Richer countries have pledged to give a record $300bn (£238bn) to the developing world to help them prepare for and prevent climate change.

The talks at the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan ran 33 hours late, and came within inches of collapse.

The head of the UN climate body, Simon Stiell, said it had “been a difficult journey, but we’ve delivered a deal.”

But the talks failed to build on an agreement passed last year calling for nations to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

Developing nations, as well as countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, dramatically walked out of the talks on Saturday afternoon.

“I am not exaggerating when I say our islands are sinking! How can you expect us to go back to the women, men, and children of our countries with a poor deal?” said the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, Cedric Schuster.

But at 03:00 local time on Sunday (23:00 GMT on Saturday), and after some changes to the agreement, nations finally passed the deal. It was met with cheers and applause, but a furious speech from India showed that intense frustration remained.

“We cannot accept it… the proposed goal will not solve anything for us. [It is] not conducive to climate action that is necessary to the survival of our country,” Leela Nandan told the conference, calling the sum too small.

Then nations including Switzerland, Maldives, Canada and Australia protested that the language about reducing global use of fossil fuels was too weak.

Instead, that decision was postponed until the next climate talks in 2025.

This promise of more money is a recognition that poorer nations bear a disproportionate burden from climate change, but also have historically contributed the least to the climate crisis.

The newly-promised money is expected to come from government grants and the private sector – banks and businesses – and should help countries move away from fossil fuel power to using renewable energy.

There was also a commitment to tripling the money that goes towards preparing countries for climate change. Historically, only 40% of the funding available for climate change has gone towards this.

As well as the promise of $300bn (£238bn), nations agreed that $1.3tn is needed by 2035 to also help prevent climate change.

This year – which is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest on record – has been punctuated by intense heatwaves and deadly storms.

The opening of the talks on 11 November was dominated by the election of US President Donald Trump, who will take office in January.

He is a climate sceptic who has said he will take the US out of the landmark Paris agreement that in 2015 created a roadmap for nations to tackle climate change.

“For sure it brought the headline number down. The other developed country donors are acutely aware that Trump will not pay a penny and they will have to make up the shortfall,” Prof Joanna Depledge, an expert on international climate negotiations at Cambridge University, told the BBC.

Reaching this deal is a sign that countries are still committed to working together on climate, but with the largest economy on the planet now unlikely to play a part, it will become harder to meet the multi-billion dollar goal.

“The protracted end game at COP29 is reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in. The result is a flawed compromise between donor countries and the most vulnerable nations in the world,” said Li Shuo from the think-tank Asia Society Policy Institute.

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband stressed that the new pledge does not commit the UK to come up with more climate finance but it was actually a “huge opportunity for British businesses” to invest in other markets.

“This is a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate. It is not everything we or others wanted but it is a step forward for us all,” he said.

In return for promising more money, developed nations including the UK and the European Union wanted stronger commitments by countries to reduce use of fossil fuels.

Despite their hopes that the agreement struck at the talks in Dubai last year to “transition away from fossil fuels” would be strengthened, the final proposed agreement only repeated it.

For many nations this was just not good enough, and it was rejected – it will now have to be agreed next year.

Countries that rely on oil and gas exports reportedly put up a strong fight in negotiations to stop further progress.

“The Arab Group will not accept any text that targets specific sectors, including fossil fuels,” Saudi Arabia’s Albara Tawfiq said at an open meeting earlier this week.

Several nations came to the talks with new plans to address climate change in their own countries.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a play for climate leadership on the world stage and pledged to reduce UK emissions by 81% by 2035, which was celebrated by many as an ambitious goal.

The host nation, Azerbaijan, was a controversial choice for climate talks. It says it wants to expand gas production by up to a third in the next decade.

Brazil is seen as a better choice to host next year’s climate summit, COP30, in the city of Belém because of President Lula’s strong commitments to climate change and reducing deforestation in the globally important Amazon rainforest.

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.

As a guide dog handler of 25 and a half years, I’ve had hundreds of experiences of being refused service – but online threats and increasing hostility towards disabled people mean I’m giving up on asking publicly for equality and respect.

The last straw came about a week ago. I was already reeling from a number of refusals by restaurants and shops when, once again, I was refused entry because I have a guide dog.

I visited the restaurant, which I have chosen not to name, but was told I couldn’t enter as people could have allergies. This, by the way, is unlawful.

They later changed their reason – saying they simply had no space.

It’s difficult to describe how this feels.

I don’t think you can understand it unless you know what it is like to face daily discrimination.

I compare the feeling to December 2022 when I was briefly robbed of my smartphone near the BBC building in central London.

Unlike street robberies, refusals are rarely violent or physical, but the feeling of being slugged in the gut is identical.

I argue refusals feel worse – because at least I can understand the motivation of robbers.

I have never understood why, when everyone on the planet is one accident or medical condition away from disability, many people seem to lack any empathy and do not attempt to understand how it must feel to be refused service because of a disability.

After failing to politely persuade the restauranteurs that my guide dog was well-behaved and then reiterating that it is unlawful to refuse access, one customer who’d overheard me voiced their disgust at the restaurant’s attitude.

I invited people who witnessed the refusal to leave a review. Two voices from another table, however, said that I had “ruined their meal” and “you should leave”.

I felt as small as a gnat.

My guide dog journey began in 1998, when I first applied to train with one. I had poor partial sight up until the year before when, as a 14-year-old, I became completely blind.

I have a number of eye conditions, but the primary diagnosis are glaucoma and hypertension, which have left me totally blind.

Put simply, leaving my house is hard. Very fatiguingly hard.

I’ve been privileged to work with four wonderful guides – Brandy, Chipp, Sammy and now Shawn.

They’ve been my life, my freedom and independence.

That all feels ripped away from me when I’m refused service.

At the restaurant, more customers expressed their shock at the way I was treated. But for me, the customers who seemed annoyed sparked echoes in my mind of every occasion I’ve shared refusals to social media over the past eight years.

There I’ve faced constant demands to justify why I should want equal treatment and, more perturbingly, threats of violence and even death.

Two years ago, I was refused access to different branches of Tesco in London.

Tesco apologised and promised further training for staff.

The encounters were captured on a privately owned body-camera. Many people were supportive but large numbers were highly abusive and aggressive.

I have received abuse on many social media platforms. Recently one user, who identified himself as a retired police officer, posted pictures of “victim cards” which, ironically, I was unable to appreciate until described to me by a sighted colleague.

His account was later suspended – but the post was not removed when I reported it.

Other users have asked why I’m sharing my experience of service rejection. I would reply to as many questions as possible and explain that it was simply to shine a torch into a dark corner.

On other occasions, social media users have threatened to punch me, kill my guide dog and tell me I need to “be careful”. One user said my mother should be raped.

Often the most vile abuse comes in the replies to lengthy threads, where discourse seems to get out of hand.

Why would I continue to put myself through this?

In England, Wales and Scotland, the Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against a disabled person because they have a guide dog with them when accessing businesses or services.

In Northern Ireland, the same is true but the legislation is named the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

There is a large anomaly in the law though. When taxis and cabs fail or refuse to carry an assistance dog, or attempt to charge more, it is a criminal offence.

When businesses and shops do the same, it’s a civil matter and it’s down to the individual disabled person to gather evidence and pursue them. It’s costly, energy-sapping and mostly not worth doing.

Raising the incidents on social media feels torturous when it means being threatened.

So I’ve had to accept there’s very little I can practically do.

Seeing is easy.

What seems harder for some, though, is trying to understand what it feels like to be barred from businesses when you can’t.

In Touch – Guide Dogs Q&A

Forty years on from the original recording, the cream of British and Irish pop music past and present are once again asking whether Ethiopians know it is Christmas.

In 1984, responding to horrific images of the famine in northern Ethiopia broadcast on the BBC, musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure corralled some of the biggest stars of the era to record a charity song.

The release of the Band Aid single, and the Live Aid concert that followed eight months later, became seminal moments in celebrity fundraising and set a template that many others followed.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? is back on Monday with a fresh mix of the four versions of the song that have been issued over the years.

But the chorus of disapproval about the track, its stereotypical representation of an entire continent – describing it as a place “where nothing ever grows; no rain nor rivers flow” – and the way that recipients of the aid have been viewed as emaciated, helpless figures, has become louder over time.

“To say: ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ is funny, it is insulting,” says Dawit Giorgis, who in 1984 was the Ethiopian official responsible for getting the message out about what was happening in his country.

His incredulity decades on is obvious in his voice and he remembers how he and his colleagues responded to the song.

“It was so untrue and so distorted. Ethiopia was a Christian country before England… we knew Christmas before your ancestors,” he tells the BBC.

But Mr Dawit has no doubt that the philanthropic response to the BBC film, by British journalist Michael Buerk and Kenyan cameraman Mohamed Amin, saved lives.

As the head of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission he had managed to smuggle the TV crew into the country. This was despite the government at that time, which was marking 10 years of Marxist rule and fighting a civil war, not wanting news of the famine to get out.

“The way the British people responded so generously strengthened my faith in humanity,” he says, speaking from Namibia where he now works.

He praises the “young and passionate people” behind Band Aid – describing them as “amazing”.

His questioning of the song, whilst also recognising its impact, sums up the debate for many who might feel that when lives need to be saved the ends justify the means.

Geldof was typically robust in defending it responding to a recent article in The Conversation about the “problematic Christmas hit”.

“It’s a pop song [expletive]… The same argument has been made many times over the years and elicits the same wearisome response,” he is quoted as saying.

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

He also recognises that Ethiopians celebrate Christmas but says that in 1984 “ceremonies were abandoned”.

In an email to the BBC, Joe Cannon, the chief financial officer of the Band Aid Trust, said that in the past seven months the charity has given more than £3m ($3.8m) helping as many as 350,000 people through a host of projects in Ethiopia, as well as Sudan, Somaliland and Chad.

He adds that Band Aid’s swift action as a “first responder” encourages others to donate where funds are lacking, especially in northern Ethiopia, which is once again emerging from a civil war.

But this is not enough to dampen the disquiet.

In the last week, Ed Sheeran has said he is not happy about his voice from the 2014 recording – made to raise funds for the West African Ebola crisis – being used as his “understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed”.

He was influenced by British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG, who himself had refused to take part a decade ago.

“The world has changed but Band Aid hasn’t,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast this week.

“It’s saying there’s no peace and joy in Africa this Christmas. It’s still saying there’s death in every tear,” he said referring to the lyrics of the 2014 version.

“I go to Ghana every Christmas… every December so we know there’s peace and joy in Africa this Christmas, we know there isn’t death in every tear.”

Fuse ODG does not deny that there are problems to be resolved but “Band Aid takes one issue from one country and paints the whole continent with it”.

The way that Africans were portrayed in this and other fundraising efforts had had a direct effect on him, he said.

When growing up “it was not cool to be African in the UK… [because of] the way that I looked, people were making fun of me”, the singer said.

Research into the impact of charity fundraisers by British-Nigerian King’s College lecturer Edward Ademolu backs this up.

He himself remembers the short films shot in Africa by Comic Relief, which had been influenced by Band Aid, and that his “African peers at [a British] primary school would passionately deny their African roots, calling all Africans – with great certainty – smelly, unintelligent and equated them to wild animals”.

Images of dangerously thin Africans became common currency in efforts to elicit funds.

The cover for the original Band Aid single, designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, features colourful Christmas scenes contrasted with two gaunt Ethiopian children, in black and white, each eating what looks like a life-saving biscuit.

For part of the poster for the Live Aid concert the following year, Sir Peter used a photograph of the back of an anonymous, naked, skeletal child.

That image was used again in the art work for the 2004 release and it has appeared once more this year.

For many working in the aid sector, as well as academics who study it, there is shock and surprise that the song and its imagery keep coming back.

The umbrella body Bond, which works with more than 300 charities including Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam, has been very critical of the release of the new mix.

“Initiatives like Band Aid 40 perpetuate outdated narratives, reinforce racism and colonial attitudes that strip people of their dignity and agency,” Lena Bheeroo, Bond’s head of anti-racism and equity, said in a statement.

Geldof had previously dismissed the idea that Band Aid’s work was relying on “colonial tropes”.

The way that charities raise funds has undergone big changes in recent years.

While remaining critical, Kenyan satirist and writer Patrick Gathara, who often mocks Western views of Africa, agrees things have shifted.

“There has been a push within humanitarian agencies to start seeing people in a crisis first as human beings and not as victims, and I think that’s a big, big change,” he tells the BBC.

“In the days of Live Aid, all you really had were these images of starvation and suffering… the idea that these are people were incapable of doing anything for themselves and that was always a misconception.”

The fallout from the Black Lives Matter protests added impetus to the change that was already happening.

A decade ago, a Norwegian organisation Radi-Aid made it its mission to highlight the way that Africa and Africans were presented in fundraising campaigns using humour.

For example, it co-ordinated a mock campaign to get Africans to send radiators to Norwegians who were supposedly suffering in the cold.

In 2017, Sheeran himself won one of their “Rusty Radiator” awards for a film he made for Comic Relief in Liberia in which he offered to pay for some homeless Liberian children to be put up in a hotel room.

The organisers of the awards said “the video should be less about Ed shouldering the burden alone but rather appealing to the wider world to step in”.

University of East Anglia academic David Girling, who once wrote a report for Radi-Aid, argues that its work is one of the reasons that things have shifted.

More and more charities are introducing ethical guidelines for their campaigns, he says.

“People have woken up to the damage that can be caused,” he tells the BBC.

Prof Girling’s own research, carried out in Kibera, a slum area in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, showed that campaigns involving and centred on those who are the targets of the charitable assistance could be more effective than the traditional top down efforts.

Many charities are still under pressure to use celebrities to help raise awareness and money. The professor says that some media outlets will not touch a fundraising story unless a celebrity is involved.

But work by his colleague Martin Scott suggests that big stars can often distract from the central message of a campaign. Whereas the celebrity might benefit, the charity and the understanding of the issue that it is working on lose out.

If a Band Aid-type project were to get off the ground now it would have to be centred on African artists, music journalist Christine Ochefu tells the BBC.

“The landscape for African artists and African music has changed so much that if there was a new release it would need to come from afrobeats artists or amapiano artists or afro-pop artists,” she argues

“I don’t think people could get way without thinking about the sentiment and imagery associated with the project and it couldn’t continue the saviour narrative that Band Aid had.”

As King’s College academic Dr Ademolu argues: “Perhaps it’s time to abandon the broken record and start anew – a fresh tune where Africa isn’t just a subject, but a co-author, harmonising its own story.”

• LISTEN: BBC Witness History – Ethiopia’s famine
• ‘I lost my leg on the way home from school’
• The country where a year lasts 13 months
• A quick guide to Ethiopia

Abida Sultaan was nothing like your typical princess.

She wore her hair short, shot tigers and was an ace polo player. She flew planes and drove herself around in a Rolls-Royce from the age of nine.

Born in 1913 into a family of brave ‘begums’ (a Muslim woman of high rank) who ruled the northern princely state of Bhopal in British India for over a century, Abida continued their legacy of defying stereotypes around women in general and Muslim women in particular.

She refused to be in purdah – a practice followed by Muslim, and some Hindu women, of wearing clothes that conceal them and secluding themselves from men – and became heir to the throne at the age of 15.

Abida ran her father’s cabinet for more than a decade, rubbed shoulders with India’s prominent freedom fighters and would eventually come to have a ringside view of the hate and violence the country disintegrated into after it was partitioned in 1947 to create Pakistan.

She was groomed from a young age to take on the mantle of ruler under the guidance of her grandmother, Sultan Jehan, a strict disciplinarian who was the ruler of Bhopal.

In her 2004 autobiography, Memoirs of a Rebel Princess, Abida writes about how she had to wake up at four in the morning to read the Quran – the religious text of Islam – and then proceed with a day filled with activities, which included learning sports, music and horse riding, but also included chores like sweeping the floor and cleaning bathrooms.

“We girls were not allowed to feel any inferiority on account of our sex. Everything was equal. We had all the freedom that a boy had; we could ride, climb trees, play any game we chose to. There were no restrictions,” she said in an interview about her childhood.

Abida had a fierce, independent streak even as a child and rebelled against her grandmother when she forced her into purdah at the age of 13. Her chutzpah coupled with her father’s broad-mindedness helped her escape the practice for the rest of her life.

Already heir to the throne of Bhopal, Abida stood the chance of becoming part of the royal family of the neighbouring princely state of Kurwai as well when at the age of 12, she was married off to Sarwar Ali Khan, her childhood friend and ruler Kurwai. She described her nikah (wedding), about which she was clueless, in hilarious detail in her memoir.

She writes about how one day, while she was pillow-fighting with her cousins, her grandmother walked into the room and asked her to dress up for a wedding. Only, no one told her that she was the bride.

“No-one had prepared or instructed me on how to conduct myself, with the result that I walked into the nikah chamber, pushing the gathered women out of my way, my face uncovered, sulking as usual for being chosen again for some new experiment,” she writes.

The wedding was brief like Abida’s marriage, which lasted for less than a decade.

Married life was difficult for Abida, not just because of her young age but also because of her strict, pious upbringing. She candidly describes how a lack of knowledge and discomfort with sex took a toll on her marriage.

“Immediately after my wedding, I entered the world of conjugal trauma. I had not realised that the consummation that followed would leave me so horrified, numbed and feeling unchaste,” she writes and adds that she could never bring herself to “accept marital relations between husband and wife”. This led to the breakdown of her marriage.

In her paper on intimacy and sexuality in the autobiographical writings of Muslim women in South Asia, historian Siobhan Lambert-Hurley underscores how Abida’s honest reflections on sexual intimacy with her husband tear apart the stereotype that Muslim women do not write about sex, by presenting an unabashed voice on the topic.

After her marriage fell apart, Abida left her marital home in Kurwai and moved back to Bhopal. But the couple’s only son, Shahryar Mohammad Khan, became the subject of an ugly custody dispute. Frustrated by the drawn-out battle and not wanting to part with her son, Abida took a bold step to make her husband back off.

On a warm night in March 1935, Abida drove for three hours straight to reach her husband’s home in Kurwai. She entered his bedroom, pulled out a revolver, threw it in her husband’s lap and said: “Shoot me or I will shoot you.”

This incident, coupled with a physical confrontation between the couple in which Abida emerged victorious, put an end to the custody dispute. She proceeded to raise her son as a single mother while juggling her duties as heir to the throne. She ran her state’s cabinet from 1935 till 1949, when Bhopal was merged with the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Abida also attended the round-table conferences – called by the British government to decide the future government of India – during which she met influential leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and his son, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was to become India’s first prime minister.

She also experienced first-hand the deteriorating relationship between Hindus and Muslims and the violence that broke out in the aftermath of India’s partition in 1947.

In her memoir Abida describes the discrimination she began facing in Bhopal; how her family, who had lived there peacefully for generations, began to be treated as “outsiders”. In one of her interviews, she spoke about a particularly disturbing memory she had of the violence that broke out between Hindus and Muslims.

One day, after the Indian government informed her that a train carrying Muslim refugees would arrive in Bhopal, she went to the railway station to supervise the arrival.

“When the compartments were opened, they were all dead,” she said and added that it was this violence and distrust that drove her to move to Pakistan in 1950.

Abida left quietly, with only her son and hopes for a brighter future. In Pakistan, she championed democracy and women’s rights through her political career. Abida died in Karachi in 2002.

After she left for Pakistan, the Indian government had made her sister heir to the throne. But Abida is still known in Bhopal, where people refer to her by her nickname ‘bia huzoor’.

“Religious politics over the past few years have chipped away at her legacy and she isn’t spoken about as much any more,” says journalist Shams Ur Rehman Alavi, who has been researching Bhopal’s women rulers.

“But her name isn’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon.”

At the epicentre of this devastating family drama is Gisèle Pelicot, a diminutive 71-year-old woman, drugged by her former husband and abused for a decade by dozens of strangers he had recruited online.

Watching her entering the court in Avignon and giving evidence, it was staggering to imagine the amount of abuse her body sustained.

But as other members of her family have taken the stand, it has become painfully clear that no-one has emerged unscathed from the storm unleashed by the actions of the Pelicot patriarch.

The damage to this family is clear. Individually, they have described the destructive force that engulfed them in November 2020 as a “tsunami” that left nothing but ruin in its wake.

Dominique Pelicot was finally caught after an alert security guard caught him filming under women’s skirts.

But it took weeks for police to discover the full truth that ultimately tore his family apart.

For years, he had been drugging his wife and recruiting men online to rape her while she was unconscious.

He filmed the abuse and neatly classified each visit in folders on his hard drive. Faced with the evidence, Dominique Pelicot admitted the rape charges against him.

Alongside obscene language describing his videos, he added captions with the men’s names. Fifty other men have been on trial with him and only a handful admit rape. More than 20 others could not be identified and are still at large.

Gisèle Pelicot has attended almost all of this trial. She waived her anonymity and allowed the public to see what she had endured.

The videos leave no doubt that the sex acts were not consensual. Ms Pelicot can be seen lying on the bed, snoring, as her husband whispers instructions to various men to touch her, prod her, use her.

Artificial sleep affords her mind a degree of protection, but her body becomes an object.

She was, in her own words, treated “like a rag doll, like a garbage bag“.

“I am 72 now and I don’t know how much time I have left,” she told the court last week.

The magnitude of Dominique Pelicot’s betrayal and crimes is such that the aftershocks have rippled far beyond his ex-wife.

The Pelicots’ middle child, Caroline Darian, now 45, screamed her anguish at her father in court as she demanded to know the truth about photos found on his computer. Entitled “My naked daughter”, the images show her semi-naked and, she says, clearly drugged.

Mr Pelicot has offered various and at times contradictory explanations for the pictures, although he has denied abusing his daughter. “I never touched you,” he pleaded with her.

But his duplicity has been abundantly exposed during this trial, and he has clearly lost the right to be believed by his daughter.

“You are a liar,” she shouted back at him. “I am sick of your lies, you are alone in your lie, you will die lying.”

Fighting back tears, she accused her father of looking at her “with incestuous eyes”.

Caroline Darian has told the court she feels she is the trial’s “forgotten victim” as, unlike her mother’s case, there is no record of the abuse she is convinced was inflicted on her.

She has founded a charity to highlight the dangers of drug-induced assault and published a book in 2022 detailing her family’s trauma. In it, she hinted at a rift with her mother, who she found had dropped off a bundle of warm clothes for her father in jail, weeks after his crimes came to light.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Caroline wrote. “She was still looking after the person who got her raped for a decade.”

That apparent rift was exploited by a combative defence lawyer who suggested Gisèle Pelicot had chosen her former husband over her daughter by not demanding the truth about the photos of Caroline. Gisèle shook her head, but Caroline cracked a slight smile, appearing to acknowledge the lawyer’s description.

When Caroline’s brothers David and Florian took the stand they made repeated references to the pain she was going through, urging their father to tell the truth.

Stifling sobs, Florian, 38, the youngest of the family, turned to face Dominique Pelicot sitting in a glass box to his left and said: “If you have any dignity and humanity – you don’t have anything left to lose anyway – tell Caroline the truth.”

He also spoke of his longstanding suspicion he was the product of an affair his mother had in the 1980s, which was compounded by a faint but lifelong feeling that his father loved his siblings more than him.

In a desperate search for answers, he wondered out loud whether he could be the “motive” for his father’s crimes. He said he would seek out a paternity test, adding it would be a “relief” not to be Dominique Pelicot’s son.

Through tears, Florian painted a desolate picture of what his life had become. His marriage to the mother of his three children, Aurore, has not survived revelations that Dominique Pelicot also surreptitiously took photographs of her.

Despite their separation, this slight, softly-spoken woman has frequently attended the trial and said it had exposed the “banality” of abuse.

Aurore, herself a survivor of incest, is having to live with the regret of not having listened to her instincts regarding Mr Pelicot. “If she had, she may have been able to alter the course of events,” her lawyer said.

The eldest of the Pelicot children, David, is a burly man of 50 who bears a striking resemblance to his father.

Taking the stand this week, he described how he had grown closer to Dominique Pelicot when he had himself become a father.

Then, his voice growing more anguished and clutching the stand as if to steady himself, he recalled the harrowing detail the night his mother told him of his father’s arrest. “All of us know where we were when the tsunami hit,” he said.

Naked photographs of his wife Celine, pregnant with their twin daughters, were also found among Mr Pelicot’s files. She was in the bathroom, snapped with a hidden camera.

His voice heavy with emotion, David described watching his mother, frail and lost, standing on a train platform, her life reduced to her dog and a suitcase.

Recalling the birthday parties his parents used to throw for him and his siblings, to the envy of their friends, he said: “My childhood has disappeared; it was erased.”

The trauma rippling through this family seems without end. David’s son, now 18, wonders what really happened when Dominique asked him to “play doctor” as a child.

His young siblings, the family’s lawyer said on Wednesday, “will have to find their place in a family in which their grandmother, their mother, their brother and their aunts have all been victims of their grandfather.”

Caroline’s young son is still profoundly shaken by the carefully worded revelation, four years ago, that his beloved grandfather hurt his grandmother.

“This is just a sample of the depth of the suffering caused by a rape in the family,” lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said in his closing arguments.

A verdict is expected on 20 December. Mr Pelicot is facing 20 years in jail – the maximum sentence for rape in France.

And for the rest of his family the trauma will live on. Because none of them will ever know for certain what he may or may not have done.

In one of the shaky phone videos shown in court, a tall naked man stands in the middle of a dark bedroom. Another man sits on the bed, smiling, next to an unconscious woman lying on her side, lightly snoring.

Behind her, on a chest of drawers, is a photograph, clearly discernible despite the low lighting.

It is the Pelicot family, huddling close on a beach on a sunny day, and beaming at the camera.

A massive Israeli air strike on central Beirut has killed at least 20 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 so-called 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?

The death toll rose from 15 to 20 on Saturday as 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 east, where air strikes in the city of Baalbek killed at least 15 people, including four children, the Lebanese health ministry said.

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, more than 3,670 people have been killed and at least 15,400 injured since October 2023, according to Lebanese authorities, with more than one million forced from their homes.

Donald Trump has nominated longtime ally Brooke Rollins for secretary of agriculture, completing his cabinet roster.

He made the announcement Saturday late afternoon, tapping the head of Maga-backed think tank the America First Policy Institute for the job.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” Trump said in a statement.

Her nomination marks the end of a whirlwind – and sometimes dramatic – spree of nominations to lead executive agencies.

Rollins has been a top Trump ally for many years, as the co-founder and president of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump right-wing think tank.

A former White House aide during the president-elect’s first administration, she served as director of the Office of American Innovation and acting director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Having grown up on a farm, Rollins was involved early with Future Farmers of America in addition to 4H, a nationwide agricultural club.

She graduated from the Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture development and later worked as a lawyer.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would oversee farm subsidies, federal nutrition programmes, meat inspections and other facets of the country’s farm, food and forestry industries.

She would also play a key role in renegotiating the trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, which could involve imposing Trump’s promised tariffs.

Rollins’ nomination marks the end of Trump’s picks for his cabinet – a group of 15 advisers who each helm a bureaucratic department within the American government.

Each nominee will have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Trump has chosen an eclectic array of cabinet picks, from Maga loyalists to former political rivals.

Some of his nominations – such as Robert Kennedy Jr for the Department of Health and Human Services and Matt Gaetz for attorney general – have raised eyebrows.

Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and vaccine sceptic who ran against Trump as an independent before dropping out and endorsing him, would be in charge of the Food and Drug Administration.

Gaetz, a bombastic former Florida congressman who spearheaded the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, withdrew his nomination and resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor, soliciting for sex and illicit drug use.

Media reported that senators made it clear it would be difficult to confirm Gaetz for the job. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing, but said he withdrew from consideration because he was becoming a “distraction”.

• The rise and fall of Matt Gaetz in eight wild days

Trump did not waste time, quickly nominating Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, to the post instead.

Another pick, Pete Hegseth, has also been embroiled in scandal, after a police report revealed new details about an alleged sexual assault encounter the former Fox-news host had with a woman in 2017.

Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing and claims the encounter was consensual. He was never arrested or charged.

Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon – the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment – has also been criticised for her lack of experience in education.

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 British businessman caught on camera confessing he was illegally selling luxury perfume to Russia is not facing criminal charges, the BBC has learned.

David Crisp admitted to an undercover investigator that he had “ignored government edicts” on sanctions by selling £1,000-a-bottle “Boadicea the Victorious” perfume in Russia.

The BBC can now exclusively show the undercover video, which has previously only been shared in court.

Mr Crisp was arrested in 2023 by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) – the UK government agency responsible for sanctions enforcement – but the investigation was dropped earlier this year. This is despite the discovery of evidence that he tried to conceal more than £1.7m of illegal sales.

Mr Crisp, from Surrey, denies knowingly breaching sanctions or concealing trades with Russia.

There has not been a single UK criminal conviction for violating trade sanctions on Russia, the BBC understands, since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago.

Failing to punish violators is “a bad signal to send” and makes the UK look like a “soft touch,” says senior Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who has been calling for tougher action against Russia.

Mr Crisp travelled the world selling high-end perfume, regularly rubbing shoulders with celebrities and VIPs, who were unaware of his activities in Russia.

But when he started chatting to a friendly American in the lift of a luxury hotel in Dallas in July last year, he had no idea he was actually speaking to a private investigator.

Posing as a Las Vegas businessman, the agent said he was interested in stocking Mr Crisp’s perfumes. They later met in Crisp’s hotel room to smell the fragrances – where the investigator secretly filmed the conversation.

“How’s your Russian market?” the investigator asked. “Don’t tell anyone.” Mr Crisp replied, “We’re doing really well… we ignore government edicts.”

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the UK government introduced sanctions banning trade with Russia in several areas – perfumes are specifically named. Breaching these regulations is a serious offence, with a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Following the introduction of sanctions, Mr Crisp had agreed with his then-business partner, David Garofalo, to cease trading with Russia. But Mr Garofalo later became suspicious after a whistleblower claimed that Crisp continued to sell perfume in Moscow. Mr Garofalo then hired the private investigators.

The undercover footage is “sickening” David Garofalo told me as we watch the footage together, adding “he knows that he’s violating the sanctions”.

Without Mr Crisp’s knowledge, the company also compiled a dossier of evidence that he had knowingly violated sanctions.

Staff also found pallets of goods in the company’s UK facility with paperwork showing recipients in Russia, and international shipping data confirming deliveries. Products were discovered on sale in Moscow that the company had only launched after the imposition of sanctions.

“He had actually gone out of his way to disguise the fact that he’d continued selling to Russia,” Mr Garofalo told us. “He had deceived our in-house lawyer and misled our auditors.”

Mr Garofalo reported Mr Crisp to HMRC and it opened a criminal investigation. At the same time, Mr Garofalo pursued a civil case against his partner to remove him from the company.

In July this year, a High Court judge granted a rare provisional injunction, meaning Mr Crisp would be removed immediately pending the full civil trial.

In his ruling, the judge said the undercover video was “compelling evidence” that Mr Crisp knew he was breaching sanctions and the company accounts showed he “concealed the Russian trading”.

After taking full control of the company, Mr Garofalo immediately halted all sales to Russia.

In a statement, David Crisp told the BBC: “I strongly refute the allegations made against me by Mr Garofalo, at no point did I knowingly trade in breach of Russian sanctions… at no point did I attempt to conceal those trades… the companies’ trades with Russia were well known to those within the business… I look forward to being fully exonerated.”

HMRC officers arrested Mr Crisp upon arrival at Gatwick Airport in October 2023 and seized his passport.

But, by July this year, HMRC had dropped its investigation and told Mr Crisp that it would take no further action against him, returning his passport.

Mr Garofalo told us he was shocked HMRC had showed no interest in the evidence he had collected. “It was an open and shut case. The evidence was just irrefutable.”

HMRC does not comment on individual cases, but it told the BBC that failure to comply with sanctions is a serious offence, and those who breach them could face enforcement actions including financial penalties or referral for criminal prosecution.

Its statement added: “HMRC has fined five companies for breaches of the Russia sanctions regulations in the last two years, including a £1m fine issued in August 2023.”

But the BBC understands there haven’t been any criminal prosecutions for violating trade sanctions on Russia since February 2022.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, the chair of a committee of MPs working on sanctions against Russia, told the BBC the Crisp case isn’t a “one-off”.

“In terms of prosecution and seriously pursuing people over sanctions, the UK is very poor indeed,” said Sir Iain. “If we don’t prosecute, who the hell is deterred from breaching sanctions?

He said other countries including the US, were “light years” ahead of the UK in terms of prosecuting violators.

“There needs to be arrest, prosecution and incarceration. And if we don’t do that, then there’s no such thing as sanctions.”

The former Conservative Party leader said that HMRC often reached settlements, instead of issuing large fines or criminal convictions.

“The authorities may say the sanctions breaches are too small to prosecute, but the answer is you prosecute the small ones, because the big ones need to know that you’re coming after them as well,” he added.

The UK government had hoped sanctions would be a deterrent, without the need for robust enforcement, according to Tim Ash from the foreign affairs think tank Chatham House.

“The reality is, the allure of doing business with Russia, the huge profits to be made, are too much for some people,” explained Mr Ash.

“They’re more interested in their bottom line, as opposed to the bottomless pit of Ukrainians dying.”

He said cases like Mr Crisp’s sent a clear message that there would be no consequences for continuing business with Russia.

“We are almost three years into the [full-scale] invasion, and the fact that we haven’t got our sanctions regime together is pretty extraordinary.”

Zayn Malik has paid tribute to his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne at his show in Leeds on Saturday night, with a sign which read: “Love you bro”.

The message, which has been widely shared on social media, also had Payne’s name and the year he was born and died.

Malik’s tour was meant to begin in Edinburgh earlier this week. However, he rescheduled two of his shows in the city, citing “unforeseen circumstances”.

The singer also previously postponed his US tour, after what he called the “heartbreaking loss” of Payne.

Payne died, aged 31, after falling from the third floor of hotel balcony in Argentina last month.

Family, friends and former bandmates remembered him at his funeral in Amersham in Buckinghamshire on Wednesday.

Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Malik were among the mourners, alongside Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy and his former partner Cheryl, with whom he shares a son.

At the O2 Academy Leeds, Malik played a string of his hits including Pillowtalk and My Woman.

Many had expected he might pay tribute to Payne during the show. In the end, he did so right at the end, with a message that was accompanied by a pink heart.

It came after Malik announced last week that he was rescheduling two of his Edinburgh shows.

In an Instagram story, he said that the show originally scheduled for 20 November at the O2 Academy Edinburgh venue had been rescheduled for 8 December.

A further date on 21 November at the same venue has been moved to 9 December.

“All tickets for the original show dates will be honoured on the rescheduled dates,” the post added.

In October, he made the decision to postpone his US shows, telling fans: “Given the heartbreaking loss experienced this week, I’ve made the decision to postpone the US leg of the Stairway to the Sky Tour.”

The US part of Malik’s tour was due to start in San Francisco, before visiting Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Washington DC and New York.

He has told fans on X the dates would be rescheduled for January and the tickets will remain valid for the new dates.

“Love you all and thank you for your understanding,” he added.

Payne and Malik rose to global fame as part of the boyband One Direction – created on The X Factor TV show in 2010 – and sang together with bandmates Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan.

Malik left the group in 2015 to embark on a solo singing career, and the band later split in 2016.

After Payne’s death, his One Direction bandmates posted a series of poignant and heartfelt tributes to their “brother”, who they remembered as “the most vital part” of the group.

“I loved and respected you dearly. I will cherish all the memories I have with you in my heart forever, there is no words that justify or explain how I feel right now other than beyond devastated,” Malik wrote.

“I hope that wherever you are right now you are good and are at peace and you know how loved you are.”

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.”

When Nila Ibrahimi set out to build a website telling the stories of Afghan girls, it wasn’t just to give them a voice.

The 17-year-old Afghan refugee was also determined to remind her fellow Gen Zs in her adopted country, Canada, that they were similar – they even listened to Taylor Swift just like other teenage girls around the world.

“I want to make them as real as possible so that other people, especially young people, Gen Z specifically, can put themselves in their shoes,” she told the BBC.

Nila spoke to the BBC earlier this week, before picking up the International Children’s Peace Prize previously won by education campaigner Malala Yousafzai and climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Nila’s is, perhaps, not an easy task. The plight of Afghanistan’s women and girls can feel a world away to young people living in Canada, where Nila found a home after fleeing her home country as the Taliban took over three years ago.

In that time, the Taliban have banned teenage girls from education, banned women from travelling long distances without a male chaperone, and now ordered them to keep their voices down in public – effectively silencing half the population.

The Taliban have defended the rulings to the BBC previously by saying they align with religious texts.

“The differences [between Afghanistan and Canada] are vast, so it makes it hard for them to feel connected,” acknowledges Nila.

That is why she helped set up HerStory – a place where she and others help share the stories of Afghan women and girls in their own words, both inside and out of the country.

“So many times we are lost in the differences that we don’t see the similarities and that’s our goal, to show that to the world.”

Nila Ibrahim was chosen from 165 nominees as the 20th winner of the prestigious prize.

The award recognises not just the work done on HerStory, but also her passion for standing up for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Nila’s first stand for women’s rights came in March 2021, when she joined other young Afghan girls in sharing a video of her singing online.

It was a small but powerful protest against a decree by the then-director of education in the Afghan capital, Kabul, who tried to ban girls over 12 singing in public. The attempted order was never implemented.

“That was when I really understood the importance of performing, the importance of speaking up and talking about these issues,” explains Nila, who was part of a group called Sound of Afghanistan.

But less than six months later, everything would change – and, aged 14, she would have to flee with her family as the Taliban arrived.

The family – who are part of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority – made the difficult journey to Pakistan, where they spent a year before being granted asylum in Canada.

It was, after 12 months without education, a “breath of fresh air”, she says.

There, Nila was reunited with her friends from the singing group.

She was also invited to speak at events, about her experiences of Afghanistan, allowing her to advocate for all the girls left behind.

People, she says, were surprised at how eloquent she was. But Nila knew there were millions of women and girls in Afghanistan who were just as capable – although with less access to the opportunities she had.

“So I thought if my potential can surprise these people and they don’t know about how educated girls from Afghanistan can be, what if that information was accessible to them?”

HerStory – the website which grew out of this thought – started in 2023. It features interviews and first person accounts from both refugees and women inside Afghanistan.

The idea is to create a safe space where a group of people who “grew up with the stories of the first period of Taliban and how horrible the lives of women were at the time” share their stories – and their “shock and anger” at finding themselves in an increasingly similar situation.

The anger is a feeling Nila tries to keep separate from her work.

“When you see Afghanistan going back in time in 20 years, of course it makes you fear,” she says.

“It’s a shared feeling. It’s a shared experience for girls anywhere.”

The award, she says, is a chance for Afghan girls to once again remind the world about the restrictions they face on a daily basis – a reminder “not to forget Afghan girls”.

Marc Dullaert, founder of the KidsRights Foundation, which runs the award, pointed out that a “staggering” number of young women were currently being excluded from education.

“Nila’s inspirational work to provide them with a voice that will be heard across the world makes her a truly worthy winner of this year’s 20th International Peace Prize,” he added.

It is also a reminder that her generation – while young – can make a difference, Nila hopes.

“I think so many times when we talk about issues and different causes, we talk about it with the very adult like approach of oh, this is very serious,” she says.

“The world is a very scary place, but there is an approach that is more Gen Z-like… and we can take little steps and… do whatever we can.”

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 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 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.”

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.

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.”

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.

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “autumn walks”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “Fluids” and the deadline for entries is 3 December 2024.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

Terms and conditions apply.

Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

All photographs subject to copyright.

Jaguar has urged people to “trust and reserve judgement” over the rebrand of the carmaker.

The company, embarking on the biggest change in its 102-year old history, released a new logo and a so-called “social media tease” this week, ahead of its relaunch as an electric-only brand in early December.

The teaser video has faced backlash, with many critics pointing to the fact it doesn’t feature an actual car. Others have praised the company for being bold and shaking things up.

Either way, the rebrand has grabbed people’s attention and Jaguar has since admitted it not only expected such debate – but it wanted it.

In the 1960s, Jaguar launched the E-Type and XJ which have come to be known among some of the most iconic cars of all time.

Now the company is trying to do the same again by unveiling its new “design vision” in Miami next month.

Teasing the vision online, the 30 second advert features models in extravagant, brightly-coloured outfits who reveal the new company logo written as JaGUar.

No cars, no suave men in suits, no big cats.

“Do you sell cars?” was the response on X, from owner Elon Musk, who is also the boss of electric car firm Tesla.

“This is surely a joke?” added one user, while another suggested the move would “cost jobs and do real damage”. Some said “Go woke, go broke”.

Specsavers, known for its humorous social media manner, created a mock-up of its own logo in response, which looked like it had been created on Microsoft Paint.

While supermarket Aldi chipped in at Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” slogan with: “You sound like our legal team.”

Amid the anger and sarcasm, Jaguar has doubled down on its decision, replying to some posts with phrases such as “To live is to evolve”.

“We had to break rules and do something that would get us cut thru,” a spokesman told the BBC – suggesting this is all part of the plan.

As Martin Brundle, the former Formula 1 racing driver turned broadcaster, put it: “I have no idea what this is all about, but it’s genius.

“Everyone is talking about Jaguar in a moment of time when they’re not actually making cars.”

Lee Rolston is the chief growth officer of global branding agency Jones Knowles Ritchie and has worked on rebrands of household names such as Burger King and the RSPCA.

He was also part of the thinking to famously drop the donuts from Dunkin’ to move “to a first-name basis with America”, given it was also one of the country’s the biggest coffee sellers.

He says rebrands occur generally when a company wants to “shift” its business strategy, which is what Jaguar is doing in its move to electric-only cars.

In an “ideal world” the rebrand leads to buzz and a positive reaction, Mr Rolston adds, but to achieve that you need to “make sure people understand the context”.

“Don’t ever just launch a logo – when people see a logo they tend to subjectively respond to it. It’s always good to show as much as you can,” he explains.

“Unless you want that response. Maybe Jaguar did actually want this kind of response” Mr Rolston ponders.

As a result of Jaguar’s rebrand strategy to tease and drip feed information of its plans, a void has been created, and that has been “filled by opinion”, Mr Rolston says.

“They have taken a very brave route – it’s one that very, very few brands ever do take because it’s very risky, but time will tell.”

It’s not new to not include a product in an ad or to raise eyebrows – the gorilla beating the drums to Phil Collins didn’t feature any Cadbury’s chocolate, for example.

Keith Wells, founder and director of brand strategy business Brandwell, points out Apple’s “think different” advert in 1997 which, rather than showcasing its computers, instead featured the likes of Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi.

However, Mr Wells has first-hand experience of a rebrand backlash. Remember Consignia? (Readers under the age of 40 can be forgiven for not).

In 2001, he led the consultancy Dragon Brands, which came up with the new corporate name for the Post Office Group. The aim was to create a new, modern umbrella brand for the restructured organisation, which included not just the Post Office, but Royal Mail and Parcelforce too.

But the creation of Consignia led to a backlash from the public, largely due to people misinterpreting the rebrand.

Some people thought Post Office branches would be renamed Consignia, which wasn’t the case.

Nonetheless, the negativity, and a new leadership team, eventually led to Consignia being canned, and being renamed Royal Mail plc 16 months later.

While Jaguar isn’t changing its name, Mr Wells says the brand has taken a “huge, bold step” and people should give “respect and time” to see how things pan out.

Mr Rolston said “branding logic” suggests companies “lean into” their current perception with the public, but Jaguar appears to have shunned that.

“Everything they have put out so far is not like a Jaguar. The question is, if it’s not a Jaguar as you used to know it, what is it?”

Jaguar argues its rebrand can been traced back to the words of its founder, Sir William Lyons, that “A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing”.

But it’s clear, as Erin Baker, editorial director at AutoTrader puts it, that the carmaker is trying to ditch the “sage” image, that its cars are only for older, white men, who perhaps frequent golf clubs, or wear cravats and smoke cigars.

“It’s been languishing in terms of sales for years now,” she said. “Something has to change fundamentally with the brand.”

But Ms Baker is a fan of the rebrand ad. “I think it needs to really stir emotion, it needs to stir curiosity, get people asking questions,” she says.

Jaguar has been the weakest link within the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group owned by Tata Motors for almost a decade, with The Range Rover and Defender behind the company’s highest profits.

Ms Baker believes Jaguar’s radical rebrand is a final attempt to revive it. But what happens if it doesn’t pay off?

“I am not sure what else they can do,” adds Ms Baker. “It’s a very risky move to go pure electric in 2026 when sales of electric cars the world over have largely stalled amongst private buyers.

“But the truth is…no one has an idea if this is going to succeed or not.”

All agree that Jaguar probably won’t mind the current noise. Jaguar replied to some critics saying “soon you’ll see things our way”. Only time will tell.

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.

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

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.

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.

• Trump picks ex-congressman and Fox host as transport secretary

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.”

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

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.

Brooke Rollins grew up on a farm, but her most recent job was as co-founder and head of the America First Policy Institute, a Maga-backed think tank.

During the president-elect’s first administration, she served as director of the Office of American Innovation and acting director of the Domestic Policy Council.

According to Trump’s press release, Rollins graduated from the Texas A&M University with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in agriculture development and later obtained her law degree from the same university.

As agriculture secretary, she will be oversee farm subsidies, federal nutrition programmes, meat inspections and other facets of the country’s agricultural industry.

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.

• Can Elon Musk cut $2 trillion from US government spending?
• Who is Elon Musk?
• Why is Musk becoming Donald Trump’s efficiency tsar?
• What Musk could gain from Trump’s presidency

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

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

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

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

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, has agreed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (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.

• Who is Susie Wiles, new chief of staff?
• Seven things Trump says he will do in power

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.

At the epicentre of this devastating family drama is Gisèle Pelicot, a diminutive 71-year-old woman, drugged by her former husband and abused for a decade by dozens of strangers he had recruited online.

Watching her entering the court in Avignon and giving evidence, it was staggering to imagine the amount of abuse her body sustained.

But as other members of her family have taken the stand, it has become painfully clear that no-one has emerged unscathed from the storm unleashed by the actions of the Pelicot patriarch.

The damage to this family is clear. Individually, they have described the destructive force that engulfed them in November 2020 as a “tsunami” that left nothing but ruin in its wake.

Dominique Pelicot was finally caught after an alert security guard caught him filming under women’s skirts.

But it took weeks for police to discover the full truth that ultimately tore his family apart.

For years, he had been drugging his wife and recruiting men online to rape her while she was unconscious.

He filmed the abuse and neatly classified each visit in folders on his hard drive. Faced with the evidence, Dominique Pelicot admitted the rape charges against him.

Alongside obscene language describing his videos, he added captions with the men’s names. Fifty other men have been on trial with him and only a handful admit rape. More than 20 others could not be identified and are still at large.

Gisèle Pelicot has attended almost all of this trial. She waived her anonymity and allowed the public to see what she had endured.

The videos leave no doubt that the sex acts were not consensual. Ms Pelicot can be seen lying on the bed, snoring, as her husband whispers instructions to various men to touch her, prod her, use her.

Artificial sleep affords her mind a degree of protection, but her body becomes an object.

She was, in her own words, treated “like a rag doll, like a garbage bag“.

“I am 72 now and I don’t know how much time I have left,” she told the court last week.

The magnitude of Dominique Pelicot’s betrayal and crimes is such that the aftershocks have rippled far beyond his ex-wife.

The Pelicots’ middle child, Caroline Darian, now 45, screamed her anguish at her father in court as she demanded to know the truth about photos found on his computer. Entitled “My naked daughter”, the images show her semi-naked and, she says, clearly drugged.

Mr Pelicot has offered various and at times contradictory explanations for the pictures, although he has denied abusing his daughter. “I never touched you,” he pleaded with her.

But his duplicity has been abundantly exposed during this trial, and he has clearly lost the right to be believed by his daughter.

“You are a liar,” she shouted back at him. “I am sick of your lies, you are alone in your lie, you will die lying.”

Fighting back tears, she accused her father of looking at her “with incestuous eyes”.

Caroline Darian has told the court she feels she is the trial’s “forgotten victim” as, unlike her mother’s case, there is no record of the abuse she is convinced was inflicted on her.

She has founded a charity to highlight the dangers of drug-induced assault and published a book in 2022 detailing her family’s trauma. In it, she hinted at a rift with her mother, who she found had dropped off a bundle of warm clothes for her father in jail, weeks after his crimes came to light.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Caroline wrote. “She was still looking after the person who got her raped for a decade.”

That apparent rift was exploited by a combative defence lawyer who suggested Gisèle Pelicot had chosen her former husband over her daughter by not demanding the truth about the photos of Caroline. Gisèle shook her head, but Caroline cracked a slight smile, appearing to acknowledge the lawyer’s description.

When Caroline’s brothers David and Florian took the stand they made repeated references to the pain she was going through, urging their father to tell the truth.

Stifling sobs, Florian, 38, the youngest of the family, turned to face Dominique Pelicot sitting in a glass box to his left and said: “If you have any dignity and humanity – you don’t have anything left to lose anyway – tell Caroline the truth.”

He also spoke of his longstanding suspicion he was the product of an affair his mother had in the 1980s, which was compounded by a faint but lifelong feeling that his father loved his siblings more than him.

In a desperate search for answers, he wondered out loud whether he could be the “motive” for his father’s crimes. He said he would seek out a paternity test, adding it would be a “relief” not to be Dominique Pelicot’s son.

Through tears, Florian painted a desolate picture of what his life had become. His marriage to the mother of his three children, Aurore, has not survived revelations that Dominique Pelicot also surreptitiously took photographs of her.

Despite their separation, this slight, softly-spoken woman has frequently attended the trial and said it had exposed the “banality” of abuse.

Aurore, herself a survivor of incest, is having to live with the regret of not having listened to her instincts regarding Mr Pelicot. “If she had, she may have been able to alter the course of events,” her lawyer said.

The eldest of the Pelicot children, David, is a burly man of 50 who bears a striking resemblance to his father.

Taking the stand this week, he described how he had grown closer to Dominique Pelicot when he had himself become a father.

Then, his voice growing more anguished and clutching the stand as if to steady himself, he recalled the harrowing detail the night his mother told him of his father’s arrest. “All of us know where we were when the tsunami hit,” he said.

Naked photographs of his wife Celine, pregnant with their twin daughters, were also found among Mr Pelicot’s files. She was in the bathroom, snapped with a hidden camera.

His voice heavy with emotion, David described watching his mother, frail and lost, standing on a train platform, her life reduced to her dog and a suitcase.

Recalling the birthday parties his parents used to throw for him and his siblings, to the envy of their friends, he said: “My childhood has disappeared; it was erased.”

The trauma rippling through this family seems without end. David’s son, now 18, wonders what really happened when Dominique asked him to “play doctor” as a child.

His young siblings, the family’s lawyer said on Wednesday, “will have to find their place in a family in which their grandmother, their mother, their brother and their aunts have all been victims of their grandfather.”

Caroline’s young son is still profoundly shaken by the carefully worded revelation, four years ago, that his beloved grandfather hurt his grandmother.

“This is just a sample of the depth of the suffering caused by a rape in the family,” lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said in his closing arguments.

A verdict is expected on 20 December. Mr Pelicot is facing 20 years in jail – the maximum sentence for rape in France.

And for the rest of his family the trauma will live on. Because none of them will ever know for certain what he may or may not have done.

In one of the shaky phone videos shown in court, a tall naked man stands in the middle of a dark bedroom. Another man sits on the bed, smiling, next to an unconscious woman lying on her side, lightly snoring.

Behind her, on a chest of drawers, is a photograph, clearly discernible despite the low lighting.

It is the Pelicot family, huddling close on a beach on a sunny day, and beaming at the camera.

Abida Sultaan was nothing like your typical princess.

She wore her hair short, shot tigers and was an ace polo player. She flew planes and drove herself around in a Rolls-Royce from the age of nine.

Born in 1913 into a family of brave ‘begums’ (a Muslim woman of high rank) who ruled the northern princely state of Bhopal in British India for over a century, Abida continued their legacy of defying stereotypes around women in general and Muslim women in particular.

She refused to be in purdah – a practice followed by Muslim, and some Hindu women, of wearing clothes that conceal them and secluding themselves from men – and became heir to the throne at the age of 15.

Abida ran her father’s cabinet for more than a decade, rubbed shoulders with India’s prominent freedom fighters and would eventually come to have a ringside view of the hate and violence the country disintegrated into after it was partitioned in 1947 to create Pakistan.

She was groomed from a young age to take on the mantle of ruler under the guidance of her grandmother, Sultan Jehan, a strict disciplinarian who was the ruler of Bhopal.

In her 2004 autobiography, Memoirs of a Rebel Princess, Abida writes about how she had to wake up at four in the morning to read the Quran – the religious text of Islam – and then proceed with a day filled with activities, which included learning sports, music and horse riding, but also included chores like sweeping the floor and cleaning bathrooms.

“We girls were not allowed to feel any inferiority on account of our sex. Everything was equal. We had all the freedom that a boy had; we could ride, climb trees, play any game we chose to. There were no restrictions,” she said in an interview about her childhood.

Abida had a fierce, independent streak even as a child and rebelled against her grandmother when she forced her into purdah at the age of 13. Her chutzpah coupled with her father’s broad-mindedness helped her escape the practice for the rest of her life.

Already heir to the throne of Bhopal, Abida stood the chance of becoming part of the royal family of the neighbouring princely state of Kurwai as well when at the age of 12, she was married off to Sarwar Ali Khan, her childhood friend and ruler Kurwai. She described her nikah (wedding), about which she was clueless, in hilarious detail in her memoir.

She writes about how one day, while she was pillow-fighting with her cousins, her grandmother walked into the room and asked her to dress up for a wedding. Only, no one told her that she was the bride.

“No-one had prepared or instructed me on how to conduct myself, with the result that I walked into the nikah chamber, pushing the gathered women out of my way, my face uncovered, sulking as usual for being chosen again for some new experiment,” she writes.

The wedding was brief like Abida’s marriage, which lasted for less than a decade.

Married life was difficult for Abida, not just because of her young age but also because of her strict, pious upbringing. She candidly describes how a lack of knowledge and discomfort with sex took a toll on her marriage.

“Immediately after my wedding, I entered the world of conjugal trauma. I had not realised that the consummation that followed would leave me so horrified, numbed and feeling unchaste,” she writes and adds that she could never bring herself to “accept marital relations between husband and wife”. This led to the breakdown of her marriage.

In her paper on intimacy and sexuality in the autobiographical writings of Muslim women in South Asia, historian Siobhan Lambert-Hurley underscores how Abida’s honest reflections on sexual intimacy with her husband tear apart the stereotype that Muslim women do not write about sex, by presenting an unabashed voice on the topic.

After her marriage fell apart, Abida left her marital home in Kurwai and moved back to Bhopal. But the couple’s only son, Shahryar Mohammad Khan, became the subject of an ugly custody dispute. Frustrated by the drawn-out battle and not wanting to part with her son, Abida took a bold step to make her husband back off.

On a warm night in March 1935, Abida drove for three hours straight to reach her husband’s home in Kurwai. She entered his bedroom, pulled out a revolver, threw it in her husband’s lap and said: “Shoot me or I will shoot you.”

This incident, coupled with a physical confrontation between the couple in which Abida emerged victorious, put an end to the custody dispute. She proceeded to raise her son as a single mother while juggling her duties as heir to the throne. She ran her state’s cabinet from 1935 till 1949, when Bhopal was merged with the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Abida also attended the round-table conferences – called by the British government to decide the future government of India – during which she met influential leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and his son, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was to become India’s first prime minister.

She also experienced first-hand the deteriorating relationship between Hindus and Muslims and the violence that broke out in the aftermath of India’s partition in 1947.

In her memoir Abida describes the discrimination she began facing in Bhopal; how her family, who had lived there peacefully for generations, began to be treated as “outsiders”. In one of her interviews, she spoke about a particularly disturbing memory she had of the violence that broke out between Hindus and Muslims.

One day, after the Indian government informed her that a train carrying Muslim refugees would arrive in Bhopal, she went to the railway station to supervise the arrival.

“When the compartments were opened, they were all dead,” she said and added that it was this violence and distrust that drove her to move to Pakistan in 1950.

Abida left quietly, with only her son and hopes for a brighter future. In Pakistan, she championed democracy and women’s rights through her political career. Abida died in Karachi in 2002.

After she left for Pakistan, the Indian government had made her sister heir to the throne. But Abida is still known in Bhopal, where people refer to her by her nickname ‘bia huzoor’.

“Religious politics over the past few years have chipped away at her legacy and she isn’t spoken about as much any more,” says journalist Shams Ur Rehman Alavi, who has been researching Bhopal’s women rulers.

“But her name isn’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon.”

Jaguar has urged people to “trust and reserve judgement” over the rebrand of the carmaker.

The company, embarking on the biggest change in its 102-year old history, released a new logo and a so-called “social media tease” this week, ahead of its relaunch as an electric-only brand in early December.

The teaser video has faced backlash, with many critics pointing to the fact it doesn’t feature an actual car. Others have praised the company for being bold and shaking things up.

Either way, the rebrand has grabbed people’s attention and Jaguar has since admitted it not only expected such debate – but it wanted it.

In the 1960s, Jaguar launched the E-Type and XJ which have come to be known among some of the most iconic cars of all time.

Now the company is trying to do the same again by unveiling its new “design vision” in Miami next month.

Teasing the vision online, the 30 second advert features models in extravagant, brightly-coloured outfits who reveal the new company logo written as JaGUar.

No cars, no suave men in suits, no big cats.

“Do you sell cars?” was the response on X, from owner Elon Musk, who is also the boss of electric car firm Tesla.

“This is surely a joke?” added one user, while another suggested the move would “cost jobs and do real damage”. Some said “Go woke, go broke”.

Specsavers, known for its humorous social media manner, created a mock-up of its own logo in response, which looked like it had been created on Microsoft Paint.

While supermarket Aldi chipped in at Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” slogan with: “You sound like our legal team.”

Amid the anger and sarcasm, Jaguar has doubled down on its decision, replying to some posts with phrases such as “To live is to evolve”.

“We had to break rules and do something that would get us cut thru,” a spokesman told the BBC – suggesting this is all part of the plan.

As Martin Brundle, the former Formula 1 racing driver turned broadcaster, put it: “I have no idea what this is all about, but it’s genius.

“Everyone is talking about Jaguar in a moment of time when they’re not actually making cars.”

Lee Rolston is the chief growth officer of global branding agency Jones Knowles Ritchie and has worked on rebrands of household names such as Burger King and the RSPCA.

He was also part of the thinking to famously drop the donuts from Dunkin’ to move “to a first-name basis with America”, given it was also one of the country’s the biggest coffee sellers.

He says rebrands occur generally when a company wants to “shift” its business strategy, which is what Jaguar is doing in its move to electric-only cars.

In an “ideal world” the rebrand leads to buzz and a positive reaction, Mr Rolston adds, but to achieve that you need to “make sure people understand the context”.

“Don’t ever just launch a logo – when people see a logo they tend to subjectively respond to it. It’s always good to show as much as you can,” he explains.

“Unless you want that response. Maybe Jaguar did actually want this kind of response” Mr Rolston ponders.

As a result of Jaguar’s rebrand strategy to tease and drip feed information of its plans, a void has been created, and that has been “filled by opinion”, Mr Rolston says.

“They have taken a very brave route – it’s one that very, very few brands ever do take because it’s very risky, but time will tell.”

It’s not new to not include a product in an ad or to raise eyebrows – the gorilla beating the drums to Phil Collins didn’t feature any Cadbury’s chocolate, for example.

Keith Wells, founder and director of brand strategy business Brandwell, points out Apple’s “think different” advert in 1997 which, rather than showcasing its computers, instead featured the likes of Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi.

However, Mr Wells has first-hand experience of a rebrand backlash. Remember Consignia? (Readers under the age of 40 can be forgiven for not).

In 2001, he led the consultancy Dragon Brands, which came up with the new corporate name for the Post Office Group. The aim was to create a new, modern umbrella brand for the restructured organisation, which included not just the Post Office, but Royal Mail and Parcelforce too.

But the creation of Consignia led to a backlash from the public, largely due to people misinterpreting the rebrand.

Some people thought Post Office branches would be renamed Consignia, which wasn’t the case.

Nonetheless, the negativity, and a new leadership team, eventually led to Consignia being canned, and being renamed Royal Mail plc 16 months later.

While Jaguar isn’t changing its name, Mr Wells says the brand has taken a “huge, bold step” and people should give “respect and time” to see how things pan out.

Mr Rolston said “branding logic” suggests companies “lean into” their current perception with the public, but Jaguar appears to have shunned that.

“Everything they have put out so far is not like a Jaguar. The question is, if it’s not a Jaguar as you used to know it, what is it?”

Jaguar argues its rebrand can been traced back to the words of its founder, Sir William Lyons, that “A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing”.

But it’s clear, as Erin Baker, editorial director at AutoTrader puts it, that the carmaker is trying to ditch the “sage” image, that its cars are only for older, white men, who perhaps frequent golf clubs, or wear cravats and smoke cigars.

“It’s been languishing in terms of sales for years now,” she said. “Something has to change fundamentally with the brand.”

But Ms Baker is a fan of the rebrand ad. “I think it needs to really stir emotion, it needs to stir curiosity, get people asking questions,” she says.

Jaguar has been the weakest link within the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group owned by Tata Motors for almost a decade, with The Range Rover and Defender behind the company’s highest profits.

Ms Baker believes Jaguar’s radical rebrand is a final attempt to revive it. But what happens if it doesn’t pay off?

“I am not sure what else they can do,” adds Ms Baker. “It’s a very risky move to go pure electric in 2026 when sales of electric cars the world over have largely stalled amongst private buyers.

“But the truth is…no one has an idea if this is going to succeed or not.”

All agree that Jaguar probably won’t mind the current noise. Jaguar replied to some critics saying “soon you’ll see things our way”. Only time will tell.

Richer countries have pledged to give a record $300bn (£238bn) to the developing world to help them prepare for and prevent climate change.

The talks at the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan ran 33 hours late, and came within inches of collapse.

The head of the UN climate body, Simon Stiell, said it had “been a difficult journey, but we’ve delivered a deal.”

But the talks failed to build on an agreement passed last year calling for nations to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

Developing nations, as well as countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, dramatically walked out of the talks on Saturday afternoon.

“I am not exaggerating when I say our islands are sinking! How can you expect us to go back to the women, men, and children of our countries with a poor deal?” said the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, Cedric Schuster.

But at 03:00 local time on Sunday (23:00 GMT on Saturday), and after some changes to the agreement, nations finally passed the deal. It was met with cheers and applause, but a furious speech from India showed that intense frustration remained.

“We cannot accept it… the proposed goal will not solve anything for us. [It is] not conducive to climate action that is necessary to the survival of our country,” Leela Nandan told the conference, calling the sum too small.

Then nations including Switzerland, Maldives, Canada and Australia protested that the language about reducing global use of fossil fuels was too weak.

Instead, that decision was postponed until the next climate talks in 2025.

This promise of more money is a recognition that poorer nations bear a disproportionate burden from climate change, but also have historically contributed the least to the climate crisis.

The newly-promised money is expected to come from government grants and the private sector – banks and businesses – and should help countries move away from fossil fuel power to using renewable energy.

There was also a commitment to tripling the money that goes towards preparing countries for climate change. Historically, only 40% of the funding available for climate change has gone towards this.

As well as the promise of $300bn (£238bn), nations agreed that $1.3tn is needed by 2035 to also help prevent climate change.

This year – which is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest on record – has been punctuated by intense heatwaves and deadly storms.

The opening of the talks on 11 November was dominated by the election of US President Donald Trump, who will take office in January.

He is a climate sceptic who has said he will take the US out of the landmark Paris agreement that in 2015 created a roadmap for nations to tackle climate change.

“For sure it brought the headline number down. The other developed country donors are acutely aware that Trump will not pay a penny and they will have to make up the shortfall,” Prof Joanna Depledge, an expert on international climate negotiations at Cambridge University, told the BBC.

Reaching this deal is a sign that countries are still committed to working together on climate, but with the largest economy on the planet now unlikely to play a part, it will become harder to meet the multi-billion dollar goal.

“The protracted end game at COP29 is reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in. The result is a flawed compromise between donor countries and the most vulnerable nations in the world,” said Li Shuo from the think-tank Asia Society Policy Institute.

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband stressed that the new pledge does not commit the UK to come up with more climate finance but it was actually a “huge opportunity for British businesses” to invest in other markets.

“This is a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate. It is not everything we or others wanted but it is a step forward for us all,” he said.

In return for promising more money, developed nations including the UK and the European Union wanted stronger commitments by countries to reduce use of fossil fuels.

Despite their hopes that the agreement struck at the talks in Dubai last year to “transition away from fossil fuels” would be strengthened, the final proposed agreement only repeated it.

For many nations this was just not good enough, and it was rejected – it will now have to be agreed next year.

Countries that rely on oil and gas exports reportedly put up a strong fight in negotiations to stop further progress.

“The Arab Group will not accept any text that targets specific sectors, including fossil fuels,” Saudi Arabia’s Albara Tawfiq said at an open meeting earlier this week.

Several nations came to the talks with new plans to address climate change in their own countries.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a play for climate leadership on the world stage and pledged to reduce UK emissions by 81% by 2035, which was celebrated by many as an ambitious goal.

The host nation, Azerbaijan, was a controversial choice for climate talks. It says it wants to expand gas production by up to a third in the next decade.

Brazil is seen as a better choice to host next year’s climate summit, COP30, in the city of Belém because of President Lula’s strong commitments to climate change and reducing deforestation in the globally important Amazon rainforest.

Donald Trump has nominated longtime ally Brooke Rollins for secretary of agriculture, completing his cabinet roster.

He made the announcement Saturday late afternoon, tapping the head of Maga-backed think tank the America First Policy Institute for the job.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” Trump said in a statement.

Her nomination marks the end of a whirlwind – and sometimes dramatic – spree of nominations to lead executive agencies.

Rollins has been a top Trump ally for many years, as the co-founder and president of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump right-wing think tank.

A former White House aide during the president-elect’s first administration, she served as director of the Office of American Innovation and acting director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Having grown up on a farm, Rollins was involved early with Future Farmers of America in addition to 4H, a nationwide agricultural club.

She graduated from the Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture development and later worked as a lawyer.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would oversee farm subsidies, federal nutrition programmes, meat inspections and other facets of the country’s farm, food and forestry industries.

She would also play a key role in renegotiating the trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, which could involve imposing Trump’s promised tariffs.

Rollins’ nomination marks the end of Trump’s picks for his cabinet – a group of 15 advisers who each helm a bureaucratic department within the American government.

Each nominee will have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Trump has chosen an eclectic array of cabinet picks, from Maga loyalists to former political rivals.

Some of his nominations – such as Robert Kennedy Jr for the Department of Health and Human Services and Matt Gaetz for attorney general – have raised eyebrows.

Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and vaccine sceptic who ran against Trump as an independent before dropping out and endorsing him, would be in charge of the Food and Drug Administration.

Gaetz, a bombastic former Florida congressman who spearheaded the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, withdrew his nomination and resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor, soliciting for sex and illicit drug use.

Media reported that senators made it clear it would be difficult to confirm Gaetz for the job. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing, but said he withdrew from consideration because he was becoming a “distraction”.

• The rise and fall of Matt Gaetz in eight wild days

Trump did not waste time, quickly nominating Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, to the post instead.

Another pick, Pete Hegseth, has also been embroiled in scandal, after a police report revealed new details about an alleged sexual assault encounter the former Fox-news host had with a woman in 2017.

Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing and claims the encounter was consensual. He was never arrested or charged.

Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon – the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment – has also been criticised for her lack of experience in education.

Forty years on from the original recording, the cream of British and Irish pop music past and present are once again asking whether Ethiopians know it is Christmas.

In 1984, responding to horrific images of the famine in northern Ethiopia broadcast on the BBC, musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure corralled some of the biggest stars of the era to record a charity song.

The release of the Band Aid single, and the Live Aid concert that followed eight months later, became seminal moments in celebrity fundraising and set a template that many others followed.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? is back on Monday with a fresh mix of the four versions of the song that have been issued over the years.

But the chorus of disapproval about the track, its stereotypical representation of an entire continent – describing it as a place “where nothing ever grows; no rain nor rivers flow” – and the way that recipients of the aid have been viewed as emaciated, helpless figures, has become louder over time.

“To say: ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ is funny, it is insulting,” says Dawit Giorgis, who in 1984 was the Ethiopian official responsible for getting the message out about what was happening in his country.

His incredulity decades on is obvious in his voice and he remembers how he and his colleagues responded to the song.

“It was so untrue and so distorted. Ethiopia was a Christian country before England… we knew Christmas before your ancestors,” he tells the BBC.

But Mr Dawit has no doubt that the philanthropic response to the BBC film, by British journalist Michael Buerk and Kenyan cameraman Mohamed Amin, saved lives.

As the head of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission he had managed to smuggle the TV crew into the country. This was despite the government at that time, which was marking 10 years of Marxist rule and fighting a civil war, not wanting news of the famine to get out.

“The way the British people responded so generously strengthened my faith in humanity,” he says, speaking from Namibia where he now works.

He praises the “young and passionate people” behind Band Aid – describing them as “amazing”.

His questioning of the song, whilst also recognising its impact, sums up the debate for many who might feel that when lives need to be saved the ends justify the means.

Geldof was typically robust in defending it responding to a recent article in The Conversation about the “problematic Christmas hit”.

“It’s a pop song [expletive]… The same argument has been made many times over the years and elicits the same wearisome response,” he is quoted as saying.

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

He also recognises that Ethiopians celebrate Christmas but says that in 1984 “ceremonies were abandoned”.

In an email to the BBC, Joe Cannon, the chief financial officer of the Band Aid Trust, said that in the past seven months the charity has given more than £3m ($3.8m) helping as many as 350,000 people through a host of projects in Ethiopia, as well as Sudan, Somaliland and Chad.

He adds that Band Aid’s swift action as a “first responder” encourages others to donate where funds are lacking, especially in northern Ethiopia, which is once again emerging from a civil war.

But this is not enough to dampen the disquiet.

In the last week, Ed Sheeran has said he is not happy about his voice from the 2014 recording – made to raise funds for the West African Ebola crisis – being used as his “understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed”.

He was influenced by British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG, who himself had refused to take part a decade ago.

“The world has changed but Band Aid hasn’t,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast this week.

“It’s saying there’s no peace and joy in Africa this Christmas. It’s still saying there’s death in every tear,” he said referring to the lyrics of the 2014 version.

“I go to Ghana every Christmas… every December so we know there’s peace and joy in Africa this Christmas, we know there isn’t death in every tear.”

Fuse ODG does not deny that there are problems to be resolved but “Band Aid takes one issue from one country and paints the whole continent with it”.

The way that Africans were portrayed in this and other fundraising efforts had had a direct effect on him, he said.

When growing up “it was not cool to be African in the UK… [because of] the way that I looked, people were making fun of me”, the singer said.

Research into the impact of charity fundraisers by British-Nigerian King’s College lecturer Edward Ademolu backs this up.

He himself remembers the short films shot in Africa by Comic Relief, which had been influenced by Band Aid, and that his “African peers at [a British] primary school would passionately deny their African roots, calling all Africans – with great certainty – smelly, unintelligent and equated them to wild animals”.

Images of dangerously thin Africans became common currency in efforts to elicit funds.

The cover for the original Band Aid single, designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, features colourful Christmas scenes contrasted with two gaunt Ethiopian children, in black and white, each eating what looks like a life-saving biscuit.

For part of the poster for the Live Aid concert the following year, Sir Peter used a photograph of the back of an anonymous, naked, skeletal child.

That image was used again in the art work for the 2004 release and it has appeared once more this year.

For many working in the aid sector, as well as academics who study it, there is shock and surprise that the song and its imagery keep coming back.

The umbrella body Bond, which works with more than 300 charities including Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam, has been very critical of the release of the new mix.

“Initiatives like Band Aid 40 perpetuate outdated narratives, reinforce racism and colonial attitudes that strip people of their dignity and agency,” Lena Bheeroo, Bond’s head of anti-racism and equity, said in a statement.

Geldof had previously dismissed the idea that Band Aid’s work was relying on “colonial tropes”.

The way that charities raise funds has undergone big changes in recent years.

While remaining critical, Kenyan satirist and writer Patrick Gathara, who often mocks Western views of Africa, agrees things have shifted.

“There has been a push within humanitarian agencies to start seeing people in a crisis first as human beings and not as victims, and I think that’s a big, big change,” he tells the BBC.

“In the days of Live Aid, all you really had were these images of starvation and suffering… the idea that these are people were incapable of doing anything for themselves and that was always a misconception.”

The fallout from the Black Lives Matter protests added impetus to the change that was already happening.

A decade ago, a Norwegian organisation Radi-Aid made it its mission to highlight the way that Africa and Africans were presented in fundraising campaigns using humour.

For example, it co-ordinated a mock campaign to get Africans to send radiators to Norwegians who were supposedly suffering in the cold.

In 2017, Sheeran himself won one of their “Rusty Radiator” awards for a film he made for Comic Relief in Liberia in which he offered to pay for some homeless Liberian children to be put up in a hotel room.

The organisers of the awards said “the video should be less about Ed shouldering the burden alone but rather appealing to the wider world to step in”.

University of East Anglia academic David Girling, who once wrote a report for Radi-Aid, argues that its work is one of the reasons that things have shifted.

More and more charities are introducing ethical guidelines for their campaigns, he says.

“People have woken up to the damage that can be caused,” he tells the BBC.

Prof Girling’s own research, carried out in Kibera, a slum area in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, showed that campaigns involving and centred on those who are the targets of the charitable assistance could be more effective than the traditional top down efforts.

Many charities are still under pressure to use celebrities to help raise awareness and money. The professor says that some media outlets will not touch a fundraising story unless a celebrity is involved.

But work by his colleague Martin Scott suggests that big stars can often distract from the central message of a campaign. Whereas the celebrity might benefit, the charity and the understanding of the issue that it is working on lose out.

If a Band Aid-type project were to get off the ground now it would have to be centred on African artists, music journalist Christine Ochefu tells the BBC.

“The landscape for African artists and African music has changed so much that if there was a new release it would need to come from afrobeats artists or amapiano artists or afro-pop artists,” she argues

“I don’t think people could get way without thinking about the sentiment and imagery associated with the project and it couldn’t continue the saviour narrative that Band Aid had.”

As King’s College academic Dr Ademolu argues: “Perhaps it’s time to abandon the broken record and start anew – a fresh tune where Africa isn’t just a subject, but a co-author, harmonising its own story.”

• LISTEN: BBC Witness History – Ethiopia’s famine
• ‘I lost my leg on the way home from school’
• The country where a year lasts 13 months
• A quick guide to Ethiopia

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.

As a guide dog handler of 25 and a half years, I’ve had hundreds of experiences of being refused service – but online threats and increasing hostility towards disabled people mean I’m giving up on asking publicly for equality and respect.

The last straw came about a week ago. I was already reeling from a number of refusals by restaurants and shops when, once again, I was refused entry because I have a guide dog.

I visited the restaurant, which I have chosen not to name, but was told I couldn’t enter as people could have allergies. This, by the way, is unlawful.

They later changed their reason – saying they simply had no space.

It’s difficult to describe how this feels.

I don’t think you can understand it unless you know what it is like to face daily discrimination.

I compare the feeling to December 2022 when I was briefly robbed of my smartphone near the BBC building in central London.

Unlike street robberies, refusals are rarely violent or physical, but the feeling of being slugged in the gut is identical.

I argue refusals feel worse – because at least I can understand the motivation of robbers.

I have never understood why, when everyone on the planet is one accident or medical condition away from disability, many people seem to lack any empathy and do not attempt to understand how it must feel to be refused service because of a disability.

After failing to politely persuade the restauranteurs that my guide dog was well-behaved and then reiterating that it is unlawful to refuse access, one customer who’d overheard me voiced their disgust at the restaurant’s attitude.

I invited people who witnessed the refusal to leave a review. Two voices from another table, however, said that I had “ruined their meal” and “you should leave”.

I felt as small as a gnat.

My guide dog journey began in 1998, when I first applied to train with one. I had poor partial sight up until the year before when, as a 14-year-old, I became completely blind.

I have a number of eye conditions, but the primary diagnosis are glaucoma and hypertension, which have left me totally blind.

Put simply, leaving my house is hard. Very fatiguingly hard.

I’ve been privileged to work with four wonderful guides – Brandy, Chipp, Sammy and now Shawn.

They’ve been my life, my freedom and independence.

That all feels ripped away from me when I’m refused service.

At the restaurant, more customers expressed their shock at the way I was treated. But for me, the customers who seemed annoyed sparked echoes in my mind of every occasion I’ve shared refusals to social media over the past eight years.

There I’ve faced constant demands to justify why I should want equal treatment and, more perturbingly, threats of violence and even death.

Two years ago, I was refused access to different branches of Tesco in London.

Tesco apologised and promised further training for staff.

The encounters were captured on a privately owned body-camera. Many people were supportive but large numbers were highly abusive and aggressive.

I have received abuse on many social media platforms. Recently one user, who identified himself as a retired police officer, posted pictures of “victim cards” which, ironically, I was unable to appreciate until described to me by a sighted colleague.

His account was later suspended – but the post was not removed when I reported it.

Other users have asked why I’m sharing my experience of service rejection. I would reply to as many questions as possible and explain that it was simply to shine a torch into a dark corner.

On other occasions, social media users have threatened to punch me, kill my guide dog and tell me I need to “be careful”. One user said my mother should be raped.

Often the most vile abuse comes in the replies to lengthy threads, where discourse seems to get out of hand.

Why would I continue to put myself through this?

In England, Wales and Scotland, the Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against a disabled person because they have a guide dog with them when accessing businesses or services.

In Northern Ireland, the same is true but the legislation is named the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

There is a large anomaly in the law though. When taxis and cabs fail or refuse to carry an assistance dog, or attempt to charge more, it is a criminal offence.

When businesses and shops do the same, it’s a civil matter and it’s down to the individual disabled person to gather evidence and pursue them. It’s costly, energy-sapping and mostly not worth doing.

Raising the incidents on social media feels torturous when it means being threatened.

So I’ve had to accept there’s very little I can practically do.

Seeing is easy.

What seems harder for some, though, is trying to understand what it feels like to be barred from businesses when you can’t.

In Touch – Guide Dogs Q&A

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 massive Israeli air strike on central Beirut has killed at least 20 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 so-called 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?

The death toll rose from 15 to 20 on Saturday as 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 east, where air strikes in the city of Baalbek killed at least 15 people, including four children, the Lebanese health ministry said.

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, more than 3,670 people have been killed and at least 15,400 injured since October 2023, according to Lebanese authorities, with more than one million forced from their homes.