US officials say President Biden has given the green light for Ukraine to use long range missiles supplied by Washington to strike deep inside Russia.

Washington had previously refused to allow such strikes with US-made ATACMS missiles 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, whose election has raised fears over the future of US support for Kyiv.

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Ukraine has been using ATACMS on Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory for more than a year.

American munitions and hardware are already being used inside Russia – in the Kursk border region, according to local reports.

But the US has never allowed Kyiv to use the ATACMS inside Russia – until now.

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 arrival of North Korean troops to support Russia in the Kursk region, where Ukraine has occupied territory since August.

Also, Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House is raising fears over the future of US support for Ukraine, and President Biden is apparently keen to do all he can to help in the little time he has left in office.

Strengthening Ukraine’s hand militarily – so the thinking goes – could grant Ukraine leverage in any peace talks that may lie ahead.

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

The Army Tactical Missile System is a surface-to-surface ballistic missile capable of hitting targets at up to 300km (186 miles) and it is their range that makes them particularly important for Ukraine.

Built by the defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin, they’re fired from either the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) or the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Each missile costs around $1.5m (£1.2m).

ATACMS (pronounced “attack-‘ems”) are fuelled by solid rocket propellant and follow a ballistic path into the atmosphere before coming back down at a high speed and high angle, making them difficult to intercept.

They can be configured to carry two different types of warhead. The first is a cluster fitted with hundreds of bomblets designed to destroy lighter-armoured units over a wide area. These might include parked aircraft, air defences and concentrations of troops. Cluster warheads, while useful, risk leaving behind unexploded bomblets which pose a risk long after the fighting has stopped.

The second type is a single warhead, a 225kg high explosive variant of which is designed to destroy hardened facilities and larger structures.

ATACMS have been around for decades. They were first used in the Gulf War of 1991.

The US Army is replacing it with the next-generation Precision Strike Missile, a faster, slimmer weapon that can go out to 500km. There is no suggestion Ukraine will be getting these.

• Which weapons are countries giving Ukraine?

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

Ukrainian and US officials expect a counter-offensive by Russian and North Korean troops to regain territory in Kursk.

Ukraine may use ATACMS to defend against the assault, targeting Russian positions including military bases, infrastructure and ammunition storage.

The supply of the missiles 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. However, moving equipment further back from the front lines may make life difficult for Russian troops as supply lines are stretched and air support takes longer to arrive.

And 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: potentially 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 has 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 in September. “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 move comes just two months before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

He has already said he intends to bring the war in Ukraine to a swift end – without specifying how he plans to do it – and he could cancel the use of the missiles once he takes office.

President-elect Trump has not yet said whether he would continue the policy, but some of his closest allies have already criticised it.

Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son, 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.”

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.

The man picked to be America’s next top law enforcement officer, Matt Gaetz, is at the centre of a number of allegations which could prevent him from getting the job. Here’s all you need to know about them.

The Florida lawmaker is the subject of a long-running investigation by a congressional ethics panel into a number of claims involving drugs, bribes and sex.

A woman who attended a 2017 party with him has testified to the House committee that she saw the then-congressman having sex with a minor, her lawyer has said. He has denied any wrongdoing and called the investigation into him a “smear campaign”.

The Justice Department – which Gaetz would lead in the post – also investigated the claim but ultimately did not file any criminal charges against him.

When he learned of his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump, he resigned from Congress, putting him out of reach of the investigation by the ethics panel.

Pressure is building for it to publish its findings and the level of cross-party concern risks derailing his nomination, which requires Senate approval.

Here are the allegations broken down.

Gaetz, 42, represented Florida’s first congressional district in the US House of Representatives from 2017 until his resignation on Thursday.

A fierce Trump defender, he has long upset Democrats but also many Republicans with his bombastic public conduct and alleged hard-partying lifestyle.

On and off since 2021, the secretive House Ethics Committee has investigated Gaetz over various allegations, including a claim that he had sex with an underage girl, used illicit drugs, accepted bribes, misused campaign funds and shared inappropriate images on the House floor.

The Floridian has repeatedly and vehemently denied wrongdoing, casting the probe as an attempt to smear his name by powerful enemies he has made in politics.

He has also raised in his defence the fact that the Justice Department ended a separate three-year federal sex-trafficking investigation last year by deciding not to bring charges against him.

“Lies were Weaponized to try to destroy me,” Gaetz posted on X on Friday.

“These lies resulted in prosecution, conviction, and prison. For the liars, not me.”

Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’s one-time friend, was the lone person charged in the Justice Department sex trafficking’s investigation. He cooperated with investigators and reportedly told prosecutors information about multiple others, including Gaetz.

Greenberg is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after agreeing to plead guilty to multiple federal charges, including under-age sex trafficking, wire fraud, stalking, identity theft, producing a fake ID card, and conspiring to defraud the US government.

As part of his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Greenberg – a local tax collector in the Orlando, Florida area – admitted he had repeatedly paid young women to attend parties with him and his friends, where they used drugs and had sex.

At least one of the girls he paid for sex was 17 years old at the time – and Greenberg alleged that Gaetz had also had sex with her – a claim federal authorities investigated but were unable to verify.

No charges were filed against Gaetz, who has fiercely denied these allegations, and the probe was later closed.

But now, the explosive claim sits at the core of the House ethics probe and is endangering his nomination.

The committee inquiry had been paused to allow the Justice Department to do its work. Gaetz claimed it was only revived because then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy considered him a nagging thorn in the side of Republican leadership.

Last year, Gaetz spearheaded an unprecedented internal revolt to oust McCarthy from the speakership – the top job in the US House of Representatives. The California Republican, who resigned from Congress less than three months later, has claimed Gaetz only wanted him removed because of the ethics investigation.

Gaetz’s nomination as Attorney General this past Thursday was followed hours later with his resignation from the House.

His resignation halted the release – which was reportedly planned just days later – of the ethics probe’s findings. His departure from Congress means he is no longer under congressional jurisdiction.

An attorney who represents the then-minor has called for the report’s release, saying that she had testified to the committee that she had sex with Gaetz while “she was a high school student, and there were witnesses”.

Sitting House Speaker Mike Johnson argued against the report’s release in a Sunday appearance on Fox News, saying it could “open Pandora’s box” if the panel started issuing reports into those who are not members of the body.

“We don’t issue investigations and ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress,” he said. “I think this would be a breach of protocol that could be dangerous for us going forward in the future.”

He also told reporters that he would “strongly request” the report isn’t made public because the rules outline that “a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the ethics committee”.

Members of the committee planned to meet behind closed doors on Friday and hold a vote on whether to release the report.

But the meeting never happened, with Chairman Michael Guest saying it was postponed and would be re-scheduled. Guest has previously indicated he is inclined to “maintain [the] confidentiality” of the panel’s work.

Public pressure is, however, mounting and even some Senate Republicans, who will be tasked with vetting his nomination and voting on whether to confirm him to the attorney general post, have indicated they would like to see the report.

Also on Friday, Joel Leppard – an attorney who represents two women who have testified in the ethics probe – said one of his clients said she had witnessed Gaetz having sex with the then-17-year-old.

“What if sworn testimony detailed conduct that would disqualify anyone from serving as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer?” he said in a statement.

“Democracy demands transparency. Release the Gaetz Ethics report.”

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has learned that the committee has heard from at least four women who say they were paid to attend parties with drugs and sex where Gaetz was allegedly present, and the panel has seen evidence of transactions on the Venmo mobile app between Gaetz and the women.

Many in Washington expect that, even if the report is not formally released, it may yet be leaked to the press.

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Organic and baby carrots sold at grocery stores across the US have been recalled after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person.

So far, 15 people are in hospital and 39 cases have been reported across 18 states, the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The recall covers bagged carrots sold by Grimmway Farms to big supermarket names including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods’s 365, Target’s Good & Gather, Walmart’s Marketside, Wegmans and others.

Officials say that impacted products are likely no longer in store but may still be in homes, and should be thrown away or returned to stores for a refund if so.

Most of the infected people live in New York, Minnesota and Washington, followed by California and Oregon, according to the AP news agency.

The CDC said the recalled organic whole carrots do not have a best-if-used-by date printed on the bag but were available to buy from 14 August to 23 October. Organic baby carrots with best-if-used-by dates from 11 September to 12 November are also recalled.

As well as getting rid of any recalled products, the CDC added that people should clean and sanitise any surface they may have touched.

Symptoms of O121 E. coli include severe stomach cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting, and usually start three to four days after swallowing the bacteria.

Most people recover without treatment, but some may develop serious kidney problems and need to be admitted to hospital, the CDC added.

The E. coli cases linked to carrots comes after another high-profile outbreak in the US, related to slivered onions on some McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers. It caused 104 people to become ill.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously said that one person died in October and 34 people had been admitted to hospital related to that outbreak.

When rumours first emerged in October that North Korean troops were about to start supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, it wasn’t immediately clear what role they would be fulfilling.

Their lack of battlefield experience was given as a key reason why they might just be assigned to non-combat roles.

But after the US and Ukraine revealed North Korean troops have already engaged in combat with Ukrainian soldiers, their role in the fight is being re-evaluated.

Even the number being deployed – originally put at around 11,000 by the Pentagon – has been debated. According to Bloomberg, unnamed sources believe Pyongyang may actually deploy as many as 100,000 troops.

Accurate information is difficult to come by, however, as Moscow and Pyongyang have not responded directly to any of these reports.

So what do we know about the presence of North Korean troops in Russia?

In short, it is hard to say.

The secretive kingdom may have one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but – unlike Russia’s military – the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat operations.

Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), believes Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness”.

However, he says, they should not be presumed to be cannon fodder – adding such a characterisation is “Ukrainian bravado”.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang’s best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps – a unit trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassinations.

These soldiers are “trained to withstand a high degree of physical pain and psychological torture”, says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington.

“What they lack in combat they make up for with what they can tolerate physically and mentally,” he adds.

Mr Cancian agrees that “if these are special operations forces, they will be much better prepared than the average North Korean unit”.

“Further, the Russians appear to be giving them additional training, likely on the special circumstances of the war in Ukraine,” he adds.

This appears to be backed up by the appearance of videos on social media showing men believed to be North Koreans in Russian uniforms, at what appear to be military training facilities in Russia.

And as the war in Ukraine creeps towards its third year, these North Korean troops may be among “the best capable” among the troops available to Russia, says Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean army lieutenant-general.

Moscow has been recruiting at least 20,000 new soldiers a month to help bolster its war effort, with more than 1,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded on average daily, according to Nato and military officials in the West.

“[Russia] has been sending troops to the front without proper training. Compared to such recruits, North Koreans are trained and motivated. They are not combat-tested currently, but that soon will not be the case,” Lt-Gen (retd) Chun said.

Still, some experts believe the obvious language barrier and unfamiliarity with Russian systems would complicate any fighting roles, suggesting instead that Pyongyang’s troops would be tapped for their engineering and construction capabilities.

Given these disadvantages, what is in this deal for the two countries?

Observers say Moscow needs manpower, while Pyongyang needs money and technology.

“For North Korea, [such deployments are] a good way to earn money,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

South Korean intelligence puts this at $2,000 (£1,585) per soldier per month, with most of this money expected to end up in the state’s coffers.

Pyongyang could also gain access to Russian military technology, which Moscow would otherwise have been reluctant to transfer, Mr Lankov adds.

Moscow’s manpower problems have been widely reported, with the US estimating that some 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order – for the third time since the war started – to expand his army.

It has also pursued personnel strategies that “minimise domestic political impact”, such as offering bonuses to recruits who volunteer and enlisting foreigners with the promise of citizenship, says Mr Cancian from CSIS.

“With Russia reportedly suffering over 1,000 casualties on the battlefield, reducing its own losses could alleviate some pressure on the Putin regime,” agrees Lami Kim, a professor of Security Studies at the Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

These developments, coming at a time when tensions within the Korean peninsula have spiralled to their highest in years, are worrying Seoul.

In October, the North blew up sections of two roads that connected it to South Korea, days after accusing Seoul of flying drones into the North’s capital Pyongyang.

That came after the two countries engaged in a tit-for-tat balloon campaign, flying thousands of trash and propaganda balloons towards each other’s territories. The Koreas have also suspended a pact aimed at lowering military tensions between them, shortly after North Korea said that the South was now “enemy number one”.

So it makes sense that South Korea would be uneasy about the North acquiring new military prowess amid these tensions. After all, troops in South Korea have also not fought in another major conflict since the Korean War.

According to Mr Madden and Mr Cancian, it is thought the North Korean troops are being employed around the embattled Kursk border region, which Moscow has been trying to recapture from Ukraine.

The South fears that “its adversary could boast more hostile capabilities” as a result of the experience its soldiers would get on the battlefield, says Lt-Gen (retd) Chun.

While South Korea has long accused the North of supplying weapons to Russia, it says the current situation has gone beyond the transfer of military materials.

It has also expressed “grave concern” over a pact between Pyongyang and Moscow, which pledges that the two counties will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has reiterated – at least three times in the past two months – that the South would consider aiding Ukraine “for defensive purposes”. If this happens, it would mark a shift from the South’s longstanding policy of not supply weapons to countries engaged in active conflict.

Efforts for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified, with a US envoy expected to return to Lebanon for talks over a possible deal, amid an escalation of Israel’s air attacks across the country.

The intensification in the past week, which has killed dozens of people in Lebanon, appears aimed at putting pressure on both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to accept an agreement to put an end to more than a year of conflict.

The draft was delivered last week by the US ambassador to Lebanon to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has been backed by Hezbollah to negotiate.

Details remained unclear but in an apparent sign of progress, Amos Hochstein, who has led the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts, was expected to return to Beirut on Tuesday.

Israel has stepped up its air attacks on Lebanon’s south, where it is also conducting a ground invasion, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut. In the capital, it has carried out multiple strikes on the southern suburbs, known as Dahieh, where Hezbollah is based.

On Sunday, central Beirut was hit for the first time in a month, in attacks that killed six people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

In the afternoon, a strike on a building in the densely populated Ras al-Nabaa neighbourhood killed Mohammed Afif, who acted as the Hezbollah spokesman and was one of the few remaining public faces of the group.

Hours later, a strike hit the busy Mar Elias area, another part of Beirut rarely targeted.

In Lebanon, the recent attacks are seen as part of Israel’s strategy to force Hezbollah and Lebanon to agree to a ceasefire, and an indication that it is prepared to expand its offensive by killing non-military members of the group and striking places outside areas where it has a strong presence, possibly to stir anti-Hezbollah sentiment.

Since the conflict intensified in late September, Lebanese authorities have said any deal should be based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

The resolution includes the removal of the group’s fighters and weapons in areas between the Blue Line – the unofficial frontier between Lebanon and Israel – and the Litani River, about 30km (20 miles) from the boundary with Israel.

A potential agreement would likely include the creation of an international mechanism to monitor its implementation, and the deployment of thousands of additional troops of the Lebanese army to southern Lebanon.

The deal would also stipulate a timeline for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the south.

A sticking point remains, however, related to Israel’s demand to have the right to act inside Lebanon if there is any violation of a deal – something the Lebanese authorities consider unacceptable.

Israel’s stated goal in its war against Hezbollah is to allow the return of about 60,000 residents who have been displaced from communities in the country’s north because of Hezbollah’s rocket fire.

The group launched its campaign the day after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel last year, saying it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

In the past year, Israel’s attacks in Lebanon have killed 3,841 people and wounded nearly 15,000 others, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

More than one million people have been displaced, putting more pressure on a country that was already struggling to cope after years of a severe economic crisis.

Hezbollah’s attacks have killed 31 soldiers and 45 civilians inside Israel, Israeli authorities say. Another 45 Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in southern Lebanon.

Israeli air strikes have destroyed large parts of Hezbollah’s infrastructure and killed many of its leaders, but the group continues to carry out daily attacks, although not with the same intensity.

Sir Keir Starmer has met President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, and emphasised the importance of a “strong UK-China relationship” for both countries.

The meeting was the first time a UK prime minister has met the Chinese president in person since 2018, following a recent souring in relations.

Sir Keir raised the case of the detained Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, Jimmy Lai, saying he was concerned about reports of a “deterioration” in his health.

The PM also signalled a desire for greater business co-operation, particularly on “areas of mutual cooperation” such as international stability, climate change and economic growth.

Sir Keir met President Xi on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and, speaking at the start of the meeting, said: “We want our relations to be consistent, durable, respectful, as we have agreed, avoid surprises where possible.”

He added: “The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.”

Speaking through a translator, Xi told Sir Keir that the two countries should commit to mutual respect and openness, saying: “China and the UK have broad space for co-operation across various domains, including trade, investment, clean energy, financial services, healthcare and improving our peoples’ well-being.”

A read-out of the closed door meeting said the PM set out the leaders’ shared responsibility to work together in pursuit of global stability, economic co-operation and trade, and efforts to move away from fossil fuels to renewables.

Climate change was a focus for the PM, who highlighted that both countries “have an important role to play in support of the global clean power transition”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the PM wants China’s support on global efforts, particularly in light of President-elect Trump’s expected roll back of green policies.

However, Sir Keir also stressed his government’s approach would “always be rooted in the national interests of the UK, but that we would be a predictable and pragmatic partner” to China.

With China’s military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine having prompted criticism from the UK and other Western countries, the PM also said he wanted to “engage honestly and frankly” on areas of disagreement, including on Hong Kong, human rights and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Their first meeting follows an initial phone conversation in August after Labour’s election victory and Sir Keir has now proposed a full bilateral meeting in Beijing or London.

The pair also agreed Chancellor Rachel Reeves should visit Beijing next year to discuss economic and financial cooperation with her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Before the meeting in Brazil, the prime minister said it was important to engage with economies like China – and Foreign Secretary David Lammy held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, as well as Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, in Beijing last month.

The last British prime minister to meet President Xi was Theresa May, who hailed a “golden era” for UK-China relations during her 2018 visit to the country.

However, since then there have been tensions over issues including China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group in Xinjiang and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Last year, then-Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said China was “the biggest state-based threat to our economic security”.

But like the current government, he also said it was necessary to engage with China on issues like climate change and the global economy.

Speaking to reporters on his way to the summit in Rio de Janeiro, Sir Keir also said “shoring up support for Ukraine” was top of his agenda.

Before the meeting, Downing Street said the prime minister will urge other G20 nations to step up their support for Ukraine or face “unfathomable consequences” if Russia is allowed to be victorious.

The summit follows large-scale missile and drone attacks by Russia across Ukraine over the weekend, and will take place as the conflict approaches its 1,000th day.

And it comes amid reports that the US has authorised the use of long-range missiles it supplies to Ukraine to strike Russia.

The weapons have so far only been used by Kyiv on Russian-occupied targets within its own territory.

The UK has also supplied Ukraine with its Storm Shadow missiles and defence officials and ministers have for months been making the case for Kyiv to be permitted to use them to hit targets inside Russia. But they were not willing to act alone – and had been waiting for the White House to change its mind.

Downing Street would not be drawn on whether the UK would follow the US, but did not rule out allowing Kyiv to use British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

Sir Keir is holding talks with other G20 leaders, representing 19 of the world’s largest economies and the African Union and the European Union.

The summit is overshadowed by the absence of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has called for allies to take a more aggressive approach towards China and may trigger a global trade war if he imposes a promised 60% tariff on Chinese goods entering the US.

This summit will provide world leaders a first chance to compare notes and prepare for Trump’s upcoming return to the White House.

Downing Street said the prime minister would also be focusing on building partnerships that increase economic growth and security during the summit, accelerating the climate transition and use of clean power, and supporting the economic development of developing countries.

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Air pollution in India’s capital Delhi has soared to extremely severe levels, choking residents and engulfing the city in thick smog.

Monitors recorded pollution levels of 1,500 on the Air Quality Index (AQI) at 15:00 IST (09:30 BST), according to tech company IQAir – 15 times the level the Word Health Organization (WHO) considers satisfactory for breathing.

The toxic air has disrupted flight services, and had already prompted authorities to shut schools and ban construction work in the city.

It comes just weeks after Lahore, in neighbouring Pakistan, also recorded pollution levels above 1,000.

And experts warn that the situation could get worse in Delhi in the coming days, saying more severe measures may be needed to combat the city’s pollution problem.

According to the WHO, air with AQI values above 300 are considered to be hazardous for health.

India’s pollution control authority has classified the air in Delhi as “severe plus”, after the city passed 450 according to its measurements on Monday morning.

As well as shutting schools and banning construction work, the city has also banned the entry of non-essential trucks into Delhi and has asked all offices to ask 50% of their staff to work from home.

Last week, the government banned all activities that involve the use of coal and firewood, as well as diesel generator use for non-emergency services.

Every year, Delhi, India’s northern states and parts of Pakistan battle hazardous air during the winter months of October to January due to plummeting temperatures, smoke, dust, low wind speed, vehicular emissions and crop stubble burning.

And every year, the government imposes pollution control measures during these months.

Yet, Delhi’s pollution problem hasn’t gone away.

On Monday, Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi said that all of northern India was experiencing a “medical emergency” due to stubble burning continuing unchecked across the country, particularly in the neighbouring states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

She accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of not taking steps to curb the practice despite the problem intensifying over the past five years.

The BJP, in turn, has blamed Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for not being able to put a check to pollution in the city.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s residents continue to gasp for air.

“Woke up with a itchy, painful throat.. even two air purifiers are not making the AQI breathable indoors. Children are breathing in gas chamber,” one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Another user called for a “peaceful mass protest on the streets”. “The air we breathe is lethally toxic,” he wrote.

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French singer-songwriter Charles Dumont, who composed Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, has died at the age of 95.

Dumont was 27 years old when he wrote the song in 1956. But it was not until 1960 that he was persuaded to approach the star, who enthusiastically accepted it.

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (I regret nothing) – which expresses a wish to make peace with the past and start anew – became one of Piaf’s signature songs.

It topped the charts in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. The song is also well known throughout the English-speaking world – it was notably quoted in 1993 by Britain’s then-Chancellor Norman Lamont.

When asked at a news conference whether he regretted optimistic statements he had made as the economy was struggling, Lamont replied: “Je ne regrette rien”, sparking laughter among reporters but controversy later.

In a 2018 interview, Dumont told AFP news agency that he initially did not dare approach Piaf with the song because she “had already fired me three times and I didn’t want to see her again”.

But the song’s lyricist, Michel Vaucaire, convinced him to try four years later. Dumont added that Piaf showed extreme reluctance when the pair turned up at her flat, but she allowed Dumont to play the song on her piano.

“From then on we were inseparable,” he said. Dumont would eventually compose more than 30 songs for Piaf before her death in 1963.

Edith Piaf became an international star after spending most of her early life on the streets of Paris.

She is famous for singing ballads – including La Vie en Rose, Milord and La Foule.

Dumont also wrote for stars such as Jacques Brel, Juliette Gréco and Barbra Streisand. He went on to have a successful solo career from the 1970s.

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.

Thorpe is among those who have advocated for a treaty between Australia’s government and its first inhabitants.

Unlike New Zealand and other former British colonies, a treaty with Indigenous peoples in Australia was never established. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people emphasise that they never ceded their sovereignty or land to the Crown.

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.

India’s north-eastern state of Manipur is on high alert after authorities recovered the bodies of six women and children, who reportedly belonged to the majority Meitei community.

Meitei groups have alleged that they were kidnapped and murdered by armed groups of the minority Kuki group. The police, however, have not confirmed this.

The news sparked a fresh wave of violent protests, prompting authorities to snap internet services in some parts of the state over the weekend.

The two ethnic groups have been locked in a deadly ethnic conflict since last May, which has killed 200 people and displaced thousands.

On Saturday, protesters ransacked and torched the houses and offices of at least a dozen lawmakers, mostly from the state’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Police have arrested 23 people in connection with the violence and authorities have imposed an indefinite curfew and suspended internet services in Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley and Bishnupur district.

At least 20 people – both Kukis and Meities – have died in flare-ups that have erupted between the two ethnic groups this month.

Tensions began on 7 November, after members of an armed group allegedly raped a woman, who reportedly belonged to the Kuki community, and set her on fire in the state’s Jiribam district.

Four days later, a police station and a relief camp housing Meitei refugees in the area was attacked. The majority community blamed Kuki groups for the assault.

Police on the same day shot dead 10 armed men in what they said was a shoot-out, also known as an “encounter” in India.

Police alleged that the men were suspected Kuki militants, but Kuki organisations deny this and claim that the individuals were “village volunteers” – or armed civilians protecting the community.

Following the attack on the relief camp, six inhabitants – a grandmother, her two daughters and three grandchildren – went missing. Meitei groups alleged that they were abducted by armed Kuki men.

On Friday, police reportedly recovered six bodies – and though they have not confirmed their identities, rumours spread that they were the same Meitei family, setting off a wave of violent protests.

Protesters and civil society groups are demanding that authorities put an end to the atrocities and take strong action against the armed groups operating in the state.

In the wake of the unrest, the federal government has rushed top security officials to Manipur. Home Minister Amit Shah chaired a high-level security meeting on the situation on Sunday, but the state remains on edge.

Clashes between the Kukis and Meiteis erupted in May last year – they were sparked by Kuki protests against demands from Meiteis to be given official tribal status, which would make them eligible for affirmative action and other benefits.

Since then, the state has witnessed months of violence and unrest, with only sporadic moments of calm.

Today, Manipur is divided into two camps, with Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal Valley and Kukis living in the surrounding hill areas. Borders and buffer zones guarded by security forces separate the two regions.

An Australian mining company, Resolute Mining, says it will pay Mali’s military government $160m (£126m) to settle a tax dispute, after the company’s British boss and two other staff were unexpectedly detained 10 days ago.

Reports say Terry Holohan and his colleagues were arrested while travelling to the capital city, Bamako, for what they were expecting to be routine negotiations.

Resolute, which owns a gold mine in Mali, said on Sunday it would pay $80m immediately from existing cash reserves, and the rest in the coming months.

Mali is one of Africa’s top gold producers.

It is is seeking to extract a greater share of income from foreign operators in the sector.

It is not yet clear when the three Resolute employees will be released.

Part of the conditions for their release were that they must sign the memorandum of understanding and complete the initial payment, according to a report by the French broadcaster RFI.

Mali’s military rulers detained the three Resolute executives on charges of forgery and damaging public property, seen as an attempt to blackmail the Australian company amid an ongoing state crackdown on foreign – mostly Western – mining companies in the West African country.

Since taking power in a coup in 2021, Mali’s junta has sought to reconfigure its political and trade relationships with international partners.

Last year, President Col Assimi Goïta signed into law a new mining code increasing the maximum stake for state and local investors from 20% to 35%.

• Junta chiefs ‘turn their backs’ on West Africa bloc
• Putin offers African countries Russia’s ‘total support’
• President gets sweeping powers in new Mali constitution
• A quick guide to Mali

Torrential rain caused by Tropical Storm Sara has cut off more than 1,700 communities in Honduras.

The slow-moving storm caused widespread flooding across the Central American nation.

So far, Honduran officials have confirmed only one death but said that more than 110,000 people had been affected by the storm.

Forecasters say Sara is likely to further weaken on Monday as it moves over the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Sara formed in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday.

The tropical storm was extremely slow moving, dumping huge amounts of rain on northern Honduras for four days running before moving north to Belize and Mexico.

Some areas saw 500mm (19.7 inches) of rain fall causing rivers to swell.

Nine bridges were destroyed by fast flowing waters and another 19 damaged, Honduran emergency services said.

Several highways also became impassable following landslides.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro had warned citizens living near rivers as early as Thursday to take shelter elsewhere and thousands heeded her call.

More than 2,500 homes were damaged and more than 200 destroyed, officials said.

Sara is the 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season and the third this month.

Less than two weeks ago, Hurricane Rafael caused a nationwide blackout when it hit Cuba.

Meteorologists say the storms have been fuelled by high sea surface temperatures.

While hurricanes and tropical storms occur naturally, human-caused climate change is supercharging them and exacerbating the risk of major damage,” Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has warned.

President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the US has sparked a furious response in Russia.

“Departing US president Joe Biden… has taken one of the most provocative, uncalculated decisions of his administration, which risks catastrophic consequences,” declared the website of the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday morning.

Russian MP Leonid Slutsky, head of the pro-Kremlin Liberal-Democratic Party, predicted that the decision would “inevitably lead to a serious escalation, threatening serious consequences”.

Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov called it “an unprecedented step towards World War Three”.

Anger, yes. But no real surprise.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, the pro-Kremlin tabloid, called it “a predictable escalation”.

What really counts, though, is what Vladimir Putin calls it and how the Kremlin leader responds.

So far he’s stayed silent.

But on Monday President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that “if such a decision has been taken it means a whole new spiral of tension and a whole new situation with regard to US involvement in this conflict”.

Mr Peskov accused the Biden administration of “adding fuel to the fire and continuing to stoke tension around this conflict”.

• Follow live: Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US missiles

Western leaders would argue that it’s Russia that is ‘adding the fuel’ by recently deploying North Korean troops to the war zone to fight alongside Russian forces and by continuing to attack Ukraine.

President Putin himself may have yet to comment. But Russia’s president has said plenty before.

In recent months, the Kremlin has made its message to the West crystal clear: do not do this, do not remove restrictions on the use of your long-range weapons, do not allow Kyiv to strike deep into Russian territory with these missiles.

In September President Putin warned that if this were allowed to happen, Moscow would view it as the “direct participation” of Nato countries in the Ukraine war.

“This would mean that Nato countries… are fighting with Russia,” he continued.

The following month, the Kremlin leader announced imminent changes to the Russian nuclear doctrine, the document setting out the preconditions under which Moscow might decide to use a nuclear weapon.

This was widely interpreted as another less-than-subtle hint to America and Europe not to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range missiles.

Guessing Vladimir Putin’s next moves is never easy.

But he has dropped hints.

Back in June, at a meeting with the heads of international news agencies, Putin was asked: how would Russia react if Ukraine was given the opportunity to hit targets on Russian territory with weapons supplied by Europe?

“First, we will, of course, improve our air defence systems. We will be destroying their missiles,” President Putin replied.

“Second, we believe that if someone is thinking it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to strike our territory and create problems for us, why can’t we supply our weapons of the same class to those regions around the world where they will target sensitive facilities of the countries that are doing this to Russia?”

In other words, arming Western adversaries to strike Western targets abroad is something Moscow has been considering.

In my recent interview with Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, Putin’s close ally seemed to confirm the Kremlin has been thinking along these lines.

Mr Lukashenko told me he had discussed the subject at a recent meeting with Western officials.

“I warned them. ‘Guys, be careful with those long-range missiles,'” Mr Lukashenko told me.

“The Houthi [rebels] might come to Putin and ask for coastal weapons systems that can carry out terrifying strikes on ships.

“And if he gets his revenge on you for supplying long-range weapons to [President] Zelensky by supplying the Houthis with the Bastion missile system? What happens if an aircraft carrier is hit? A British or American one. What then?”

• How long-range missiles striking Russia could affect Ukraine war

But some of the media reaction in Russia appeared designed to play things down.

“The Russian armed forces had already [previously] intercepted ATACMS missiles during attacks on the Crimean shore,” a military expert told the Izvestia newspaper, which went on to suggest that President-elect Trump might “revise” the decision.

This is, to put it mildly, an unusual situation.

In two months’ time, President Biden will be out of office and Donald Trump will be in the White House.

The Kremlin knows that President-elect Trump has been far more sceptical than President Biden about military assistance for Ukraine.

Will that be a factor in Vladimir Putin’s calculations as he formulates Russia’s response?

President Zelensky has been pushing for this moment for months. When it finally came, he was a little coy.

Strikes are not made with words, he said in his nightly address: “Such things are not announced, missiles speak for themselves”.

President Biden has given Ukraine permission to use long range missiles supplied by Washington to strike deep inside Russia.

It is thought that initially Ukraine’s use of the Army Tactical Missile System – known by its acronym ATACMS – will be confined to defending Ukrainian troops still holding on to a small chunk of Russian territory in the Kursk region.

• Follow live updates on this story

A major Russian counter offensive is expected there within days, assisted by as many as 10,000 troops from North Korea.

Use of the missiles, capable of targeting military facilities deep inside Russia, could complicate Russia’s efforts, enabling Ukraine to hold onto this valuable bargaining chip ahead of any possible peace talks next year.

Ukrainian military experts have welcomed Washington’s decision – saying it will not necessarily change the course of the war, but will restore a little balance.

This comes at a time when Russian forces are creeping forward all along the eastern front and Ukraine feels it has been on the back foot for several months.

“Ukrainians are very much inspired with the news,” said Maj Volodymyr Omelyan from the Brigade of Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Putin has previously warned that such a move from the US would amount to direct participation of Nato countries in the war – but Maj Omelyan said this was simply “bluffing”.

“We shall not pay any attention,” he told the BBC World Service, since Russia had issued similar warnings about “many other systems and weapons we received”.

“Nothing happened. Nothing will happen this time as well.”

The former government minister added that Ukraine needed similar permission for the use of Storm Shadow missiles, manufactured by Britain and France.

Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun said Ukrainians were “happy this decision has been taken” and that it would make a “huge difference”.

But she said there was discontent “that it took Biden so long to make a decision that could have saved lives” had it been taken earlier.

“I wish it [had] been made before Putin had destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” she said.

• Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with missiles

What we do not know are the specifics of Washington’s decision. We do not know how many of the systems Ukraine has.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP for Odessa, stressed that Ukraine needed a sufficient quantity of missiles for Washington’s move to matter.

“It’s very important to have not just permission but missiles – to be capable… to make a difference to the situation.”

He added that it was a “pity” the decision “took almost 1,000 days”, adding that it was “better late than never”.

We do not know what the Americans are saying in terms of what Ukraine can and cannot do with the missiles. We will also have to see whether Ukraine is allowed to use the missiles more widely in the future

But another Ukrainian MP, Maria Ionova stressed that missiles were “not the silver bullet”.

She said the focus needed to be on a change in strategy.

“Because our enemies are united – and we should stand together as well.”

It is a significant move ahead of another long hard winter.

But Sunday’s Russian missile and drone attacks, which killed as many as 20 people, served as a stark reminder that Moscow is still intent on winning the war, on its terms.

Now that the US has given Ukraine the green light to use American-supplied long range missiles in Russia, what will the UK decide?

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing for permission from Washington to use the powerful US-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia.

UK defence officials for their part have been seeking US approval for Kyiv to use Storm Shadow missiles provided by Britain to hit military targets inside Russia.

But London has not been willing to go it alone and had been waiting for the White House to change its mind, which it did on Sunday.

The change of US policy paves the way for Ukraine to use Storm Shadow with fewer restrictions – something Ukraine has been requesting for months.

• Kremlin says Biden throwing ‘oil on fire’ by allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia
• Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with missiles
• How long-range missiles striking Russia could affect Ukraine war
• Missile news welcomed in Ukraine but ‘won’t win war’

Storm Shadow missiles, and their French equivalent called SCALP, have been sent in limited quantities – low hundreds not thousands – to Ukraine and so far have only been used against targets inside its borders.

Ukraine has already used them against Russian-occupied Crimea – for example hitting Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters at Sevastopol.

These missiles, which are launched from an aircraft, fly close to the speed of sound and carry highly explosive warheads making them an ideal weapon for penetrating Russian bunkers and ammunition stores.

Protracted discussions about firing Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia were raised during July’s Nato summit in Washington.

Starmer insisted the missiles were to be used for defensive purposes but said “it’s up to Ukraine to decide how to deploy it”.

In a message on X at the time Zelensky wrote he had “learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory”, adding that he and Starmer had the “opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision”.

But nothing actually happened after the summit.

Zelensky made it clear the use of long-range missiles are a key part of his “Victory Plan”.

He raised the issue again when he went to Downing Street to brief Starmer last month, in a meeting attended by the new Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.

There was no change in policy, but Rutte said there was no legal reason to prevent Ukraine from striking Russia if the countries who supplied the missiles consented.

UK Defence Secretary John Healey has worked hard to avoid to show any public disagreement with Washington. When recently asked about the matter in a joint press conference with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Healey said such discussions in public would only help Russia.

And he is keeping tight-lipped about the UK’s position now. On Monday he said he “won’t be drawn on details about long-range missiles” when asked about the use of UK weapons inside Russia.

Responding to a question from the DUP MP Sammy Wilson in the House of Commons, Healey said “it risks operational security and the only person that benefits from public debate is President Putin.”

He added he spoke to the US defence secretary on Sunday about Russian escalation over the weekend, and would be speaking to the Ukrainian defence minister later on Monday.

“I want this House to be in no doubt – the prime minister has been clear that we must double down and give Ukraine the support that it needs for as long as it needs. And we will continue to work in close co-ordination with the US in our support for Ukraine.”

The fear is that although Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats have turned out to be largely bluffs, allowing Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles could provoke a major escalation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned Putin had expressed such a move would put Nato “at war” with Russia – as such strikes would ultimately be carried out not by Ukraine but by the countries that give permission for such use of missiles.

Professor Justin Bronk from defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute told BBC News it is “very likely” that US President Joe Biden’s belated decision to allow long-range strikes with ATACMS ballistic missiles will also enable Storm Shadow to be used in at least the same way.

“US objections will presumably have been dropped for them,” he said.

“Russian threats are unlikely to be considered a significant deterrent at this stage, since Russia has threatened dire consequences – including allusions to nuclear attacks – repeatedly throughout the war at each stage when Western equipment has been supplied.”

But he said there is little reason to think that expanding the usable area for UK Storm Shadow “will make any difference” to Ukraine’s ability to hit back at Russia.

He added “most of the more critical targets such as fighter bombers on Russian air bases are likely beyond the range of these missiles in practical terms – and there will be a limited number of the missiles available after lengthy combat use of the system in the war to date.”

When rumours first emerged in October that North Korean troops were about to start supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, it wasn’t immediately clear what role they would be fulfilling.

Their lack of battlefield experience was given as a key reason why they might just be assigned to non-combat roles.

But after the US and Ukraine revealed North Korean troops have already engaged in combat with Ukrainian soldiers, their role in the fight is being re-evaluated.

Even the number being deployed – originally put at around 11,000 by the Pentagon – has been debated. According to Bloomberg, unnamed sources believe Pyongyang may actually deploy as many as 100,000 troops.

Accurate information is difficult to come by, however, as Moscow and Pyongyang have not responded directly to any of these reports.

So what do we know about the presence of North Korean troops in Russia?

In short, it is hard to say.

The secretive kingdom may have one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but – unlike Russia’s military – the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat operations.

Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), believes Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness”.

However, he says, they should not be presumed to be cannon fodder – adding such a characterisation is “Ukrainian bravado”.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang’s best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps – a unit trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassinations.

These soldiers are “trained to withstand a high degree of physical pain and psychological torture”, says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington.

“What they lack in combat they make up for with what they can tolerate physically and mentally,” he adds.

Mr Cancian agrees that “if these are special operations forces, they will be much better prepared than the average North Korean unit”.

“Further, the Russians appear to be giving them additional training, likely on the special circumstances of the war in Ukraine,” he adds.

This appears to be backed up by the appearance of videos on social media showing men believed to be North Koreans in Russian uniforms, at what appear to be military training facilities in Russia.

And as the war in Ukraine creeps towards its third year, these North Korean troops may be among “the best capable” among the troops available to Russia, says Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean army lieutenant-general.

Moscow has been recruiting at least 20,000 new soldiers a month to help bolster its war effort, with more than 1,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded on average daily, according to Nato and military officials in the West.

“[Russia] has been sending troops to the front without proper training. Compared to such recruits, North Koreans are trained and motivated. They are not combat-tested currently, but that soon will not be the case,” Lt-Gen (retd) Chun said.

Still, some experts believe the obvious language barrier and unfamiliarity with Russian systems would complicate any fighting roles, suggesting instead that Pyongyang’s troops would be tapped for their engineering and construction capabilities.

Given these disadvantages, what is in this deal for the two countries?

Observers say Moscow needs manpower, while Pyongyang needs money and technology.

“For North Korea, [such deployments are] a good way to earn money,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

South Korean intelligence puts this at $2,000 (£1,585) per soldier per month, with most of this money expected to end up in the state’s coffers.

Pyongyang could also gain access to Russian military technology, which Moscow would otherwise have been reluctant to transfer, Mr Lankov adds.

Moscow’s manpower problems have been widely reported, with the US estimating that some 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order – for the third time since the war started – to expand his army.

It has also pursued personnel strategies that “minimise domestic political impact”, such as offering bonuses to recruits who volunteer and enlisting foreigners with the promise of citizenship, says Mr Cancian from CSIS.

“With Russia reportedly suffering over 1,000 casualties on the battlefield, reducing its own losses could alleviate some pressure on the Putin regime,” agrees Lami Kim, a professor of Security Studies at the Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

These developments, coming at a time when tensions within the Korean peninsula have spiralled to their highest in years, are worrying Seoul.

In October, the North blew up sections of two roads that connected it to South Korea, days after accusing Seoul of flying drones into the North’s capital Pyongyang.

That came after the two countries engaged in a tit-for-tat balloon campaign, flying thousands of trash and propaganda balloons towards each other’s territories. The Koreas have also suspended a pact aimed at lowering military tensions between them, shortly after North Korea said that the South was now “enemy number one”.

So it makes sense that South Korea would be uneasy about the North acquiring new military prowess amid these tensions. After all, troops in South Korea have also not fought in another major conflict since the Korean War.

According to Mr Madden and Mr Cancian, it is thought the North Korean troops are being employed around the embattled Kursk border region, which Moscow has been trying to recapture from Ukraine.

The South fears that “its adversary could boast more hostile capabilities” as a result of the experience its soldiers would get on the battlefield, says Lt-Gen (retd) Chun.

While South Korea has long accused the North of supplying weapons to Russia, it says the current situation has gone beyond the transfer of military materials.

It has also expressed “grave concern” over a pact between Pyongyang and Moscow, which pledges that the two counties will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has reiterated – at least three times in the past two months – that the South would consider aiding Ukraine “for defensive purposes”. If this happens, it would mark a shift from the South’s longstanding policy of not supply weapons to countries engaged in active conflict.

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 another unexpected crisis.

“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.

During the summer, Denmark’s emergency management agency said it was emailing Danish adults details on the water, food and medicine they would need to get through a crisis for three days.

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?”

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 ever 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.”

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.”

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
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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 Investigations 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 were involved in a campaign launch in Edinburgh, which warns young people about the dangers of sextortion.

The Fearless campaign brings together Police Scotland, Crimestoppers and the Scottish government. It highlights the risks of sharing intimate images online and offers advice on what to do and where to go for help if someone is targeted by criminals.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson said it was “difficult but not impossible” to track offenders – and that it was important for people to report crimes to police to help with evidence gathering.

He added the force would target criminals no matter where they are in the world.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Thorpe is among those who have advocated for a treaty between Australia’s government and its first inhabitants.

Unlike New Zealand and other former British colonies, a treaty with Indigenous peoples in Australia was never established. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people emphasise that they never ceded their sovereignty or land to the Crown.

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.

Ed Sheeran says that Band Aid did not ask for permission to re-use his vocals on a new 40th anniversary version of Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Writing on Instagram, the star said he would have “respectfully” declined the request, citing a post by British-Ghanian rapper Fuse ODG that criticised foreign aid in Africa.

Sheeran sang alongside Coldplay, Sinead O’Connor, Sam Smith, One Direction and Rita Ora on Band Aid 30 in 2014. A new mix, released next week, blends his vocals with those of Sting from the original 1984 version of the charity song.

“My approval wasn’t sought on this new Band Aid 40 release,” Sheeran said. “Had I had the choice I would have respectfully declined the use of my vocals.”

He continued: “A decade on and my understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed, eloquently explained by @fuseodg.

“This is just my personal stance, I’m hoping it’s a forward-looking one. Love to all x.”

In his post, Fuse ODG said he had turned down the invitation to take part in Band Aid 30 alongside Sheeran, 10 years ago.

“I refused to participate in Band Aid because I recognised the harm initiatives like it inflict on Africa,” he wrote.

“While they may generate sympathy and donations, they perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism, and investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its dignity, pride and identity.”

The rapper said he believed that charity efforts like Band Aid “fuel pity rather than partnership”, and that he wanted to “reclaim the narrative” by empowering Africans “to tell their own stories, redefine their identity, and position Africa as a thriving hub for investment and tourism.”

The BBC has asked Band Aid for a response to Sheeran and Fuse ODG’s comments.

The latest version of Do They Know It’s Christmas? was announced last week.

It will combine different versions of the charity single that have been recorded over the years, featuring stars such as Boy George, Harry Styles, George Michael, Sam Smith, the Sugababes, Bono, Bananarama, Robbie Williams, Thom Yorke, Rita Ora, Dizzee Rascal and Paul McCartney.

The new “ultimate mix” will premiere on British radio stations on the morning of 25 November, the 40th anniversary of the original song being recorded.

The charity single was conceived as a way to tackle the famine that devastated Ethiopia in 1984.

Over the years, the song’s lyrics have been criticised for their patronising portrayal of Africa as a barren land that needed rescuing by Western intervention.

This “ignorant and colonial attitude“, wrote Indrajit Samarajiva in 2023, was “more about making white people feel good than helping anyone”.

Over the weekend, Sir Bob Geldof – who organised and co-wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas? with Midge Ure – defended the song in response to an article by New Zealand’s 1 News.

“This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive,” he wrote.

“In fact, just today Band Aid has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to help those running from the mass slaughter in Sudan and enough cash to feed a further 8,000 children in the same affected areas of Ethiopia as 1984.

“Those exhausted women who weren’t raped and killed and their panicked children and any male over 10 who survived the massacres and those 8,000 Tigrayan children will sleep safer, warmer and cared for tonight because of that miraculous little record.

“We wish that it were other but it isn’t. ‘Colonial tropes’, my arse.”

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 Welle 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.

Veteran Australian broadcaster and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones has been charged with sexually abusing seven men and a 17-year-old boy.

The 83-year-old was taken into custody at his Sydney apartment early on Monday morning, as detectives from the New South Wales (NSW) Police Child Abuse Squad searched the harbour-front property and seized electronic devices.

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.

He now faces 24 charges over alleged incidents between 2001 and 2019, including 11 counts of aggravated indecent assault.

All the charges, except two of common assault, are sex offences.

Police said some of the alleged victims knew the radio titan personally, and that at least one had been employed by him.

Others were allegedly assaulted the first time they met him, NSW Police’s Michael Fitzgerald told reporters.

“I wish to commend the victims and their bravery in coming forward. [They] have now got the ability to have a voice. This is what they’ve been asking for,” he said.

Commissioner Karen Webb earlier said police had conducted a “very complex”, “protracted” and “thorough” investigation, and expected other alleged victims may now come forward.

“There’s no such thing as a matter that’s too old to be investigated,” she said at a press conference.

“You will be listened to, and we will take your matter seriously.”

Mr Jones has been granted conditional bail, and will face court on 18 December.

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.

President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the US has sparked a furious response in Russia.

“Departing US president Joe Biden… has taken one of the most provocative, uncalculated decisions of his administration, which risks catastrophic consequences,” declared the website of the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday morning.

Russian MP Leonid Slutsky, head of the pro-Kremlin Liberal-Democratic Party, predicted that the decision would “inevitably lead to a serious escalation, threatening serious consequences”.

Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov called it “an unprecedented step towards World War Three”.

Anger, yes. But no real surprise.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, the pro-Kremlin tabloid, called it “a predictable escalation”.

What really counts, though, is what Vladimir Putin calls it and how the Kremlin leader responds.

So far he’s stayed silent.

But on Monday President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that “if such a decision has been taken it means a whole new spiral of tension and a whole new situation with regard to US involvement in this conflict”.

Mr Peskov accused the Biden administration of “adding fuel to the fire and continuing to stoke tension around this conflict”.

• Follow live: Biden allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US missiles

Western leaders would argue that it’s Russia that is ‘adding the fuel’ by recently deploying North Korean troops to the war zone to fight alongside Russian forces and by continuing to attack Ukraine.

President Putin himself may have yet to comment. But Russia’s president has said plenty before.

In recent months, the Kremlin has made its message to the West crystal clear: do not do this, do not remove restrictions on the use of your long-range weapons, do not allow Kyiv to strike deep into Russian territory with these missiles.

In September President Putin warned that if this were allowed to happen, Moscow would view it as the “direct participation” of Nato countries in the Ukraine war.

“This would mean that Nato countries… are fighting with Russia,” he continued.

The following month, the Kremlin leader announced imminent changes to the Russian nuclear doctrine, the document setting out the preconditions under which Moscow might decide to use a nuclear weapon.

This was widely interpreted as another less-than-subtle hint to America and Europe not to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range missiles.

Guessing Vladimir Putin’s next moves is never easy.

But he has dropped hints.

Back in June, at a meeting with the heads of international news agencies, Putin was asked: how would Russia react if Ukraine was given the opportunity to hit targets on Russian territory with weapons supplied by Europe?

“First, we will, of course, improve our air defence systems. We will be destroying their missiles,” President Putin replied.

“Second, we believe that if someone is thinking it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to strike our territory and create problems for us, why can’t we supply our weapons of the same class to those regions around the world where they will target sensitive facilities of the countries that are doing this to Russia?”

In other words, arming Western adversaries to strike Western targets abroad is something Moscow has been considering.

In my recent interview with Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, Putin’s close ally seemed to confirm the Kremlin has been thinking along these lines.

Mr Lukashenko told me he had discussed the subject at a recent meeting with Western officials.

“I warned them. ‘Guys, be careful with those long-range missiles,'” Mr Lukashenko told me.

“The Houthi [rebels] might come to Putin and ask for coastal weapons systems that can carry out terrifying strikes on ships.

“And if he gets his revenge on you for supplying long-range weapons to [President] Zelensky by supplying the Houthis with the Bastion missile system? What happens if an aircraft carrier is hit? A British or American one. What then?”

• How long-range missiles striking Russia could affect Ukraine war

But some of the media reaction in Russia appeared designed to play things down.

“The Russian armed forces had already [previously] intercepted ATACMS missiles during attacks on the Crimean shore,” a military expert told the Izvestia newspaper, which went on to suggest that President-elect Trump might “revise” the decision.

This is, to put it mildly, an unusual situation.

In two months’ time, President Biden will be out of office and Donald Trump will be in the White House.

The Kremlin knows that President-elect Trump has been far more sceptical than President Biden about military assistance for Ukraine.

Will that be a factor in Vladimir Putin’s calculations as he formulates Russia’s response?

US officials say President Biden has given the green light for Ukraine to use long range missiles supplied by Washington to strike deep inside Russia.

Washington had previously refused to allow such strikes with US-made ATACMS missiles 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, whose election has raised fears over the future of US support for Kyiv.

• Follow live updates on this story

Ukraine has been using ATACMS on Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory for more than a year.

American munitions and hardware are already being used inside Russia – in the Kursk border region, according to local reports.

But the US has never allowed Kyiv to use the ATACMS inside Russia – until now.

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 arrival of North Korean troops to support Russia in the Kursk region, where Ukraine has occupied territory since August.

Also, Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House is raising fears over the future of US support for Ukraine, and President Biden is apparently keen to do all he can to help in the little time he has left in office.

Strengthening Ukraine’s hand militarily – so the thinking goes – could grant Ukraine leverage in any peace talks that may lie ahead.

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

The Army Tactical Missile System is a surface-to-surface ballistic missile capable of hitting targets at up to 300km (186 miles) and it is their range that makes them particularly important for Ukraine.

Built by the defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin, they’re fired from either the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) or the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Each missile costs around $1.5m (£1.2m).

ATACMS (pronounced “attack-‘ems”) are fuelled by solid rocket propellant and follow a ballistic path into the atmosphere before coming back down at a high speed and high angle, making them difficult to intercept.

They can be configured to carry two different types of warhead. The first is a cluster fitted with hundreds of bomblets designed to destroy lighter-armoured units over a wide area. These might include parked aircraft, air defences and concentrations of troops. Cluster warheads, while useful, risk leaving behind unexploded bomblets which pose a risk long after the fighting has stopped.

The second type is a single warhead, a 225kg high explosive variant of which is designed to destroy hardened facilities and larger structures.

ATACMS have been around for decades. They were first used in the Gulf War of 1991.

The US Army is replacing it with the next-generation Precision Strike Missile, a faster, slimmer weapon that can go out to 500km. There is no suggestion Ukraine will be getting these.

• Which weapons are countries giving Ukraine?

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

Ukrainian and US officials expect a counter-offensive by Russian and North Korean troops to regain territory in Kursk.

Ukraine may use ATACMS to defend against the assault, targeting Russian positions including military bases, infrastructure and ammunition storage.

The supply of the missiles 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. However, moving equipment further back from the front lines may make life difficult for Russian troops as supply lines are stretched and air support takes longer to arrive.

And 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: potentially 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 has 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 in September. “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 move comes just two months before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

He has already said he intends to bring the war in Ukraine to a swift end – without specifying how he plans to do it – and he could cancel the use of the missiles once he takes office.

President-elect Trump has not yet said whether he would continue the policy, but some of his closest allies have already criticised it.

Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son, 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.”

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.

The man picked to be America’s next top law enforcement officer, Matt Gaetz, is at the centre of a number of allegations which could prevent him from getting the job. Here’s all you need to know about them.

The Florida lawmaker is the subject of a long-running investigation by a congressional ethics panel into a number of claims involving drugs, bribes and sex.

A woman who attended a 2017 party with him has testified to the House committee that she saw the then-congressman having sex with a minor, her lawyer has said. He has denied any wrongdoing and called the investigation into him a “smear campaign”.

The Justice Department – which Gaetz would lead in the post – also investigated the claim but ultimately did not file any criminal charges against him.

When he learned of his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump, he resigned from Congress, putting him out of reach of the investigation by the ethics panel.

Pressure is building for it to publish its findings and the level of cross-party concern risks derailing his nomination, which requires Senate approval.

Here are the allegations broken down.

Gaetz, 42, represented Florida’s first congressional district in the US House of Representatives from 2017 until his resignation on Thursday.

A fierce Trump defender, he has long upset Democrats but also many Republicans with his bombastic public conduct and alleged hard-partying lifestyle.

On and off since 2021, the secretive House Ethics Committee has investigated Gaetz over various allegations, including a claim that he had sex with an underage girl, used illicit drugs, accepted bribes, misused campaign funds and shared inappropriate images on the House floor.

The Floridian has repeatedly and vehemently denied wrongdoing, casting the probe as an attempt to smear his name by powerful enemies he has made in politics.

He has also raised in his defence the fact that the Justice Department ended a separate three-year federal sex-trafficking investigation last year by deciding not to bring charges against him.

“Lies were Weaponized to try to destroy me,” Gaetz posted on X on Friday.

“These lies resulted in prosecution, conviction, and prison. For the liars, not me.”

Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’s one-time friend, was the lone person charged in the Justice Department sex trafficking’s investigation. He cooperated with investigators and reportedly told prosecutors information about multiple others, including Gaetz.

Greenberg is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after agreeing to plead guilty to multiple federal charges, including under-age sex trafficking, wire fraud, stalking, identity theft, producing a fake ID card, and conspiring to defraud the US government.

As part of his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Greenberg – a local tax collector in the Orlando, Florida area – admitted he had repeatedly paid young women to attend parties with him and his friends, where they used drugs and had sex.

At least one of the girls he paid for sex was 17 years old at the time – and Greenberg alleged that Gaetz had also had sex with her – a claim federal authorities investigated but were unable to verify.

No charges were filed against Gaetz, who has fiercely denied these allegations, and the probe was later closed.

But now, the explosive claim sits at the core of the House ethics probe and is endangering his nomination.

The committee inquiry had been paused to allow the Justice Department to do its work. Gaetz claimed it was only revived because then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy considered him a nagging thorn in the side of Republican leadership.

Last year, Gaetz spearheaded an unprecedented internal revolt to oust McCarthy from the speakership – the top job in the US House of Representatives. The California Republican, who resigned from Congress less than three months later, has claimed Gaetz only wanted him removed because of the ethics investigation.

Gaetz’s nomination as Attorney General this past Thursday was followed hours later with his resignation from the House.

His resignation halted the release – which was reportedly planned just days later – of the ethics probe’s findings. His departure from Congress means he is no longer under congressional jurisdiction.

An attorney who represents the then-minor has called for the report’s release, saying that she had testified to the committee that she had sex with Gaetz while “she was a high school student, and there were witnesses”.

Sitting House Speaker Mike Johnson argued against the report’s release in a Sunday appearance on Fox News, saying it could “open Pandora’s box” if the panel started issuing reports into those who are not members of the body.

“We don’t issue investigations and ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress,” he said. “I think this would be a breach of protocol that could be dangerous for us going forward in the future.”

He also told reporters that he would “strongly request” the report isn’t made public because the rules outline that “a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the ethics committee”.

Members of the committee planned to meet behind closed doors on Friday and hold a vote on whether to release the report.

But the meeting never happened, with Chairman Michael Guest saying it was postponed and would be re-scheduled. Guest has previously indicated he is inclined to “maintain [the] confidentiality” of the panel’s work.

Public pressure is, however, mounting and even some Senate Republicans, who will be tasked with vetting his nomination and voting on whether to confirm him to the attorney general post, have indicated they would like to see the report.

Also on Friday, Joel Leppard – an attorney who represents two women who have testified in the ethics probe – said one of his clients said she had witnessed Gaetz having sex with the then-17-year-old.

“What if sworn testimony detailed conduct that would disqualify anyone from serving as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer?” he said in a statement.

“Democracy demands transparency. Release the Gaetz Ethics report.”

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has learned that the committee has heard from at least four women who say they were paid to attend parties with drugs and sex where Gaetz was allegedly present, and the panel has seen evidence of transactions on the Venmo mobile app between Gaetz and the women.

Many in Washington expect that, even if the report is not formally released, it may yet be leaked to the press.

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When rumours first emerged in October that North Korean troops were about to start supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, it wasn’t immediately clear what role they would be fulfilling.

Their lack of battlefield experience was given as a key reason why they might just be assigned to non-combat roles.

But after the US and Ukraine revealed North Korean troops have already engaged in combat with Ukrainian soldiers, their role in the fight is being re-evaluated.

Even the number being deployed – originally put at around 11,000 by the Pentagon – has been debated. According to Bloomberg, unnamed sources believe Pyongyang may actually deploy as many as 100,000 troops.

Accurate information is difficult to come by, however, as Moscow and Pyongyang have not responded directly to any of these reports.

So what do we know about the presence of North Korean troops in Russia?

In short, it is hard to say.

The secretive kingdom may have one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but – unlike Russia’s military – the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat operations.

Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), believes Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness”.

However, he says, they should not be presumed to be cannon fodder – adding such a characterisation is “Ukrainian bravado”.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang’s best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps – a unit trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassinations.

These soldiers are “trained to withstand a high degree of physical pain and psychological torture”, says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington.

“What they lack in combat they make up for with what they can tolerate physically and mentally,” he adds.

Mr Cancian agrees that “if these are special operations forces, they will be much better prepared than the average North Korean unit”.

“Further, the Russians appear to be giving them additional training, likely on the special circumstances of the war in Ukraine,” he adds.

This appears to be backed up by the appearance of videos on social media showing men believed to be North Koreans in Russian uniforms, at what appear to be military training facilities in Russia.

And as the war in Ukraine creeps towards its third year, these North Korean troops may be among “the best capable” among the troops available to Russia, says Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean army lieutenant-general.

Moscow has been recruiting at least 20,000 new soldiers a month to help bolster its war effort, with more than 1,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded on average daily, according to Nato and military officials in the West.

“[Russia] has been sending troops to the front without proper training. Compared to such recruits, North Koreans are trained and motivated. They are not combat-tested currently, but that soon will not be the case,” Lt-Gen (retd) Chun said.

Still, some experts believe the obvious language barrier and unfamiliarity with Russian systems would complicate any fighting roles, suggesting instead that Pyongyang’s troops would be tapped for their engineering and construction capabilities.

Given these disadvantages, what is in this deal for the two countries?

Observers say Moscow needs manpower, while Pyongyang needs money and technology.

“For North Korea, [such deployments are] a good way to earn money,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

South Korean intelligence puts this at $2,000 (£1,585) per soldier per month, with most of this money expected to end up in the state’s coffers.

Pyongyang could also gain access to Russian military technology, which Moscow would otherwise have been reluctant to transfer, Mr Lankov adds.

Moscow’s manpower problems have been widely reported, with the US estimating that some 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order – for the third time since the war started – to expand his army.

It has also pursued personnel strategies that “minimise domestic political impact”, such as offering bonuses to recruits who volunteer and enlisting foreigners with the promise of citizenship, says Mr Cancian from CSIS.

“With Russia reportedly suffering over 1,000 casualties on the battlefield, reducing its own losses could alleviate some pressure on the Putin regime,” agrees Lami Kim, a professor of Security Studies at the Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

These developments, coming at a time when tensions within the Korean peninsula have spiralled to their highest in years, are worrying Seoul.

In October, the North blew up sections of two roads that connected it to South Korea, days after accusing Seoul of flying drones into the North’s capital Pyongyang.

That came after the two countries engaged in a tit-for-tat balloon campaign, flying thousands of trash and propaganda balloons towards each other’s territories. The Koreas have also suspended a pact aimed at lowering military tensions between them, shortly after North Korea said that the South was now “enemy number one”.

So it makes sense that South Korea would be uneasy about the North acquiring new military prowess amid these tensions. After all, troops in South Korea have also not fought in another major conflict since the Korean War.

According to Mr Madden and Mr Cancian, it is thought the North Korean troops are being employed around the embattled Kursk border region, which Moscow has been trying to recapture from Ukraine.

The South fears that “its adversary could boast more hostile capabilities” as a result of the experience its soldiers would get on the battlefield, says Lt-Gen (retd) Chun.

While South Korea has long accused the North of supplying weapons to Russia, it says the current situation has gone beyond the transfer of military materials.

It has also expressed “grave concern” over a pact between Pyongyang and Moscow, which pledges that the two counties will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has reiterated – at least three times in the past two months – that the South would consider aiding Ukraine “for defensive purposes”. If this happens, it would mark a shift from the South’s longstanding policy of not supply weapons to countries engaged in active conflict.

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 Welle 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.

Air pollution in India’s capital Delhi has soared to extremely severe levels, choking residents and engulfing the city in thick smog.

Monitors recorded pollution levels of 1,500 on the Air Quality Index (AQI) at 15:00 IST (09:30 BST), according to tech company IQAir – 15 times the level the Word Health Organization (WHO) considers satisfactory for breathing.

The toxic air has disrupted flight services, and had already prompted authorities to shut schools and ban construction work in the city.

It comes just weeks after Lahore, in neighbouring Pakistan, also recorded pollution levels above 1,000.

And experts warn that the situation could get worse in Delhi in the coming days, saying more severe measures may be needed to combat the city’s pollution problem.

According to the WHO, air with AQI values above 300 are considered to be hazardous for health.

India’s pollution control authority has classified the air in Delhi as “severe plus”, after the city passed 450 according to its measurements on Monday morning.

As well as shutting schools and banning construction work, the city has also banned the entry of non-essential trucks into Delhi and has asked all offices to ask 50% of their staff to work from home.

Last week, the government banned all activities that involve the use of coal and firewood, as well as diesel generator use for non-emergency services.

Every year, Delhi, India’s northern states and parts of Pakistan battle hazardous air during the winter months of October to January due to plummeting temperatures, smoke, dust, low wind speed, vehicular emissions and crop stubble burning.

And every year, the government imposes pollution control measures during these months.

Yet, Delhi’s pollution problem hasn’t gone away.

On Monday, Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi said that all of northern India was experiencing a “medical emergency” due to stubble burning continuing unchecked across the country, particularly in the neighbouring states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

She accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of not taking steps to curb the practice despite the problem intensifying over the past five years.

The BJP, in turn, has blamed Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for not being able to put a check to pollution in the city.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s residents continue to gasp for air.

“Woke up with a itchy, painful throat.. even two air purifiers are not making the AQI breathable indoors. Children are breathing in gas chamber,” one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Another user called for a “peaceful mass protest on the streets”. “The air we breathe is lethally toxic,” he wrote.

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The ballet world is mourning the death of Vladimir Shklyarov, one of its leading male dancers.

Shklyarov, a principal with the prestigious Mariinsky Theatre, was an “extraordinary artist” who inspired fans worldwide, one tribute said.

His death, announced by the St Petersburg company on Saturday, is being investigated by federal authorities, according to Russian media reports.

Mariinsky representatives told media he had fallen from the fifth floor of a St Petersburg building while on painkillers.

“This is a huge loss not only for the theatre’s staff but for all of contemporary ballet,” the company said in a statement on Saturday.

“Our condolences to the artist’s family, loved ones, friends and all the numerous admirers of his work and talent.”

Shklyarov was married to fellow company dancer Maria Shklyarov, with whom he had two children.

Born in Leningrad, he studied at the famed Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, graduating in 2003.

He joined the Mariinsky Theatre the same year, becoming a principal in 2011.

Over 20 years with the company, he danced leads across several productions, including Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.

He performed at prestigious venues around the world, including the Royal Opera House in London and Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In 2014 and 2015, he featured as a guest artist at the American Ballet Theatre. The company issued a statement on Sunday mourning his “tragic loss.”

“We mourn the tragic loss of Vladimir Shklyarov, an extraordinary artist whose grace and passion inspired audiences worldwide.

“Your light will continue to shine through the beauty you brought to this world,” the company wrote on Instagram.

Shklyarov received several accolades during his lifetime, including the Léonide Massine International Prize in 2008. He was also appointed an Honoured Artist of Russia in 2020.

“He forever inscribed his name in the history of world ballet,” the Mariinsky Theatre said.

Sir Keir Starmer has met President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, and emphasised the importance of a “strong UK-China relationship” for both countries.

The meeting was the first time a UK prime minister has met the Chinese president in person since 2018, following a recent souring in relations.

Sir Keir raised the case of the detained Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, Jimmy Lai, saying he was concerned about reports of a “deterioration” in his health.

The PM also signalled a desire for greater business co-operation, particularly on “areas of mutual cooperation” such as international stability, climate change and economic growth.

Sir Keir met President Xi on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and, speaking at the start of the meeting, said: “We want our relations to be consistent, durable, respectful, as we have agreed, avoid surprises where possible.”

He added: “The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.”

Speaking through a translator, Xi told Sir Keir that the two countries should commit to mutual respect and openness, saying: “China and the UK have broad space for co-operation across various domains, including trade, investment, clean energy, financial services, healthcare and improving our peoples’ well-being.”

A read-out of the closed door meeting said the PM set out the leaders’ shared responsibility to work together in pursuit of global stability, economic co-operation and trade, and efforts to move away from fossil fuels to renewables.

Climate change was a focus for the PM, who highlighted that both countries “have an important role to play in support of the global clean power transition”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the PM wants China’s support on global efforts, particularly in light of President-elect Trump’s expected roll back of green policies.

However, Sir Keir also stressed his government’s approach would “always be rooted in the national interests of the UK, but that we would be a predictable and pragmatic partner” to China.

With China’s military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine having prompted criticism from the UK and other Western countries, the PM also said he wanted to “engage honestly and frankly” on areas of disagreement, including on Hong Kong, human rights and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Their first meeting follows an initial phone conversation in August after Labour’s election victory and Sir Keir has now proposed a full bilateral meeting in Beijing or London.

The pair also agreed Chancellor Rachel Reeves should visit Beijing next year to discuss economic and financial cooperation with her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Before the meeting in Brazil, the prime minister said it was important to engage with economies like China – and Foreign Secretary David Lammy held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, as well as Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, in Beijing last month.

The last British prime minister to meet President Xi was Theresa May, who hailed a “golden era” for UK-China relations during her 2018 visit to the country.

However, since then there have been tensions over issues including China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group in Xinjiang and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Last year, then-Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said China was “the biggest state-based threat to our economic security”.

But like the current government, he also said it was necessary to engage with China on issues like climate change and the global economy.

Speaking to reporters on his way to the summit in Rio de Janeiro, Sir Keir also said “shoring up support for Ukraine” was top of his agenda.

Before the meeting, Downing Street said the prime minister will urge other G20 nations to step up their support for Ukraine or face “unfathomable consequences” if Russia is allowed to be victorious.

The summit follows large-scale missile and drone attacks by Russia across Ukraine over the weekend, and will take place as the conflict approaches its 1,000th day.

And it comes amid reports that the US has authorised the use of long-range missiles it supplies to Ukraine to strike Russia.

The weapons have so far only been used by Kyiv on Russian-occupied targets within its own territory.

The UK has also supplied Ukraine with its Storm Shadow missiles and defence officials and ministers have for months been making the case for Kyiv to be permitted to use them to hit targets inside Russia. But they were not willing to act alone – and had been waiting for the White House to change its mind.

Downing Street would not be drawn on whether the UK would follow the US, but did not rule out allowing Kyiv to use British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

Sir Keir is holding talks with other G20 leaders, representing 19 of the world’s largest economies and the African Union and the European Union.

The summit is overshadowed by the absence of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has called for allies to take a more aggressive approach towards China and may trigger a global trade war if he imposes a promised 60% tariff on Chinese goods entering the US.

This summit will provide world leaders a first chance to compare notes and prepare for Trump’s upcoming return to the White House.

Downing Street said the prime minister would also be focusing on building partnerships that increase economic growth and security during the summit, accelerating the climate transition and use of clean power, and supporting the economic development of developing countries.

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Organic and baby carrots sold at grocery stores across the US have been recalled after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person.

So far, 15 people are in hospital and 39 cases have been reported across 18 states, the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The recall covers bagged carrots sold by Grimmway Farms to big supermarket names including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods’s 365, Target’s Good & Gather, Walmart’s Marketside, Wegmans and others.

Officials say that impacted products are likely no longer in store but may still be in homes, and should be thrown away or returned to stores for a refund if so.

Most of the infected people live in New York, Minnesota and Washington, followed by California and Oregon, according to the AP news agency.

The CDC said the recalled organic whole carrots do not have a best-if-used-by date printed on the bag but were available to buy from 14 August to 23 October. Organic baby carrots with best-if-used-by dates from 11 September to 12 November are also recalled.

As well as getting rid of any recalled products, the CDC added that people should clean and sanitise any surface they may have touched.

Symptoms of O121 E. coli include severe stomach cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting, and usually start three to four days after swallowing the bacteria.

Most people recover without treatment, but some may develop serious kidney problems and need to be admitted to hospital, the CDC added.

The E. coli cases linked to carrots comes after another high-profile outbreak in the US, related to slivered onions on some McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers. It caused 104 people to become ill.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously said that one person died in October and 34 people had been admitted to hospital related to that outbreak.

Nearly three years after an Indian family of four froze to death in Canada during an ill-fated attempt to enter the US, two men are facing trial, accused of trying to help smuggle them across the border.

It was a backpack with child’s clothing and toys that first worried US Border Patrol agents.

That winter morning in January 2022, after a fierce blizzard, authorities had arrested a man driving a van near the US-Canada border, suspecting him of smuggling migrants.

Along with the driver, border guards picked up seven Indian nationals. One was carrying the backpack, but there were no children.

A family with two children had been with the other migrants as they made their way across the border at night, border agents were told, but they had become separated.

A search was launched and Canadian police found the bodies of Vaishaliben Patel, her husband Jagdish and their two young children, 11-year-old Vihangi and three-year-old Dharmik, in a Manitoba field just 12m (39ft) from the US border.

It is believed that the family – who had travelled on visitor visas from their home village in western India to Toronto, Canada – were trying to cross into the US when they were caught in the blinding blizzard with a bone-chilling cold that hovered below -35C (-31F).

• The family that froze to death a world away from home

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel (who is not related to the deceased family) and Steve Anthony Shand are accused of helping them make the fatal journey.

They each face charges of human trafficking, criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the US state of Minnesota, with their trial set to begin on Monday with jury selection. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Court documents filed in the case reveal an alleged complex, global web behind human smuggling operations that are designed to get foreign nationals into North America.

In this alleged case, it began with thousands of dollars in payments to illegal immigration agents in India, who then connected those eager to move abroad with a network of smugglers based in the US and Canada.

Since the Patel tragedy, at least two more families have died trying to unlawfully cross the US-Canada border.

Immigration experts fear clandestine smuggling networks will be used more by undocumented migrants in the coming years, in light of Donald Trump’s incoming administration and its plan for mass deportations.

Mr Shand was the van driver, arrested on the same day the Patels’ bodies were discovered.

Police say they found him with a 15-passenger van near the border of Minnesota in the US and Winnipeg in Canada, with two Indian nationals who were unlawfully in the US.

Five others – all from Gujarat, the Patels’ home state in India – were found walking towards where Mr Shand was apprehended.

One of them, identified in documents only as VD, told officers that the group had walked across the border at night. It took them 11 hours and they had expected to be picked up by someone once in the US.

VD told authorities that he paid “a significant sum” of US$87,000 (£68,519) to an organisation in India that arranged for him to enter Canada – under the guise of a fraudulently obtained student visa – and later help him illegally enter the US.

Meanwhile, Mr Patel is accused of being a key organiser of the smuggling effort.

He managed a casino in Orange City, Florida, according to testimony provided by Mr Shand to the authorities after his arrest. Mr Patel, who police say also went by the nickname “Dirty Harry”, does not have legal status in the US and has been refused a US visa five times, per government records.

He is believed to have recruited Mr Shand to transport people illegally across the US-Canada border, communicating with him regularly about travel logistics, rental car arrangements, hotel bookings and pick-up locations for Indian nationals.

The two had discussed the severe weather on the day the Patels’ bodies were found, according to court documents, with Mr Shand texting Mr Patel: “Make sure everyone is dressed for blizzard conditions please.”

The Patel family are believed to have been connected to the two men through a contact in Toronto, who was connected to the India-based organisation that used student visas to grant people entry into Canada and then smuggle them into the US.

A lawyer for Mr Patel said in a statement to the BBC that: “We look forward to the trial and the chance to show that Mr Patel took no part in this tragic event.”

No other lawyers involved in the case commented.

Two Indian nationals in Gujarat have also been arrested by police in connection with the Patels’ death. Indian police said the men were “illegal immigration” agents.

A related investigation into this India-based operation has revealed that, once crossing into the US, some Indian nationals would then be transported to a Chicago restaurant chain – unnamed by investigators – where they worked for “substandard wages” to pay off debts they owed to the smugglers.

It is unclear what the Patels’ final destination was, or why they had made the treacherous and unlawful journey.

Shortly after their death, residents from their home village in India told the BBC that they had known of the family’s plan to travel, and that they had arrived in Canada on visitors’ visas. Their relatives grew concerned when messages from the family stopped coming, about a week after they had left.

Both Jagdish and Vaishaliben were working at one point as teachers, and had appeared to have a well-anchored life in India. But like many in the village of Dingucha, they felt compelled to leave, idealising a life abroad full of opportunity.

“Every child here grows with the dream of moving to a foreign country,” a Dingucha councilman told the BBC at the time.

As the Patels finalised their travel plans, Border Patrol agents an ocean away in the US had noticed a pattern of “fresh footsteps” in northern Minnesota, near the US-Canada border, that would appear each week on a Wednesday.

Suspecting that they had belonged to people crossing the border unlawfully, the agents began surveying the area regularly, including on the morning of 19 January 2022, despite the snowstorm that made the rural roads practically impassable.

It was the footprints that eventually led to police finding the Patels in snow-covered field.

“What I am about to share is going to be difficult for many people to hear,” assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told reporters the following day, as they announced the news of the deaths.

“It is an absolute and heartbreaking tragedy.”