The couple stands on the edge of the sheer limestone cliff.

More than 100 metres (328ft) beneath them is a lost world of ancient forests, plants and animals. All they can see is leafy tree tops and hear is the echoes of cicadas and birds bouncing off the cliffs.

For thousands of years, this “heavenly pit” or “tiankeng”, in Mandarin, was unexplored.

People feared demons and ghosts hiding in the mists which swirled up from the depths.

But drones and a few brave souls who lowered themselves into places untouched since dinosaurs roamed the Earth have revealed new treasures – and turned China’s sinkholes into a tourist attraction.

Two-thirds of the world’s more than 300 sinkholes are in China, scattered throughout the country’s west – with 30 known tiankeng, Guangxi province in the south has more of of them than anywhere else. Its biggest and most recent find was two years ago: an ancient forest with trees reaching as high as 40m (130ft). These cavities in the earth trap time, preserving unique, delicate ecosystems for centuries. Their discovery, however, has begun to draw tourists and developers, raising fears that these incredible, rare finds could be lost forever.

“I’ve never done this kind of thing before,” says 25-year-old Rui, looking down into the chasm. “It’s very cool. It will be the first time but not the last time.”

She takes a big breath. Then she and her boyfriend step back – off the edge and into the air.

Fei Ge – the man who had just meticulously checked Rui and Michael’s harnesses before sending them over the cliff – knows better than most the feeling of stepping back over the edge.

He was one of the first explorers. Now in his 50s, he works as a tour guide helping people discover the secrets of Guangxi’s sinkholes.

Growing up in a village nearby, Fe had been told to stay away. “We thought that if humans went into the sinkholes, demons would bring strong winds and heavy rain. We thought ghosts brought the mist and fog.”

Fei Ge – or Brother Fei as he is known – was taught that these sinkholes have their own microclimate. The wind rushes through the tunnels and evaporated water from rivers inside the caves produces the mist.

Eventually Brother Fei’s curiosity won and he found a way into a sinkhole as a child.

“Every tiny stone caused loud noises and echoes,” he said. There was wind, rain and even “mini tornadoes”, he recalled. “At first, we were afraid.”

But he kept exploring. It was only when he brought scientists to the site that he realised how unique the sinkholes were.

“The experts were astonished. They found new plants and told us they’ve been doing research for decades and never seen these species. They were very excited. We couldn’t believe that something we had taken for granted nearby was such a treasure.”

As scientists published their finds in journals, and word spread of their discovery, others came to study the sinkholes. Fei says explorers from the UK, France and Germany have come in the last 10 years.

Sinkholes are rare. China – and Guangxi particularly – has so many because of the abundance of limestone. When an underground river slowly dissolves the surrounding limestone rock, it creates a cave that expands upwards towards the ground.

Eventually, the ground collapses, leaving a yawning hole. Its depth and width must measure at least 100m for it to qualify as a sinkhole. Some, like the one found in Guangxi in 2022, are much bigger, stretching 300m into the earth and 150m wide.

For scientists these cavernous pits are a journey back in time, to a place where they can study animals and plants they had thought extinct. They have also found species they had never seen or known, including types of wild orchid, ghostly white cave fish and various spiders and snails.

Protected by sheer cliffs, jagged mountains and limestone caves, these plants and animals have thrived deep in the earth.

There is a delighted shriek as Rui dangles mid-air, before she starts rappelling down.

This is just the start of the adventure for her and Michael. They have more ropework to do, in the belly of the cave.

After a short walk through a maze of stalactites, Michael is lowered into the dark. The guides sweep the area with torches, illuminating the arc above us – a network of caves – and then shine the light into the narrow passages below, where a river once carved through the rock.

That’s where we are headed. The guides have to work hard to move the ropes into position.

“I am not a person that does much exercise,” says Michael, his words echoing in the cave.

This is the highlight of the Shanghai couple’s two-week break in Guangxi, the kind of holiday they had craved during China’s long Covid lockdowns. “This kind of tourism is more and more familiar on the Chinese internet,” he says. “We saw it and thought it looked pretty cool. That’s why we wanted to try it.”

Videos of the Guangxi sinkholes have gone viral on social media. What is a fun and daring feat for young people is a source of much-needed revenue in a province that was only recently lifted out of poverty.

There is little farmland in Guangxi’s unusual but stunning terrain, and its mountainous borders make trade with the rest of China and neighbouring Vietnam difficult.

Still, people come for the views. Pristine rivers and the soaring karst peaks of Guilin and Yangshuo in the north draw more than a million Chinese tourists each year. Photographs of mist-covered Guangxi have even made it onto the 20-yuan note.

Yet few have heard of Ping’e village, the nearest settlement to the sinkholes. But that is changing.

Brother Fei says says a steady stream of visitors is changing fortunes for some in Ping’e. “It used to be very poor. We started developing tourism and it brought lots of benefits. Like when the highways were built. We were really happy knowing we have something so valuable here.”

But there are concerns that tourism revenue could override the demands of scientific research.

About 50km from Ping’e, developers have built what they say is the highest viewing platform, which overlooks Dashiwei, the second-deepest sinkhole in the world. Tourists can peer 500m down into this particular “heavenly pit”.

“We should better protect such habitats,” says Dr Lina Shen, a leading sinkhole researcher based in China. “Sinkholes are paradises for many rare and endangered plant species. We are continuing to make new discoveries.”

By studying sinkholes, scientists also hope to find out how the Earth has changed over tens of thousands of years, and better understand the impact of climate change. At least one sinkhole in Guangxi has already been closed to tourists to protect unique orchid varieties.

“Overdevelopment could cause tremendous damage. We should maintain their original ecological state,” Dr Shen says, adding that the solution lies in striking a balance.

“Hot air balloons, drones for aerial photography, and appropriate pathways for observation from a distance could allow tourists to closely yet remotely view sinkholes, while disturbing as few organisms as possible.”

Brother Fei doesn’t disagree, and insists there are “clear rules” to protect the sinkholes and what they hold. To him, they are a prized find that has changed his life. He is now one of Guangxi’s most qualified climbers and a renowned guide for both tourists and scientists, which has made him “very happy”.

As we walk through acres of lush forest inside the sinkhole, he points to a cliff above us. He tells us to return when the rains do to see the waterfalls that pour down the side. It’s worth coming back for, he assures us.

Rui and Michael are being roped up as they encourage each other to abseil further into the cave. All that is visible beneath them is a narrow chasm, lit up by a torch. It’s all that remains of a river bed, the catalyst in making this sinkhole.

“We need to balance this joy with protecting this place,” Michael says, looking around him.

He smiles as he is slowly lowered down and disappears into the cave.

There are no “red lines” when it comes to support for Ukraine, the French Foreign Minister has told the BBC.

Jean-Noël Barrot said that Ukraine could fire French long-range missiles into Russia “in the logics of self defence”, but would not confirm if French weapons had already been used.

“The principle has been set… our messages to President Zelensky have been well received,” he said in an exclusive interview for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

French President Macron indicated France’s willingness to allow its missiles to be fired into Russia earlier this year. But Barrot’s comments are significant, coming days after US and UK long-range missiles were used in that way for the first time.

Barrot, who held talks with Foreign Secretary David Lammy in London on Friday, said Western allies should not put any limits on support for Ukraine against Russia, and “not set and express red lines”.

Asked if this could even mean French troops in combat he said: “We do not discard any option.”

“We will support Ukraine as intensely and as long as necessary. Why? Because it is our security that is at stake. Each time the Russian army progresses by one square kilometre, the threat gets one square kilometre closer to Europe,” he said.

Barrot hinted at inviting Ukraine to join Nato, as President Zelensky has requested. “We are open to extending an invitation, and so in our discussions with friends and allies, and friends and allies of Ukraine, we are working to get them to closer to our positions,” Barrot said.

And he suggested that Western countries will have to increase the amount they spend on defence, remarking: “Of course we will have to spend more if we want to do more, and I think that we have to face these new challenges.”

Barrot’s comments come after a week of significant escalation in Ukraine – with UK and US long-range missiles being fired in Russia for the first time, Russia firing what it said was a new type of missile and Vladimir Putin suggesting the possibility of global war.

One UK government source describes the moment as “crunch point” ahead of the winter, and ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

But how should Ukraine’s allies respond to Putin’s threats and Ukraine’s increasingly perilous position? I’ve been speaking to sources inside and outside of the UK government to understand what the next steps might be.

Top of the list is to keep the money and military support flowing. “I’d turn up with a trebling of European money for Ukraine and I’d go after Russian assets,” one source said. “We need to work out what is the war chest that Ukraine needs to find to fight through 2025 and into 2026 – it’s hard to ask the US taxpayer to foot the bill.”

It’s not surprising there’s a strong feeling in the defence world that increasing defence budgets is part of the answer. The head of the military, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, who visited President Zelensky this week, told us a fortnight ago that spending had to go up.

But with money tight, and the government reluctant even to set a date on hitting its target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, there is little chance of sudden injections of extra billions.

Government sources emphasise long-term commitments the UK has already made, particularly supporting Ukraine with drones.

Intelligence we can reveal this weekend shows Ukraine used drones in mid and late September to hit four Russian ammunition depots, hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The attacks are understood to have successfully destroyed the biggest amount of Russian and North Korean supplied ammunition during the conflict so far. It hasn’t been confirmed whether these drones were provided by the UK or others.

They also highlighted a treaty signed between the UK and Ukraine in July to help the country arm itself in the long term.

What about responding to Putin’s increasingly threatening rhetoric? The message from multiple sources is: don’t panic.

One said: “The whole way through he has made threats – we have to not let it deter us”. What’s different now, according to one former minister, is that Putin’s comments are designed to catch the ear of the president-elect. “Russia wants to help Trump with reasons to switch off the help”. If it sounds like the conflict is becoming intolerably dangerous, perhaps the next President will be more eager to bring it to an end.

When it comes to the next President, there is nervous pause while Trump’s plan remains unclear. The hope is to put Ukraine in the best possible position for any negotiation, several sources said, and an insider advising the government told me that might involve bigging up Trump’s own negotiation ability. “To get [Trump] into frame of mind where it is one that is good for Ukraine – so he looks like the guy who stopped the war not the guy that lost Ukraine.”

In private there are also suggestions of getting Ukraine to consider what might be an acceptable way out of the conflict. In public, ministers will always say Russia should not be rewarded for an illegal invasion and that it is for Ukraine, and Ukraine alone to decide if and when to negotiate and whether to offer any compromise whatsoever.

But a source acknowledges that in government there’s an awareness that “every negotiation has to involve trade offs.”

“We have to think about what could be the quid pro quo for Ukraine,” a former minister says. “If [Zelensky] were to concede, what does he get? Does he get NATO membership to guarantee security in the long term?”

There is also is a realisation that the threat from Russia is here to stay – whether in Ukraine or attempted sabotage in our streets. “They are literally allied with the North Koreans fighting now, and the Iranians are supplying them,” a government source said. “We can’t see them as anything other than a threat now.”

Perhaps the reality is a more permanent threat on the eastern fringes of Europe. Perhaps Russia’s aggression and dangerous alliances are a return to the norm after a brief positive spell during the 90s. “Get used to it,” one source said, “it’s how we’ve lived for ever.”

A tourist in Tasmania has had his leg amputated in the middle of a raging river after getting trapped between rocks during a kayaking trip with friends.

Medics said they made the “life or death” decision in consultation with the international visitor during a complex rescue on the Franklin River lasting some 20 hours.

The visitor in his 60s was partially submerged in water throughout the ordeal, and rescuers said it was clear that “had he remained in the location where he was, and trapped in the rock crevice he would not have survived”.

Multiple attempts to move him prior to the amputation were unsuccessful, police in the Australian island state said.

The tourist was kayaking with a group in the south-west of Tasmania when his leg got stuck between rocks in an area of rapids on Friday afternoon.

Emergency services rushed to the remote and inaccessible area after the man’s smartwatch called for assistance, police said.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts were made to free the man overnight and as his condition deteriorated, the decision was made to amputate his leg so he could be winched from the location and airlifted to hospital.

“This rescue was an extremely challenging and technical operation, and an incredible effort over many hours to save the man’s life,” Doug Oosterloo, acting assistant commissioner at Tasmania Police, said in a statement.

“This was a life and death situation,” Oosterloo told Australian national broadcaster ABC.

The man is now in a critical condition in hospital.

Oosterloo said that though the kayaker was “well prepared”, he wasn’t prepared for spending “that significant amount of time in a rock crevice with that temperature and the torrent of water that was he was under”.

The other 10 travellers who were kayaking with the man were being airlifted from the area and police plan to speak to them about how the accident happened, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Oosterloo told the news agency that the tourists had stopped kayaking and were on the shore when the man slipped.

“He was scouting the area and he slipped and fell into that rock crevice,” Oosterloo said.

A massive Israeli air strike on central Beirut has killed at least 15 people, Lebanese officials say – in the latest attack on the capital amid an escalation of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah.

The strike happened without warning at about 04:00 (02:00 GMT) on Saturday, and was an attempt to assassinate a senior Hezbollah official, Israeli media reported.

The attack was heard and felt across the city, and destroyed at least one eight-storey residential building in the densely populated Basta district.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said a ‘bunker buster’ bomb was used, a type of weapon previously used by Israel to kill senior Hezbollah figures, including former leader Hassan Nasrallah.

• Israel-Lebanon in maps: Tracking the conflict with Hezbollah and Iran

• What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?

All day, emergency workers used heavy machinery to remove the rubble and retrieve bodies.

The Lebanese health ministry said more than 60 people had been wounded, and that the number of victims was expected to rise as DNA tests would be carried out on body parts that had been recovered.

“It was a very horrible explosion. All the windows and glasses were over me, my wife and my children. My home now is a battlefield,” said 55-year-old Ali Nassar, who lived in a nearby building.

“Even if one person is hiding here… Should you destroy buildings where people are sleeping inside? Is it necessary to kill all the people for one person? Or we’re not humans? That’s what I’m asking.”

According to the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, the attack was an attempt to kill Mohammed Haydar, a top Hezbollah official. Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri said none of the group’s leaders were in the building hit, and Haydar’s fate remained unclear.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented.

Also on Saturday, the IDF carried out further air strikes on the Dahieh, the area in southern Beirut where Hezbollah is based, saying they were buildings linked to the group.

Israeli attacks have also hit the south, where an Israeli ground invasion is advancing, and the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah has strong presence.

In the past two weeks, Israel has intensified its campaign against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia and political movement, amid international efforts for a ceasefire, in what appears to be a strategy to pressure the group to accept a deal.

The escalation comes as renewed negotiations to end more than one year of conflict showed initial signs of progress. This week, Amos Hochstein, who has led the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts, held talks in Lebanon and Israel to try to advance a US drafted deal.

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

The resolution includes the withdrawal of Hezbollah’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.

Israel says that was never fully respected, while Lebanon says Israeli violations included military flights over Lebanese territory.

The proposal, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, includes a 60-day ceasefire which would see the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the removal of Hezbollah’s presence from the area. The Lebanese military would then boost its presence there, with thousands of extra troops.

But disagreements over some elements remained, the diplomat added, including about the timeline for an Israeli pull-out and the formation of an international mechanism to monitor the agreement.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have indicated being interested in a deal, according to a senior Lebanese source. After the initial shock, the group has reorganised itself, and continues to carry out daily attacks on Israel, though not with the same intensity, and confront invading Israeli soldiers.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem said the group had received the US proposal, clarified its reservations, and that it was allowing the talks to go ahead to see if they produced any results. The conditions for a deal, he said, were a complete cessation of hostilities and the preservation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, warning that Hezbollah was ready for a long fight.

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 northern Israel because of the group’s attacks.

In Lebanon, the conflict has killed more than 3,500 people and forced more than one million from their homes, Lebanese authorities say.

For Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, it was their first big trip venturing out to explore the world.

Like so many 19-year-olds, they were drawn to the romance of backpacking across South East Asia – where food is great, people are friendly and the scenery stunning.

They had “saved up enough money after school and university to have their overseas jaunt, as so many of our kids do,” said their football team coach Nick Heath. “And off they went.”

They ended up on 12 November in the riverside town of Vang Vieng in central Laos.

The two checked into the popular Nana Backpacker Hostel – where guests often receive a free shot upon arrival. Days later both were on life support in hospitals in Thailand.

Jones’s death was announced on 21 November, and Bowles’s a day later. The death of a British woman, 28-year-old Simone White, was also announced on Thursday.

They are among six foreign tourists who have died from what is believed to be a mass incident of methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng.

Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, died last week, while an American man also died. They have not been identified.

It is unclear how many others have fallen ill, but a transnational police investigation is now underway into the deaths.

Much of the scrutiny has fallen on the hostel where some of the victims were reportedly staying. The girls had taken free shots there before heading out for the night.

The hostel manager has denied culpability, saying the same drinks had been served to at least 100 other guests that night who reported no problems. The manager was taken in by police for questioning on Thursday.

Mr Heath, who spoke to media on behalf of Ms Bowles’s family, said they knew it was methanol that caused the girls to fall ill. But “no one really knows how and where it entered their system”.

To understand what happened, the BBC spoke to backpackers and a diplomat about the area.

Our reporting found the town where travellers fell ill remains a party hotspot despite past efforts, with some success, to clean up its image, and that while the risk of methanol poisoning is known among consulates and tourism operators, travellers appear largely ignorant.

• Parents ‘devastated’ over daughter’s suspected poisoning death

Vang Vieng – a tiny town on the Nam Song river surrounded by limestone mountains and paddy fields – is known for its scenery.

It is also known as a party town – a reputation Laos officials have been trying to shed over the past decade.

A four-hour bus ride from the capital Vientiane, it has long been the stopping point on the Banana Pancake Trail backpacking route between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading north to the ancient temples of Luang Prabang.

In Vang Vieng, hostel bunks are advertised at less than €10 (£8) a night, while a bucket of beer can cost half that. Drugs like marijuana and mushrooms are in ready supply, openly advertised at cafes and diners.

During the early 2000s and 2010s the town was famous for hardcore partying and and as a spot for riding inflatables down the local river. But after several tourists were injured or died, efforts were made at raising safety standards.

“To combat the river tubing deaths they demolished a bunch of the riverside bars that were selling buckets of vodka to people floating by,” one Western diplomat in the region told the BBC.

Laos officials aimed to re-centre the town as a spot for eco-tourism rather than just a hub for the young and drunk.

“And it worked,” they say. “It’s actually changed a quite a lot in the past decade, they’ve cleaned it up, it’s way more modern than it used to be.”

But because of that: “I think it can be very easy for young travellers to miss that this is still a very poor country with lax regulations and safety standards.”

The diplomat said methanol poisoning – where alcoholic drinks are contaminated with a toxic compound – is well-known among consulates and tourism operators.

Consulates are fairly regularly having to deal with cases of tourists who have fallen ill from dodgy drinks, the diplomat noted.

South East Asia is documented as the worst region for methanol poisoning. Local producers making cheap alcohol often will not correctly reduce the toxic level of methanol produced in the process.

Thousands of incidents are recorded every year in the region, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

But for tourists, awareness around poisonous alcohol is low.

British backpacker Sarisha told the BBC’s Newsbeat programme that people did not seem to consider the risks of free drinks when she was recently staying at Nana Backpacker.

Like most other hostels, happy hours were a daily staple at the venue as well as free shots of local vodkas as courtesies, she said.

“It’s a very party city,” she said.

Tourists still in town are now taking extra precautions after the shocking deaths.

On Friday, Miika, 19, a Finnish backpacker staying at a hostel just 10 minutes walk from Nana Backpacker, told the BBC he and his friends had arrived in town two days ago. They were now only ordering bottled beers and rethinking river tubing because shots were included.

“Now because we know about this, we didn’t really want to go there,” he said.

British woman Natasha Moore, 22, told the BBC she cancelled her booking for Nana Backpacker after hearing about the deaths.

“It’s just so scary, I feel so overwhelmed… it feels like I’ve escaped death, almost like survivor’s guilt”, she said in a TikTok video warning other travellers.

Her group arrived in the town two days after the poisoning, where “it was still kind of hush hush, nobody really knew too much about what was going on”.

She knew many travellers decided to skip the town and said there were signs in the hostel warning to be careful about drinks.

She said she “can’t even count how many free drinks” she had on her travels, but over five nights in Vang Vieng, she and her friends had no free drinks or spirits, only bottled alcohol.

“I feel so, so sad and upset for all the friends and family and the people still in hospital. It’s just so unfair, we were just trying to have a good time,” she said.

“We’ve worked hard to save up to go travel, like it’s such a brave thing to do, and then something like that can happen.”

A video of a fashion shoot in India has gone viral and unexpectedly turned a group of underprivileged school children into local celebrities.

The footage shows the children, most of them girls between the ages of 12 and 17, dressed in red and gold outfits fashioned from discarded clothes.

The teenagers designed and tailored the outfits and also doubled up as models to showcase their creations, with the grubby walls and terraces of the slum providing the backdrop for their ramp walk.

The video was filmed and edited by a 15-year-old boy.

The video first appeared earlier this month on the Instagram page of Innovation for Change, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the city of Lucknow.

The charity works with about 400 children from the city’s slums, providing them free food, education and job skills. The children featured in the shoot are students of this NGO.

Mehak Kannojia, one of the models in the video, told the BBC that she and her fellow students closely followed the sartorial choices of Bollywood actresses on Instagram and often duplicated some of their outfits for themselves.

“This time, we decided to pool our resources and worked as a group,” the 16-year-old said.

For their project, they chose wisely – a campaign by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of India’s top fashion designers who has dressed Bollywood celebrities, Hollywood actresses and billionaires. In 2018, Kim Kardashian wore his sequinned red sari for a Vogue shoot.

Mukherjee is also known as the “king of weddings” in India. He has dressed thousands of brides, including Bollywood celebrities such as Anushka Sharma and Deepika Padukone. Priyanka Chopra married Nick Jonas in a stunning red Sabyasachi outfit.

Mehak said their project, called Yeh laal rang (the colour red), was inspired by the designer’s heritage bridal collection.

“We sifted through the clothes that had come to us in donation and picked out all the red items. Then we zeroed in on the outfits we wanted to make and began putting them together.”

It was intense work – the girls stitched about a dozen outfits in three-four days but, Mehak says, they had “great fun doing it”.

For the ramp walk, Mehak says they studied the models carefully in Sabyasachi videos and copied their moves.

“Just like his models, some of us wore sunglasses, one drank from a sipper with a straw, while another walked carrying a cloth bundle under her arm.”

Some of it, Mehak says, came together organically. “At one point in the shoot, I was supposed to laugh. At that moment, someone said something funny and I just burst out laughing.”

It was an ambitious project, but the result has won hearts in India. Put together on a shoestring budget with donated clothes, the video went viral after Mukherjee reposted it on his Instagram feed with a heart emoji.

The campaign won widespread praise, with many on social media comparing their work to that of professionals.

The viral video has brought enormous attention to the charity and its school has been visited by several TV channels, some of the children were invited to participate in shows on popular FM radio stations and Bollywood actress Tamannah Bhatia visited them to accept a scarf from the children.

The response, Mehak says, has been “totally unexpected”.

“It feels like a dream come true. All my friends are sharing the video and saying ‘you’ve become famous’. My parents were full of joy when they heard about all the attention we are getting.

“We are feeling wonderful. Now we have only one dream left – to meet Sabyasachi.”

The shoot, however, also received criticism, with some wondering if showing young girls dressed as brides could encouraged child marriage in a country where millions of girls are still married off by their families before they turn 18 – the legal age.

The Innovation for Change addressed the concern in a post on Instagram, saying they had no intention to encourage child marriage.

“Our aim is not to promote child marriage in any way. Today, these girls are able to do something like this by fighting against such ideas and restrictions. Please appreciate them, otherwise the morale of these children will fall.”

A woman who accused Conor McGregor of raping her has won her claim against him for damages in a civil case.

A jury found that the Irish mixed martial arts fighter assaulted Nikita Hand in a Dublin hotel in December 2018.

He has been ordered to pay her more than €248,000 (£206,000) in damages.

Speaking outside the court on Friday, Ms Hand said her story was “a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be to speak up, you have a voice”.

In a post on X on Friday evening, McGregor said he would appeal against the verdict and he thanked “all my support worldwide”.

“I am with my family now, focused on my future” he added.

The jury at the High Court in Dublin had been deliberating for a day before returning its verdict that McGregor did assault Ms Hand.

She had also taken a case against another man, James Lawrence, 35, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh in Dublin.

She alleged that he assaulted her by having sex with her without her consent in the Beacon Hotel.

The jury found that he did not assault her.

Ms Hand told reporters said she was “overwhelmed and touched” by the support she had received.

She added: “I want to show [my daughter] Freya and every other young girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person is, and that justice will be served.”

Both men had denied the claims by the 35-year-old hair colourist and said they separately had consensual sex with Ms Hand at the hotel almost six years ago.

After eight days of evidence and three days listening to closing speeches and the judge’s comments, the jury of eight women and four men spent six hours and 10 minutes deliberating before returning with its verdict.

McGregor shook his head after the jury read out that Ms Hand had won her case against him.

He was accompanied by his partner Dee Devlin, his parents, his sister and his brother-in-law.

He sat in the back row of the court, between his partner and mother Margaret.

Ms Hand cried and was hugged by her partner and supporters.

The jury had previously heard that on the day of the attack Ms Hand and her colleague Danielle Kealy went to the hotel’s penthouse suite with McGregor and Mr Lawrence after their work Christmas party.

They gave evidence of how they had been partying all night from 8 December into the morning of 9 December and had been heavily drinking and taking cocaine.

Ms Hand, a mother-of-one, told the court how McGregor had pinned her to a bed before assaulting her.

She was left with extensive bruises and abrasions over her body, including on her hands and wrists.

There was a bloodied scratch on her breast and tenderness on her neck after she said she was placed in a “chokehold” by McGregor.

He denied causing the bruising, saying it could have happened after she “swan dived” into the bath in the hotel room.

Ms Hand was taken in an ambulance to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin the next day where she was assessed in the sexual assault treatment unit.

A paramedic who examined Ms Hand told the court that she had not seen “someone so bruised” in a long time.

The jury had been told how Ms Hand had to leave her job as a hairdresser and has not been able to work since due to her mental health, that her relationship with her partner ended months after the incident, that she had to move out of her home in Drimnagh and that her mortgage was now in arrears.

She also said she had to stop seeing a counsellor because she could no longer afford to pay for the sessions.

The court heard that she had spent more than €4,000 (£3,326) on GP, pharmacy and psychotherapy costs.

Russia has a stock of powerful new missiles “ready to be used”, President Vladimir Putin has said, a day after his country fired a new ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

In an unscheduled TV address, the Russian leader said the Oreshnik missile could not be intercepted and promised to carry out more tests, including in “combat conditions”.

Russia’s use of the Oreshnik capped a week of escalation in the war that also saw Ukraine fire US and British missiles into Russia for the first time.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for world leaders to give a “serious response” so that Putin “feels the real consequences of his actions”.

His country was asking Western partners for updated air defence systems, he added.

According to news agency Interfax-Ukraine, Kyiv is seeking to obtain the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), or to upgrade its Patriot anti-ballistic missile defence systems.

In Friday’s address Putin said the Oreshnik hypersonic missiles flew at 10 times the speed of sound and ordered them to be put into production. He had earlier said that use of the missile was a response to Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and Atacms missiles.

Thursday’s strike on Dnipro was described as unusual by eyewitnesses and triggered explosions which went on for three hours.

The attack included a strike by a missile so powerful that in the aftermath Ukrainian officials said it resembled an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Justin Crump, CEO and founder of the risk advisory company Sibylline, told the BBC that Moscow likely used the strike as a warning, noting that the missile – which is faster and more advanced that others in its arsenal – has the capacity to seriously challenge Ukraine’s air defences.

This week’s escalation has also prompted several warnings from other world leaders about the direction of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the war was entering a decisive stage – with a real risk of global conflict.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban meanwhile said the West should take Vladimir Putin’s warnings “at face value” because Russia “bases its policies primarily on military power”.

And North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un warned “never before” had the threat of a nuclear war been greater and accused the US of having an “aggressive and hostile” policy towards Pyongyang.

North Korea has sent thousands of troops to fight on Russia’s side and Ukrainian forces have reported clashes with them in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops are occupying some territory.

US President Biden has said he gave Ukraine permission to use longer-range Atacms missiles against targets inside Russia as a response to Moscow’s use of North Korean troops.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Both countries are now trying to secure a battlefield advantage before Donald Trump becomes US president in January.

Trump has vowed to end the war within hours but has not provided details as to how.

In his nightly address, Zelensky also criticised China for its response to Moscow’s new missile after China’s foreign ministry said all parties should “remain calm and exercise restraint”.

“From Russia, this is a mockery of the position of states such as China, states of the Global South, some leaders who call for restraint every time,” he said.

He also criticised the Ukrainian parliament for postponing a session on Friday over security concerns following the attack on Dnipro.

In a post on Telegram, he said unless an air raid signal sounded everyone should work as normal – and not take Russian threats as “permission to have a day off”.

“The siren sounds – we go to shelter. When there is no siren – we work and serve. There is no other way in war,” he said.

Donald Trump has nominated Scott Bessent to lead the US Treasury Department, one of the most influential roles in government with wide oversight of tax policy, public debt, international finance and sanctions.

The selection ends what has proven to be one of the more protracted decisions for the president-elect as he assembles his team for a second term.

Bessent, a Wall Street financier who once worked for George Soros, was an early backer of Trump’s 2024 bid and brings a relatively conventional resume to the role.

The 62-year-old’s nomination on Friday evening kicked-off a series of cabinet announcements and White House appointments that leaves Trump’s top team almost complete ahead of his return to the presidency in January.

“Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists,” Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social.

“[He] has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda,” he said, adding that Bessent would “support my Policies that will drive US Competitiveness, and stop unfair Trade imbalances.”

Bessent has made it well known that he wants to extend tax cuts made in Mr Trump’s first term in office.

He has also defended the use of import tariffs, one of the more controversial parts of the President-elect’s campaign agenda, calling them a “useful negotiating tool”.

On the campaign trail, Bessent told voters that Trump would usher in a “new golden age with de-regulation, low-cost energy, [and] low taxes”.

Trump also nominated Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer for US Labor Secretary on Friday, saying she would help to “grow wages and improve working conditions [and] bring back our manufacturing jobs”.

The representative from Oregon, 56, won strong trade union support but narrowly lost her bid for re-election earlier this month, meaning her nomination will not affect the Republican majority in the House come January.

He then made another cabinet nomination moments later, announcing Scott Turner as his pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The NFL veteran and motivational speaker previously served in the Texas House of Representatives.

Trump also announced a series of senior health picks, giving his backing to Fox News contributor Dr Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General and former Florida Congressman Dr Dave Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

He selected Russell Vought as director of the US Office of Management and Budget, which helps decide policy priorities and how they should be funded.

Vought, who played a role in Project 2025 – a “wish list” for a second Trump presidency by the conservative Heritage Foundation – held the same position during Trump’s first term.

The president-elect also announced White House roles for Alex Wong and Sebastian Gorka who also served during Trump’s first term.

If his nomination to lead the Treasury department is confirmed by the Senate, Bessent would almost immediately be plunged into the fight in Washington over extending the tax cuts from Trump’s first term.

Trump has also called for controversial changes to trade policy, proposing sweeping tariffs on all goods coming into the country.

Such ideas have been met with alarm in traditional economic and corporate circles.

In an interview with Fox News shortly before the election, Bessent said ensuring the tax cuts do not expire as planned at the end of next year would be his top priority, if he ended up in the administration.

“If it doesn’t happen, this will be the largest tax increase in US history,” he warned.

For other posts, Trump has been willing to back candidates with minimal experience in favour of loyalty and apparent conviction in his pledges.

But he has appeared more hesitant to buck convention at the Treasury Department, which serves as a key liaison between the White House and Wall Street and has critical functions that include collecting taxes, supervising banks, wielding sanctions and handling US government debt.

In his announcement, Trump said Bessent would “help curb the unsustainable path of Federal Debt”. That issue has long been a priority for traditional Republicans, but financial markets see an increase in debt as a risk in a second Trump term.

Bessent, a native of South Carolina, made his name in the 1990s betting against the British pound and Japanese yen while working for Soros, a major Democratic donor.

In 2015, he started his own fund, Key Square Capital Management, which is known for making investments based on big-picture economic policy.

He and his husband, a former New York City prosecutor, married in 2011 and have two children. He is known for philanthropy in South Carolina, where his family has deep roots.

Bessent has defended tariffs – a capstone of Trump’s protectionist agenda – arguing that opposition to them is rooted in political ideology and not “considered economic thought”.

But he has also characterised Trump’s support for such border taxes as a negotiating tool, suggesting the president-elect isn’t necessarily committed to aggressively raising duties.

That stance makes him more moderate than others whose names were floated for the treasury role.

However, Bessent has been a strong proponent of Trump’s embrace of the crypto industry. Such support would make him the first treasury secretary to openly champion cryptocurrency, sending a clear signal that Trump is serious about establishing the US as the “crypto capital of the planet”.

• How these new recruits will be vetted
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• Who is Pam Bondi, nominee for attorney general?
• Fact-checking RFK’s views on health policy
• What Trump picks say about Mid East policy

Russia is estimated to have supplied North Korea with more than a million barrels of oil since March this year, according to satellite imagery analysis from the Open Source Centre, a non-profit research group based in the UK.

The oil is payment for the weapons and troops Pyongyang has sent Moscow to fuel its war in Ukraine, leading experts and UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have told the BBC.

These transfers violate UN sanctions, which ban countries from selling oil to North Korea, except in small quantities, in an attempt to stifle its economy to prevent it from further developing nuclear weapons.

The satellite images, shared exclusively with the BBC, show more than a dozen different North Korean oil tankers arriving at an oil terminal in Russia’s Far East a total of 43 times over the past eight months.

Further pictures, taken of the ships at sea, appear to show the tankers arriving empty, and leaving almost full.

North Korea is the only country in the world not allowed to buy oil on the open market. The number of barrels of refined petroleum it can receive is capped by the United Nations at 500,000 annually, well below the amount it needs.

Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to our request for comment.

• LIVE: Zelensky says world must respond to Russia’s use of new type of missile in Ukraine

The first oil transfer documented by the Open Source Centre in a new report, was on 7 March 2024, seven months after it first emerged Pyongyang was sending Moscow weapons.

The shipments have continued as thousands of North Korean troops are reported to have been sent to Russia to fight, with the last one recorded on 5 November.

“While Kim Jong Un is providing Vladimir Putin with a lifeline to continue his war, Russia is quietly providing North Korea with a lifeline of its own,” says Joe Byrne from the Open Source Centre.

“This steady flow of oil gives North Korea a level of stability it hasn’t had since these sanctions were introduced.”

Four former members of a UN panel responsible for tracking the sanctions on North Korea have told the BBC the transfers are a consequence of increasing ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

“These transfers are fuelling Putin’s war machine – this is oil for missiles, oil for artillery and now oil for soldiers,” says Hugh Griffiths, who led the panel from 2014 to 2019.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has told the BBC in a statement: “To keep fighting in Ukraine, Russia has become increasingly reliant on North Korea for troops and weapons in exchange for oil.”

He added that this was “having a direct impact on security in the Korean peninsula, Europe and Indo-Pacific”.

While most people in North Korea rely on coal for their daily lives, oil is essential for running the country’s military. Diesel and petrol are used to transport missile launchers and troops around the country, run munitions factories and fuel the cars of Pyongyang’s elite.

The 500,000 barrels North Korea is allowed to receive fall far short of the nine million it consumes – meaning that since the cap was introduced in 2017, the country has been forced to buy oil illicitly from criminal networks to make up this deficit.

This involves transferring the oil between ships out at sea – a risky, expensive and time-consuming business, according to Dr Go Myong-hyun, a senior research fellow at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, which is linked to the country’s spy agency.

“Now Kim Jong Un is getting oil directly, it’s likely better quality, and chances are he’s getting it for free, as quid pro quo for supplying munitions. What could be better than that?”

“A million barrels is nothing for a large oil producer like Russia to release, but it is a substantial amount for North Korea to receive,” Dr Go adds.

In all 43 of the journeys tracked by the Open Source Centre using satellite images, the North Korean-flagged tankers arrived at Russia’s Vostochny Port with their trackers switched off, concealing their movements.

The images show they then made their way back to one of four ports on North Korea’s east and west coast.

“The vessels appear silently, almost every week,” says Joe Byrne, the researcher from the Open Source Centre. “Since March there’s been a fairly constant flow.”

The team, which has been tracking these tankers since the oil sanctions were first introduced, used their knowledge of each ship’s capacity to calculate how many oil barrels they could carry.

Then they studied images of the ships entering and leaving Vostochny and, in most instances, could see how low they sat in the water and, therefore, how full they were.

The tankers, they assess, were loaded to 90% of their capacity.

“We can see from some of the images that if the ships were any fuller they would sink,” Mr Byrne says.

Based on this, they calculate that, since March, Russia has given North Korea more than a million barrels of oil – more than double the annual cap, and around ten times the amount Moscow officially gave Pyongyang in 2023.

This follows an assessment by the US government in May that Moscow had already supplied more than 500,000 barrels’ worth of oil.

Cloud cover means the researchers cannot get a clear image of the port every day.

“The whole of August was cloudy, so we weren’t able to document a single trip,” Mr Byrne says, leading his team to believe that one million barrels is a “baseline” figure.

Not only do these oil deliveries breach UN sanctions on North Korea, that Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, signed off on – but also, more than half of the journeys tracked by the Open Source Centre were made by vessels that have been individually sanctioned by the UN.

This means they should have been impounded upon entering Russian waters.

But in March 2024, three weeks after the first oil transfer was documented, Russia disbanded the UN panel responsible for monitoring sanctions violations, by using its veto at the UN Security Council.

Ashley Hess, who was working on the panel up until its collapse, says they saw evidence the transfers had started.

“We were tracking some of the ships and companies involved, but our work was stopped, possibly after they had already breached the 500,000-barrel cap”.

Eric Penton-Voak, who led the group from 2021-2023, says the Russian members on the panel tried to censor its work.

“Now the panel is gone, they can simply ignore the rules,” he adds. “The fact that Russia is now encouraging these ships to visit its ports and load up with oil shows a new level of contempt for these sanctions.”

But Mr Penton-Voak, who is on the board of the Open Source Centre, thinks the problem runs much deeper.

“You now have these autocratic regimes increasingly working together to help one another achieve whatever it is they want, and ignoring the wishes of the international community.”

This is an “increasingly dangerous” playbook, he argues.

“The last thing you want is a North Korean tactical nuclear weapon turning up in Iran, for instance.”

As Kim Jong Un steps up his support for Vladimir Putin’s war, concern is growing over what else he will receive in return.

The US and South Korea estimate Pyongyang has now sent Moscow 16,000 shipping containers filled with artillery shells and rockets, while remnants of exploded North Korean ballistic missiles have been recovered on the battlefield in Ukraine.

More recently, Putin and Kim signed a defence pact, leading to thousands of North Korean troops being sent to Russia’s Kursk region, where intelligence reports indicate they are now engaged in battle.

The South Korean government has told the BBC it would “sternly respond to the violation of the UN Security Council resolutions by Russia and North Korea”.

Its biggest worry is that Moscow will provide Pyongyang with technology to improve its spy satellites and ballistic missiles.

Last month, Seoul’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, stated there was a “high chance” North Korea was asking for such help.

“If you’re sending your people to die in a foreign war, a million barrels of oil is just not sufficient reward,” Dr Go says.

Andrei Lankov, an expert in North Korea-Russia relations at Seoul’s Kookmin University, agrees.

“I used to think it was not in Russia’s interest to share military technology, but perhaps its calculus has changed. The Russians need these troops, and this gives the North Koreans more leverage.”

The mourners at a cemetery in crisis-hit Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, were strikingly young – children shedding tears as they bade farewell to a 16-year-old friend, who was shot dead while banging pots and pans in an opposition-organised protest against the outcome of last month’s presidential election.

“Antonio was shot in the mouth, and the bullet went through the back of his head,” his uncle, Manuel Samuel, told the BBC.

“We saw CCTV footage from nearby shops of police shooting at protesters,” he added.

Antonio Juaqim’s killing is a tragic reminder of the volatile political climate in the southern African state since Frelimo – the former liberation movement in power since independence 49 years ago – was declared the winner of the poll.

The electoral commission said Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, won with a whopping 71% of the vote, compared to the 20% of his closest rival, Venâncio Mondlane.

An evangelical pastor who contested the presidency as an independent after breaking away from the main opposition Renamo party, Mondlane rejected the declaration, alleging the poll was rigged.

This was denied by the electoral commission, but Mondlane – who fled the country, fearing arrest – has rallied his supporters via social media to protest against the result.

Every night at 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT), people have been banging pots and pans in their homes, as they heed Mondlane’s call to send a loud message that they reject an extension of Frelimo’s 49-year rule.

Mr Samuel said the protest was first held on the night of 15 November when huge numbers of people took to the streets to bang pots, pans and bottles or to blow whistles.

“It was as though a new Mozambique was being born,” he added.

But the night ended tragically, with Antonio being among those killed by police, Mr Samuel said.

Since then most people have been carrying out the protest inside their homes, with the sound of banged pots and pans echoing across Maputo at 21:00 every night.

At Antonio’s funeral at the São Francisco Xavier Cemetery four days after his killing, one of his friends delivered his mother’s eulogy: “You were so full of life and hope. Now you are a victim of a bullet.”

Crying, Antonio’s friends planted flowers on his grave before bursting colourful balloons over it, a reminder that he was just a child.

“At the morgue I counted six bodies of young children,” Mr Manuel told the BBC.

“They are killing us and our future,” he added.

Campaign group Human Rights Watch said that about 40 people – including at least 10 children – have been killed by police during the post-election protests.

Mozambique’s police commander Bernadino Raphael expressed sympathy with the families of the victims, but deflected responsibility for the deaths, blaming Mondlane’s supporters.

“They are using children as shields in front of them while they remain behind,” he alleged in a BBC interview.

The commander added that in many instances police had no choice but to defend themselves from protesters who had unleashed violence, including killing six officers and looting and burning property and vehicles.

“We recorded 103 injured people, 69 of whom were police officers,” he said.

But Albino Forquilha, the leader of the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique, which backed Mondlane’s presidential bid, accused police of using excessive force to suppress dissent.

“It feels as though they are being used to protect the ruling party,” he told the BBC.

South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies analyst Borges Nhamirre said this was the first time Mozambique had witnessed so many casualties, and damage to property, during protests.

He said it was clear that Frelimo had lost popularity, especially among young people who were “looking for jobs, looking for vocational training, looking for a plot to build their house, looking for some money”.

“They don’t care about who brought independence. The independence they want is their financial independence,” Mr Nhamirre said.

After the result was announced on 24 October, Chapo was adamant that he and Frelimo had won in a free and fair contest, saying: “We are an organised party that prepares its victories.”

Since then he has kept a notably low profile, waiting for the courts to rule on Mondlane’s bid to annul the result.

In an apparent attempt to keep up the pressure ahead of the ruling, many of Mondlane’s supporters also heeded his call to mourn the dead for three days (until 22 November) by stopping their vehicles and hooting at noon.

Like Antonio, 20-year-old Alito Momad was allegedly killed by police during the protests.

The BBC came across some of his friends in a neighbourhood outside Maputo, holding a night vigil for him on 17 November.

With a Mozambican flag laid out on the floor next to burning candles, Alito’s friends showed us a photo of him – with what appeared to be a gunshot wound in the back of his head.

It was another reminder of how the election had cut short the lives of young people, with their friends and relatives hoping they will get justice as Mozambique goes through one of its most turbulent periods since the advent of multi-party democracy about 30 years ago.

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• How the ‘tuna bond’ scandal unfolded

Just weeks ago, Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, celebrated Donald Trump’s election victory and announced plans to invest $10bn (£7.9bn) in energy and infrastructure projects in the US.

Now, the 62-year-old Indian billionaire and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose sprawling $169bn empire spans ports and renewable energy, faces US fraud charges that could potentially jeopardise his ambitions at home and abroad.

Federal prosecutors have accused him of orchestrating a $250m bribery scheme and concealing it to raise money in the US. They allege Mr Adani and his executives paid bribes to Indian officials to secure contracts worth $2bn in profits over 20 years. Adani Group has denied the allegations, calling them “baseless.”

But this is already hurting the group and the Indian economy.

Adani Group firms lost $34bn in market value on Thursday, reducing the combined market capitalisation of its 10 companies to $147bn. Adani Green Energy, which is the firm at the centre of the allegations, also said it wouldn’t proceed with a $600m bond offering.

Then there are questions about the impact of the charges on India’s business and politics.

India’s economy is deeply intertwined with Mr Adani, the country’s leading infrastructure tycoon. He operates 13 ports (30% market share), seven airports (23% of passenger traffic), and India’s second-largest cement business (20% of the market).

With six coal-fired power plants, Mr Adani is India’s largest private player in power. At the same time, he has pledged to invest $50bn in green hydrogen and runs a 8,000km (4,970 miles)-long natural gas pipeline. He’s also building India’s longest expressway and redeveloping India’s largest slum. He employs over 45,000 people, but his businesses impact millions nationwide.

• Gautam Adani: Asia’s richest man

His global ambitions span coal mines in Indonesia and Australia, and infrastructure projects in Africa.

Mr Adani’s portfolio closely mirrors Modi’s policy priorities, beginning with infrastructure and more recently expanding into clean energy. He has thrived despite critics labeling his business empire as crony capitalism, pointing to his close ties with Modi, both as Gujarat’s chief minister – where they both hail from – and as India’s prime minister. (Like any successful businessman, Mr Adani has also forged ties with many opposition leaders, investing in their states.)

“This [the bribery allegations] is big. Mr Adani and Modi have been inseparable for a long time. This is going to influence the political economy of India,” says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an Indian journalist who has written extensively on the business group.

This crisis also comes as Mr Adani has spent nearly two years trying to rebuild his image after US short-seller Hindenburg Research’s 2023 report accused his conglomerate of decades of stock manipulation and fraud. Though Mr Adani denied the claims, the allegations triggered a market sell-off and an ongoing investigation by India’s market regulator, SEBI.

“Mr Adani has been trying to rehabilitate his image, and try to show that those earlier fraud allegations leveled by the Hindenburg group were not true, and his company and his businesses had actually been doing quite well. There’d been a number of new deals and investments made over the last year or so, and so this is just a body blow coming to this billionaire who had done a very good job of shaking off the potential damage of those earlier allegations,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told the BBC.

For now, raising capital at home may prove challenging for Mr Adani’s cash-guzzling projects.

“The market reaction shows how serious this is,” Ambareesh Baliga, an independent market analyst, told the BBC. “Adanis will still secure funding for their major projects, but with delays.”

The latest charges could also throw a spanner in Mr Adani’s global expansion plans. He has been already challenged in Kenya and Bangladesh over a planned takeover of an international airport and a controversial energy deal. “This [bribery charges] stops international expansion plans linked to the US,” Nirmalya Kumar, Lee Kong Chian Professor at Singapore Management University, told the BBC.

What’s next? Politically, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has unsurprisingly called for Mr Adani’s arrest and promised to stir up parliament. “Bribing government officials in India is not news, but the amounts mentioned are staggering. I suspect the US has names of some of those who were the intended recipients. This has potential reverberations for the Indian political scene. There is more to come,” Mr Kumar believes.

Mr Adani’s team will undoubtedly assemble a top-tier legal defence. “For now, we have only the indictment, leaving much still to unfold,” says Mr Kugelman.

While the US-India business relationship may face scrutiny, it’s unlikely to be significantly impacted, particularly given the recent $500m US deal with Mr Adani for a port project in Sri Lanka, says Mr Kugelman. Despite the serious allegations, broader US-India business ties remain strong.

“The US-India business relationship is a very large and multifaceted one. Even with these very serious allegations against someone that’s such a major player in the Indian economy, I don’t think we should overstate the impact that this could have on that relationship,” Mr Kugelman says.

Also, it’s unclear if Mr Adani can be targeted, despite the US-India extradition treaty, as it depends on whether the new administration allows the cases to proceed. Mr Baliga believes it is not doom and gloom for the Adanis. “I still do think foreign investors and banks will back them like they did post Hindenburg though, given that they are part of very important, well performing sectors of the Indian economy,” he says.

“The sense in the market is also that this will perhaps blow over and be sorted out, once the [Donald] Trump administration takes over.”

The stakes have never been higher in the Ukraine-Russia war.

In the week that saw the conflict pass its 1000th day, Western powers substantially boosted Ukraine’s military arsenal – and the Kremlin made its loudest threats yet of a nuclear strike.

Here is how the last week played out – and what it means.

Late on Sunday night, reports emerged that outgoing US President Joe Biden had given Ukraine permission to use longer-range ATACMS missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

The move marked a major policy change by Washington – which for months had refused Ukraine’s requests to use the missiles beyond its own borders.

After the decision was leaked to the press, a volley of ATACMS missiles were fired by Ukraine into Russia’s Bryansk region.

The Kremlin said six were fired, with five intercepted, while anonymous US officials claimed it was eight, with two intercepted.

Whatever the specifics, this was a landmark moment: American-made missiles had struck Russian soil for the first time in this war.

Then on Wednesday, Ukraine launched UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Russia’s Kursk region – where Ukrainian troops have seized a roughly 600-sq km (232 sq mile) patch of Russian territory.

Later in the week, Biden added the final element of a ramped-up weapons arsenal to Ukraine by approving the use of anti-personnel landmines.

Simple, controversial, but highly-effective, landmines are a crucial part of Ukraine’s defences on the eastern frontline – and it is hoped their use could help slow Russia’s advance.

With three swift decisions, over a few seismic days, the West signalled to the world that its support for Ukraine was not about to vanish.

If Ukraine’s western allies raised the stakes this week – so too did Moscow.

On Tuesday, the 1000th day of the war, Putin pushed through changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia.

The Kremlin then took its response a step further by deploying a new type of missile – “Oreshnik” – to strike the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Putin claimed it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound – and that there are “no ways of counteracting this weapon”.

Most observers agree the strike was designed to send a warning: that Russia could, if it chose, use the new missile to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Such posturing would once have caused serious concern in the West. Now, not so much.

Since the start of the conflict nearly three years ago, Putin has repeatedly laid out nuclear “red lines’” which the West has repeatedly crossed. It seems many have become used to Russia’s nuclear “sabre-rattling”.

And why else do Western leaders feel ready to gamble with Russia’s nuclear threats? China.

Beijing has become a vital partner for Moscow in its efforts to soften the impact of sanctions imposed by the US and other countries.

China, the West believes, would react with horror at the use of nuclear weapons – thus discouraging Putin from making true on his threats.

• What we know about Russia’s Oreshnik missile

In a rare televised address on Thursday evening, the Russian president warned that the war had “acquired elements of a global character”.

That assessment was echoed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who said “the threat is serious and real when it comes to global conflict”.

The US and UK are now more deeply involved than ever – while the deployment of North Korean troops to fight alongside Russia saw another nuclear power enter the war.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Thursday that “never before” has the threat of a nuclear war been greater, blaming the US for its “aggressive and hostile” policy towards Pyongyang.

So, why are we seeing these developments now?

The likely reason is the impending arrival of US President-elect Donald Trump, who will officially enter the White House on 20 January.

While on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to end the war within “24 hours”.

Those around him, like Vice President-elect JD Vance, have signalled that will mean compromises for Ukraine, likely in the form of giving up territory in the Donbas and Crimea.

That goes against the apparent stance of the Biden administration – whose decisions this week point to a desire to get as much aid through the door as possible before Trump enters office.

But some are more bullish about Ukraine’s prospects with Trump in power.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said himself Kyiv would like to end the war through “diplomatic means” in 2025.

Former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the BBC this week: “President Trump will undoubtedly be driven by one goal, to project his strength, his leadership… And show that he is capable of fixing problems which his predecessor failed to fix.”

“As much as the fall of Afghanistan inflicted a severe wound on the foreign policy reputation of the Biden administration, if the scenario you mentioned is to be entertained by President Trump, Ukraine will become his Afghanistan, with equal consequences.”

“And I don’t think this is what he’s looking for.”

This week’s developments may not be the start of the war escalating out of control – but the start of a tussle for the strongest negotiating position in potential future talks to end it.

Travellers are being warned of the dangers of methanol poisoning after six tourists to Laos have died.

Methanol is an industrial chemical found in antifreeze and windshield washer fluid.

It’s not meant for human consumption and is highly toxic.

Drinking even small amounts can be damaging. A few shots of bootleg spirit containing it can be lethal.

It looks and tastes like alcohol, and the first effects are similar – it can make you feel intoxicated and sick.

Initially, people might not realise anything is wrong.

The harm happens hours later as the body attempts to clear it from the body by breaking it down in the liver.

This metabolism creates toxic by-products called formaldehyde, formate and formic acid.

These build up, attacking nerves and organs which can lead to blindness, coma and death.

Dr Christopher Morris, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University, said: “Formate, which is the main toxin produced, acts in a similar way to cyanide and stops energy production in cells, and the brain seems to be very vulnerable to this.

“This leads to certain parts of the brain being damaged. The eyes are also directly affected and this can cause blindness which is found in many people exposed to high levels of methanol.”

Of the victims so far, five of the six have been women.

Toxicity from methanol is related to the dose you get and how your body handles it.

As with alcohol, the less you weigh, the more you can be affected by a given amount.

Dr Knut Erik Hovda from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which tracks methanol poisonings, says awareness varies a lot among tourists and healthcare staff in different parts of the world – and that could mean delays in diagnosing it.

“The symptoms are often so vague until you get really sick,” he told the BBC.

Poisoning is a medical emergency and should be treated in hospital.

There are drug treatments that can be given, as well as dialysis to clean the blood.

Some cases can be treated using alcohol (ethanol) to outcompete the methanol metabolism. But this has to be done quickly.

Prof Alastair Hay, an expert in environmental toxicology from the University of Leeds, explained: “Ethanol acts as a competitive inhibitor largely preventing methanol breakdown, but markedly slowing it down, allowing the body to vent methanol from the lungs and some through the kidneys, and a little through sweat.”

Dr Hovda said getting help quickly after consuming methanol was crucial to chances of surviving.

“You can ease all affects if you get to hospital early enough and that hospital has the treatment needed,” he said.

“You can die from a very small proportion of methanol and you can survive from a quite substantial one, if you get to help.

“The most important antidote is regular alcohol.”

MSF says the majority of methanol poisonings happen in Asia, but some also occur in Africa and Latin America.

The advice for travellers is to know what you’re drinking and be aware of the risks.

Drink from reputable, licensed premises and avoid home-brewed drinks or bootleg spirits.

Methanol is produced during the brewing process and concentrated by distillation.

Commercial manufacturers will reduce it to levels which are safe for human consumption. However, unscrupulous backyard brewers or others in the supply chain may sometimes add industrially produced methanol, to make it go further and increase profits.

Dr Hovda said methanol was mixed into alcohol “mostly for profit reasons, because it’s cheaper and easily available”.

It is also possible for high levels of methanol to be produced by contaminating microbes during traditional ethanol fermentation.

The UK Foreign Office advises travellers: “Take care if offered, particularly for free, or when buying spirit-based drinks. If labels, smell or taste seem wrong then do not drink.”

Affected drinks may include:

• local spirits, including local rice or palm liquor
• spirit-based mixed drinks, such as cocktails
• counterfeit brand-name bottled alcohol in shops or behind the bar

To protect yourself from methanol poisoning:

• buy alcoholic beverages only from licensed liquor stores
• buy drinks only at licensed bars and hotels
• avoid home-made alcoholic drinks
• check bottle seals are intact
• check labels for poor print quality or incorrect spelling

Seek urgent medical attention if you or someone you are travelling with show signs of methanol poisoning.

Scott Jeff was in the life of two-year-old Isabella Jonas-Wheildon for just 36 days.

After starting a relationship with her mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell and leaving their home town in Bedfordshire, he subjected the toddler to sustained attacks that killed her.

Fleeing to the Norfolk coast and then Ipswich, with the couple both under the influence of drugs, Gleason-Mitchell turned a blind eye to Jeff’s brutality and they even walked the child’s dead body around in a pushchair to conceal the crime.

They were eventually arrested after leaving Isabella’s body in a locked bathroom and on Friday Jeff was convicted of her murder, while Gleason-Mitchell admitted charges relating to the death and child cruelty.

She said Jeff’s anger at the child spiralled when Isabella had accidents while potty training.

Smiley, blonde-haired Isabella had been described as an “engaging and happy” child with an attentive mother – so how did it go so horribly wrong?

The two-year-old, who was found under a pile of blankets with “traumatic injuries from head to toe” on 30 June 2023, officially died from a bone marrow embolism as a consequence of skeletal trauma.

Gleason-Mitchell and boyfriend Jeff, both 24 and previously of Biggleswade, were arrested the day after Isabella was discovered.

They had spent the previous night drinking at the Corn Exchange pub in Bury St Edmunds.

The harrowing details of Isabella’s final weeks were described over the course of a seven-week murder trial at Ipswich Crown Court.

A jury found Jeff guilty of murder but acquitted Gleason-Mitchell of the charge.

Jeff was also found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child, cruelty to a child in relation to cocaine, and cruelty to a child in relation to cannabis – offences Gleason-Mitchell had previously admitted.

The couple had first dated in 2019 but split up, before Gleason-Mitchell met Thomas Wheildon, with whom she had Isabella.

Over the course of that relationship their daughter was said to have been “a happy, healthy, engaging and contented child” and there was “absolutely no suggestion of anything other than good parenting”.

However, after splitting from the child’s father, Gleason-Mitchell reunited with Jeff on 21 May 2023 before leaving Bedfordshire and fleeing to Great Yarmouth.

They attempted to secure council housing, falsely claiming they were on the run from Gleason-Mitchell’s former partner, who they claimed was violent.

The pair stayed at the St George Hotel in Great Yarmouth and then in a tent on a beach in Caister-on-Sea, sleeping on towels and blankets, before spending three nights at a local caravan park.

During this time Isabella was regularly left alone and was made to repeat phrases about how her real father hurt her. These were said to be “learned lines” that she was forced to repeat.

They were offered a flat at the East Villas housing complex in Sidegate Lane, Ipswich, on 19 June – 11 days before Isabella’s body would be found and a week before she would be murdered.

Over the course of the trial both defendants blamed each other for the violence and each claimed to have never physically harmed Isabella.

Gleason-Mitchell said she witnessed Jeff repeatedly kick and stamp on her daughter and her death ultimately “arose from” violence born out of anger over potty training.

“She was aware of what was happening to her child but stood by and did nothing and said nothing,” said Sasha Wass KC, representing Gleason-Mitchell.

In the past, however, she said Isabella’s wellbeing had been at the forefront of Gleason-Mitchell’s mind.

“Isabella’s medical records showed full engagement with health care – Isabella had attended immunisation and there was no cause for concern raised by anybody,” she added.

She laid complete blame for the injuries suffered by Isabella with Jeff.

This version of events, however, was disputed by Christopher Paxton KC, who represented Jeff and described Gleason-Mitchell as “cunning”.

What was not contested throughout the trial, however, was the severity of the injuries inflicted on Isabella.

Bone pathologist Prof Anthony Freemont said he had never before seen such a degree of pelvic injury in a child in his 40-year career.

It was also said that the toddler had died with injuries usually seen in “high-velocity traffic accidents” or when “being kicked by a horse”.

But, even after she died, Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff opted against reporting it to the police, instead choosing to pretend she was still alive.

They wheeled her dead body around Ipswich in a pushchair while they shopped, drank and took cocaine.

Toxicology reports even revealed traces of the drug, as well as cannabis, in Isabella’s body, understood to be ingested second-hand as a result of the couple’s own drug use.

The alarm was only raised when, on 29 June, Gleason-Mitchell admitted to friend Joanne Gardner online that Isabella had been dead in her pushchair for around three days.

She said she had not contacted the authorities out of fear she would “get done” because of the bruising on her daughter’s body.

Instead, Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff decided to abandon Isabella and leave their flat on 30 June, catching a bus into the town centre, where they were captured on CCTV shopping and going to McDonald’s, before heading to a pub.

The pair then got a taxi to Ipswich train station later that afternoon before catching a train to Bury St Edmunds.

While at the Corn Exchange pub, Jeff was said to have had a text exchange with his mum, Sandy Duncan, who urged him to turn himself into the police.

He replied: “I can’t mum – it’s hard enough to lose a baby girl without them blaming us for it.”

Photos were also taken of Gleason-Mitchell while the pair were at the pub, showing her smiling while drinking.

Unbeknown to the couple, Ms Gardner had called the police with concerns about Isabella about 10 minutes prior to them leaving their flat.

The couple were then arrested in Bury St Edmunds during the early hours of the morning on 1 July.

After the jury returned its verdict, High Court judge Mr Justice Neil Garnham told Jeff: “I am obliged by law to impose a life sentence on you. I will have to fix a minimum term for you to serve.”

The pair will be sentenced on 13 December at Ipswich Crown Court.

The BBC has contacted Central Bedfordshire Council, Norfolk County Council and Suffolk County Council. The authorities are yet to confirm whether they had any contact with the couple and Isabella prior to her death.

A video of a fashion shoot in India has gone viral and unexpectedly turned a group of underprivileged school children into local celebrities.

The footage shows the children, most of them girls between the ages of 12 and 17, dressed in red and gold outfits fashioned from discarded clothes.

The teenagers designed and tailored the outfits and also doubled up as models to showcase their creations, with the grubby walls and terraces of the slum providing the backdrop for their ramp walk.

The video was filmed and edited by a 15-year-old boy.

The video first appeared earlier this month on the Instagram page of Innovation for Change, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the city of Lucknow.

The charity works with about 400 children from the city’s slums, providing them free food, education and job skills. The children featured in the shoot are students of this NGO.

Mehak Kannojia, one of the models in the video, told the BBC that she and her fellow students closely followed the sartorial choices of Bollywood actresses on Instagram and often duplicated some of their outfits for themselves.

“This time, we decided to pool our resources and worked as a group,” the 16-year-old said.

For their project, they chose wisely – a campaign by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of India’s top fashion designers who has dressed Bollywood celebrities, Hollywood actresses and billionaires. In 2018, Kim Kardashian wore his sequinned red sari for a Vogue shoot.

Mukherjee is also known as the “king of weddings” in India. He has dressed thousands of brides, including Bollywood celebrities such as Anushka Sharma and Deepika Padukone. Priyanka Chopra married Nick Jonas in a stunning red Sabyasachi outfit.

Mehak said their project, called Yeh laal rang (the colour red), was inspired by the designer’s heritage bridal collection.

“We sifted through the clothes that had come to us in donation and picked out all the red items. Then we zeroed in on the outfits we wanted to make and began putting them together.”

It was intense work – the girls stitched about a dozen outfits in three-four days but, Mehak says, they had “great fun doing it”.

For the ramp walk, Mehak says they studied the models carefully in Sabyasachi videos and copied their moves.

“Just like his models, some of us wore sunglasses, one drank from a sipper with a straw, while another walked carrying a cloth bundle under her arm.”

Some of it, Mehak says, came together organically. “At one point in the shoot, I was supposed to laugh. At that moment, someone said something funny and I just burst out laughing.”

It was an ambitious project, but the result has won hearts in India. Put together on a shoestring budget with donated clothes, the video went viral after Mukherjee reposted it on his Instagram feed with a heart emoji.

The campaign won widespread praise, with many on social media comparing their work to that of professionals.

The viral video has brought enormous attention to the charity and its school has been visited by several TV channels, some of the children were invited to participate in shows on popular FM radio stations and Bollywood actress Tamannah Bhatia visited them to accept a scarf from the children.

The response, Mehak says, has been “totally unexpected”.

“It feels like a dream come true. All my friends are sharing the video and saying ‘you’ve become famous’. My parents were full of joy when they heard about all the attention we are getting.

“We are feeling wonderful. Now we have only one dream left – to meet Sabyasachi.”

The shoot, however, also received criticism, with some wondering if showing young girls dressed as brides could encouraged child marriage in a country where millions of girls are still married off by their families before they turn 18 – the legal age.

The Innovation for Change addressed the concern in a post on Instagram, saying they had no intention to encourage child marriage.

“Our aim is not to promote child marriage in any way. Today, these girls are able to do something like this by fighting against such ideas and restrictions. Please appreciate them, otherwise the morale of these children will fall.”

Republican President-elect Donald Trump has said his election victory handed him an “unprecedented and powerful” mandate to govern.

He beat Democratic rival Kamala Harris in all seven closely watched swing states, giving him a decisive advantage overall.

Trump’s party has also won both chambers of Congress, giving the returning president considerable power to enact his agenda.

He has broadened his appeal across nearly all groups of voters since his 2020 defeat. And in doing so he pulled off a comeback unmatched by any previously defeated president in modern history.

But the data suggests it was a much closer contest than he and his allies are suggesting.

His communications director Steven Cheung has called it a “landslide” victory. Yet it emerged this week that his share of the vote has fallen below 50%, as counting continues.

“It feels grandiose to me that they’re calling it a landslide,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice-president in the US team of polling firm Ipsos.

The Trump language suggested overwhelming victories, Jackson said, when in fact it was a few hundred-thousand votes in key areas that propelled Trump back to the White House.

That is thanks to America’s electoral college system, which amplifies relatively slender victories in swing states.

Here are three ways to look at his win.

With 76.9 million votes and counting, Trump won what is known as the popular vote, according to the latest tally by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

That means he scored more votes than Harris (74.4 million), or any other candidate. No Republican has managed that feat since 2004.

But as vote-tallying continues in some parts of the US, he has now slipped a fraction of a percentage point below 50% in his vote share. He is not expected to make up the gap as counting goes on in places like Democratic-leaning California.

This was also the case in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the presidency despite losing the popular vote – having notched only 46% of the overall ballots cast.

In 2024, Trump’s win of both the popular vote and the presidency can be seen as an improvement on his last victory eight years ago.

But Trump cannot say that he won the outright majority of the presidential votes that were cast in the election overall.

To do so, he would need to have won more than 50%, as all victors have done for the last 20 years – other than Trump in 2016.

For this reason, his claim to have a historic mandate “may be overwrought”, suggested Chris Jackson of polling firm Ipsos, who said the language of Trump and his supporters was a tactic being used to “justify the sweeping actions they’re planning to take once they have control of the government”.

On a different metric, Trump’s win over Harris in 2024 appears more comfortable. He won 312 votes in the US electoral college compared with Harris’s 226.

And this is the number that really matters. The US election is really 50 state-by-state races rather than a single national one.

The winner in any given state wins all of its electoral votes – for example, 19 in swing state Pennsylvania. Both candidates hoped to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes to earn a majority in the college.

Trump’s 312 is better than Joe Biden’s 306 and beats both Republican wins by George W Bush. But it is well shy of the 365 achieved by Barack Obama in 2008 or the 332 Obama won getting re-elected, or the colossal 525 by Ronald Reagan in 1984.

And it is important to remember that the “winner takes all” mechanic of the electoral college means that relatively slender wins in some critical areas can be amplified into what looks like a much more resounding triumph.

• What is the US electoral college, and how does it work?

Trump is ahead by just over 230,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the latest numbers from CBS. All three states were the focus of intensive campaigning by both parties ahead of the 5 November vote.

If just over 115,000 voters in that group had instead picked Harris, she would have won those Rust Belt swing states, giving her enough votes in the electoral college to win the presidency.

That might sound like a lot of people but the number is a drop in the ocean of the more-than-150 million votes that were cast nationwide.

In other swing states in the Sun Belt – namely Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina – the margins of victory for Trump were much more comfortable.

But when looking at the power wielded by the Republicans more broadly, their majority in the US House, the lower chamber of Congress, remains slender.

• Republicans win House in major boost for Trump
• How America voted in maps and charts
• ‘It’s simple, really’ – why Latinos voted for Trump

There is another measure with which to consider Trump’s win, which is to look at the number of votes he received, although this is a relatively crude measure.

The 76.9 million that he has amassed so far is the second-highest tally in American history.

It is important to remember that the US population, and therefore the electorate, is constantly growing. The more-than-150 million people who voted in the US this year is more than double the number of 74 million who went to the polls in 1964.

That makes comparisons through time tricky. But it was only four years ago that the record haul was achieved.

Biden won 81.3 million votes on his way to the White House in 2020 – a year of historic voter turnout when Trump was again on the ticket.

Although the Republicans made important breakthroughs in 2024, the Democrats also failed to connect with voters, said Jackson, who put the trend down to Americans’ wish to return to “2019 prices” after a years-long cost-of-living squeeze.

“The real story is Harris’s inability to mobilise people who voted for Biden in 2020,” he said.

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can’t do on day one
• How undocumented migrants feel about deportations
• Fact-checking RFK’s views on health policy
• The rise and fall of Matt Gaetz, in eight wild days

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

The WhatsApp message was from the chief negotiator of one of the most powerful countries at the COP climate gathering. Could I stop by for a chat, he asked.

As his team hunched over computers eating takeaway pizza, he raged about the obstructionist behaviour of many of the other teams at the conference.

So far, so normal. Others had been saying versions of this all week – that this was the worst COP ever; that negotiating texts, which are meant to get smaller as deadlines approached, were in fact ballooning; that COP in its current form might be dead in the water…

Looming over it all was the prospect of US president-elect Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the COP process when he takes office for a second time. He has called climate action a “scam” and, at his victory celebration in West Palm Beach earlier this month, vowed to boost US oil production beyond its current record levels, saying, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world”.

But there was one positive: China.

“It’s the only bright spot in all of this is,” the chief negotiator told me. Not only was its negotiating style markedly different to previous years, but he also observed that, as he puts it, “China could be stepping forward.”

Another sign that this may be the case came at the start of the conference, when China made public details of its climate funding. Traditionally, China has released minimal information about its climate policies and plans, so it came as a surprise when, for the first time, officials said they have paid developing countries more than $24 billion for climate action since 2016.

“That’s serious money, almost nobody else is at that level,” one COP insider told me.

It is a “notable signal”, says Li Shuo, a director of China Climate Hub, “as it’s the first time that the Chinese government has laid out a clear figure in terms of how much they have been providing.”

If these are indeed signs that China plans to take a more central role in the future, just as the US is stepping back, it would mark a tectonic shift in the COP process.

Historically, Western countries – particularly the US and EU – have provided the momentum, cheered on by smaller climate-vulnerable nations. The difference in the way the talks play out if China steps forward will be marked.

Jonathan Pershing, program director of environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, has been to every COP and understands better than most the behind-the-scenes bartering, bullying and brinkmanship that makes or breaks deals at summits. He says that China won’t lead from the front, like the US and Europe.

“They’re more cautious players than that. It may be that they’re leading with Chinese characteristics, which is what they might say themselves.”

(This echoes how Deng Xiaoping, president in the early 1980s, described his economic reforms, which catapulted the country’s economic growth into double figures: “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.)

Pershing suggests that China is likely to help drive the COP process forward by discreetly intervening to unblock disputes. Most of this effort will take place behind closed doors, he believes, but is likely to include urging developing and developed countries to increase their ambition – and the flow of cash.

However China may not be entirely helpful on some of the challenges that slow the process, such as instances when countries use COP as a stage to champion their own interests.

One of the biggest blockers in Baku was said to be Saudi Arabia, which heads up a group of fossil fuel producing countries that want to slow the transition to renewables. As a big consumer of fossil fuels, China has often thrown its weight behind them in the past, such as by resisting the UK’s effort to get agreement to phase out coal at COP26 in Glasgow.

There have been some other occasions in this year’s talks that indicate how China’s approach is already shifting.

In the past, it tended to focus on its own interests and as such, it played a dual role in these talks. Sometimes it has aligned with the US and Europe, for example on ambitious targets to boost renewable power or on the reduction of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. On other issues, meanwhile, it has slowed progress.

One such example was COP15, held in Copenhagen in 2009. There had been high hopes that an agreement would be reached to commit countries to deep cuts in carbon emissions. But the conference nearly collapsed when China fought against US pressure to submit to a regime of international monitoring. The final non-binding deal was generally considered a failure.

This year was different, the chief negotiator I spoke to said. He observed that China was being “unusually cooperative” across all the discussions.

Other changes were observed too, some around China’s presentation of its own economic status.

It is classed as a developing country in the context of UN climate talks, despite being the world’s second biggest economy, the result of a peculiarity in the COP rules. (This is linked to its economic status in 1992 when the talks process began.) It has also long resisted pressure from developed countries to change its status, meaning it doesn’t have to contribute to the pot that rich countries have agreed to pay to poorer ones. Yet this year some experts noticed a change in the wording used by Chinese negotiators.

“What’s so interesting is the language the Chinese used,” says Professor Michael Jacobs, an expert on climate politics at Sheffield University. “They described it as ‘provided and mobilised’ – that’s the term developed countries use for their payments.”

Language matters at climate conferences. Negotiators can spend days discussing whether something “should” or “will” happen. So, the Chinese echoing the language of the rich world is significant, Prof Jacobs argues.

“They used to calibrate everything against what the US did,” he says. When Trump took office in 2016, China stood back from the talks in response. This time is different, according to Prof Jacobs.

“This looks to me like a claim of leadership.”

None of this is driven by “altruism” on China’s part,” Prof Jacobs continues.

According to Li Shuo, the shifting economics of renewables explains why China is likely to be a bigger player.

“The green transformation is very much being led by China – not necessarily the government, but its private sector and companies”. These companies lead the rest of the world by what Li Shuo says is a “very significant margin”.

Eight out of every ten solar panels are made in China, and it controls some two-thirds of wind turbine production. It is reckoned to produce at least three-quarters of the world’s lithium batteries and more than 60% of the global market for electric vehicles.

Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that solar panels, EVs and batteries are the “new trio” at the heart of the Chinese economy.

It is the huge investments China has made in renewable technologies and the massive economies of scale that it has created that have also driven down renewable costs year after year – the challenge it faces now is finding new markets to sell it into.

The developing world is where the demand is set to boom. These countries will account for two-thirds of the renewable market within 10 years, according to a recent report by a group of economists tasked by the UN with calculating the costs of the energy transition.

Pakistan imported 13 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels in the first six months of this year alone, according to research by Bloomberg NEF. To put that in context, the UK has 17GW of installed solar.

Shipping clean tech to emerging economies dovetails with another of China’s policies: its “Belt and Road Initiative,” an effort to develop new trade routes, including roads, railways, ports and airports, to connect with the rest of the world.

China has spent more than a trillion dollars on the project, according to the World Economic Forum. Last week, President Xi opened a new port on the coast of Peru.

Which begins to explain why, as Prof Jacobs sees it, while the US may withdraw, China looks like it might be stepping up. “It now sees its best interest as encouraging other countries to also cut their emissions by using Chinese technologies and equipment.”

Ultimately, though, regardless of whether this plays, out, there is cause for hope, according to some well-placed observers. Camilla Born, who has been part of the UK’s negotiating team and helped run COP26 in Glasgow, believes that the future talks will be determined by the new economics of energy, not the politics of meetings.

“This isn’t just about an idea of how to deal with climate change anymore,” she argues. “This is about investments, about money – it’s people’s jobs, it’s new technologies. The conversations are different.”

It is, after all, the biggest revolution in energy since the start of the industrial revolution. And regardless of which superpower takes the lead, or if the US is out of the game for four years, it’s unlikely that anyone will want to miss out on such a vast market.

US rapper Kendrick Lamar has released a surprise new album called GNX.

The 12-track album, which is the performer’s sixth studio release, dropped on his social media pages at around 17:00 GMT on Friday.

It features contributions from American R&B star SZA as well as Kamasi Washington, among others.

GNX is Lamar’s first album since 2022’s Mr Morale & The Big Steppers, and comes ahead of his headlining performance at the Super Bowl halftime show in February.

It caps off an eventful year for Lamar, whose recent music has been fuelled by a long-running feud with Canadian star Drake.

There had been rumours for months that Lamar, who has won multiple Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize for Music, was working on a new project.

Early reviews of the album have been mostly positive, with fans also taking to social media to praise his new offering.

“Whatever comes next, the Pulitzer Prize winner has written another thrilling chapter in what remains the most fascinating longform story in hip-hop,” wrote AP News.

The news outlet called Lamar “an ambitious and searingly talented poet from Compton working through his – and the world’s – contradictions on the biggest stage, forever discomforted by his crown”.

Rating Game Music said the album “reminds us why he’s one of the greats”, but added: “Overall, this album doesn’t feel like a monumental release – it’s more like a creative purge, a way for Kendrick to get a few ideas out of his system.”

“My guess? The real project is on the horizon”.

Some had speculated that Taylor Swift would make an appearance, but the pop sensation does not appear to have made it on.

The pair have worked together before, when the rapper appeared on Swift’s track Bad Blood from the album 1989.

However, SZA lends her voice to two tracks, luther and gloria.

Lamar and SZA recently sat down for an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, which covered a wide range of topics from spirituality to mental health.

Other tracks include tv off, dodger blue, peekaboo, and gnx.

On the opening track, wacced out murals, Lamar refers to his upcoming Super Bowl performance.

The coveted gig takes place in the middle of the NFL season finale and has a massive audience among Americans. However, it caused some upset among Lil Wayne fans who thought he should have been picked instead.

“I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down,” the Compton rapper sings.

“Won the Super Bowl and Nas the only one congratulate me.”

The new album also follows a long-running spat with Drake, which goes back years, but it escalated to new levels earlier this year, as the two rappers traded insults in a flurry of new songs.

The feud resulted in some huge tracks, notably Lamar’s Not Like Us.

Powered by an irresistible DJ Mustard beat, Not Like Us broke Spotify records, becoming the hip-hop song with the most plays in a single day.

It went on to top the US charts, and reached number six in the UK – making it Lamar’s biggest hit as a solo artist.

The new team entrusted with delivering Donald Trump’s agenda is taking shape, with several contentious hires in his proposed administration.

Ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025, the president-elect has named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and military veteran, as his pick for defence secretary. And he wants Robert F Kennedy Jr to be health secretary.

Marco Rubio could be the next secretary of state. And billionaire supporter Elon Musk will play a role in cost-cutting.

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

We will start with the cabinet roles, which require approval from the US Senate. If four Republican senators and all the Democrats disagree to any individual then that nomination will fail.

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

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

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

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

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

His appointment is one of the most highly anticipated in Trump’s cabinet as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza rage on. “Nobody fights harder for the troops,” Trump said.

After Hegseth’s appointment, it emerged that he was investigated in 2017 for an alleged sexual assault. He was never arrested or charged and denies the allegation.

His lawyer also confirmed that he had paid a woman in the same year to stay quiet about an assault claim that he feared would cost him his job at Fox. Again, he denied any wrongdoing.

• Trump defence pick surprises Washington, here’s why

Trump’s first pick for attorney general, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration for the role Thursday after a week of controversy over a congressional investigation into sexual misconduct and drug allegations against him.

Gaetz denied all of the claims, but said he wanted to avoid a “needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”

About six hours after Gaetz withdrew, Trump named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, as his successor.

“Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families,” Trump wrote.

Bondi served during Trump’s first administration as a member of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission. And she was on his defence team during his first impeachment trial.

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

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

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

• Trump victory is a major setback for climate action, experts say

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

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

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

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

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

• Fact-checking RFK Jr’s views on health policy

Former Georgia congressman Doug Collins has been chosen to lead the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

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

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

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

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

• Trump lines Kristi Noem and others for top jobs

Former congressman and Fox Business host Sean Duffy has been selected to lead the Department of Transportation.

If confirmed by senators, he will take charge of aviation, automotive, rail, transit and other transportation policies at the transport department, with a roughly $110bn annual budget.

In the role, the incoming secretary can expect to face a number of safety-related aviation issues, including the continued problems at Boeing, as the troubled manufacturer addresses a series of safety and quality issues.

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

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

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

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Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team and chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has been picked to lead the US commerce department.

Trump said Lutnick would spearhead the administration’s “tariff and trade agenda”.

Lutnick had also been in the running for treasury secretary, a more high-profile role.

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) co-founder and Trump transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, has been appointed as Trump’s nominee for education secretary.

A long-time Trump ally, McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first presidency and donated millions of dollars to his presidential campaign.

Trump has criticised the Department of Education, and has promised to close the agency down – a job McMahon could be tasked with.

In his statement announcing her nomination, Trump said McMahon would “spearhead” the effort to “send Education BACK TO THE STATES”, in reference to the pledge.

Scott Bessent has been nominated to lead the US Treasury Department, a post with wide oversight of tax policy, public debt, international finance and sanctions.

The selection ends what has proven to be one of the more protracted decisions for the president-elect as he assembles his team for a second term.

Bessent, a Wall Street financier who once worked for liberal billionaire George Soros, was an early backer of Trump’s 2024 bid and would bring a relatively conventional resume to the role.

On the campaign trail, Bessent told voters that Trump would usher in a “new golden age with de-regulation, low-cost energy, [and] low taxes”.

“[He] has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda,” Trump said, adding that Bessent would “support my Policies that will drive US Competitiveness, and stop unfair Trade imbalances.”

Russell Vought has been selected to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a post he held during Trump’s first term.

Vought previously served as the director of the agency, which helps craft the president’s budget, acts as the central regulatory gatekeeper and executes the president’s agenda across the government.

He also authored a key chapter in Project 2025, a 900-page conservative wish-list that sought to expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.

Vought served as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director.

“He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term,” Trump said in announcing Vought. “We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success!”

Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been selected by Trump to lead the US Department of Labor – which oversees worker health and safety, workforce laws and administers unemployment and workers compensation.

Chavez-DeRemer has been serving in the US Congress since 2023 but lost a re-election bid in Oregon in the November election, despite winning strong trade union support.

Scott Turner, an NFL veteran and motivational speaker, has been chosen to lead the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The department oversees America’s housing needs, enforces laws, prevents discrimination and provides assistance to those in need, through both low-income housing and helping Americans avoid foreclosure.

Turner served as the executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term. He previously served in the Texas legislature.

Outside the 15 department heads who make up the core of the cabinet, there are several other roles that are often given cabinet-rank, like the FBI director and the head of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). These roles will also require the nominees to be confirmed by the Senate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Florida congressman Michael Waltz has been selected as the next national security adviser.

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

Waltz will have to help navigate the US position on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has been nominated to be the US Ambassador to Nato – the alliance Trump has regularly criticised, and has even previously threatened to withdraw from completely.

“Matt is a strong warrior and loyal Patriot, who will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended,” Trump said in a statement.

“Matt will strengthen relationships with our Nato Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability – He will put AMERICA FIRST.”

Whitaker is a high school football star turned lawyer who has served as a US Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. He has little experience of foreign policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mehmet Oz has been chosen to run the powerful agency that oversees the healthcare of millions of Americans. He, too, will need to be confirmed by the US Senate next year before he officially takes charge.

Oz trained as a surgeon before finding fame on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the early 2000s. He later hosted a TV programme of his own.

“There may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said.

Oz has been criticised by experts for promoting what they called bad health advice about weight loss drugs and “miracle” cures, and suggesting malaria drugs as a cure for Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Karoline Leavitt to become youngest White House press secretary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russia is estimated to have supplied North Korea with more than a million barrels of oil since March this year, according to satellite imagery analysis from the Open Source Centre, a non-profit research group based in the UK.

The oil is payment for the weapons and troops Pyongyang has sent Moscow to fuel its war in Ukraine, leading experts and UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have told the BBC.

These transfers violate UN sanctions, which ban countries from selling oil to North Korea, except in small quantities, in an attempt to stifle its economy to prevent it from further developing nuclear weapons.

The satellite images, shared exclusively with the BBC, show more than a dozen different North Korean oil tankers arriving at an oil terminal in Russia’s Far East a total of 43 times over the past eight months.

Further pictures, taken of the ships at sea, appear to show the tankers arriving empty, and leaving almost full.

North Korea is the only country in the world not allowed to buy oil on the open market. The number of barrels of refined petroleum it can receive is capped by the United Nations at 500,000 annually, well below the amount it needs.

Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to our request for comment.

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The first oil transfer documented by the Open Source Centre in a new report, was on 7 March 2024, seven months after it first emerged Pyongyang was sending Moscow weapons.

The shipments have continued as thousands of North Korean troops are reported to have been sent to Russia to fight, with the last one recorded on 5 November.

“While Kim Jong Un is providing Vladimir Putin with a lifeline to continue his war, Russia is quietly providing North Korea with a lifeline of its own,” says Joe Byrne from the Open Source Centre.

“This steady flow of oil gives North Korea a level of stability it hasn’t had since these sanctions were introduced.”

Four former members of a UN panel responsible for tracking the sanctions on North Korea have told the BBC the transfers are a consequence of increasing ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

“These transfers are fuelling Putin’s war machine – this is oil for missiles, oil for artillery and now oil for soldiers,” says Hugh Griffiths, who led the panel from 2014 to 2019.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has told the BBC in a statement: “To keep fighting in Ukraine, Russia has become increasingly reliant on North Korea for troops and weapons in exchange for oil.”

He added that this was “having a direct impact on security in the Korean peninsula, Europe and Indo-Pacific”.

While most people in North Korea rely on coal for their daily lives, oil is essential for running the country’s military. Diesel and petrol are used to transport missile launchers and troops around the country, run munitions factories and fuel the cars of Pyongyang’s elite.

The 500,000 barrels North Korea is allowed to receive fall far short of the nine million it consumes – meaning that since the cap was introduced in 2017, the country has been forced to buy oil illicitly from criminal networks to make up this deficit.

This involves transferring the oil between ships out at sea – a risky, expensive and time-consuming business, according to Dr Go Myong-hyun, a senior research fellow at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, which is linked to the country’s spy agency.

“Now Kim Jong Un is getting oil directly, it’s likely better quality, and chances are he’s getting it for free, as quid pro quo for supplying munitions. What could be better than that?”

“A million barrels is nothing for a large oil producer like Russia to release, but it is a substantial amount for North Korea to receive,” Dr Go adds.

In all 43 of the journeys tracked by the Open Source Centre using satellite images, the North Korean-flagged tankers arrived at Russia’s Vostochny Port with their trackers switched off, concealing their movements.

The images show they then made their way back to one of four ports on North Korea’s east and west coast.

“The vessels appear silently, almost every week,” says Joe Byrne, the researcher from the Open Source Centre. “Since March there’s been a fairly constant flow.”

The team, which has been tracking these tankers since the oil sanctions were first introduced, used their knowledge of each ship’s capacity to calculate how many oil barrels they could carry.

Then they studied images of the ships entering and leaving Vostochny and, in most instances, could see how low they sat in the water and, therefore, how full they were.

The tankers, they assess, were loaded to 90% of their capacity.

“We can see from some of the images that if the ships were any fuller they would sink,” Mr Byrne says.

Based on this, they calculate that, since March, Russia has given North Korea more than a million barrels of oil – more than double the annual cap, and around ten times the amount Moscow officially gave Pyongyang in 2023.

This follows an assessment by the US government in May that Moscow had already supplied more than 500,000 barrels’ worth of oil.

Cloud cover means the researchers cannot get a clear image of the port every day.

“The whole of August was cloudy, so we weren’t able to document a single trip,” Mr Byrne says, leading his team to believe that one million barrels is a “baseline” figure.

Not only do these oil deliveries breach UN sanctions on North Korea, that Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, signed off on – but also, more than half of the journeys tracked by the Open Source Centre were made by vessels that have been individually sanctioned by the UN.

This means they should have been impounded upon entering Russian waters.

But in March 2024, three weeks after the first oil transfer was documented, Russia disbanded the UN panel responsible for monitoring sanctions violations, by using its veto at the UN Security Council.

Ashley Hess, who was working on the panel up until its collapse, says they saw evidence the transfers had started.

“We were tracking some of the ships and companies involved, but our work was stopped, possibly after they had already breached the 500,000-barrel cap”.

Eric Penton-Voak, who led the group from 2021-2023, says the Russian members on the panel tried to censor its work.

“Now the panel is gone, they can simply ignore the rules,” he adds. “The fact that Russia is now encouraging these ships to visit its ports and load up with oil shows a new level of contempt for these sanctions.”

But Mr Penton-Voak, who is on the board of the Open Source Centre, thinks the problem runs much deeper.

“You now have these autocratic regimes increasingly working together to help one another achieve whatever it is they want, and ignoring the wishes of the international community.”

This is an “increasingly dangerous” playbook, he argues.

“The last thing you want is a North Korean tactical nuclear weapon turning up in Iran, for instance.”

As Kim Jong Un steps up his support for Vladimir Putin’s war, concern is growing over what else he will receive in return.

The US and South Korea estimate Pyongyang has now sent Moscow 16,000 shipping containers filled with artillery shells and rockets, while remnants of exploded North Korean ballistic missiles have been recovered on the battlefield in Ukraine.

More recently, Putin and Kim signed a defence pact, leading to thousands of North Korean troops being sent to Russia’s Kursk region, where intelligence reports indicate they are now engaged in battle.

The South Korean government has told the BBC it would “sternly respond to the violation of the UN Security Council resolutions by Russia and North Korea”.

Its biggest worry is that Moscow will provide Pyongyang with technology to improve its spy satellites and ballistic missiles.

Last month, Seoul’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, stated there was a “high chance” North Korea was asking for such help.

“If you’re sending your people to die in a foreign war, a million barrels of oil is just not sufficient reward,” Dr Go says.

Andrei Lankov, an expert in North Korea-Russia relations at Seoul’s Kookmin University, agrees.

“I used to think it was not in Russia’s interest to share military technology, but perhaps its calculus has changed. The Russians need these troops, and this gives the North Koreans more leverage.”

Just weeks ago, Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, celebrated Donald Trump’s election victory and announced plans to invest $10bn (£7.9bn) in energy and infrastructure projects in the US.

Now, the 62-year-old Indian billionaire and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose sprawling $169bn empire spans ports and renewable energy, faces US fraud charges that could potentially jeopardise his ambitions at home and abroad.

Federal prosecutors have accused him of orchestrating a $250m bribery scheme and concealing it to raise money in the US. They allege Mr Adani and his executives paid bribes to Indian officials to secure contracts worth $2bn in profits over 20 years. Adani Group has denied the allegations, calling them “baseless.”

But this is already hurting the group and the Indian economy.

Adani Group firms lost $34bn in market value on Thursday, reducing the combined market capitalisation of its 10 companies to $147bn. Adani Green Energy, which is the firm at the centre of the allegations, also said it wouldn’t proceed with a $600m bond offering.

Then there are questions about the impact of the charges on India’s business and politics.

India’s economy is deeply intertwined with Mr Adani, the country’s leading infrastructure tycoon. He operates 13 ports (30% market share), seven airports (23% of passenger traffic), and India’s second-largest cement business (20% of the market).

With six coal-fired power plants, Mr Adani is India’s largest private player in power. At the same time, he has pledged to invest $50bn in green hydrogen and runs a 8,000km (4,970 miles)-long natural gas pipeline. He’s also building India’s longest expressway and redeveloping India’s largest slum. He employs over 45,000 people, but his businesses impact millions nationwide.

• Gautam Adani: Asia’s richest man

His global ambitions span coal mines in Indonesia and Australia, and infrastructure projects in Africa.

Mr Adani’s portfolio closely mirrors Modi’s policy priorities, beginning with infrastructure and more recently expanding into clean energy. He has thrived despite critics labeling his business empire as crony capitalism, pointing to his close ties with Modi, both as Gujarat’s chief minister – where they both hail from – and as India’s prime minister. (Like any successful businessman, Mr Adani has also forged ties with many opposition leaders, investing in their states.)

“This [the bribery allegations] is big. Mr Adani and Modi have been inseparable for a long time. This is going to influence the political economy of India,” says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an Indian journalist who has written extensively on the business group.

This crisis also comes as Mr Adani has spent nearly two years trying to rebuild his image after US short-seller Hindenburg Research’s 2023 report accused his conglomerate of decades of stock manipulation and fraud. Though Mr Adani denied the claims, the allegations triggered a market sell-off and an ongoing investigation by India’s market regulator, SEBI.

“Mr Adani has been trying to rehabilitate his image, and try to show that those earlier fraud allegations leveled by the Hindenburg group were not true, and his company and his businesses had actually been doing quite well. There’d been a number of new deals and investments made over the last year or so, and so this is just a body blow coming to this billionaire who had done a very good job of shaking off the potential damage of those earlier allegations,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told the BBC.

For now, raising capital at home may prove challenging for Mr Adani’s cash-guzzling projects.

“The market reaction shows how serious this is,” Ambareesh Baliga, an independent market analyst, told the BBC. “Adanis will still secure funding for their major projects, but with delays.”

The latest charges could also throw a spanner in Mr Adani’s global expansion plans. He has been already challenged in Kenya and Bangladesh over a planned takeover of an international airport and a controversial energy deal. “This [bribery charges] stops international expansion plans linked to the US,” Nirmalya Kumar, Lee Kong Chian Professor at Singapore Management University, told the BBC.

What’s next? Politically, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has unsurprisingly called for Mr Adani’s arrest and promised to stir up parliament. “Bribing government officials in India is not news, but the amounts mentioned are staggering. I suspect the US has names of some of those who were the intended recipients. This has potential reverberations for the Indian political scene. There is more to come,” Mr Kumar believes.

Mr Adani’s team will undoubtedly assemble a top-tier legal defence. “For now, we have only the indictment, leaving much still to unfold,” says Mr Kugelman.

While the US-India business relationship may face scrutiny, it’s unlikely to be significantly impacted, particularly given the recent $500m US deal with Mr Adani for a port project in Sri Lanka, says Mr Kugelman. Despite the serious allegations, broader US-India business ties remain strong.

“The US-India business relationship is a very large and multifaceted one. Even with these very serious allegations against someone that’s such a major player in the Indian economy, I don’t think we should overstate the impact that this could have on that relationship,” Mr Kugelman says.

Also, it’s unclear if Mr Adani can be targeted, despite the US-India extradition treaty, as it depends on whether the new administration allows the cases to proceed. Mr Baliga believes it is not doom and gloom for the Adanis. “I still do think foreign investors and banks will back them like they did post Hindenburg though, given that they are part of very important, well performing sectors of the Indian economy,” he says.

“The sense in the market is also that this will perhaps blow over and be sorted out, once the [Donald] Trump administration takes over.”

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

Officers in the southern Netherlands have found a garden gnome weighing nearly 2kg (4lb) and made of the drug MDMA.

“Drugs appear in many shapes and sizes, but every now and then we come across special things,” Dongemond Police said in a translated social media post.

The gnome was found among suspected narcotics during a large drug search.

“In itself a strange place to keep your garden gnome,” the force said. “That’s why we decided to test [it] for narcotics”.

“The gnome himself was visibly startled,” police said, referring to the gnome having its hands covering its mouth.

It is not known which area the gnome was recovered in, but the Dongemond Police covers the municipalities of Oosterhout, Geertruidenberg, Drimmelen and Altena.

MDMA – which is an illegal substance in the Netherlands – is a synthetic party drug also known as ecstasy.

As of 2019, the Netherlands was among the world’s leading producers of MDMA.

It is not the first time someone has attempted to hide the drug in inconspicuous guises.

Last year, a Scottish man was jailed for more than four years for trying to smuggle over £84,000 worth of MDMA that was hidden in cat food into the country.

A Leeds man was also previously charged over a plot to smuggle 90kg (198lb) of the drug into the UK hidden inside pallets of frozen chicken.

Two men have pleaded guilty midway through their trial to people smuggling.

Dilshad Shamo, 41, and Ali Khdir, 40, were convicted for their roles in an operation which ran through Europe labelled “Tripadvisor for people smugglers”.

They brought about 100 migrants illegally to Europe each week, over a period of two years.

The pair – based in a car wash in the south Wales town of Caerphilly – offered the migrants bronze, silver, gold and platinum packages, depending on risk.

A platinum package could get you a flight, whereas silver might land you a “comfortable ride” in the back of a lorry.

Migrants from the Middle East heading to Europe rated their journeys in videos filmed inside lorries, boats and even on planes.

“How was the route, lads?” a man asks in one clip, as someone at the back of the lorry gives a thumbs-up.

Investigators found the video reviews on the phones of the smugglers themselves, seemingly made as promotional material.

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), most of the people using their services were from Iran, Iraq and Syria, searching for a better life in western Europe. Many are believed to have come to the UK.

In one video, a migrant said: “Lorry route agreement with knowledge of the driver; here we have men, women and children – thank God the route was easy and good.”

Another showed men smiling to the camera as they pointed to at least a dozen others on a boat travelling rapidly over the water.

Derek Evans, from the NCA, said the pair operated “like a travel agency”.

“It’s like Tripadvisor, they were rating their service within that community,” he said.

The highest tier offered – platinum – would get migrants a fake passport and air travel, costing between £10,000 and £25,000.

The gold tier would be by vessel costing about £8,000-£10,000, while bronze, the most risky service – between £3,000 and £5,000 – would involve travel in a heavy goods vehicle.

The NCA tracked the smugglers down after a tip-off and secretly recorded some of their phone calls.

“From last Friday till last night, I have been smuggling people,” Shamo said in one conversation.

“A batch every single day, Kurds from Turkey… so this week, I smuggled six to seven batches.”

Mr Evans told the BBC Wales Investigates programme that they hope to have “dismantled and disrupted” part of the smuggling industry.

But he said there was “no doubt” someone else would take over because it was such a “fruitful business model”.

Shamo and Khdir made hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds, he said, but the profits were unlikely ever to be recovered.

This is because they used a system known as hawala banking, which does not require detailed information from those using it.

Individuals can deposit money to a hawala broker in one country, and a recipient withdraws it from a broker in another country, using a code.

This means money is transferred without any cash being physically moved. No identification is needed from those using it.

While there are legitimate and even “essential” uses for it – such as people without bank accounts sending remittances to their families abroad – it is also a system that is “attractive for criminal activity”, said Claire Healy, of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

We knew that from their car wash in south Wales, Shamo and Khdir had contacts in Iraq as a key part of their smuggling operation.

So we travelled to the city of Erbil and enlisted the help of a local man with knowledge of smuggling gangs to find out more about the shady but hugely profitable smuggling industry.

He quickly found adverts on TikTok offering a similar service to the men from Caerphilly, but they were unlikely to talk openly about illegal activity.

So we went undercover, sending our contact in to pose as an Iraqi man looking to reach the UK.

One smuggler said he could arrange for us to be taken from France to the UK in the back of a lorry for $5,000 (£3,900).

Another man, who called himself Bawar, claimed to be based in Cardiff and offered a more comfortable trip, with a fake passport.

“My brother, we have by plane from France to Britain… we guarantee no stoppage or fingerprinting,” he told us.

“The amount is $8,000 (£6,200) and you can easily deposit the amount in any transfer office you want.”

To finalise the deal, Bawar told us to deposit the money at a hawala in Erbil.

When our undercover reporter arrived there, the man running it appeared familiar with the arrangement. We confirmed we were travelling by plane with documents provided by Bawar.

“OK, fine. You must know that the [hawala] fee is £400,” he replied.

We did not go through with the deal, but it appeared to illustrate how easily the hawala banking system is being exploited by smugglers.

When the BBC approached Bawar for comment, he denied being involved in smuggling, claiming he was a shepherd who had no money.

The hawala owner in Erbil denied offering to take money to help our undercover reporter travel to the UK on a false passport.

Mr Evans, from the NCA, said only some of the known hawalas in the UK were registered with the financial authorities, while many others were working within a criminal network.

But not enough was being done to identify how this kind of banking was exploited by smugglers and other criminals, said Dr Healy.

“I think a lot of countries are struggling in their responses because they really don’t understand the system.

“Very often it’s simply the person driving a boat or driving a car who gets arrested… these are actors who are very easily replaceable.”

Dr Healy said more financial expertise was required to locate the criminals making big profits, and further work was needed to regulate hawalas to flag suspicious transactions, while ensuring legitimate business cold continue.

“It’s also extremely urgent – we’ve seen around the world, including the UK, the dangerous conditions in which smuggling happens and the lives that are lost.”

A spokesperson for TikTok told the BBC it had “zero tolerance for content that promotes human smuggling” and would remove accounts that break its rules.

It said it worked with the NCA to “identify and combat organised immigration crime online and respond to evolving threats”.

The UK government, having pledged to freeze the bank accounts of smugglers, said it would “stop at nothing to dismantle vile people smuggling gangs”.

It added that the NCA was working closely with international partners to develop intelligence to disrupt criminals who use the hawala system to launder profits.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump has said his election victory handed him an “unprecedented and powerful” mandate to govern.

He beat Democratic rival Kamala Harris in all seven closely watched swing states, giving him a decisive advantage overall.

Trump’s party has also won both chambers of Congress, giving the returning president considerable power to enact his agenda.

He has broadened his appeal across nearly all groups of voters since his 2020 defeat. And in doing so he pulled off a comeback unmatched by any previously defeated president in modern history.

But the data suggests it was a much closer contest than he and his allies are suggesting.

His communications director Steven Cheung has called it a “landslide” victory. Yet it emerged this week that his share of the vote has fallen below 50%, as counting continues.

“It feels grandiose to me that they’re calling it a landslide,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice-president in the US team of polling firm Ipsos.

The Trump language suggested overwhelming victories, Jackson said, when in fact it was a few hundred-thousand votes in key areas that propelled Trump back to the White House.

That is thanks to America’s electoral college system, which amplifies relatively slender victories in swing states.

Here are three ways to look at his win.

With 76.9 million votes and counting, Trump won what is known as the popular vote, according to the latest tally by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

That means he scored more votes than Harris (74.4 million), or any other candidate. No Republican has managed that feat since 2004.

But as vote-tallying continues in some parts of the US, he has now slipped a fraction of a percentage point below 50% in his vote share. He is not expected to make up the gap as counting goes on in places like Democratic-leaning California.

This was also the case in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the presidency despite losing the popular vote – having notched only 46% of the overall ballots cast.

In 2024, Trump’s win of both the popular vote and the presidency can be seen as an improvement on his last victory eight years ago.

But Trump cannot say that he won the outright majority of the presidential votes that were cast in the election overall.

To do so, he would need to have won more than 50%, as all victors have done for the last 20 years – other than Trump in 2016.

For this reason, his claim to have a historic mandate “may be overwrought”, suggested Chris Jackson of polling firm Ipsos, who said the language of Trump and his supporters was a tactic being used to “justify the sweeping actions they’re planning to take once they have control of the government”.

On a different metric, Trump’s win over Harris in 2024 appears more comfortable. He won 312 votes in the US electoral college compared with Harris’s 226.

And this is the number that really matters. The US election is really 50 state-by-state races rather than a single national one.

The winner in any given state wins all of its electoral votes – for example, 19 in swing state Pennsylvania. Both candidates hoped to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes to earn a majority in the college.

Trump’s 312 is better than Joe Biden’s 306 and beats both Republican wins by George W Bush. But it is well shy of the 365 achieved by Barack Obama in 2008 or the 332 Obama won getting re-elected, or the colossal 525 by Ronald Reagan in 1984.

And it is important to remember that the “winner takes all” mechanic of the electoral college means that relatively slender wins in some critical areas can be amplified into what looks like a much more resounding triumph.

• What is the US electoral college, and how does it work?

Trump is ahead by just over 230,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the latest numbers from CBS. All three states were the focus of intensive campaigning by both parties ahead of the 5 November vote.

If just over 115,000 voters in that group had instead picked Harris, she would have won those Rust Belt swing states, giving her enough votes in the electoral college to win the presidency.

That might sound like a lot of people but the number is a drop in the ocean of the more-than-150 million votes that were cast nationwide.

In other swing states in the Sun Belt – namely Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina – the margins of victory for Trump were much more comfortable.

But when looking at the power wielded by the Republicans more broadly, their majority in the US House, the lower chamber of Congress, remains slender.

• Republicans win House in major boost for Trump
• How America voted in maps and charts
• ‘It’s simple, really’ – why Latinos voted for Trump

There is another measure with which to consider Trump’s win, which is to look at the number of votes he received, although this is a relatively crude measure.

The 76.9 million that he has amassed so far is the second-highest tally in American history.

It is important to remember that the US population, and therefore the electorate, is constantly growing. The more-than-150 million people who voted in the US this year is more than double the number of 74 million who went to the polls in 1964.

That makes comparisons through time tricky. But it was only four years ago that the record haul was achieved.

Biden won 81.3 million votes on his way to the White House in 2020 – a year of historic voter turnout when Trump was again on the ticket.

Although the Republicans made important breakthroughs in 2024, the Democrats also failed to connect with voters, said Jackson, who put the trend down to Americans’ wish to return to “2019 prices” after a years-long cost-of-living squeeze.

“The real story is Harris’s inability to mobilise people who voted for Biden in 2020,” he said.

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can’t do on day one
• How undocumented migrants feel about deportations
• Fact-checking RFK’s views on health policy
• The rise and fall of Matt Gaetz, in eight wild days

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

A massive Israeli air strike on central Beirut has killed at least 15 people, Lebanese officials say – in the latest attack on the capital amid an escalation of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah.

The strike happened without warning at about 04:00 (02:00 GMT) on Saturday, and was an attempt to assassinate a senior Hezbollah official, Israeli media reported.

The attack was heard and felt across the city, and destroyed at least one eight-storey residential building in the densely populated Basta district.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said a ‘bunker buster’ bomb was used, a type of weapon previously used by Israel to kill senior Hezbollah figures, including former leader Hassan Nasrallah.

• Israel-Lebanon in maps: Tracking the conflict with Hezbollah and Iran

• What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?

All day, emergency workers used heavy machinery to remove the rubble and retrieve bodies.

The Lebanese health ministry said more than 60 people had been wounded, and that the number of victims was expected to rise as DNA tests would be carried out on body parts that had been recovered.

“It was a very horrible explosion. All the windows and glasses were over me, my wife and my children. My home now is a battlefield,” said 55-year-old Ali Nassar, who lived in a nearby building.

“Even if one person is hiding here… Should you destroy buildings where people are sleeping inside? Is it necessary to kill all the people for one person? Or we’re not humans? That’s what I’m asking.”

According to the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, the attack was an attempt to kill Mohammed Haydar, a top Hezbollah official. Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri said none of the group’s leaders were in the building hit, and Haydar’s fate remained unclear.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented.

Also on Saturday, the IDF carried out further air strikes on the Dahieh, the area in southern Beirut where Hezbollah is based, saying they were buildings linked to the group.

Israeli attacks have also hit the south, where an Israeli ground invasion is advancing, and the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah has strong presence.

In the past two weeks, Israel has intensified its campaign against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia and political movement, amid international efforts for a ceasefire, in what appears to be a strategy to pressure the group to accept a deal.

The escalation comes as renewed negotiations to end more than one year of conflict showed initial signs of progress. This week, Amos Hochstein, who has led the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts, held talks in Lebanon and Israel to try to advance a US drafted deal.

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

The resolution includes the withdrawal of Hezbollah’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.

Israel says that was never fully respected, while Lebanon says Israeli violations included military flights over Lebanese territory.

The proposal, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, includes a 60-day ceasefire which would see the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the removal of Hezbollah’s presence from the area. The Lebanese military would then boost its presence there, with thousands of extra troops.

But disagreements over some elements remained, the diplomat added, including about the timeline for an Israeli pull-out and the formation of an international mechanism to monitor the agreement.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have indicated being interested in a deal, according to a senior Lebanese source. After the initial shock, the group has reorganised itself, and continues to carry out daily attacks on Israel, though not with the same intensity, and confront invading Israeli soldiers.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem said the group had received the US proposal, clarified its reservations, and that it was allowing the talks to go ahead to see if they produced any results. The conditions for a deal, he said, were a complete cessation of hostilities and the preservation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, warning that Hezbollah was ready for a long fight.

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 northern Israel because of the group’s attacks.

In Lebanon, the conflict has killed more than 3,500 people and forced more than one million from their homes, Lebanese authorities say.

For Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, it was their first big trip venturing out to explore the world.

Like so many 19-year-olds, they were drawn to the romance of backpacking across South East Asia – where food is great, people are friendly and the scenery stunning.

They had “saved up enough money after school and university to have their overseas jaunt, as so many of our kids do,” said their football team coach Nick Heath. “And off they went.”

They ended up on 12 November in the riverside town of Vang Vieng in central Laos.

The two checked into the popular Nana Backpacker Hostel – where guests often receive a free shot upon arrival. Days later both were on life support in hospitals in Thailand.

Jones’s death was announced on 21 November, and Bowles’s a day later. The death of a British woman, 28-year-old Simone White, was also announced on Thursday.

They are among six foreign tourists who have died from what is believed to be a mass incident of methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng.

Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, died last week, while an American man also died. They have not been identified.

It is unclear how many others have fallen ill, but a transnational police investigation is now underway into the deaths.

Much of the scrutiny has fallen on the hostel where some of the victims were reportedly staying. The girls had taken free shots there before heading out for the night.

The hostel manager has denied culpability, saying the same drinks had been served to at least 100 other guests that night who reported no problems. The manager was taken in by police for questioning on Thursday.

Mr Heath, who spoke to media on behalf of Ms Bowles’s family, said they knew it was methanol that caused the girls to fall ill. But “no one really knows how and where it entered their system”.

To understand what happened, the BBC spoke to backpackers and a diplomat about the area.

Our reporting found the town where travellers fell ill remains a party hotspot despite past efforts, with some success, to clean up its image, and that while the risk of methanol poisoning is known among consulates and tourism operators, travellers appear largely ignorant.

• Parents ‘devastated’ over daughter’s suspected poisoning death

Vang Vieng – a tiny town on the Nam Song river surrounded by limestone mountains and paddy fields – is known for its scenery.

It is also known as a party town – a reputation Laos officials have been trying to shed over the past decade.

A four-hour bus ride from the capital Vientiane, it has long been the stopping point on the Banana Pancake Trail backpacking route between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading north to the ancient temples of Luang Prabang.

In Vang Vieng, hostel bunks are advertised at less than €10 (£8) a night, while a bucket of beer can cost half that. Drugs like marijuana and mushrooms are in ready supply, openly advertised at cafes and diners.

During the early 2000s and 2010s the town was famous for hardcore partying and and as a spot for riding inflatables down the local river. But after several tourists were injured or died, efforts were made at raising safety standards.

“To combat the river tubing deaths they demolished a bunch of the riverside bars that were selling buckets of vodka to people floating by,” one Western diplomat in the region told the BBC.

Laos officials aimed to re-centre the town as a spot for eco-tourism rather than just a hub for the young and drunk.

“And it worked,” they say. “It’s actually changed a quite a lot in the past decade, they’ve cleaned it up, it’s way more modern than it used to be.”

But because of that: “I think it can be very easy for young travellers to miss that this is still a very poor country with lax regulations and safety standards.”

The diplomat said methanol poisoning – where alcoholic drinks are contaminated with a toxic compound – is well-known among consulates and tourism operators.

Consulates are fairly regularly having to deal with cases of tourists who have fallen ill from dodgy drinks, the diplomat noted.

South East Asia is documented as the worst region for methanol poisoning. Local producers making cheap alcohol often will not correctly reduce the toxic level of methanol produced in the process.

Thousands of incidents are recorded every year in the region, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

But for tourists, awareness around poisonous alcohol is low.

British backpacker Sarisha told the BBC’s Newsbeat programme that people did not seem to consider the risks of free drinks when she was recently staying at Nana Backpacker.

Like most other hostels, happy hours were a daily staple at the venue as well as free shots of local vodkas as courtesies, she said.

“It’s a very party city,” she said.

Tourists still in town are now taking extra precautions after the shocking deaths.

On Friday, Miika, 19, a Finnish backpacker staying at a hostel just 10 minutes walk from Nana Backpacker, told the BBC he and his friends had arrived in town two days ago. They were now only ordering bottled beers and rethinking river tubing because shots were included.

“Now because we know about this, we didn’t really want to go there,” he said.

British woman Natasha Moore, 22, told the BBC she cancelled her booking for Nana Backpacker after hearing about the deaths.

“It’s just so scary, I feel so overwhelmed… it feels like I’ve escaped death, almost like survivor’s guilt”, she said in a TikTok video warning other travellers.

Her group arrived in the town two days after the poisoning, where “it was still kind of hush hush, nobody really knew too much about what was going on”.

She knew many travellers decided to skip the town and said there were signs in the hostel warning to be careful about drinks.

She said she “can’t even count how many free drinks” she had on her travels, but over five nights in Vang Vieng, she and her friends had no free drinks or spirits, only bottled alcohol.

“I feel so, so sad and upset for all the friends and family and the people still in hospital. It’s just so unfair, we were just trying to have a good time,” she said.

“We’ve worked hard to save up to go travel, like it’s such a brave thing to do, and then something like that can happen.”

A tourist in Tasmania has had his leg amputated in the middle of a raging river after getting trapped between rocks during a kayaking trip with friends.

Medics said they made the “life or death” decision in consultation with the international visitor during a complex rescue on the Franklin River lasting some 20 hours.

The visitor in his 60s was partially submerged in water throughout the ordeal, and rescuers said it was clear that “had he remained in the location where he was, and trapped in the rock crevice he would not have survived”.

Multiple attempts to move him prior to the amputation were unsuccessful, police in the Australian island state said.

The tourist was kayaking with a group in the south-west of Tasmania when his leg got stuck between rocks in an area of rapids on Friday afternoon.

Emergency services rushed to the remote and inaccessible area after the man’s smartwatch called for assistance, police said.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts were made to free the man overnight and as his condition deteriorated, the decision was made to amputate his leg so he could be winched from the location and airlifted to hospital.

“This rescue was an extremely challenging and technical operation, and an incredible effort over many hours to save the man’s life,” Doug Oosterloo, acting assistant commissioner at Tasmania Police, said in a statement.

“This was a life and death situation,” Oosterloo told Australian national broadcaster ABC.

The man is now in a critical condition in hospital.

Oosterloo said that though the kayaker was “well prepared”, he wasn’t prepared for spending “that significant amount of time in a rock crevice with that temperature and the torrent of water that was he was under”.

The other 10 travellers who were kayaking with the man were being airlifted from the area and police plan to speak to them about how the accident happened, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Oosterloo told the news agency that the tourists had stopped kayaking and were on the shore when the man slipped.

“He was scouting the area and he slipped and fell into that rock crevice,” Oosterloo said.

There are no “red lines” when it comes to support for Ukraine, the French Foreign Minister has told the BBC.

Jean-Noël Barrot said that Ukraine could fire French long-range missiles into Russia “in the logics of self defence”, but would not confirm if French weapons had already been used.

“The principle has been set… our messages to President Zelensky have been well received,” he said in an exclusive interview for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

French President Macron indicated France’s willingness to allow its missiles to be fired into Russia earlier this year. But Barrot’s comments are significant, coming days after US and UK long-range missiles were used in that way for the first time.

Barrot, who held talks with Foreign Secretary David Lammy in London on Friday, said Western allies should not put any limits on support for Ukraine against Russia, and “not set and express red lines”.

Asked if this could even mean French troops in combat he said: “We do not discard any option.”

“We will support Ukraine as intensely and as long as necessary. Why? Because it is our security that is at stake. Each time the Russian army progresses by one square kilometre, the threat gets one square kilometre closer to Europe,” he said.

Barrot hinted at inviting Ukraine to join Nato, as President Zelensky has requested. “We are open to extending an invitation, and so in our discussions with friends and allies, and friends and allies of Ukraine, we are working to get them to closer to our positions,” Barrot said.

And he suggested that Western countries will have to increase the amount they spend on defence, remarking: “Of course we will have to spend more if we want to do more, and I think that we have to face these new challenges.”

Barrot’s comments come after a week of significant escalation in Ukraine – with UK and US long-range missiles being fired in Russia for the first time, Russia firing what it said was a new type of missile and Vladimir Putin suggesting the possibility of global war.

One UK government source describes the moment as “crunch point” ahead of the winter, and ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

But how should Ukraine’s allies respond to Putin’s threats and Ukraine’s increasingly perilous position? I’ve been speaking to sources inside and outside of the UK government to understand what the next steps might be.

Top of the list is to keep the money and military support flowing. “I’d turn up with a trebling of European money for Ukraine and I’d go after Russian assets,” one source said. “We need to work out what is the war chest that Ukraine needs to find to fight through 2025 and into 2026 – it’s hard to ask the US taxpayer to foot the bill.”

It’s not surprising there’s a strong feeling in the defence world that increasing defence budgets is part of the answer. The head of the military, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, who visited President Zelensky this week, told us a fortnight ago that spending had to go up.

But with money tight, and the government reluctant even to set a date on hitting its target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, there is little chance of sudden injections of extra billions.

Government sources emphasise long-term commitments the UK has already made, particularly supporting Ukraine with drones.

Intelligence we can reveal this weekend shows Ukraine used drones in mid and late September to hit four Russian ammunition depots, hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The attacks are understood to have successfully destroyed the biggest amount of Russian and North Korean supplied ammunition during the conflict so far. It hasn’t been confirmed whether these drones were provided by the UK or others.

They also highlighted a treaty signed between the UK and Ukraine in July to help the country arm itself in the long term.

What about responding to Putin’s increasingly threatening rhetoric? The message from multiple sources is: don’t panic.

One said: “The whole way through he has made threats – we have to not let it deter us”. What’s different now, according to one former minister, is that Putin’s comments are designed to catch the ear of the president-elect. “Russia wants to help Trump with reasons to switch off the help”. If it sounds like the conflict is becoming intolerably dangerous, perhaps the next President will be more eager to bring it to an end.

When it comes to the next President, there is nervous pause while Trump’s plan remains unclear. The hope is to put Ukraine in the best possible position for any negotiation, several sources said, and an insider advising the government told me that might involve bigging up Trump’s own negotiation ability. “To get [Trump] into frame of mind where it is one that is good for Ukraine – so he looks like the guy who stopped the war not the guy that lost Ukraine.”

In private there are also suggestions of getting Ukraine to consider what might be an acceptable way out of the conflict. In public, ministers will always say Russia should not be rewarded for an illegal invasion and that it is for Ukraine, and Ukraine alone to decide if and when to negotiate and whether to offer any compromise whatsoever.

But a source acknowledges that in government there’s an awareness that “every negotiation has to involve trade offs.”

“We have to think about what could be the quid pro quo for Ukraine,” a former minister says. “If [Zelensky] were to concede, what does he get? Does he get NATO membership to guarantee security in the long term?”

There is also is a realisation that the threat from Russia is here to stay – whether in Ukraine or attempted sabotage in our streets. “They are literally allied with the North Koreans fighting now, and the Iranians are supplying them,” a government source said. “We can’t see them as anything other than a threat now.”

Perhaps the reality is a more permanent threat on the eastern fringes of Europe. Perhaps Russia’s aggression and dangerous alliances are a return to the norm after a brief positive spell during the 90s. “Get used to it,” one source said, “it’s how we’ve lived for ever.”

The stakes have never been higher in the Ukraine-Russia war.

In the week that saw the conflict pass its 1000th day, Western powers substantially boosted Ukraine’s military arsenal – and the Kremlin made its loudest threats yet of a nuclear strike.

Here is how the last week played out – and what it means.

Late on Sunday night, reports emerged that outgoing US President Joe Biden had given Ukraine permission to use longer-range ATACMS missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

The move marked a major policy change by Washington – which for months had refused Ukraine’s requests to use the missiles beyond its own borders.

After the decision was leaked to the press, a volley of ATACMS missiles were fired by Ukraine into Russia’s Bryansk region.

The Kremlin said six were fired, with five intercepted, while anonymous US officials claimed it was eight, with two intercepted.

Whatever the specifics, this was a landmark moment: American-made missiles had struck Russian soil for the first time in this war.

Then on Wednesday, Ukraine launched UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Russia’s Kursk region – where Ukrainian troops have seized a roughly 600-sq km (232 sq mile) patch of Russian territory.

Later in the week, Biden added the final element of a ramped-up weapons arsenal to Ukraine by approving the use of anti-personnel landmines.

Simple, controversial, but highly-effective, landmines are a crucial part of Ukraine’s defences on the eastern frontline – and it is hoped their use could help slow Russia’s advance.

With three swift decisions, over a few seismic days, the West signalled to the world that its support for Ukraine was not about to vanish.

If Ukraine’s western allies raised the stakes this week – so too did Moscow.

On Tuesday, the 1000th day of the war, Putin pushed through changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia.

The Kremlin then took its response a step further by deploying a new type of missile – “Oreshnik” – to strike the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Putin claimed it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound – and that there are “no ways of counteracting this weapon”.

Most observers agree the strike was designed to send a warning: that Russia could, if it chose, use the new missile to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Such posturing would once have caused serious concern in the West. Now, not so much.

Since the start of the conflict nearly three years ago, Putin has repeatedly laid out nuclear “red lines’” which the West has repeatedly crossed. It seems many have become used to Russia’s nuclear “sabre-rattling”.

And why else do Western leaders feel ready to gamble with Russia’s nuclear threats? China.

Beijing has become a vital partner for Moscow in its efforts to soften the impact of sanctions imposed by the US and other countries.

China, the West believes, would react with horror at the use of nuclear weapons – thus discouraging Putin from making true on his threats.

• What we know about Russia’s Oreshnik missile

In a rare televised address on Thursday evening, the Russian president warned that the war had “acquired elements of a global character”.

That assessment was echoed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who said “the threat is serious and real when it comes to global conflict”.

The US and UK are now more deeply involved than ever – while the deployment of North Korean troops to fight alongside Russia saw another nuclear power enter the war.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Thursday that “never before” has the threat of a nuclear war been greater, blaming the US for its “aggressive and hostile” policy towards Pyongyang.

So, why are we seeing these developments now?

The likely reason is the impending arrival of US President-elect Donald Trump, who will officially enter the White House on 20 January.

While on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to end the war within “24 hours”.

Those around him, like Vice President-elect JD Vance, have signalled that will mean compromises for Ukraine, likely in the form of giving up territory in the Donbas and Crimea.

That goes against the apparent stance of the Biden administration – whose decisions this week point to a desire to get as much aid through the door as possible before Trump enters office.

But some are more bullish about Ukraine’s prospects with Trump in power.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said himself Kyiv would like to end the war through “diplomatic means” in 2025.

Former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the BBC this week: “President Trump will undoubtedly be driven by one goal, to project his strength, his leadership… And show that he is capable of fixing problems which his predecessor failed to fix.”

“As much as the fall of Afghanistan inflicted a severe wound on the foreign policy reputation of the Biden administration, if the scenario you mentioned is to be entertained by President Trump, Ukraine will become his Afghanistan, with equal consequences.”

“And I don’t think this is what he’s looking for.”

This week’s developments may not be the start of the war escalating out of control – but the start of a tussle for the strongest negotiating position in potential future talks to end it.

A woman who accused Conor McGregor of raping her has won her claim against him for damages in a civil case.

A jury found that the Irish mixed martial arts fighter assaulted Nikita Hand in a Dublin hotel in December 2018.

He has been ordered to pay her more than €248,000 (£206,000) in damages.

Speaking outside the court on Friday, Ms Hand said her story was “a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be to speak up, you have a voice”.

In a post on X on Friday evening, McGregor said he would appeal against the verdict and he thanked “all my support worldwide”.

“I am with my family now, focused on my future” he added.

The jury at the High Court in Dublin had been deliberating for a day before returning its verdict that McGregor did assault Ms Hand.

She had also taken a case against another man, James Lawrence, 35, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh in Dublin.

She alleged that he assaulted her by having sex with her without her consent in the Beacon Hotel.

The jury found that he did not assault her.

Ms Hand told reporters said she was “overwhelmed and touched” by the support she had received.

She added: “I want to show [my daughter] Freya and every other young girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person is, and that justice will be served.”

Both men had denied the claims by the 35-year-old hair colourist and said they separately had consensual sex with Ms Hand at the hotel almost six years ago.

After eight days of evidence and three days listening to closing speeches and the judge’s comments, the jury of eight women and four men spent six hours and 10 minutes deliberating before returning with its verdict.

McGregor shook his head after the jury read out that Ms Hand had won her case against him.

He was accompanied by his partner Dee Devlin, his parents, his sister and his brother-in-law.

He sat in the back row of the court, between his partner and mother Margaret.

Ms Hand cried and was hugged by her partner and supporters.

The jury had previously heard that on the day of the attack Ms Hand and her colleague Danielle Kealy went to the hotel’s penthouse suite with McGregor and Mr Lawrence after their work Christmas party.

They gave evidence of how they had been partying all night from 8 December into the morning of 9 December and had been heavily drinking and taking cocaine.

Ms Hand, a mother-of-one, told the court how McGregor had pinned her to a bed before assaulting her.

She was left with extensive bruises and abrasions over her body, including on her hands and wrists.

There was a bloodied scratch on her breast and tenderness on her neck after she said she was placed in a “chokehold” by McGregor.

He denied causing the bruising, saying it could have happened after she “swan dived” into the bath in the hotel room.

Ms Hand was taken in an ambulance to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin the next day where she was assessed in the sexual assault treatment unit.

A paramedic who examined Ms Hand told the court that she had not seen “someone so bruised” in a long time.

The jury had been told how Ms Hand had to leave her job as a hairdresser and has not been able to work since due to her mental health, that her relationship with her partner ended months after the incident, that she had to move out of her home in Drimnagh and that her mortgage was now in arrears.

She also said she had to stop seeing a counsellor because she could no longer afford to pay for the sessions.

The court heard that she had spent more than €4,000 (£3,326) on GP, pharmacy and psychotherapy costs.

The couple stands on the edge of the sheer limestone cliff.

More than 100 metres (328ft) beneath them is a lost world of ancient forests, plants and animals. All they can see is leafy tree tops and hear is the echoes of cicadas and birds bouncing off the cliffs.

For thousands of years, this “heavenly pit” or “tiankeng”, in Mandarin, was unexplored.

People feared demons and ghosts hiding in the mists which swirled up from the depths.

But drones and a few brave souls who lowered themselves into places untouched since dinosaurs roamed the Earth have revealed new treasures – and turned China’s sinkholes into a tourist attraction.

Two-thirds of the world’s more than 300 sinkholes are in China, scattered throughout the country’s west – with 30 known tiankeng, Guangxi province in the south has more of of them than anywhere else. Its biggest and most recent find was two years ago: an ancient forest with trees reaching as high as 40m (130ft). These cavities in the earth trap time, preserving unique, delicate ecosystems for centuries. Their discovery, however, has begun to draw tourists and developers, raising fears that these incredible, rare finds could be lost forever.

“I’ve never done this kind of thing before,” says 25-year-old Rui, looking down into the chasm. “It’s very cool. It will be the first time but not the last time.”

She takes a big breath. Then she and her boyfriend step back – off the edge and into the air.

Fei Ge – the man who had just meticulously checked Rui and Michael’s harnesses before sending them over the cliff – knows better than most the feeling of stepping back over the edge.

He was one of the first explorers. Now in his 50s, he works as a tour guide helping people discover the secrets of Guangxi’s sinkholes.

Growing up in a village nearby, Fe had been told to stay away. “We thought that if humans went into the sinkholes, demons would bring strong winds and heavy rain. We thought ghosts brought the mist and fog.”

Fei Ge – or Brother Fei as he is known – was taught that these sinkholes have their own microclimate. The wind rushes through the tunnels and evaporated water from rivers inside the caves produces the mist.

Eventually Brother Fei’s curiosity won and he found a way into a sinkhole as a child.

“Every tiny stone caused loud noises and echoes,” he said. There was wind, rain and even “mini tornadoes”, he recalled. “At first, we were afraid.”

But he kept exploring. It was only when he brought scientists to the site that he realised how unique the sinkholes were.

“The experts were astonished. They found new plants and told us they’ve been doing research for decades and never seen these species. They were very excited. We couldn’t believe that something we had taken for granted nearby was such a treasure.”

As scientists published their finds in journals, and word spread of their discovery, others came to study the sinkholes. Fei says explorers from the UK, France and Germany have come in the last 10 years.

Sinkholes are rare. China – and Guangxi particularly – has so many because of the abundance of limestone. When an underground river slowly dissolves the surrounding limestone rock, it creates a cave that expands upwards towards the ground.

Eventually, the ground collapses, leaving a yawning hole. Its depth and width must measure at least 100m for it to qualify as a sinkhole. Some, like the one found in Guangxi in 2022, are much bigger, stretching 300m into the earth and 150m wide.

For scientists these cavernous pits are a journey back in time, to a place where they can study animals and plants they had thought extinct. They have also found species they had never seen or known, including types of wild orchid, ghostly white cave fish and various spiders and snails.

Protected by sheer cliffs, jagged mountains and limestone caves, these plants and animals have thrived deep in the earth.

There is a delighted shriek as Rui dangles mid-air, before she starts rappelling down.

This is just the start of the adventure for her and Michael. They have more ropework to do, in the belly of the cave.

After a short walk through a maze of stalactites, Michael is lowered into the dark. The guides sweep the area with torches, illuminating the arc above us – a network of caves – and then shine the light into the narrow passages below, where a river once carved through the rock.

That’s where we are headed. The guides have to work hard to move the ropes into position.

“I am not a person that does much exercise,” says Michael, his words echoing in the cave.

This is the highlight of the Shanghai couple’s two-week break in Guangxi, the kind of holiday they had craved during China’s long Covid lockdowns. “This kind of tourism is more and more familiar on the Chinese internet,” he says. “We saw it and thought it looked pretty cool. That’s why we wanted to try it.”

Videos of the Guangxi sinkholes have gone viral on social media. What is a fun and daring feat for young people is a source of much-needed revenue in a province that was only recently lifted out of poverty.

There is little farmland in Guangxi’s unusual but stunning terrain, and its mountainous borders make trade with the rest of China and neighbouring Vietnam difficult.

Still, people come for the views. Pristine rivers and the soaring karst peaks of Guilin and Yangshuo in the north draw more than a million Chinese tourists each year. Photographs of mist-covered Guangxi have even made it onto the 20-yuan note.

Yet few have heard of Ping’e village, the nearest settlement to the sinkholes. But that is changing.

Brother Fei says says a steady stream of visitors is changing fortunes for some in Ping’e. “It used to be very poor. We started developing tourism and it brought lots of benefits. Like when the highways were built. We were really happy knowing we have something so valuable here.”

But there are concerns that tourism revenue could override the demands of scientific research.

About 50km from Ping’e, developers have built what they say is the highest viewing platform, which overlooks Dashiwei, the second-deepest sinkhole in the world. Tourists can peer 500m down into this particular “heavenly pit”.

“We should better protect such habitats,” says Dr Lina Shen, a leading sinkhole researcher based in China. “Sinkholes are paradises for many rare and endangered plant species. We are continuing to make new discoveries.”

By studying sinkholes, scientists also hope to find out how the Earth has changed over tens of thousands of years, and better understand the impact of climate change. At least one sinkhole in Guangxi has already been closed to tourists to protect unique orchid varieties.

“Overdevelopment could cause tremendous damage. We should maintain their original ecological state,” Dr Shen says, adding that the solution lies in striking a balance.

“Hot air balloons, drones for aerial photography, and appropriate pathways for observation from a distance could allow tourists to closely yet remotely view sinkholes, while disturbing as few organisms as possible.”

Brother Fei doesn’t disagree, and insists there are “clear rules” to protect the sinkholes and what they hold. To him, they are a prized find that has changed his life. He is now one of Guangxi’s most qualified climbers and a renowned guide for both tourists and scientists, which has made him “very happy”.

As we walk through acres of lush forest inside the sinkhole, he points to a cliff above us. He tells us to return when the rains do to see the waterfalls that pour down the side. It’s worth coming back for, he assures us.

Rui and Michael are being roped up as they encourage each other to abseil further into the cave. All that is visible beneath them is a narrow chasm, lit up by a torch. It’s all that remains of a river bed, the catalyst in making this sinkhole.

“We need to balance this joy with protecting this place,” Michael says, looking around him.

He smiles as he is slowly lowered down and disappears into the cave.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he travels to the UK, after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, Downing Street has indicated.

A No 10 spokesman refused to comment on the specific case but said the government would fulfil its “legal obligations”.

On Thursday the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, along with Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The court’s member countries, including the UK, have signed a treaty that obliges them to act on arrest warrants.

Asked whether Netanyahu would be detained if he entered the UK, the prime minister’s official spokesman refused to comment on “hypotheticals”.

However, he added: “The government would fulfil its obligations under the act and indeed its legal obligations.”

This refers to the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which states that if the court issues a warrant for arrest, a designated minister “shall transmit the request… to an appropriate judicial officer”, who, if satisfied the warrant appears to have been issued by the ICC, “shall endorse the warrant for execution in the United Kingdom”.

The PM’s spokesman confirmed the government stands by the process outlined in the act and would “always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law”.

He was unable to confirm which secretary of state would be involved in the process and did not answer questions about whether the government was seeking legal advice from Attorney General Lord Hermer – the UK’s top lawyer – in relation to the case.

Generally, arrest warrants and extradition requests from around the world must be sent to a special team in the Home Office for basic checks before they are acted on.

The UK’s legislation on the ICC says that the courts have the final say on whether an arrest and “delivery” of a suspect should go ahead.

Asked whether the PM was still willing to talk to Netanyahu, the PM’s spokesman said it was “obviously important that we have a dialogue with Israel on all levels”, describing the country as “a key partner across a range of areas”.

Last month Lord Hermer told the BBC he would not allow political considerations to influence his conclusions if the ICC were to issue an arrest warrant.

“My advice [on an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu] would be legal advice, based on analysis of the law,” he said.

“It’s not for the attorney to dictate what a government chooses to do. The role of the attorney is to provide fearless legal advice as to what the law requires, what the contents of the law is, and where the law takes you. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

Following the arrest warrants being issued on Thursday, Downing Street said the UK government respected the ICC’s independence and remained focused on pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The court also issued a warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in July, over alleged war crimes in relation to the 7 October 2023 attacks against Israel.

Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel criticised the ICC for drawing a “moral equivalence” between Israel’s actions in Gaza and the 7 October attacks.

She called on the government to “condemn and challenge” the court’s decision, describing it as “concerning and provocative”.

After winning power, the new Labour government scrapped its predecessor’s plan to challenge the right of the ICC to issue arrest warrants, saying it was a matter for the judges to decide.

The impact of the warrants will depend on whether the court’s 124 member states – which do not include Israel or its ally, the US – decide to enforce them or not.

US President Joe Biden has called the arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister “outrageous”, saying there is “no equivalence” between Israel and Hamas.

However, officials from a number of European countries have made statements standing by the court and said they would implement its decision.

Both Israel and Hamas reject the allegations made by the ICC, with Netanyahu branding the warrant “antisemitic”.

Netanyahu condemned the ICC’s decision as “antisemitic”. Hamas made no mention of the warrant for Deif but welcomed the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot has told the BBC that the ICC’s decision “is the formalisation of an accusation, it is by no means a judgement”.

He told the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show: “We also say that we’ve condemned, in [the] strongest possible terms, the fact that humanitarian help has not been able to reach civil populations in Gaza while the situation is catastrophic.

“But in no way do we draw any form of equivalence between the Hamas leaders that have been targeted by arrest warrants by the ICC and the government of Israel.”

Donald Trump has nominated Scott Bessent to lead the US Treasury Department, one of the most influential roles in government with wide oversight of tax policy, public debt, international finance and sanctions.

The selection ends what has proven to be one of the more protracted decisions for the president-elect as he assembles his team for a second term.

Bessent, a Wall Street financier who once worked for George Soros, was an early backer of Trump’s 2024 bid and brings a relatively conventional resume to the role.

The 62-year-old’s nomination on Friday evening kicked-off a series of cabinet announcements and White House appointments that leaves Trump’s top team almost complete ahead of his return to the presidency in January.

“Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists,” Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social.

“[He] has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda,” he said, adding that Bessent would “support my Policies that will drive US Competitiveness, and stop unfair Trade imbalances.”

Bessent has made it well known that he wants to extend tax cuts made in Mr Trump’s first term in office.

He has also defended the use of import tariffs, one of the more controversial parts of the President-elect’s campaign agenda, calling them a “useful negotiating tool”.

On the campaign trail, Bessent told voters that Trump would usher in a “new golden age with de-regulation, low-cost energy, [and] low taxes”.

Trump also nominated Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer for US Labor Secretary on Friday, saying she would help to “grow wages and improve working conditions [and] bring back our manufacturing jobs”.

The representative from Oregon, 56, won strong trade union support but narrowly lost her bid for re-election earlier this month, meaning her nomination will not affect the Republican majority in the House come January.

He then made another cabinet nomination moments later, announcing Scott Turner as his pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The NFL veteran and motivational speaker previously served in the Texas House of Representatives.

Trump also announced a series of senior health picks, giving his backing to Fox News contributor Dr Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General and former Florida Congressman Dr Dave Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

He selected Russell Vought as director of the US Office of Management and Budget, which helps decide policy priorities and how they should be funded.

Vought, who played a role in Project 2025 – a “wish list” for a second Trump presidency by the conservative Heritage Foundation – held the same position during Trump’s first term.

The president-elect also announced White House roles for Alex Wong and Sebastian Gorka who also served during Trump’s first term.

If his nomination to lead the Treasury department is confirmed by the Senate, Bessent would almost immediately be plunged into the fight in Washington over extending the tax cuts from Trump’s first term.

Trump has also called for controversial changes to trade policy, proposing sweeping tariffs on all goods coming into the country.

Such ideas have been met with alarm in traditional economic and corporate circles.

In an interview with Fox News shortly before the election, Bessent said ensuring the tax cuts do not expire as planned at the end of next year would be his top priority, if he ended up in the administration.

“If it doesn’t happen, this will be the largest tax increase in US history,” he warned.

For other posts, Trump has been willing to back candidates with minimal experience in favour of loyalty and apparent conviction in his pledges.

But he has appeared more hesitant to buck convention at the Treasury Department, which serves as a key liaison between the White House and Wall Street and has critical functions that include collecting taxes, supervising banks, wielding sanctions and handling US government debt.

In his announcement, Trump said Bessent would “help curb the unsustainable path of Federal Debt”. That issue has long been a priority for traditional Republicans, but financial markets see an increase in debt as a risk in a second Trump term.

Bessent, a native of South Carolina, made his name in the 1990s betting against the British pound and Japanese yen while working for Soros, a major Democratic donor.

In 2015, he started his own fund, Key Square Capital Management, which is known for making investments based on big-picture economic policy.

He and his husband, a former New York City prosecutor, married in 2011 and have two children. He is known for philanthropy in South Carolina, where his family has deep roots.

Bessent has defended tariffs – a capstone of Trump’s protectionist agenda – arguing that opposition to them is rooted in political ideology and not “considered economic thought”.

But he has also characterised Trump’s support for such border taxes as a negotiating tool, suggesting the president-elect isn’t necessarily committed to aggressively raising duties.

That stance makes him more moderate than others whose names were floated for the treasury role.

However, Bessent has been a strong proponent of Trump’s embrace of the crypto industry. Such support would make him the first treasury secretary to openly champion cryptocurrency, sending a clear signal that Trump is serious about establishing the US as the “crypto capital of the planet”.

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