing Biden administration has told Kyiv it can use US-made ATACMS missiles for limited strikes inside Russia, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

Washington had previously refused to allow such strikes because it feared they would escalate the war.

The major policy reversal comes two months before President Joe Biden hands over power to Donald Trump, who is sceptical of US military aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine has been using the Army Tactical Missile System, more commonly known as ATACMS, on Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory for more than a year.

It has used ATACMS to strike airbases in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and military positions in the Zaporizhzhia region.

But the US has never allowed Kyiv to use the long-range missiles inside Russia – until now.

The Lockheed Martin ballistic missiles are some of the most powerful so far provided to Ukraine, capable of travelling up to 300km (186 miles).

Ukraine had argued that not being allowed to use such weapons inside Russia was like being asked to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

The change in policy reportedly comes in response to the recent deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia in the Kursk border region, where Ukraine has occupied territory since August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has yet not confirmed the move. But he said on Sunday: “Strikes are not made with words … The missiles will speak for themselves.”

• Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with missiles

Ukraine will now be able to strike targets inside Russia, most likely around the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold over 1,000 kmsq of territory.

US officials say Kyiv will be able to use ATACMS to defend against an expected counter-offensive by Russian and North Korean troops, which may begin within days with the aim of regaining Russian territory.

Ukrainian forces will be able to hit Russian positions in Kursk, including troops, infrastructure and ammunition storage.

The supply of ATACMS will probably not be enough to turn the tide of the war. Russian military equipment, such as jets, has already been moved to airfields further inside Russia in anticipation of such a decision.

But the weapons may grant Ukraine some advantage at a time when Russian troops have been gaining ground in the country’s east and morale is low.

“I don’t think it will be decisive,” a Western diplomat in Kyiv told the BBC, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“However, it’s an overdue symbolic decision to raise the stakes and demonstrate military support to Ukraine.”

“It can raise the war cost for Russia.”

There are also questions over how much ammunition will be provided, said Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence in the Obama administration.

“The question is of course how many missiles do they have? We have heard that the Pentagon has warned there aren’t that many of these missiles that they can make available to Ukraine.”

Farkas added that the ATACMS could have a “positive psychological impact” in Ukraine if they are used to strike targets such as the Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to mainland Russia.

The US authorisation will also have a further knock-on effect: enabling the UK and France to grant Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia. Storm Shadow is a Franco-British long-range cruise missile with similar capabilities to the American ATACMS.

The Biden administration had for months refused to authorise Ukraine to hit Russia with long-range missiles, fearing escalation of the conflict.

Vladimir Putin had warned against allowing Western weapons to be used to hit Russia, saying Moscow would view that as the “direct participation” of Nato countries in the war in Ukraine.

“It would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” Putin said. “This will mean that Nato countries, the USA and European states, are fighting with Russia.”

Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.

Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato, said: “By restricting the range of Ukraine’s use of American weapons, the US was unjustifiably imposing unilateral restrictions on Ukraine’s self-defence.”

He added that the decision to limit the use of ATACMS was “completely arbitrary and done out of fear of ‘provoking’ Russia.”

“However, it is a mistake to make such a change public, as it gives Russia advance notice of potential Ukrainian strikes.”

The elephant in the room is that Biden is a lame-duck president, with just two months left in office before he hands power to President-elect Donald Trump.

It is unknown whether Trump would continue with such a policy. But some of his closest allies have already expressed criticism of the decision.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr wrote on social media: “The military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get World War Three going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.”

Trump has not spelled out what policy he will take on the war in Ukraine, beyond having vowed to end the conflict within a day, though never specifying how he would do so. Democratic opponents have also accused him of cosying up to Putin, whom he has repeatedly expressed admiration for.

Many of Trump’s top officials, such as Vice-President-elect JD Vance, say the US should not provide any more military aid to Ukraine.

But others in the next Trump administration hold a different view. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz has argued that the US could accelerate weapons deliveries to Ukraine to force Russia to negotiate.

Which way the president-elect will go is unclear. But many in Ukraine fear that he will cut off weapons deliveries, including ATACMS.

“We are worried. We hope that [Trump] will not reverse [the decision],” Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, told the BBC.

For a harrowing week in August, Ruchika Tandon, a 44-year-old neurologist at one of India’s top hospitals, was ensnared in what felt like a high-stakes federal crime investigation.

Yet, it was an elaborate scam – a web of deceit spun by scammers who manipulated her every move and drained her and her family’s life savings.

Under the pretence of “digital arrest”- a term fabricated by her perpetrators – Dr Tandon was coerced to take leave from work, surrender her daily freedoms, and comply with nonstop surveillance and instructions from strangers on the phone, who convinced her she was at the centre of a grave investigation.

The “digital arrest” scam involves fraudsters impersonating law enforcement officials on video calls, threatening victims with arrest over fake charges, and pressuring them to transfer large sums of money.

In Dr Tandon’s case, they stripped her and her family of nearly 25m rupees ($300,000; £235,000) across bank accounts, mutual funds, pension funds, and life insurance – years of savings lost in a manufactured nightmare.

She is not alone. Indians lost over 1,200m rupees to “digital arrest” hoaxes between January and April this year, according to official figures. These figures only scratch the surface, as many victims don’t report such crimes. Stolen funds are often funnelled into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency wallets. More than 40% of the scams have been traced back to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, according to officials.

Things are so bad that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about the scam in his monthly radio talk in October.

“Whenever you receive such a call, don’t be scared. You should be aware that no investigative agency never inquires like this through a phone call or a video call,” he said.

India faces a range of cyber crimes, from fake investment and trading to dating scams. But the “digital arrest” scam stands out as especially elaborate and sinister – meticulously planned, relentless, and invasive to every part of a victim’s life.

Sometimes scammers reveal themselves during video calls, while other times they remain hidden, relying solely on audio. The plot could be straight out of an outlandish Bollywood thriller – except it is carefully choreographed.

On that fateful first day, scammers posing as officials from India’s telecom regulator called Lucknow-based Dr Tandon, claiming her number would be disconnected due to “22 complaints” of harassing messages sent from it.

Moments later, a man claiming to be a senior police officer took over. He accused her of using a joint bank account with her mother to launder money for women and child trafficking.

In the background, a jarring chorus of voices echoed, “Arrest her, arrest her!”

“The police will be coming in five minutes to arrest you. All police stations have been alerted,” the man warned.

“I was angry and frustrated. I kept saying this can’t be true,” Dr Tandon recalls.

The officer seemed to soften, but with a catch. He said India’s federal detective agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), would take over as it was a “matter of national secrecy”.

“I will try to talk and persuade them not to put you in physical custody. But you have to be in digital custody,” he insisted.

Dr Tandon used a feature phone that lacked video calling, making it impossible for the scammers to proceed. So they forced her to drive to a store and buy a smartphone.

Over the next six days, three men and a woman, posing as police officers and a judge, kept her under constant surveillance on Skype, with her phone camera running nonstop.

They made her wake up her students at night to buy extra data packs to keep the scam going. She was required to place the phone throughout the house – while cooking, sleeping, and even outside the bathroom – tracking her every move.

She was also forced to lie to her hospital and relatives, claiming she was too ill to work or meet anyone. When an uncle visited, they ordered her to hide under a bed, with the phone camera running.

For a full week, Dr Tandon endured more 700 questions on her life and work, a staged trial, falsified court documents, and promises of a digital “bail” in exchange for her life savings. In the fake court she was ordered to dress in white to “show respect to the judge”. The callers had switched off their video, leaving only their fake names and authentic-looking badges displayed on blank screens.

At one point, during the ordeal, the scammers even talked to Dr Tandon’s 70-year-old mother, urging her to stay silent “for her daughter’s sake”.

When the doctor repeatedly broke down on camera, the scammers told her: “Take a deep breath and relax. You have not committed a murder. You have just laundered money.”

In a desperate bid for freedom, she transferred her entire savings from half-a-dozen different bank accounts to accounts controlled by the scammers, believing she would be refunded after “government verification”. Instead, she lost everything. The callers disconnected the line after transfer was completed.

Back at work after a week, exhaustion drove Dr Tandon to search terms like “digital custody” and “new CBI investigation methods” on the internet.

This led to newspaper stories detailing similar “digital arrest” scams across the country. She still had refused to accept she was a victim of an elaborate hoax, and had rushed to the police station, hoping that “the police station and officers were real”.

Dr Tandon says she approached the police station, anxious.

“I’ve been receiving strange calls for days,” she started, trying to explain.

Before she could say more, a woman officer interrupted sharply, “Have you transferred any money?”

At another police station, “the moment they heard my case, they began laughing”, Dr Tandon recalls.

“This is very common now,” a policeman said.

Over 500km (310 miles) away in Delhi, author and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay narrowly escaped the scam in July.

He endured 28 hours under “digital arrest,” as scammers claimed that his defunct bank account had been used to launder money. Mr Mukhopadhyay’s suspicions aroused when a caller asked him why he hadn’t redeemed his mutual funds – not a question a police officer would usually ask on the phone.

Mr Mukhopadhyay slipped from his study, where scammers were surveilling him on his desktop, and confided briefly with his wife. Friends, alerted by his message, quickly asked her to disconnect his modem, freeing him from their grip.

“I became a digital slave until my friends exposed the scam,” says Mr Mukhopadhyay. “I had moved my funds into my account, ready to transfer it all to them. I felt like a fool when it was over.”

Progress on catching these scammers remains unclear, with many victims frustrated by slow moving complaint processes.

Dr Tandon, however, has seen some success: police have arrested 18 suspects, including a woman, from across India. About a third of the stolen money has been recovered in cash and seized in different bank accounts. She has received only 1.2m of the 25m rupees of her looted money so far – that was the cash recovered.

Investigating officer Deepak Kumar Singh says the scammers were running an elaborate operation.

“The scammers are educated men and women – fluent in English and various Indian languages – including engineering graduates, cyber security experts, and banking professionals. Most operate through Telegram channels,” Mr Singh, a senior police official, told the BBC.

The scammers were clever, using targeted information from their victims’ social media, investigators believe.

“They track you, gather personal information, and identify your weaknesses,” says Mr Singh. “Then they strike quickly, using a hit-and-run approach with potential victims.”

The scammers knew Mr Mukhopadhyay was a journalist and writer – author of a biography on Prime Minister Modi. They knew Dr Tandon was a doctor and had attended a conference in Goa. They had their biometric national identity numbers. Mr Mukhopadhyay wonders if they were aware he was among the journalists whose house was raided by Delhi police in October 2023 as part of an investigation into the funding of NewsClick (Critics had deplored the move as an attack on press freedom, a charge the government denied.)

They also made errors. Mr Mukhopadhyay’s caller was unaware of how long it typically took to redeem funds, which raised his suspicions. Dr Tandon’s fake judge, called himself Judge Dhananjay and displayed a fake insignia with a picture of the recently retired Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud. Yet, overwhelmed by the moment, she missed the clue.

Dr Tandon says she still lives in a haze, struggling to separate reality from the nightmare that overtook her life. Even when she filed the police complaint, she wondered, “Was the police station also fake?”

Every phone call stirs fresh anxiety.

“At work, I sometimes go blank, filled with fears. Days are better, but after dusk, it becomes hard. I get nightmares.”

Washington’s highest-ranking Republican has said that President-elect Donald Trump is tapping “disruptors” to lead his incoming administration.

“They are persons who will shake up the status quo,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think that’s by design.”

Trump continues to announce officials who he wants to fill high-ranking positions in his administration, seeming to favour close allies over those with related policy experience.

Some of those picks have sent shockwaves through Washington and caused bipartisan concern. But those close to Trump say there are back-up plans in place if these nominees can’t muster the support needed to be approved.

Trump’s defence secretary pick Pete Hegseth has denied a sexual assault allegation and his potential attorney general Matt Gaetz is at the centre of an ethics scandal. His health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is under scrutiny for his vaccine scepticism.

The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr, defended his father’s nominees on Sunday, saying on Fox News that “we know who the good guys and bad guys are”.

“It’s about surrounding my father with people who are competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises,” he said. “They are not people who think they know better as unelected bureaucrats.”

He noted some of the nominees are “controversial” and appeared to acknowledge some could face problems in the Senate, which is tasked with vetting thousands of presidential nominees and voting on their appointments.

“We do have back-up plans, but we’re obviously going with the strongest candidates first,” the president-elect’s son said. “You know some of them are going to be controversial because they’ll actually get things done.”

One of Donald Trump’s latest picks is oil executive Chris Wright, nominated as energy secretary.

Wright, the founder and CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, is expected to work toward fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to increase fossil fuel production – an aim summed by the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill”.

He 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”.

He has no government experience but 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 world’s largest oil producer.

Wright’s appointment is a win for the fossil fuel industry. 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.

His appointment came as Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, on Sunday, as he touted his climate legacy.

Biden took take an aerial tour over part of the Amazon and met with local and Indigenous leaders working to preserve the region’s ecosystem before making a brief appearance in Manaus, a large city nestled in the centre of the rainforest.

There, Biden described the battle against climate change as “a defining cause of my presidency” and touted the landmark climate legislation passed under his administration.

The Democrat also pledged new financial assistance to protect the Amazon, including an additional $50m (£40m)contribution to the Amazon Conservation Fund bringing the US commitment to $100m.

And while he did not mention Trump by name, Biden seemed to make reference to his successor, saying that while “some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that is underway in America… nobody, nobody can reverse it”.

“The question now,” he said, “is which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity.”

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Homeowners are struggling to sell or remortgage as some major lenders are rejecting properties with spray foam insulation, the BBC has found.

A quarter of the UK’s biggest mortgage providers will not lend against homes with spray foam in the roof, our research suggests.

It is estimated as many as 250,000 homes in the UK have this type of insulation, with much of it fitted under the previous government’s Green Homes Grant scheme.

“We were blissfully unaware of any issues to do with it until we put the house on the market,” said Wendy Rowe, whose family struggled to sell her late father’s home and paid thousands to have the insulation removed.

Some mortgage firms are reluctant to deal with homes with spray foam insulation due to concerns over poor fitting leaving moisture trapped and roof timbers at risk of decay.

But the Insulation Manufacturers Association said spray foam can be beneficial if properly installed, and it was worried homeowners could be needlessly driven to “cowboy” removals companies.

Ms Rowe told the BBC that when her father Alan Chawner was offered spray foam insulation in his loft, he thought it would make his ex-council property in Leicester warmer and cut his energy bills.

As a pensioner who claimed the attendance allowance, the entire £4,331 cost of the installation was covered by the Green Homes Grant scheme, which ran in England until 31 March 2021.

However, the work was not up to scratch, according to a report by Stephen Hodgson, the former boss of the Property Care Association (PCA) who now inspects properties with spray foam and trains surveyors.

After sales stalled and difficult conversations with lenders, Ms Rowe agreed to replace the roof entirely, splitting the cost of nearly £10,000 with new buyers.

She said it has cost the family thousands more in surveyors’ and estate agent fees and utility bills.

The firm that installed the spray foam, SealSixty, gave the family £400 as a gesture of goodwill and said the work met all the requirements set out by the Green Homes Grant scheme at the time.

Ms Rowe said that her family had been “left high and dry”.

“It was installed under a government initiative, and you really don’t expect them to turn their back,” she said.

Spray foam insulation has been used to stop heat escaping from roofs, lofts and attics for decades and comes in two forms.

Closed cell spray foam is rigid once set. It is a better thermal insulator and was previously sold to stabilise failing roofs. But if it has been used inappropriately or installed poorly, it might put stress on timbers, restrict air circulation and put them at risk of decaying.

Open cell spray foam remains soft once set and is only used for insulation. It is more breathable but is often installed where a highly-resistant underlay like bitumen felt is already present, stopping vapour from escaping.

While a recent report by the Health and Safety Executive highlighted situations where using open cell was low-risk, it cautioned against applying it directly to roof tiles.

The nature of spray foam can make it tricky for valuers acting on behalf of lenders to inspect the condition of roof timbers.

When the BBC contacted the 20 largest lenders in the UK, five – including TSB Bank, Skipton Building Society, Co-operative Bank, Principality and equity release lender Aviva – said they did not lend against properties where spray foam is found in the roof space.

The Yorkshire Building Society and Metro Bank said they would not usually lend where there is a significant amount of spray foam.

Equity release provider More 2 Life told the BBC it will only lend on properties with spray foam where it was fitted as part of an authorised new build and has the necessary documentation.

Other lenders such as Lloyds, Nationwide, Barclays, the NatWest Group and Santander have said they consider applications on a case-by-case basis, and will take a valuer’s report into account.

They may, however, ask homeowners for documentation showing it has been installed correctly or for a specialist report to be carried out.

In 2023, the PCA published an inspection protocol in a bid to help surveyors and lenders assess any potential risk in pitched roofs.

But homeowners like Gary Wright feel like they have been “left in limbo”.

When his two-year fixed-rate mortgage was up for renewal, he hoped to find a better rate.

But when he applied he was shocked to discover open cell spray foam had been installed in 2009. It had not come up during surveys when he had bought the house.

He decided to remove most of the foam in the loft himself, after receiving several expensive quotes.

A surveyor still recommended a full roof report and Mr Wright felt he had to renew his mortgage with his current lender at a less preferable rate.

“We know that in the next two years, we need to get this fixed, and I can’t afford to right now,” he said.

“This phrase ‘spray foam’ has created fear [among lenders] based on a lack of knowledge,” Simon Storer, chief executive of the Insulation Manufacturers Association, told the BBC.

He suggested “hares were set running” by previous industry guidance that has since been withdrawn.

“Insulating is a very good thing,” he said, adding: “But as with any building work, it needs to be done correctly”.

He said the organisation was also concerned about unregulated companies targeting older, potentially vulnerable, homeowners pushing them to pay for an overpriced removal service during cold calls.

The Homeowners Alliance (HOA) does not recommend installing spray foam until issues with lenders and rogue traders are resolved.

For homes where it is already present, the HOA recommends:

• Checking you have all the relevant documentation, including a product certificate, installer warranty, before and after photos, a survey report and a product warranty
• Contacting the installer or manufacturer to see if you can get a free “health check”
• Considering an independent assessment by a qualified spray foam surveyor

A government spokesperson said it had “consulted lenders about this matter who say they rely on the views of valuers and surveyors on this issue”.

They added any measures fitted under government schemes must be done by a Trustmark-registered installer “to the highest standards with issues promptly and properly rectified”.

Further information on Trustmark’s dispute resolution process can be found here.

Veteran Australian broadcaster and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones has been arrested after an investigation into a series of sexual abuse allegations.

New South Wales (NSW) Police said detectives from the Child Abuse Squad took an 83-year-old man into custody at an apartment in Sydney’s Circular Quay early on Monday morning, before searching the property.

A strike force was set up in March to investigate several indecent assaults and sexual touching incidents between 2001 and 2019, they said in a statement.

Mr Jones is one of Australia’s most influential media figures, and has previously denied allegations of abuse, first published by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2023.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said officers had been working “tirelessly” on what has been a “very complex”, “protracted” and “thorough” investigation.

She added that police expect other alleged victims may come forward, as often happens in cases like this.

“There’s no such thing as a matter that’s too old to be investigated.

“There is no better time to come forward than now and you will be listened to, and we will take your matter seriously,” she said.

A former teacher, Mr Jones coached Australia’s national rugby union team between 1984 and 1988, before pivoting to a radio career.

He also, at times, worked as a speechwriter and advisor for Liberal Party figures – including former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser – and launched several failed bids to represent the party in both state and federal politics.

A staple of Sydney airwaves on local station 2GB for decades, Mr Jones juggled those duties with TV commentary gigs before he retired from full time work in 2020 citing health issues.

The broadcaster is a polarising figure, for years boasting one of the nation’s biggest audiences but often courting controversy.

He made headlines in 2012 for suggesting that then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father had “died of shame”, and in 2019 faced a massive advertiser boycott after saying someone should “shove a sock” down the throat of New Zealand’s leader at the time, Jacinda Ardern.

Mr Jones has also been successfully sued for defamation many times.

Police are expected to update the media on their investigation later on Monday.

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

Australian lawmakers have voted to censure an Aboriginal senator who heckled King Charles during his visit to Canberra last month, to express their “profound disapproval” of her protest.

Lidia Thorpe shouted “you are not my King” and “this is not your land” shortly after the King addressed the Great Hall of Parliament, in an effort to highlight the impacts of British colonisation.

The Senate’s censure, which passed 46-12, described Thorpe’s actions as “disrespectful and disruptive” and said they should disqualify her from representing the chamber as a member of any delegation.

A censure motion is politically symbolic but carries no constitutional or legal weight.

Shortly after the Senate vote on Monday, Thorpe told reporters she had been denied her right to respond in the chamber due to a flight delay.

“The British Crown committed heinous crimes against the first peoples of this country… I will not be silent,” the independent senator said.

Her protest last month drew immediate ire from across the political aisle, as well as from some prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders.

But it also drew praise from some activists who argued that it highlighted the plight of Australia’s first inhabitants, who endured colonial violence and still face acute disadvantages in terms of health, wealth, education, and life expectancy compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

Despite the protest, the King was warmly greeted by Australian crowds during his five-day tour alongside Queen Camilla.

“You have shown great respect for Australians, even during times when we have debated the future of our own constitutional arrangements and the nature of our relationship with the crown. Nothing stands still,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an official address.

Thorpe has a history of Indigenous activism which has, at times, grabbed global headlines.

During her swearing in ceremony in 2022, the Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman referred to the Queen Elizabeth II as a coloniser – and was asked to retake her oath after facing criticism.

Last year, Australia decisively rejected a proposal to grant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people constitutional recognition and allow them to establish a body to advise parliament on issues impacting their communities.

The referendum – known as the Voice – became ensnared in a bruising campaign, and both sides of politics have sought to move on swiftly, leaving uncertainty over future policy.

While the data suggests a majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people voted ‘Yes’, support wasn’t unanimous. Thorpe herself was a leading ‘No’ campaigner, having criticised the measure as tokenistic.

On Monday, millions of Swedes will start receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or other unexpected crises.

“If crisis or war comes” has been updated from six years ago because of what the government in Stockholm calls the worsening security situation, by which it means Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The booklet is also twice the size.

Neighbouring Finland has also just published its own fresh advice online on “preparing for incidents and crises”.

And Norwegians have also recently received a pamphlet urging them to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war and other threats.

In a detailed section on military conflict, the Finnish digital brochure explains how the government and president would respond in the event of an armed attack, stressing that Finland’s authorities are “well prepared for self defence”.

Sweden joined Nato only this year, deciding like Finland to apply after Moscow expanded its war in 2022. Norway was a founder member of the Western defensive alliance.

Unlike Sweden and Norway, the Helsinki government has decided not to print a copy for every home as it “would cost millions” and a digital version could be updated more easily.

“We have sent out 2.2 million paper copies, one for each household in Norway,” said Tore Kamfjord, who is responsible for the campaign of self-preparedness at the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB).

Included in the lists of items to be kept at home are long-life foods such as tins of beans, energy bars and pasta, and medicines including iodine tablets in case of a nuclear accident.

Oslo sent out an earlier version in 2018, but Kamfjord said climate change and more extreme weather events such as floods and landslides had brought increased risks.

For Swedes, the idea of a civil emergency booklet is nothing new. The first edition of “If War Comes” was produced during World War Two and it was updated during the Cold War.

But one message has been moved up from the middle of the booklet: “If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.”

It was not long ago that Finland and Sweden were still neutral states, although their infrastructure and “total defence system” date back to the Cold War.

Sweden’s Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said last month that as the global context had changed, information to Swedish households had to reflect the changes too.

Earlier this year he warned that “there could be war in Sweden”, although that was seen as a wake-up call because he felt that moves towards rebuilding that “total defence” were progressing too slowly.

Because of its long border with Russia and its experience of war with the Soviet Union in World War Two, Finland has always maintained a high level of defence. Sweden, however, scaled down its infrastructure and only in recent years started gearing up again.

“From the Finnish perspective, this is a bit strange,” according to Ilmari Kaihko, associate professor of war studies at the Swedish Defence University. “[Finland] never forgot that war is a possibility, whereas in Sweden, people had to be shaken up a bit to understand that this can actually happen,” says Kaihko, who’s from Finland.

Melissa Eve Ajosmaki, 24, who is originally from Finland but studies in Gothenburg, says she felt more worried when the war broke out in Ukraine. “Now I feel less worried but I still have the thought at the back of my head on what I should do if there was a war. Especially as I have my family back in Finland.”

The guides include instructions on what to do in case of several scenarios and ask citizens to make sure they can fend for themselves, at least initially, in case of a crisis situation.

Finns are asked how they would cope without power for days on end with winter temperatures as low as -20C.

Their checklist also includes iodine tablets, as well as easy-to-cook food, pet food and a backup power supply.

The Swedish checklist recommends potatoes, cabbage, carrots and eggs along with tins of bolognese sauce and prepared blueberry and rosehip soup.

Swedish Economist Ingemar Gustafsson, 67, recalls receiving previous versions of the pamphlet: “I’m not that worried about the whole thing so I take it pretty calmly. It’s good that we get information about how we should act and how we should prepare, but it’s not like I have all those preparations at home”.

One of the most important recommendations is to keep enough food and drinking water for 72 hours.

But Ilmari Kaihko wonders whether that is practical for everyone.

“Where do you stash it if you have a big family living in a small apartment?”

A bullet failed to silence her, now Malala Yousafzai is lending her voice to the women of Afghanistan.

In just a few years since the Taliban retook control of the country, women’s rights have been eroded to the point where even singing is banned.

Malala has a personal history with the Taliban across the border in Pakistan, after a gunman from the hardline Islamist group shot her as she sat on a school bus.

The speed of change in Afghanistan, if not the brutality, has surprised Malala, who since that near-fatal shooting in 2012 has campaigned for equality.

“I never imagined that the rights of women would be compromised so easily,” Malala tells BBC Asian Network.

“A lot of girls are finding themselves in a very hopeless, depressing situation where they do not see any way out,” the 27-year-old Nobel Prize Winner says.

“The future looks very dark to them.”

In 2021, the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

In the three-and-a-half years since Western forces left the country, “morality laws” have meant women in Afghanistan have lost dozens of rights.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they’re related by blood or marriage.

“The restrictions are just so extreme that it does not even make sense to anybody,” says Malala.

The United Nations (UN) says the rules amount to “gender apartheid” – a system where people face economic and social discrimination based on their sex and something human rights group Amnesty International wants recognised as crime under international law.

But the rules have been defended by the Taliban, which claims they’re accepted in Afghan society and that the international community should respect “Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies”.

“Women lost everything,” says Malala.

“They [the Taliban] know that to take away women’s rights you have to start with the foundation, and that is education.”

The UN says since the takeover more than a million girls are not in school in Afghanistan – about 80% – and in 2022 about 100,000 female students were banned from their university courses.

It’s also reported a correlation between the lack of access to education and a rise in child marriage and deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.

“Afghan women live in very dark times now,” Malala says.

“But they show resistance.”

The Pakistan-born activist, who became the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize, is an executive producer on an upcoming film, Bread & Roses, that documents the lives of three Afghan women living under the Taliban regime.

The documentary follows Zahra, a dentist forced to give up her practice, activist Taranom, who flees to the border, and government employee Sharifa, who loses her job and her independence.

But the film isn’t just about the stories of three women, Malala says.

“It’s about the 20 million Afghan girls and women whose stories may not make it to our screens.”

Bread & Roses was directed by Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani and US actress Jennifer Lawrence was also brought on board as a producer.

Sahra tells Asian Network her mission was “to tell the story of a nation under the Taliban dictatorship”.

“How slowly, all the rights have been taken away.”

Sahra managed to flee Afghanistan after the US-backed government collapsed following the withdrawal of troops in August 2021.

But she kept in touch with women back home, who would share videos which she then collected and archived.

“It was very important to find young, modern, educated women that have talent they were ready to dedicate to society,” says Sahra.

“They were ready to build the country but now they have to sit at home and almost do nothing.”

Even though the film hasn’t been released yet, Sahra believes the situation in Afghanistan has already deteriorated to the point where it would be impossible to make if she started now.

“At that time, women could still go out and demonstrate,” she says.

“Nowadays, women are not even allowed to sing… the situation is getting more difficult.”

The first-hand footage shows the women at protests – they kept the cameras rolling while being arrested by the Taliban.

And Sahra says the project only got harder over time as more of their rights were stripped away.

“We were really honoured that these women trusted us to share their stories,” she says.

“And it was really important for us to put their security in our priorities.

“But when they were out in the street asking for their rights, it was not for the documentary.

“It was for them, for their own life, for their own freedom.”

Malala says that, for women in Afghanistan, “defiance is extremely challenging”.

“Despite all of these challenges, they’re out on their streets and risking their lives to hope for a better world for themselves.”

All three of the women featured in the film are no longer living in Afghanistan and Sahra and Malala are hopeful the film will raise awareness of what women who remain endure.

“They are doing all that they can to fight for their rights, to raise their voices,” Malala says.

“They’re putting so much at risk. It’s our time to be their sisters and be their supporters.”

Malala also hopes the documentary prompts more international pressure on the Taliban to restore women’s rights.

“I was completely shocked when I saw the reality of the Taliban take over,” she says.

“We really have to question what sort of systems we have put in place to guarantee protection to women in Afghanistan, but also elsewhere.”

And as much as Bread & Roses deals with stories of loss and oppression, the film is also about resilience and hope.

“There’s so much for us to learn from the bravery and courage of these Afghan women,” says Malala.

“If they are not scared, if they are not losing that courage to stand up to the Taliban, we should learn from them and we should stand in solidarity with them.”

The title itself was inspired by an Afghan saying.

“Bread is a symbol of freedom, earning a salary and supporting the family,” Sahra says.

“We have a saying in my language that the one who gave you bread is the one who orders you.

“So if you find your bread, that means you are the boss of you.”

That’s exactly the future she hopes to see for the women of Afghanistan and, based on what she’s seen, one she believes they will achieve in the end.

“Women in Afghanistan, they keep changing the tactic,” she says.

“They keep searching for a new way to keep fighting back.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.