In the face of political pressure, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared martial law in the democratic country for the first time in more than 50 years – prompting protests near the country’s parliament building.

The late-night pronouncement – made on national TV at 23:00 local time (14:00 GMT) had citizens immediately thinking it was related to North Korea – the South’s nuclear-armed neighbour- or a critical matter of national security like a terrorism event or coup.

However, it became clear fairly quickly that Yoon had made this drastic move in response to a series of political events.

Having lost control of parliament earlier in the year, his government had been battling a series of opposition bills and motions which had sought to undermine his rule.

Political observers say he’s now been driven to the point of invoking martial law – temporary rule by the military – as an undemocratic tactic to fend off the political attacks.

Opposition leaders on Tuesday immediately condemned the move as unconstitutional.

South Korea’s main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung called on his Democratic Party MPs to converge on parliament on Tuesday night to vote down the declaration.

But in Seoul, police buses had already been moved in to block or barricade the entrance to the parliament building, local broadcasts showed.

Still, demonstrators have rushed to the National Assembly building, protesting and chanting “No martial law! No martial law”. They have clashed with lines of police guarding the building.

Martial law is temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, when civil authorities are deemed unable to function.

The last time it was declared in South Korea was in 1979, when a long-term president had been assassinated during a coup.

It has never been invoked since South Korea became a parliamentary democracy in 1987.

But on Tuesday, Yoon pulled that trigger, in a national address saying he was invoking military rule over a threat from “anti-state forces”.

Under martial law, extra powers are given to the military and there may be a suspension of usual rule of law protections and procedures.

Yoon has been a lame duck president since South Korea’s general election in April when the opposition won a landslide.

His government since then has not been able to pass bills they wanted and have been reduced instead to vetoing bills the opposition have been passing.

He has also seen a dive in his popularity with voters; having been mired in several political influence and corruption scandals – including one involving the First Lady accepting a Dior bag, and another around stock manipulation.

Just last month he was forced to issue an apology on national TV, saying he was setting up an office overseeing the First Lady’s duties. But he rejected a wider or independent investigation, which opposition parties had been calling for.

Then this week, the opposition proposed slashing budgets for his government – and a budget bill cannot be vetoed.

At the same time, the opposition also moved to impeach cabinet members, including the head of the government’s audit agency – for failing to investigate the First Lady.

Yoon’s declaration caught many off guard – it’s a fast-moving situation now.

The political opposition has called on the public to gather in protest outside parliament – peaceful mass demonstrations are common in South Korea and they have proven effective in changing governments before.

The main opposition Democratic Party on Tuesday night immediately called for all its lawmakers to assemble at the National Assembly.

Under South Korean law, the government must lift martial law if a majority in parliament – the National Assembly – demands it in a vote. The same law also prohibits martial law command from arresting lawmakers.

But police buses had already been moved into place in front of the building in what is being viewed as a barricade to stop lawmakers from reaching the assembly.

There is also discord within Yoon’s own party, the People’s Power Party leader.

Its leader Han Dong-hoon has called the declaration of martial law a “wrong” move, South Korean outlet Yonhap is reporting. He has vowed to block the law.

Deadly Israeli air strikes and a mortar attack by Hezbollah have raised fears that the ceasefire in Lebanon could collapse.

Ten people were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday night, the health ministry said, after Israel carried out its biggest wave of air strikes since both sides agreed last week to end 14 months of conflict.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah fighters, launchers and infrastructure and urged Lebanese authorities to prevent what it called the group’s “hostile activity”.

Hezbollah had earlier fired two mortars at an Israeli army base in a disputed border area, saying they were a warning over what it saw as “repeated violations” by Israel. No casualties were reported.

The US, which along with France brokered the agreement and is monitoring compliance, said that “largely speaking” the ceasefire was holding despite the violence.

Under the deal, Hezbollah has been given 60 days to end its armed presence between the Blue Line – the unofficial border between Lebanon and Israel – and the Litani river, about 30km (20 miles) to the north.

Israeli forces must withdraw from the area over the same period, and Lebanese army troops and UN peacekeepers are due to deploy there.

The conflict began on 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Israel launched an intense air campaign and ground invasion against the Iran-backed group in late September, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by the rocket attacks.

Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed during the hostilities, many of them civilians, and one million others were displaced from areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Israeli authorities say more than 80 Israeli soldiers and 47 civilians were killed.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that Israeli warplanes carried out strikes in at least 11 areas of southern Lebanon on Monday night.

They included the town of Haris, where the health ministry said six people were killed and two injured.

Another four people were killed and one was injured in the town of Tallousseh, according to the ministry.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it “struck Hezbollah terrorists, dozens of launchers, and terrorist infrastructure throughout Lebanon”.

It also said it hit the Hezbollah launcher in Berghoz that was used to fire two mortars towards the disputed Mount Dov/Shebaa Farms area in the occupied Golan Heights. The projectiles fell in an open area and nobody was hurt.

“Hezbollah’s launches tonight constitute a violation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon,” it warned.

“The State of Israel demands that the relevant parties in Lebanon fulfil their responsibilities and prevent Hezbollah’s hostile activity from within Lebanese territory.”

Israel‘s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it was “determined to continue enforcing the ceasefire and will respond to every Hezbollah violation – minor and major”.

Hezbollah confirmed it carried out the mortar attack, saying it was a “defensive and warning response” to what it described as “repeated violations by the Israeli enemy of the ceasefire agreement”.

It said they included firing on civilians and conducting air strikes, as well breaches of Lebanese airspace by Israeli aircraft.

Earlier on Monday, Lebanese authorities said two people had been killed in Israeli strikes in the south of the country.

The health ministry said one person was killed in Marjaoun, where a motorcycle was reportedly targeted, while Lebanese State Security agency said a drone strike killed one of its personnel who was on duty in Nabatieh.

The Lebanese army also said a soldier was wounded when a drone targeted an army bulldozer near the north-eastern town of Hermel, in the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli military said it had “operated in southern Lebanon in response to several acts by Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed a threat to Israeli civilians, in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.

“We are aware of reports regarding a soldier from the Lebanese military who was injured in one of the strikes and the incident is under investigation,” it added.

Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who helped negotiate the deal, said: “The aggressive actions carried out by Israeli occupation forces… represent a flagrant violation of the terms of the ceasefire.”

He added that Lebanese authorities had asked the committee formed to monitor enforcement of the ceasefire – comprising the US, France, Israel, Lebanon and the UN peacekeeping force (Unifl) – to declare “where it stands on ongoing violations… that have exceeded 54 breaches”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot meanwhile told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, in a call that there was a need “for all sides to respect the ceasefire in Lebanon”, the foreign ministry said.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan also reported that US envoy Amos Hochstein had warned Israel over alleged violations.

In a video posted online, Saar said: “We hear claims that Israel is violating the ceasefire understandings in Lebanon. On the contrary!”

He warned that Israel would take action when armed Hezbollah fighters were identified south of the Litani river or they attempted to move weapons.

“Their presence south of the Litani river is the most basic violation of the understandings,” he said. “They must move north immediately.”

“I want to emphasize – Israel is committed to the successful implementation of the ceasefire, but we will not accept a return to the situation as it stood [before the conflict].”

US officials said the ceasefire had been broadly successful, but there was “a lot more work to do.”

“We’ve gone from dozens of [Israeli] strikes down to one a day maybe two a day,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We’re going to keep trying and see what we can do to get it down to zero.”

Abdulkafi, an English teacher from Aleppo, saw his father for the first time in years on Monday, days after rebels launched a major offensive and took control of the northern Syrian city from government forces.

“He is 85, an old man. He never dreamed he would see me again before he died,” said Abdulkafi, who lives in opposition territory. Until the offensive he had been unable to cross into regime-held Aleppo.

A video of the encounter, seen by the BBC, shows the two men embracing and sobbing with emotion.

Abdulkafi is one of several people inside Aleppo who have spoken to the BBC since the city was captured by the armed rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allies from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

They described being treated with respect by HTS fighters and increased supplies of electricity and water – but also spoke of their fears at war returning to Aleppo and distrust that the former al-Qaeda-linked group’s professed moderation would last.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the recent fighting, according to the UN.

Many interviewees requested anonymity for their own safety. Some details of individual accounts could not be verified due to the difficulty of reporting independently from Syria.

Many people in Aleppo are scared of renewed fighting, the locals the BBC spoke to said. Air strikes by the Syrian government and allied Russian forces have already killed dozens, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.

One man told the BBC his main worry was the bombardment that he feared could hit the city at any point. He said he had stopped his family from even going to the corner shop.

“We’re living in complete apprehension,” he said. He added that the air strikes that have hit the city over the past few days reminded him of earlier periods in the war.

Aleppo, most of which had been captured by rebels in the early years of the Syrian civil war, was retaken by Syrian government forces backed by Russia in 2016 after a gruelling siege.

Since then, the city has mostly avoided direct warfare. The Syrian government claims credit for what it says is the ongoing reconstruction of the city, which until the war was Syria’s commercial hub.

But NGOs and independent journalists accuse the government of widespread human rights abuses there, including torture and killings of civilians and non-existent democratic rights.

Abdulkafi and his father’s reunion was joyful – but Abdulkafi said some of his relatives were afraid to be seen with him for fear of retribution were regime forces to retake the city once again.

“Nineteen Eighty-Four is applied in Aleppo. Assad’s image is on every building, streets, on every corner. He is controlling their minds,” he said, referring to the George Orwell novel about totalitarianism.

HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of al-Qaeda. It has since split from the group and claims to have moderated its ideology. Human rights groups accuse HTS of arbitrarily detaining and mistreating critical journalists and civilians, claims the group denies.

Some in Aleppo remain fearful. One woman said people were “confused and scared” following the rebel takeover. She said she hadn’t left her house at first, but later went for walks and drives with her family after hearing that civilians were not being harassed by the rebels.

“Everywhere was relatively calm. But everyone looked scared and anxious, you could sense it in their faces and their reactions. No-one looked comfortable.

“People are scared, because we don’t trust anyone or what their reaction might be to what’s happening now.

“We feel let down by everyone. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

One man, Mohammad, told the BBC on Sunday that he had seen some armed men on the streets while he had been out buying food. Many other people had been stocking up on supplies, he said.

“When I went out the militiamen asked me if I was going to leave the city, they said to me ‘don’t worry it is safe for you’,” he said.

“One of the men from the militia asked why my sister, who I was with, did not have her head covered. But they didn’t tell her to cover it – they just asked why.

“We are grateful that these armed groups have taken over. They are better than the government.

“There is a lot of fear, fear that the city will run out of food, but our biggest fear is of the Russia and Syrian government bombardment.”

George Meneshian, a Greek-Armenian political analyst who is in contact with Armenians in Aleppo, said Christians in the city had not experienced any problems since the HTS takeover.

“On the first day, an HTS fighter knocked on the door of an Armenian neighbour and assured them that they would definitely not harm them,” he told the BBC, adding that his sources were afraid to directly speak to the media due to fear of retribution.

“They said they would respect them and allow them to do whatever they want, as Christians and as Armenians.”

Mr Meneshian said Christians were suspicious of HTS promises, saying minority groups in Syria had previously been persecuted by jihadist groups which at first said they would not harm non-Muslims. He said many had grown used to Assad’s rule, which was authoritarian but at least did not actively persecute Armenians.

“There are precedents for Islamist militias initially not harming anyone, but afterwards committing crimes against minorities. Hopefully this will not be the case.”

Abdulkafi, who lives in the HTS-controlled city of Al-Dana in Idlib, said that minorities had nothing to fear from the group, which he stressed he disagreed with.

“They are showing much more flexibility, because the highest achievement that HTS can get is acceptance from the world. This doesn’t mean that I like them.”

A man wanted over one of Australia’s most infamous cold cases, dubbed the Easey Street murders, has arrived in Melbourne after being extradited from Italy.

Suzanne Armstrong, 27, and Susan Bartlett, 28, were stabbed to death in their Melbourne house in 1977, in a case which has gripped the nation ever since.

Police said suspect Perry Kouroumblis, 65, only became the focus of their investigation in recent years after DNA testing breakthroughs.

Mr Kouroumblis – who has not been charged and maintains his innocence – was detained in Italy in September. If charged, he is expected to face court later this week, according to local media.

Mr Kouroumblis first came to police attention the week after the murders, when the then 17-year-old said he had found a bloodied knife near the scene in Easey Street, Collingwood, an inner-city suburb.

The bodies of the high school friends were discovered three days after they were last seen alive. Ms Armstrong’s one-year-old son was also found in the home, unharmed in his cot.

Both women had been stabbed more than a dozen times and Ms Armstrong had been sexually assaulted, police say.

The case has long drawn huge interest – becoming the subject of major police appeals, true crime books and a hit podcast. In 2017 Victoria Police offered a A$1m (£511,800, $647,600) reward for information.

Commissioner Shane Patton described the murders as “an absolutely gruesome, horrific, frenzied homicide” when announcing the arrest of Mr Kouroumblis – a dual Greek-Australian citizen – in Rome in September.

“This was a crime that struck at the heart of our community – two women in their own home, where they should have felt their safest,” he said.

Police had issued an Interpol red notice for Mr Kouroumblis on two charges of murder and one of rape, after he left Australia about seven years ago.

But he was not able to be arrested in Greece, where he had been living, as the country’s law requires murder charges to be laid within 20 years of an alleged crime.

At the time of Mr Kouroumblis’s arrest, the women’s families released a statement, saying their lives had been changed “irrevocably” by the murders.

“For two quiet families from country Victoria it has always been impossible to comprehend the needless and violent manner in which Suzanne and Susan died,” the statement read.

Addressing police, they said: “For always giving us hope and never giving up, we simply say, thank you.”

Thirteen women from the Philippines have been convicted of human trafficking in Cambodia for intending to sell babies they carried through surrogacy.

They were sentenced to four years in prison, but with two years suspended, the Kandal Provincial Court said.

The court said it had strong evidence showing that the women intended on having the babies “to sell to a third person in exchange for money, which is an act of human trafficking”.

The women are not expected to serve any jail time until giving birth, and the court did not say what will happen to the babies when they are born.

Surrogacy is illegal in Cambodia, but agencies continue to offer the service.

This case was unusual because surrogates are normally employed in their own countries, not transported elsewhere.

The women were found when police raided a villa near the capital Phnom Penh on 23 September.

After their arrest, Nicholas Felix Ty, undersecretary in the Philippines Department of Justice, said it was the women themselves who were “victims of human trafficking”.

But Cambodian interior minister Chou Bun Eng rejected the idea and said she considered the women to be responsible.

Four Vietnamese women and a further seven Filipino women were also caught, but were not pregnant so have been deported, Bun Eng said.

A Cambodian woman was jailed for two months and one day for acting as an accomplice by cooking meals for the mothers, the court said.

Developing countries are popular for surrogacy because costs are far lower.

The Cambodian commercial surrogacy industry began to boom in 2016 after the practice was made illegal in neighbouring Thailand.

Although banned later that year by the Cambodian government, it continued to thrive.

The AFP news agency reported couples from China will pay agencies anywhere between $40,000 (£31,600) and $100,000 (£79,000) to arrange for a Cambodian woman to carry their child.

In 2017, an Australian nurse who ran a surrogacy clinic was jailed for 18 months in Cambodia.

The following year, 32 surrogate mothers charged with human trafficking in Cambodia were released on the condition they raised the children themselves.

US President-elect Donald Trump has issued an apparent warning to Hamas, threatening “all hell to pay” if hostages held in Gaza are not released by the time he returns to the White House on 20 January.

Dozens of people taken during the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack remain unaccounted for. On Monday, the Israeli military said an Israeli-American soldier who it believed to be a captive had in fact been killed last October.

Without mentioning Hamas by name, Trump posted online the same day: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.”

Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “strong statement”.

Trump has generally spoken of ending foreign conflicts, and of reducing US involvement.

He has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel during its campaign in Gaza, but has urged the American ally to end its military operation.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 44,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Tens of thousands of others have been injured and much of the Palestinian enclave is in ruins.

On Monday, Israel attributed a new death to the 2023 assault by Hamas – saying Israeli-American soldier Omer Neutra was killed that day, and his body taken to Gaza. He was previously believed to have been in captivity but alive.

US President Joe Biden was among those who paid tribute to the 21-year-old, saying he was “devastated and outraged” at Neutra’s death.

In recent days, Hamas also released a video purporting to show another Israeli-American caught up in the attacks, hostage Edan Alexander.

In the clip, in which he appears distressed, the man calls on Trump and Netanyahu to negotiate for his freedom.

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Monday’s Truth Social post by Trump gave few specifics, but appeared to refer to the hostages still held captive in Gaza by Hamas.

“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world, in the Middle East – but it’s all talk, and no action!” he wrote.

He went on to say: “If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity.”

The 20 January date refers to Trump’s inauguration, following his win in last month’s US presidential election.

His post continued: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

In response, senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters that Netanyahu had sabotaged all efforts to secure a deal that involved exchanging the hostages for Palestinians prisoners held by Israel.

“Therefore, we understand [Trump’s] message is directed first at Netanyahu and his government to end this evil game,” he told the news agency.

Netanyahu said Trump’s message was aimed at the “responsibility of Hamas” to release the hostages, and said the president-elect’s comment “adds another force to our continued effort to release all the hostages”.

His words echoed comments made during July’s Republican National Convention, when he threatened a “very big price” if hostages were not returned.

During the recent election campaign, Trump presented himself as the anti-war candidate, suggesting for example that he could end the conflict in Ukraine “in a day”.

A ceasefire in a linked conflict in Lebanon – between Israel and Hezbollah, a group allied to Hamas – came into effect last week, but has been threatened by fire from both sides.

After the Lebanon ceasefire was agreed, the US said it would make another push with regional powers for a ceasefire in Gaza, involving the release of hostages and the removal of Hamas from power.

Updating reporters on Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters: “The main stumbling block continues to be Hamas.”

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Women training as midwives and nurses in Afghanistan have told the BBC they were ordered not to return to classes in the morning – effectively closing off their last route to further education in the country.

Five separate institutions across Afghanistan have also confirmed to the BBC that the Taliban had instructed them to close until further notice, with videos shared online showing students crying at the news.

The BBC has yet to confirm the order officially with the Taliban government’s health ministry.

However, the closure appears to be in line with the group’s wider policy on female education, which has seen teenage girls unable to access secondary and higher education since August 2021.

The Taliban have repeatedly promised they would be readmitted to school once a number of issues were resolved – including ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”.

This has yet to happen.

One of the few avenues still open to women seeking education was through the country’s further education colleges, where they could learn to be nurses or midwives.

Midwifery and nursing are also one of the only careers women can pursue under the Taliban government’s restrictions on women – a vital one, as male medics are not allowed to treat women unless a male guardian is present.

Just three months ago, the BBC was given access to one Taliban-run midwife training centre, where more than a dozen women in their 20s were learning how to deliver babies.

The women were happy to have been given the chance to learn.

“My family feels so proud of me,” a trainee called Safia said. “I have left my children at home to come here, but they know I’m serving the country.”

But even then, some of the women expressed fear about whether even this might be stopped eventually.

What will happen to those women – and another estimated 17,000 women on training courses – is unclear.

No formal announcement has been made, although two sources in the Ministry of Health confirmed the ban to BBC Afghan off the record.

In videos sent to the BBC from other training colleges, trainees can be heard weeping.

“Standing here and crying won’t help,” a student tells a group of women in one video. “The Vice and Virtue officials [who enforce Taliban rules] are nearby, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to any of you.”

Other videos shared with the BBC show women quietly protesting as they leave the colleges – singing as they make their way through the hallways.

One Kabul student said she had been told to “wait until further notice”.

“Even though it is the end of our semester, exams have not yet been conducted, and we have not been given permission to take them,” she told the BBC.

Another student revealed they “were only given time to grab our bags and leave the classrooms”.

“They even told us not to stand in the courtyard because the Taliban could arrive at any moment, and something might happen. Everyone was terrified,” she said. “For many of us, attending classes was a small glimmer of hope after long periods of unemployment, depression, and isolation at home.”

What this means for women’s healthcare also now remains to be seen: last year, the United Nations said Afghanistan needed an additional 18,000 midwives to meet the country’s needs.

Afghanistan already has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with a report released last year noting 620 women were dying per 100,000 live births.

A US woman has pleaded guilty to drink-driving charges over an incident in which she killed a newlywed bride who was travelling in a golf cart on her wedding night.

Jamie Lee Komoroski was sentenced to 25 years in prison over the crash in South Carolina last year that killed Samantha Miller while she was still wearing her wedding dress.

The victim’s husband, Aric Hutchinson, was among three others who were hurt, along with two of his family members who were also in the vehicle.

He wept as he told the court his new wife had “wanted the night to never end”, Associated Press reported.

The collision occurred in the city of Folly Beach in April 2023 as the newlyweds were being taken back to their accommodation just hours after their ceremony.

Komoroski was accused by prosecutors of drinking at several bars and then driving at 65mph (104km/h) in a 25 mph zone. Her car hit the golf cart carrying the couple, driven by Mr Hutchinson’s brother-in-law.

A blood test showed that she was three times over the drinking limit, according to a report released by state officials after the crash. She had earlier refused to provide officers with breath samples, a police incident report said.

At Charleston County Courthouse on Monday, Komoroski admitted charges including felony DUI resulting in death. She received multiple sentences that will run at the same time.

Addressing the court before being sentenced, she spoke of her regret and said she took full responsibility.

Mr Hutchinson, who sustained a brain injury and broken bones in the crash, also spoke. Although he has said he has no memory of the incident itself, he was able to recount his final conversation with his wife.

“On the golf cart, she told me she didn’t want the night to end and I kissed her on the forehead and then the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital,” he said.

After the sentencing, he said he felt “the punishment fit the crime”, according to CBS News affiliate WCSC.

“I do think she’s sorry,” Mr Hutchinson said. “However, that doesn’t change the fact that Sam’s not here, my wife’s not here, the family we planned, all of our injuries. So that’ll take some time for sure.”

The diplomatic red carpet is being rolled out for a state visit from the Emir of Qatar, with the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales leading a royal welcome.

The visiting Qatari royals were given a parade along the Mall, but Queen Camilla stayed away from the outdoor parts of the official welcome – as she revealed she had been suffering the side-effects of a form of pneumonia.

Catherine took part in the carriage procession, marking another stage in her return to official duties.

The Qatari visitors were given a private lunch at Buckingham Palace, to be followed by a visit to the Houses of Parliament and a state banquet on Tuesday evening.

There have been criticisms over Qatar’s record on LGBT rights – and a small group of protesters shouted “Qatar’s anti-gay shame” as the royal carriages went past.

Queen Camilla had to pull out of the ceremonial welcome on a chilly Horse Guards Parade, as it emerged that she’s still suffering from the side effects of a chest infection, but she is taking part in events in Buckingham Palace, including the state banquet.

She told guests at the state visit that her chest infection had been a form of pneumonia, which has now cleared, but she still sometimes suffers from post-viral fatigue and bouts of extreme tiredness.

Palace sources say she has recovered well, but the “episodic” fatigue has meant the Queen has had to miss a number of engagements over recent weeks.

But the Princess of Wales was involved in a state visit for the first time since ending the chemotherapy treatment that followed her cancer diagnosis.

After taking part in the carriage procession, she joined a private lunch at the Palace, along with the King, Queen and other senior royals.

In the winter sunshine, tourists held up their phones to take photos as the UK and Qatari royals went along the Mall to Buckingham Palace, with flags of both countries hung along the route.

State visits are a mix of elaborate ceremony and practical politics, offering hospitality on a grand scale to an important international partner.

This is a carefully choreographed effort by the UK government to build warm relations with Qatar, from the pageantry of marching bands to a Downing Street meeting with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

The Qatari visitors are from a Muslim country but it won’t be an alcohol-free banquet at the palace, with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks being served.

Among the symbolic gifts exchanged, King Charles gave the Emir a hand-knotted prayer mat and a handmade wooden stand for a Quran. In return, the Emir gave an inlaid side table, made using limestone and sodalite, a blue-coloured mineral.

The King also gave an important honour to Qatar’s Emir, appointing him Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

The UK Foreign Office, which advises on which countries are invited for a state visit, says Qatar is a key defence partner and that trade between the UK and the gas-rich Gulf state is worth £6.6bn per year, with £40bn of Qatari investment in the UK economy.

Qatar has been a mediator in talks over the conflict in Gaza, though the role was suspended last month.

And the country’s Emir has been a regular visitor to the UK, coming here at least eight times in the past decade.

He studied at school in the UK and attended Sandhurst military academy.

Qatar has been seen as an important bridge between the West and the Middle East, hosting events such as the 2022 World Cup.

There are close military ties. The UK and Qatar have a joint RAF Typhoon squadron based at RAF Coningsby – the first joint RAF squadron since World War II, says the Foreign Office.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Caroline Hawley describes Qatar as a small country which plays an outsized role in global affairs.

Thanks to its reserve of natural gas, the Gulf state is also one of the richest countries in the Middle East, with high-profile investments in the UK.

Qatar owns Harrods, the Shard, and the luxury London hotel Claridge’s. And it has significant shares in Sainsbury’s and Heathrow Airport.

There have been protests against this week’s visit, including by the Peter Tatchell Foundation, which has criticised Qatar’s record on LGBT rights, women’s rights and the treatment of migrant workers.

Human Rights Watch has said the visit should not ignore Qatar’s “troubling rights record”.

In response, the UK government says it regularly discusses human rights with its Qatari counterparts and is opposed to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender.

The centrepiece of such state visits is the state banquet, where the King and Emir will give speeches in front of dignitaries from both countries, in the grand setting of the Buckingham Palace ballroom.

The Princess of Wales won’t be at the banquet but it will be the first time Starmer will have been at this diplomatic showcase as prime minister.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Our strong, historic ties with Qatar are vital to UK prosperity, growth and security.

“The UK government is committed to continued strong relations with Qatar to deliver partnerships of mutual value.”

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More than two years after the Supreme Court granted bail and ordered “immediate release” of Mohammed Zubair from prison, the leading Indian fact-checker and journalist is once again back in court.

On Tuesday, the Allahabad high court briefly heard his petition in a fresh case as police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh seek his arrest, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

The charge is non-bailable and a conviction could mean a minimum of seven years in jail and fine or even life imprisonment.

Zubair, who’s a co-founder of the fact-checking website called AltNews, denies all the accusations against him. “I feel I’m being targeted because of the work I do,” he told the BBC.

Just 20 minutes into Tuesday’s hearing, the judges recused themselves from hearing the case – now the case will have to be taken up by another court in the coming days.

Described by some as “a thorn in the side for the government because he’s single-handedly taking on hate crimes”, Zubair is wanted in connection with a post he put out on X spotlighting hate speech by a controversial Hindu priest.

Shared on 3 October, the post included a video that showed Yati Narsinghanand delivering comments against Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims found hurtful.

The 60-year-old priest is the head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad town and has been repeatedly in the news for openly calling for violence against Muslims. In 2022, he was arrested for making Islamophobic and misogynistic comments and spent a month in jail.

A day after Zubair’s post pointed out his latest offensive comments, Muslims protested outside the temple. Police said 10 people were arrested for allegedly pelting stones during the protest, PTI reported.

Several Muslim groups lodged police complaints against Narsinghanand and the priest disappeared from public view amid reports that he had been arrested. Police, however, denied that.

A few days later, hundreds of Narsinghanand’s supporters surrounded the local police station, demanding action against Zubair. Police opened a case against the fact-checker after Uditya Tyagi – a politician from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a close aide of the priest – lodged a complaint.

In the initial complaint, Zubair faced somewhat milder charges – including promoting enmity between different religious groups, defamation and giving false evidence. But last week, police added Section 152 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita – as India’s new legal code is called – to the list of charges, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

This, legal experts say, allows police to arrest Zubair. His lawyer has sought interim bail and also asked the court to throw out the case.

In his defence, Zubair says he was not the only one who had posted Narsinghanand’s remarks and that a number of journalists, politicians and media channels had tweeted the video even before him.

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“Police have registered a case against me based on complaints from the followers of a man who routinely gives hate speeches. And they are going after someone who’s reporting hate speeches, while people giving hate speeches are going free,” he says.

“This is an attempt to gag people trying to hold the government to account,” he adds.

Pratik Sinha, Zubair’s colleague and the other co-founder of AltNews, says the authorities go after Zubair because of the work he does and because it makes an impact.

“It’s a classic case of shooting the messenger. It’s a witch-hunt,” he told the BBC.

“Why are the police invoking more stringent charges against him nearly two months later? It’s not just Narsinghanand and his supporters going after him – this is actually the government going after him.”

The addition of the draconian charge against Zubair has also been criticised by rights organisations and groups representing journalists and media in India who say that Section 152 is a “new version” of the colonial-era sedition law.

Amnesty International India said it was an example of how the law was being used “to harass, intimidate, and persecute human rights defenders, activists, journalists, students, filmmakers, singers, actors and writers for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression”.

The Press Club of India condemned the move and demanded withdrawal of the police case against Zubair.

“All sane minds have been opposing this section as it has potential to silence the free thinkers and media. It can also be imposed against those who are critical of dispensation,” it said in a statement.

Digipub, an association of digital media organisations, condemned the “escalating harassment” of Zubair and described the allegations against him as “unfounded”.

“This is a vindictive and unreasonable over-reach by agencies of the state,” it said.

The government had faced similar criticism in 2022 when Zubair was arrested and spent more than three weeks in jail before the Supreme Court freed him on bail.

Delhi police had arrested him over a 2018 tweet which was a screengrab from a popular 1980s Bollywood film, but they accused him of “insulting Hindu religious beliefs”. Later, police in Uttar Pradesh also registered cases against him, accusing him of other misdemeanours including criminal conspiracy and receiving foreign funds.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia had accused him of being “selective and politically biased” in his fact-checking and said his tweets “hurt the religious sentiments of a large number of Hindus”.

But many at the time linked his arrest to the controversial Islamophobic comments made by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. The Hindu newspaper said Zubair was “being made to pay for a tweet that had drawn wide attention to Sharma’s vile remarks” against Prophet Mohammad and described it as an instance of the government’s “intolerance towards fact-checkers who frequently expose its claims”.

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International rights groups and the United Nations had also expressed concern, with a spokesperson for the UN chief Antonio Guterres saying that “journalists should not be jailed for what they write, tweet, and say”.

But critics say that’s exactly what the authorities are using to pick on Zubair and other journalists.

India has been consistently sliding on the Global Press Freedom rankings – it is now placed at 159 out of 180 countries – according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“Journalists critical of the government are routinely subjected to online harassment, intimidation, threats and physical attacks, as well as criminal prosecutions and arbitrary arrests,” the annual RSF report said.

In the past, the Indian government has rejected the report, saying its methodology was “questionable and non-transparent”.

Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan has lost her appeal against her death sentence for masterminding the world’s biggest bank fraud.

The 68-year-old is now in a race for her life because the law in Vietnam states that if she can pay back 75% of what she took, her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

In April the trial court found that Truong My Lan had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44bn (£34.5bn).

Of that prosecutors say $27bn was misappropriated, and $12bn was judged to have been embezzled, the most serious financial crime for which she was sentenced to death.

It was a rare and shocking verdict – she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

On Tuesday, the court said there was no basis to reduce Truong My Lan’s death sentence. However, she could still avoid execution if she returns $9bn, three-quarters of the $12bn she embezzled. It’s not her final appeal and she can still petition the president for amnesty.

During her trial Truong My Lan was sometimes defiant, but in the recent hearings for her appeal against the sentence she was more contrite.

She said she was embarrassed to have been such a drain on the state, and that her only thought was to pay back what she had taken.

Born into a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother. She began buying land and property after the Communist Party introduced economic reform in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

When she was convicted and sentenced in April, she was the chairwoman of a prominent real estate firm, Van Thinh Phat Group. It was a dramatic moment in the “Blazing Furnaces” anti-corruption campaign led by then-Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

All of the remaining 85 defendants were convicted. Four were sentenced to life in jail, while the rest -including Truong My Lan’s husband and niece – were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended.

The State Bank of Vietnam is believed to have spent many billions of dollars recapitalising Saigon Commercial Bank to prevent a wider banking panic. The prosecutors argued that her crimes were “huge and without precedent” and did not justify leniency.

Truong My Lan’s lawyers said she was working as fast as she could to find the $9bn needed. But cashing in her assets has proven difficult.

Some are luxury properties in Ho Chi Minh City which could, in theory, be sold quite quickly. Others are in the form of shares or stakes in other businesses or property projects.

In all the state has identified more than a thousand different assets linked to the fraud. These have been frozen by the authorities for now. The BBC understands the tycoon has also reached out to friends to raise loans for her to help reach the target.

Her lawyers have argued for leniency from the judges on financial grounds. They said that while she is under sentence of death it would be hard for her to negotiate the best price for selling her assets and investments, and so harder for her to raise $9bn.

She could do much better if under a life sentence instead, they say.

“The total value of her holdings actually exceeds the required compensation amount,” lawyer Nguyen Huy Thiep told the BBC before her appeal was rejected.

“However, these require time and effort to sell, as many of the assets are real estate and take time to liquidate. Truong My Lan hopes the court can create the most favourable conditions for her to continue making compensation.”

Few had expected the judges to be moved by these arguments. She is now, in effect, in a race with the executioner to raise the funds she needs.

Vietnam treats the death penalty as a state secret. The government does not publish how many people are on death row, though human rights groups say there are more than 1,000 and that Vietnam is one of the world’s biggest executioners.

Typically there are long delays, often many years before sentences are carried out, although prisoners are given very little notice.

If Truong My Lan can recover the $9bn before that happens, her life will most likely be spared.

US President Joe Biden has said he is “very proud to be the first American president visiting Angola” at the start of talks with his counterpart João Lourenço.

Discussions at the presidential palace in the capital, Luanda, were on security and trade.

The US government is backing a new 1,300km (810-mile) railway project linking an Angolan port with mining areas in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.

The visit to oil-rich Angola is part of a US effort to focus more on trade and investment in Africa, in what some analysts see as a counter to China’s influence on the continent.

In his first and only trip to Africa during his presidency, Biden’s choice of Angola is significant and it signals a dramatic improvement in relations between the two nations.

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Welcoming the US president to the country, Lourenço said the visit “marks an important turning point in our relationship, which will undoubtedly gain a new dynamic from today onward”.

“I’m deeply proud of everything we have done together to transform our partnership thus far,” Biden said in response.

“You’ve heard me say it before… the United States is all in on Africa… The future of the world is here, in Africa, and Angola,” the president said recalling remarks he made at the US-Africa summit in Washington in 2022.

Angola was firmly in the political orbit of China and Russia after independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, but since taking power in 2017, Lourenço has steered it towards closer relations with the US.

Later on Tuesday Biden is due to visit a slavery museum. More than four million slaves were forcibly sent from this region of Africa to the Americas.

“Together, the United States and Angola acknowledge the past horrors of slavery and its legacy, while looking forward to a bright future of continually deepening collaboration between our nations,” the White House said in a statement on Monday.

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A deal that could see the Parthenon Sculptures returned to Greece is “close”, a former adviser to the country’s government has told the BBC.

Prof Irene Stamatoudi said it “seems negotiations have gone forward” over relocating the antiquities – also known as the Elgin Marbles – which were taken from Athens more than 200 years ago and are displayed in the British Museum.

It came as Sir Keir Starmer and his Greek counterpart met for talks in Downing Street on Tuesday, though No 10 has said the issue is not on the agenda.

An official account of the meeting released by Downing Street made no mention of the issue being discussed, though Greek’s public broadcaster ERT claimed it had been.

The meeting comes amid reports that talks over a deal which would see the statues moved to Athens have recently progressed.

The status of the sculptures has been a source of diplomatic tension between the UK and Greece for decades.

Greece says they were stolen, but the British Museum rejects that and says they were legally obtained. Talks between Greece and the museum have been going on since 2021.

Prof Stamatoudi, who advised the Greek culture minister during previous Elgin Marbles negotiations, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she believes “a deal is close” but was unsure if it was “close enough”.

She said the Greek government has proposed a “cultural, strategic partnership” which would involve other antiquities being sent to the British Museum to fill the gallery which would be left vacant by any return.

Negotiations over what could be sent to the British Museum are “secret”, Prof Stamatoudi said, adding that while she is not personally involved in this round of talks, she believes it would involve “antiquities that attract public attention”.

Prof Statamoudi said securing the return is something “all Greeks are passionate about” as the antiquities are widely considered to be part of the country’s “cultural heritage”.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has made securing the return of the Elgin Marbles a political priority.

The issue caused a diplomatic spat last year when then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a planned meeting with Mitsotakis after he indicated he would use it to raise the issue.

The previous government said the sculptures should remain in the museum. In opposition, Labour’s view was they wouldn’t stand in the way of a loan arrangement between the British Museum and Athens if one was arranged.

Government sources in Athens have told Greek media Mitsotakis wants to “pick up the thread” with Starmer following a meeting between the pair in November 2023.

Earlier this week, Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said Mitsotakis would raise the issue again with Starmer but that it was more of a matter for the British Museum than the government.

He also denied a Sky News report that three private meetings had taken place between senior Greek officials and members of the British Museum board of directors.

Asked if they discussed the potential return of the marbles, Starmer’s official spokesman said: “The government’s position is that we have no plans to change the law that would permit a permanent move, and that the case of decisions relating to the care and management and sculptures are a matter for the trustees for the British Museum, which is operationally independent of the government.”

Starmer is thought to be more open to the statues being relocated than his predecessor, providing a deal can be struck between the Greek government and the British Museum.

The Elgin Marbles were crafted in the 5th century BC and were originally displayed in the Parthenon in Athens. They are considered among the most prized antiquities from the Ancient Greek period.

They were removed by British aristocrat Lord Elgin while Athens was part of the Ottoman Empire and were badly damaged en route to London, where they have been displayed since.

A law called the 1963 British Museum Act prevents the removal of objects from the British Museum’s collection.

The trustees of the British Museum are exploring the possibility of a special loan arrangement with Greece.

But the Greek government has previously said it will not agree to a loan as this would acknowledge the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures.

The BBC is pulling its MasterChef Christmas after presenter Greg Wallace was accused of inappropriate sexual comments.

The corporation had said on Monday that all MasterChef episodes that had already been filmed would be aired as planned, including the festive editions.

Wallace stepped aside from presenting the show last week after a BBC News investigation revealed allegations of inappropriate sexual comments and inappropriate behaviour against him.

His lawyers have denied he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.

Two Christmas specials were planned, both of which were set to air on BBC One later this month.

It is understood the celebrity contestants involved in the Christmas special are being spoken to about the reasons behind the decision to pull the show.

A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have said, MasterChef is an amazing competition which is life-changing for the chefs taking part and the current series of MasterChef: The Professionals is continuing as planned.

“The celebrity Christmas specials are obviously a different type of show and in the current circumstances we have decided not to broadcast them.”

In a press release issued on Friday, the BBC said viewers could “expect fireworks, great Christmas banter and good food”.

The first, a Celebrity MasterChef Christmas Cook Off, featured The Wanted singer Max George, Emmerdale actor Amy Walsh, reality star Luca Bish and comedian Shazia Mirza.

The second, called MasterChef Meets Strictly Festive Extravaganza, was due to feature Strictly Come Dancing’s Amy Dowden, Gorka Marquez, Kai Widdrington and Nancy Xu, with Motsi Mabuse setting a challenge.

Three repeats of an old series of Inside the Factory – which Wallace had also presented on – will no longer be shown on BBC Two in the lead up to Christmas, the BBC spokesperson said.

There will be no changes to iPlayer content.

On Monday, the BBC came under mounting pressure to consider pausing MasterChef while Wallace is investigated.

Rupa Huq MP, who is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said the continued broadcast of MasterChef could be “triggering” for the women involved.

But the BBC confirmed later in the day that all MasterChef episodes filmed would be aired as planned, including the Christmas specials.

“MasterChef is life-changing for the chefs that take part and the show is about more than one individual,” a BBC source said on Monday afternoon.

On Monday night, the latest episode of MasterChef: The Professionals was broadcast on BBC One.

But on Tuesday, in a change of position, it was revealed that the festive specials will now no longer be aired.

It comes after Wallace apologised for suggesting allegations against him came from “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.

The TV host had said on Sunday there had been “13 complaints” from “over 4,000 contestants” he had worked with in 20 years on the BBC cookery show.

His comments caused a backlash, with a Downing Street spokesperson describing them as “inappropriate and misogynistic”.

In a new video posted on his Instagram story on Monday, he said: “I want to apologise for any offence that I caused with my post yesterday, and any upset I may have caused to a lot of people.

“I wasn’t in a good head space when I posted it. I’ve been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion, I felt very alone, under siege, yesterday, when I posted it.”

He concluded: “It’s obvious to me I need to take some time out while this investigation is under way. I hope you understand and I do hope that you will accept this apology.”

A BBC News investigation heard from 13 people spanning a range of ages, who worked across five different programmes.

Production company Banijay UK said it has launched an investigation, with which Wallace was co-operating, while the BBC has said it will “always listen if people want to make us aware of something directly”.

People who have come forward with allegations against Wallace include former BBC Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, who said he told stories and jokes of a “sexualised nature” in front of contestants and crew when she was on Celebrity MasterChef.

Other allegations we have heard include Wallace talking openly about his sex life, taking his top off in front of a female worker saying he wanted to “give her a fashion show”, and telling a junior female colleague he wasn’t wearing any boxer shorts under his jeans.

BBC News has also spoken to a former MasterChef worker who says he showed her topless pictures of himself and asked for massages, and a former worker on Channel 5’s Gregg Wallace’s Big Weekends, who says he was fascinated by the fact she dated women and asked for the logistics of how it worked.

Another female worker on MasterChef in 2019 says Wallace talked about his sex life; a female worker on the BBC Good Food Show in 2010 says Wallace stared at her chest; and a male worker on MasterChef in 2005-06 says Wallace regularly said sexually explicit things on set.

But some workers have spoken of more positive experiences with Wallace.

One former worker on Inside the Factory told the BBC he made a lot of “dad jokes” but it never went beyond that.

A former MasterChef worker said nothing during her time there was concerning. Another said she didn’t feel there was any malice to his comments, although she understood why some people may have felt uncomfortable.

Wallace has also re-posted comments on social media from former contestants who said they had positive memories of working with him.

He has not responded to requests for an interview from BBC News.

Forty years ago, an Indian city became the site of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

On the night of 2 December, 1984, a poisonous gas leaked from Union Carbide India’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, enveloping the central Indian city in a deadly fog which killed thousands and poisoned about half-a-million people.

According to government estimates, around 3,500 people died within days of the gas leak and more than 15,000 in the years since. But activists say that the death toll is much higher, and that victims continue to suffer from the side-effects of being poisoned.

In 2010, an Indian court convicted seven former managers at the plant, handing down minor fines and brief prison sentences. But many victims and campaigners say that justice has still not been served, given the magnitude of the tragedy.

Union Carbide was a US company which Dow Chemicals bought in 1999.

Migrants stranded for more than three years on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia have been brought to the UK.

The Sri Lankan Tamils are permitted to remain in the country for six months, with financial support from the Foreign Office, according to documents seen by the BBC.

Their journey to the UK marks the end of years of complex legal battles waged over thousands of miles over their fate, but their long-term future remains uncertain.

Most of the group of around 60 migrants have been living in a makeshift camp on Diego Garcia – the site of a strategic UK-US military base – since October 2021, when they became the first people ever to file asylum claims there.

On Monday, a government spokesperson described the move as a “one-off, due to the exceptional nature of these cases and in the interests of their welfare”.

“This government inherited a deeply troubling situation that remained unresolved under the last administration for years,” the spokesperson said.

Tessa Gregory of UK law firm Leigh Day, which represents some of the migrants, said it was the “only sensible solution to end the humanitarian crisis” on the island.

“This vulnerable group which includes 16 children have spent 38 months detained in the most squalid of conditions on Crown land… we hope our clients will now be able to seek safe haven and begin to rebuild their lives,” she said.

The BBC gained unprecedented access earlier this year to Diego Garcia and the migrant camp there, where the Tamils were housed in groups in military tents, some of which had leaks and rats nesting inside.

During their time on the island, there were multiple hunger strikes and numerous incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts in response to the conditions, after which some people were transferred to Rwanda for medical treatment.

There were also allegations of sexual assaults and harassment within the camp.

Migrants have told the BBC it was like living in “hell”.

Those in Rwanda have also been brought to the UK, arriving on a flight on Tuesday morning.

One told the BBC: “I hope to turn a new page. I hope my health will improve and I will transform into a new person.”

Two men with criminal convictions and another under investigation remain on the island, the BBC understands.

The Tamils’ arrival in the UK comes amid uncertainty over the future of the territory.

The UK announced in October that it was ceding control of the Chagos Islands, of which Diego Garcia is part, to Mauritius. But the new Mauritian prime minister has said he has reservations over the deal, which was struck by his predecessor and has still to be signed, and has asked for an independent review.

The deal is facing opposition from some politicians in the UK and allies of US President-elect Donald Trump.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has played down the criticism, describing it as a “good deal” for both Mauritius and the UK, and saying it addresses US concerns about the future of the Diego Garcia base.

In recent years, the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds, with the bulk of this categorised under “migrant costs”.

Communications obtained by the BBC between Foreign Office officials in July warned that “the costs are increasing and the latest forecast is that these will be £50m per annum” if they were to remain there.

In letters sent to the Tamils on Friday from the Home Office, they were told they were being granted temporary entry clearance to the UK “outside of the Immigration Rules” to allow them to consider their “long-term options”.

It stressed that the offer did not “constitute permanent settlement in the UK or recognition of refugee status by the UK government”, and said the group would not be permitted to work.

The government says the Chagos Islands, known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot), are “constitutionally distinct” from the UK, with the unusual status leading to the long legal dispute.

Most of the Tamils have been awaiting final decisions on claims for international protection – which the United Nations says is akin to refugee status – or appealing against rejections.

In total, eight have been granted international protection, meaning they cannot be returned to Sri Lanka, the BBC understands.

Successive governments have previously said that bringing the Tamils to the UK would risk creating a “backdoor migration route”.

But the government said on Monday that arrangements had been made to ensure this did not happen, citing a deal to send future arrivals to St Helena – another UK territory some 5,000 miles away.

“Once a sovereignty agreement with Mauritius is fully in place they would then take responsibility for any future migrants,” the spokesperson said.

Night after night, Georgians have filled the broad central avenue that runs past parliament, in such great numbers there is barely space to move, on the road or the pavement either side.

They come to Rustaveli Avenue draped in flags, the blue and gold of the EU and the red and white of the George Cross, and accuse their increasingly authoritarian government of ditching their European future for a return to the sphere of their Russian neighbour.

The ruling party, Georgian Dream, fervently denies any link to the Kremlin, but its actions in recent days have raised big questions about this country’s future with the West.

Not only has the party presided over a bitter fallout with the EU, it has just seen the US suspend Georgia’s hard-won strategic partnership too.

In a country of only 3.7 million people, these are dangerous as well as momentous times. One Georgian Dream supporter spoke of his country sitting at the edge of an abyss.

Through the night, whistles and the honk of vuvuzelas are occasionally punctuated by the crackle of protesters’ fireworks aimed at the imposing parliament building and the riot police standing guard with water cannon and tear gas.

For the first four nights, police waited until towards dawn before moving in to reclaim the street by force. But on Monday night they advanced far earlier, pushing protesters elsewhere.

Police have counted more than 100 injuries among their own force, while protesters in detention have endured beatings and serious facial and head injuries, according to lawyers, and dozens of TV reporters have come under attack.

“The scale of people being hunted down and beaten individually, so they have to be treated in clinics, has never been seen before here,” says Lasha Dzebisashvili, professor of politics at the University of Georgia.

Georgia’s public rights defender, Levan Ioseliani, says police have engaged in “brutality” and abused their authority with impunity. Government supporters argue police have come under intolerable attack from stones and fireworks.

It is a constitutional crisis with no obvious way out, unless one side blinks first. Will the government back down, or the protests fizzle out under pressure from police?

“No negotiations,” says Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, claiming without foundation that the protests are funded from abroad.

One couple say they will turn out every night in December until Georgian Dream changes tack and calls fresh elections, to erase a vote just over a month ago marred by a string of violations ranging from bribery to multiple voting.

Both sides accuse the other of lacking legitimacy.

The protesters, spurred on by a figurehead pro-Western president and four opposition groups, say the government is illegitimate; the opposition won’t enter parliament because of the “falsified elections”.

The ruling party, Georgian Dream, says it won the vote fair and square and insists it’s the largely ceremonial president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has no legitimacy. Her time in office is almost up, so why is it she is the one who plans to stay on to maintain stability, it asks.

All the while neighbouring Russia trains a close eye, comparing events to Ukraine’s “Maidan”, when its unpopular president was ousted by pro-EU protesters in February 2014 and Russian troops and their proxies moved in to seize parts of the country.

“We’re losing our country,” says Nika Gvaramia, an opposition leader from the alliance Coalition for Change, and Georgians are facing a stark choice between either a European Georgia or Russia.

As he speaks, the protests are in full swing around the corner from his party HQ, and colleagues point to a CCTV video from inside their lobby a few days ago, showing a protester being beaten by police.

“We’re shaking this government. The rallies will go on for as long as needed. We have no other option. It’s a liberation fight. We know who we’re fighting with, and that’s Russia.”

The words “No to Russia” were daubed in big black graffiti on the front of the parliament building over the weekend and you can find the same kind of message on walls all over Tbilisi in varying degrees of bluntness.

It is also a message that carries different meanings here.

Georgian Dream’s highly controversial laws targeting civil society and LGBT groups this year have been branded Russian-style as well as anti-democratic.

The president has spoken of Georgian Dream’s election win as a Russian special operation, and there was an outcry afterwards when it emerged that a Russian called Alexander Malkevich who had set up a propaganda network in occupied eastern Ukraine had been given accreditation to cover the vote.

But none of that proves Russian interference, even if the billionaire driving force behind the party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, made his money in banking and steel in Russia, and critics believe he must still have contacts there.

A high-ranking Georgian Dream figure told the BBC back in October that Georgia had said no to Moscow a long time ago and that the “Russia card” was being used by the opposition to attack her party.

“Knowing a little bit of Georgian history… no government would be that stupid to start thinking about that,” said Maka Bochorishvili. Russia did fight a war with Georgia only 16 years ago.

She has since become Georgia’s foreign minister, the new face of this country’s diplomacy.

The crunch moment for Georgia and its relationship with the West came last Thursday, when the prime minister declared that the government had “decided not to put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union” on the agenda for the next four years.

Within hours, Russia’s Vladimir Putin had seized on his comments.

“I admired their courage and character, which they showed when defending their point of view,” he said, stressing that Russia had no direct relationship with Tbilisi.

Kobakhidze has even used the same kind of language as the Kremlin, accusing the opposition of planning a Ukraine-style “Maidan” revolution.

However, his point was that Georgian police would ensure it did not happen.

Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus specialist at Carnegie Europe, believes it’s a mistake to see any kind of close friendship with Russia.

“It’s a business relationship – there’s no diplomatic relationship. Things are going on behind the scenes but they’re more afraid of Russia than wanting to join Russia.”

Whatever the extent of contacts, Moscow is bound to prefer Georgian Dream, who have within a short period trashed Georgia’s links with the EU and US, to a passionately pro-Western opposition.

The nightly protests show no sign yet of abating, despite temperatures falling close to freezing, and there is no indication yet of a resolution.

Georgia has seen protests before, but not like this, says Lasha Dzebisashvili. Public servants from all walks of life have signed letters and petitions, and several ambassadors have resigned, including Georgia’s ambassador to the US, a clear blow for the ruling party.

The long stretch of Rustaveli Avenue is where this story will play out in front of parliament in Tbilisi, but the protests are being felt in other towns and cities too, including Batumi and Poti on the Black Sea, Zugdidi in the north-west and Kutaisi.

On Sunday night, a large crowd of protesters formed outside the public broadcaster, demanding that the president be given airtime rather than the usual pro-government fare.

It didn’t happen and gradually the protesters marched towards the centre of the capital, halting the traffic and chanting “Georgia, Georgia”.

Nika Gvaramia and his fellow opposition leaders believe the clear way out is for free and fair elections, not under the existing election commission but under the auspices of the EU and US: “If Georgian Dream is sure they won the elections, let’s go with new ones.”

That seems highly unlikely as it would require an implicit admission that the original vote was unfair.

GD supporter and university lecturer Levan Gigineishvili believes they just need to hold out for a new president in the US: “I think a great way out of this will be [Donald] Trump coming to power and then everything will change.”

But 20 January is a long way ahead and this small state in the Caucasus will not be top of his agenda. And Georgia’s business sector for one will not be happy with a continuing stalemate or with the government doing lasting damage to ties with the West.

Short of another surprise, France will once more be without a government on Wednesday.

That is when Michel Barnier, appointed by President Macron after July’s inconclusive parliamentary election, faces a no-confidence motion over the budget – a vote he will almost certainly lose.

As the left-wing MP Alexis Corbière put it in the National Assembly this afternoon: “That’s it for Barnier. He’s out of here.”

The arithmetic is merciless for the former Brexit negotiator, who now stands to end his career as the shortest-lived prime minister in France’s Fifth Republic.

From the start he has been leading an anomaly: a minority government whose very survival depended on the indulgence of its enemies.

In the National Assembly, Barnier could count on his own conservative group and the Macronites. But this centrist bloc has been easily outnumbered by a left-wing coalition on one side, and on the other the populist right of Marine Le Pen.

And when those two forces combine – as they will in Wednesday’s censure motion – then the numbers are too much, and Barnier must fall.

It is a crisis that has been waiting to happen, but was deferred till now by long procedural haggling over the 2025 budget.

Shortly after taking office in September, he proposed a budget that promised €60bn (£49bn) in deficit reduction – necessary, he said, to satisfy Brussels and get the country’s finances back in shape.

But because he lacked a majority, his budget was then disfigured by opposition amendments – from both left and populist right – which removed taxes and introduced more spending, thus changing its essential nature.

After much parliamentary to-ing and fro-ing with the conservative dominated Senate, Barnier came back with a new text, or technically texts, because there is a social security budget as well as the overall budget.

But that version remains unacceptable to the opposition.

Marine Le Pen, who could save Barnier if she chose to, made a series of new demands, including removing a new tax on electricity, and restoring fully index-linked pensions).

Barnier gave ground – quite a lot in fact. But it wasn’t enough. And now Le Pen plans to pull the plug.

Barnier and his supporters have made much of their one good argument – the chaos scenario.

What responsible party leader, they said, could want to tip France into the uncertainty and instability of yet another government crisis?

Would Marine Le Pen really want to take the blame for the inevitable turbulence on the financial markets, the hike in borrowing costs, the spending cuts that would follow?

Her response has been to say that warnings of doom are exaggerated: there will be no catastrophe. Technically France might not have a budget (which it won’t if Barnier is ousted on Wednesday) but systems will kick in. The constitution allows for matters to be administered for a time by decree.

Up to a point she is right.

If Barnier falls, he will probably stay in power in a caretaker capacity while Macron (who is inconveniently in Saudi Arabia this week) seeks a replacement.

That could take weeks, as it did in the summer after Macron lost his disastrously mismanaged early elections and Gabriel Attal stayed as caretaker until September.

In the meantime a special law could be passed carrying the 2024 budget into 2025, so that civil servants are paid and hospitals meet their heating bills. An eventual new government would then pass a retrospective “corrective” budget to set the books straight.

But the bigger picture is much more serious.

The original political crisis triggered by Macron’s June dissolution of parliament has been exposed as the chronic disaster it always was. There is no “fix” with a “consensus-building” negotiator of the Barnier mould.

Barnier was the best the president could offer. And if Barnier has failed, it shows the situation is truly intractable.

No new elections can be called until July. No stable government is conceivable. Some say the only answer is for Macron himself to go. Until now that’s been regarded as political fantasy.

But how much more of this is France prepared to take?

The tone is dark, even angry.

“The situation is getting worse every day.”

“We don’t see the goal. Our land is not here.”

Almost four months after Ukrainian troops launched a lightning offensive into the Russian region of Kursk, text messages from soldiers fighting there paint a dismal picture of a battle they don’t properly understand and fear they might be losing.

We’ve been in contact, via Telegram, with several soldiers serving in Kursk, one of whom has recently left. We’ve agreed not to identify any of them.

None of the names in this article are real.

They speak of dire weather conditions and a chronic lack of sleep caused by Russia’s constant bombardment, which includes the use of terrifying, 3,000kg glide bombs.

They’re also in retreat, with Russian forces gradually retaking territory.

“This trend will continue,” Pavlo wrote on 26 November. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Pavlo spoke of immense fatigue, the lack of rotation and the arrival of units, made up largely of middle-aged men, brought directly from other fronts with little or no time to rest in between.

To hear soldiers complain – about their commanding officers, orders and lack of equipment – is hardly unusual. It’s what soldiers often do in difficult circumstances.

Under immense pressure from the enemy and with winter setting in, it would be surprising to hear much optimism.

But the messages we’ve received are almost uniformly bleak, suggesting that motivation is a problem.

Some questioned whether one of the operation’s initial goals – to divert Russian soldiers from Ukraine’s eastern front – had worked.

The orders now, they said, were to hang onto this small sliver of Russian territory until a new US president, with new policies, arrives in the White House at the end of January.

“The main task facing us is to hold the maximum territory until Trump’s inauguration and the start of negotiations,” Pavlo said. “In order to exchange it for something later. No-one knows what.”

Towards the end of November, President Zelensky indicated that both sides had the change of US administration in mind.

“I am sure that he [Putin] wants to push us out by 20 January,” he said.

“It is very important for him to demonstrate that he controls the situation. But he does not control the situation.”

In an effort to help Ukraine thwart Russian counterattacks in Kursk, the US, UK and France have all permitted Kyiv to use long-range weapons on targets inside Russia.

It doesn’t seem to have done much to lift spirits.

“No-one sits in a cold trench and prays for missiles,” Pavlo said.

“We live and fight here and now. And missiles fly somewhere else.”

Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles may have been used to powerful, even devastating, effect on distant command posts and ammunition dumps, but such successes seem remote to soldiers on the front lines.

“We don’t talk about missiles,” Myroslav said. “In the bunkers we talk about family and rotation. About simple things.”

For Ukraine, Russia’s slow, grinding advance in eastern Ukraine underlines the necessity of clinging on in Kursk.

In October alone, Russia was able to occupy an estimated 500 sq km of Ukrainian territory, the most it’s taken since the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

By contrast, Ukraine has already lost around 40% of the territory it seized in Kursk in August.

“The key is not to capture but to hold,” Vadym said, “and we’re struggling a bit with that.”

Despite the losses, Vadym thinks the Kursk campaign is still vital.

“It did manage to divert some [Russian] forces from the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions,” he said.

But some of the soldiers we spoke to said they felt they were in the wrong place, that it was more important to be on Ukraine’s eastern front, rather than occupying part of Russia.

“Our place should have been there [in eastern Ukraine], not here in someone else’s land,” Pavlo said. “We don’t need these Kursk forests, in which we left so many comrades.”

And despite weeks of reports suggesting that as many as 10,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Kursk to join the Russian counter-offensive, the soldiers we’ve been in contact have yet to encounter them.

“I haven’t seen or heard anything about Koreans, alive or dead,” Vadym responded when we asked about the reports.

The Ukrainian military has released recordings which it says are intercepts of North Korean radio communications.

Soldiers said they had been told to capture at least one North Korean prisoner, preferably with documents.

They spoke of rewards – drones or extra leave – being offered to anyone who successfully captures a North Korean soldier.

“It’s very difficult to find a Korean in the dark Kursk forest,” Pavlo noted sarcastically. “Especially if he’s not here.”

Veterans of previous doomed operations see parallels in what’s happening in Kursk.

From October 2023 until July this year, Ukrainian forces attempted to hold onto a tiny bridgehead at Krynky, on the left bank of the Dnipro River, some 25 miles (40km) upstream from the liberated city of Kherson.

The bridgehead, initially intended as a possible springboard for advances further into Russian-held territory in southern Ukraine, was eventually lost.

The operation was hugely costly. As many as 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are thought to have been killed or gone missing.

Some came to see it as a stunt, designed to distract attention from the lack of progress elsewhere.

They fear something similar might be happening in Kursk.

“Good idea but bad implementation,” says Myroslav, a marine officer who served in Krynky and is now in Kursk.

“Media effect, but no military result.”

Military analysts insist that for all the hardship, the Kursk campaign continues to play an important role.

“It’s the only area where we maintain the initiative,” Serhiy Kuzan, of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre, told me.

He acknowledged that Ukrainian forces were experiencing “incredibly difficult conditions” in Kursk, but said Russia was devoting vast resources to ejecting them – resources which it would prefer to be using elsewhere.

“The longer we can hold this Kursk front – with adequate equipment, artillery, Himars and of course long-range weapons to strike their rear – the better,” he said.

In Kyiv, the senior commanders stand by the Kursk operation, arguing that it’s still reaping military and political rewards.

“This situation annoys Putin,” one said recently, on condition of anonymity. “He is suffering heavy losses there.”

As for how long Ukrainian troops would be able to hold out in Kursk, the answer was straightforward.

“As long as it is feasible from the military point of view.”

The beaches of Gaza are no longer for day trips. Tens of thousands of people now have to live on the coastline, forced to leave their homes during the war.

In recent days they have come under a new kind of assault: from winter seas battering their flimsy, makeshift dwellings.

“Nothing is left in the tent: not mattresses, bedding, bread, everything was taken. The sea took it,” says Mohammed al-Halabi, in Deir al-Balah.

“We rescued a two-month-old child who was dragged out to sea.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now displaced and nine in ten of those living in shelters are in tents, the UN says.

With temperatures plummeting, many people have been falling sick. There have been floods of rainwater and sewage.

“My children’s feet, their heads—everything is freezing,” Shaima Issa tells the BBC in Khan Younis. “My daughter has a fever because of the cold. We’re essentially living on the streets, surrounded by strips of fabric. Everyone here is sick and coughing.”

“When it rains on us, we’re drenched,” adds her neighbour, Salwa Abu Nimer, crying. “The heavy rain floods us, and we don’t have a waterproof cover. The water seeps into the tent, we wear our clothes wet.”

“No flour, no food, no drink, no shelter,” she went on. “What is this life I’m living? I go to the ends of the earth just to feed my children.”

While the situation is worst in the north, UN officials are warning of dire shortages of medicines, food, shelter and fuel across Gaza, describing the situation as “catastrophic.”

There are long queues for charity handouts in parts of central and southern Gaza where most people are living.

On successive days, our local cameramen have filmed hundreds of people crowding outside bakeries where there is very little bread. At times, there are crushes as those waiting surge forward.

“I need a loaf of bread. I have pain, diabetes, and high blood pressure. I can’t push through crowds of people; I’m afraid I’ll suffocate and die,” says Hanan al-Shamali, who is in Deir al-Balah but originally comes from northern Gaza.

“I need bread so that I can feed the orphans I take care of. Every morning, I come here. In the end, do I get bread or not? Sometimes I get it, but most of the time, I don’t.”

At the Kerem Shalom crossing, Israel’s main crossing point with Gaza, last week journalists were shown lorries moving goods that had gone through security checks.

Aid entering the Palestinian territory remains at some of the lowest levels of the past year. Israel blames aid agencies for distribution problems.

“Unfortunately we’re still seeing that the biggest backlog for humanitarian aid getting to where it needs to get to is the distribution capabilities of the international organisations, as the 800 trucks worth of aid around me attest to,” said Shimon Freedman, spokesman for Cogat, part of the Israeli military that control the crossings.

But inside Gaza, humanitarian workers say armed gangs have been looting incoming supplies brought through Kerem Shalom amid increased lawlessness. This has now led the biggest UN agency operating in the territory, Unrwa, to pause its use of this route for deliveries.

The overall picture, says Antoine Renard, local head of the UN’s World Food Programme, is of Palestinians facing “a daily struggle for survival”.

“The levels of hunger, devastation and destruction we are seeing now in Gaza is worse than ever before. People cannot cope anymore,” Mr Renard says. “There is barely any food coming in while markets are empty.”

Amid the destruction in Gaza, there is still no end in sight to the war. Just the expectation of more suffering, as cold weather sets in.

Yasmin – not her real name – came from Iran to study for a master’s degree at a new university in the UK, but she was “shocked” to find many of her fellow students had limited English, and only one or two were British.

“How is it possible to continue this coursework without understanding a British accent or English properly?” she tells BBC File on 4.

Most students paid other people to do their coursework, she explains, and some would pay people to register their attendance at lectures for them.

Yasmin’s experience reflects a growing concern. The University and College Union (UCU) says some institutions are overlooking language skills to receive high fees from overseas students, and one professor tells us 70% of his recent master’s students had inadequate English.

Universities UK – which represents 141 institutions – rejects the claims and says there are strict language requirements for students coming from abroad.

Jo Grady from the UCU, which represents 120,000 lecturers and university staff, says it is an open secret that students who lack English skills find ways to come to the UK to study.

“When we speak to members we hear about the tricks that are pulled in order to have people pass the relevant language test and get on to courses,” she says.

About seven out of 10 students studying on master’s courses in England are now from overseas, far higher than on other types of higher education course, says Rose Stephenson from the Higher Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank.

In England, university tuition fees for undergraduate domestic students are capped at £9,250, rising to £9,535 per year in 2025-26. Each of the other UK nations set their own fees. But fees for overseas students studying in England have no upper limit.

• Tuition fees: How much does university cost in the UK?

“You can charge a foreign student as much as they’re willing to pay,” says Ms Stephenson.

Post-graduate fees are not capped either, so a master’s degree at an elite university could cost £50,000.

Because undergraduate tuition fees for domestic students in England have not kept up with inflation, there has been a real-terms cut in university funding, says Ms Stephenson – with international students, in effect, subsidising the below-cost fees of home students.

One whistleblower who worked at an education provider that prepares international students for university, told us agents would target families abroad who had the money to pay.

The whistleblower – who has previously also spoken to the Sunday Times – said: “We knew that those universities are increasingly desperate and would go along with our plans without much scrutiny into how those students were being found.

“No independent party is looking at the grades or the examinations. It’s the Wild West, in a way.”

The whistleblower worked for Study Group, one of dozens of providers feeding the UK university system, and taking fees from students in the process.

Based in the UK, Study Group is a registered provider which says it works for more than 50 universities with a network of 3,500 agents in 99 countries.

Study Group strongly disputes the whistleblower’s claims, saying overseas students earn their places on merit. It adds that any decision to admit a student on to a course is taken by the university, not Study Group, and rejects the claim that entry criteria are waived for any reason.

It says courses it runs are robustly “scrutinised by partner universities”.

Yasmin paid £16,000 for her course in international finance at a university in southern England. She later found out that of the 100 students on most of her modules, “maybe 80 or 90 of them bought assignments” from so-called “essay mills” based overseas. In England it is a criminal offence to complete work for a student which they can pass off as their own.

When Yasmin told her tutor what was happening, he took no action. Yasmin says she now feels her master’s degree has been “devalued”.

A Russell Group university professor, who has taught at several universities and wants to remain anonymous, echoes Yasmin’s concerns. He tells File on 4 that 70% of his students at master’s degree level over the past five years did not have sufficient English language skills to be on the course.

“There have certainly been occasions when very simple questions have not been able to be understood by students who I am teaching,” he says.

The professor told us he has had to adapt his teaching technique, and says students even use translation apps in class. But he insists fault does not lie with international students themselves, who are mostly trying their best, and says the situation varies from subject to subject.

They pass, he says, because courses are often assessed through assignments, rather than exams. Some students use essay mills and pay for others to write their work or, increasingly, use artificial intelligence (AI). Both methods, he says, can defeat current anti-plagiarism software.

UCU’s Jo Grady says it is hardly surprising some students with poor English skills feel they need help from other people, or even use AI to do their work, as an “act of desperation”.

She says her members tell their managers that enrolling students without good English “is a bad idea… they will struggle, and we will also struggle to teach them”. However, she says “university managers and leaders pursue it regardless, because of the money and income it will bring in”.

Some universities are in financial crisis, says Ms Grady, and have become dependent on high-fee paying overseas students who “pay eye-watering sums of money”.

“Institutions are chasing money. They’re not necessarily chasing the best candidates. And it’s a corruption of what higher education should be.”

Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, rejects the suggestion some overseas students are being allowed on courses with poor English language skills as a way of boosting income.

She says universities carry out strict checks on those they enrol – including minimum language levels, as set by the UK government.

“Students will need to be able to afford the fee to study in the UK, but beyond that it’s a question of taking students who apply, and applying a merit-based criteria,” she says. “It is absolutely central that this is a system that people trust.”

Ms Stern says international students are attracted by the quality of the UK’s universities and says it would be “unwise” to rely on international income to fund domestic education and research, because overseas student numbers could be affected by geopolitics or shifts in exchange rates.

Meanwhile, international student numbers are falling. Data on UK student visa applications from the first half of this year shows there has been a 16% decline in applications, resulting in a loss of income for some institutions. This drop is, in part, being attributed to changes in UK student visa rules preventing most postgraduate students from bringing dependents.

It is contributing to the worst financial crisis for universities since fees were first introduced. Last month, the government regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), estimated that by 2025-26, 72% of universities could be spending more money than they have coming in, and warned that “rapid and decisive action is necessary”.

The Department for Education told the BBC a reliance on overseas students has been identified as a risk, and many universities will have to change their business models, adding that the government is committed to managing migration carefully.

US actor Colman Domingo has won the top acting prize at the 2024 Gotham Awards, as the Oscars race continues to heat up.

The star won best actor for his performance in Sing Sing, a powerful film about an educational performing arts programme in a New York prison.

There was a surprise but welcome winner in the top category, best feature, which went to A Different Man, a thought-provoking movie about a man who has a disfiguring facial condition and drastically changes his appearance.

The Gothams are one of the few film awards ceremonies to have merged their gendered acting categories, and all of this year’s winners were men.

• How to watch this year’s awards-tipped films

The Gotham Awards, held in New York, celebrate independent films. The event is not as big or influential as some others in awards season, but they can indicate early support for certain films in the race.

The next big milestone in the awards calendar will be the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations on Monday (9 December). A string of US critics groups and film organisations will also announce their winners in the coming days.

The Oscars race is considered to be wide open this year, with several strong contenders but no clear frontrunner to win best picture as things stand.

Sing Sing tells the real-life story of a man, known as Divine G, who has been imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, and finds purpose by acting in a theatre group.

The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023, but its release was delayed until this summer to give it some distance from Rustin, another film starring Domingo which was in contention for awards last year.

Accepting his Gotham prize, Domingo said: “I’m just very grateful for this, to be seen in this way, to do the work that my heart desires, and my soul desires, making work that I truly believe can make a difference in this world.”

He thanked the films director, writer and producer “for inviting me to bring my whole self, to help tell the story of these men that I care so deeply about”.

“They found art to be the parachute that can save them, and they poured themselves into it, and it poured back into them.”

Domingo’s previous acting credits include One Night in Miami, If Beale Street Could Talk, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Color Purple.

His co-star Clarence Maclin, a former real-life inmate of Sing Sing prison who portrays a version of himself in the film, was named best supporting actor.

The top prize was won by A Different Man, a superb and original film about an aspiring actor who has neurofibromatosis, a disfiguring facial condition.

He undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance, but then begins to grapple with a loss of identity, and is perturbed after meeting a man with a similar condition who is happy and fulfilled within his own body.

A Different Man held off competition from films including Anora and Babygirl, both of which could feature prominently in the Oscars race.

Director Aaron Schimberg said he was shocked to collect the award “considering the other nominees”.

Other attendees at the Gothams included Hollywood stars Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Chastain, Adrian Brody, Pamela Anderson, Zoe Kravitz and Saoirse Ronan.

Elsewhere, filmmaker RaMell Ross won the best director gong for the accomplished Nickel Boys, while the star of the film Brandon Wilson received the prize for best breakthrough performer.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys follows the powerful friendship between two men navigating a brutal reform school together in Florida.

Nickel Boys has attracted attention for its unusual shooting style. Ross opted to tell the story entirely from the characters’ own point of view, which means viewers experience events through the eyes of the protagonists.

It has struggled to stay in the awards conversation in recent weeks despite its innovative style, but its Gotham win could give it a welcome boost of momentum.

There was also recognition for the terrific His Three Daughters, about three women who gather to care for their dying father, which won best screenplay.

Best feature

• Anora
• Babygirl
• Challengers
• WINNER: A Different Man
• Nickel Boys

Outstanding lead performance

• Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
• Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
• WINNER: Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
• Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
• Keith Kupferer, Ghostlight
• Mikey Madison, Anora
• Demi Moore, The Substance
• Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun
• Justice Smith, I Saw the TV Glow

Outstanding supporting performance

• Yura Borisov, Anora
• Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
• Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
• Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow
• Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters
• WINNER: Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
• Katy O’Brian, Love Lies Bleeding
• Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
• Adam Pearson, A Different Man
• Brian Tyree Henry, The Fire Inside

Best director

• Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light
• Sean Baker, Anora
• Guan Hu, Black Dog
• Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow
• WINNER: RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Best international feature

• WINNER: All We Imagine as Light
• Green Border
• Hard Truths
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
• Vermiglio

Best documentary feature

• Dahomey
• Intercepted
• WINNER: No Other Land
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• Sugarcane
• Union

Best screenplay

• Between the Temples
• Evil Does Not Exist
• Femme
• WINNER: His Three Daughters
• Janet Planet

Breakthrough director

• Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls
• India Donaldson, Good One
• Alessandra Lacorazza, In the Summers
• WINNER: Vera Drew, The People’s Joker
• Mahdi Fleifel, To a Land Unknown

Breakthrough performer

• Lily Collias, Good One
• Ryan Destiny, The Fire Inside
• Maisy Stella, My Old Ass
• Izaac Wang, Dìdi
• WINNER: Brandon Wilson, Nickel Boys

The ceremony also saw tributes made to stars including director Denis Villeneuve and actors Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya and Angelina Jolie.

British actor Josh O’Connor presented the spotlight award to Zendaya, after the pair starred in Challengers together.

O’Connor likened Zendaya to stars including the late Dame Maggie Smith, using “authenticity as a superpower”, having “seamlessly” navigated her way from being a child star.

Zendaya described the award as “quite the honour”, before praising her film crew: “My character is only an amalgamation of the beautiful ideas of the amazing creative people around me,” she said.

“I have to say, I love what I do, so much,” she added, “so incredibly grateful I get to this for a living.”

The Dune star later presented the director tribute award to filmmaker Villeneuve, who said he is most proud that over 12 years in the industry he has been able to “protect my flame” and not compromise his independent freedom and creativity.

Meanwhile, Dune star Oscar Isaac presented Chalamet and director James Mangold with the visionary award for their Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.

Chalamet, sporting a moustache, said: “Getting to study and immerse myself in the world of Bob Dylan has been the greatest education a young artist can receive.”

Jolie, who most recently played late opera star Maria Callas in her final days in 1970s Paris, also received the performer tribute during the ceremony.

“I grew up with a mother who kept books inside the oven because there were more books in our house than shelves in the apartment we had,” Jolie said on stage.

The US actress said early influences “nurture and shape us as artists”, noting the importance of art “taught in our schools, and so concerning that many of those programmes are being reduced”.

The first snow of winter has fallen in Sanmartin, a village in Romania’s eastern Carpathian mountains.

Shepherd József Rácz and his sons keep 500 ewes up on the high pasture here. It’s a hard life: when he’s not worrying about milking his sheep, which he does three times a day, he’s worrying about protecting them from predators.

Each year, József loses five or six of his herd to a wolf, or a bear. It’s why he keeps 17 dogs.

“A good dog is the best tool a shepherd has, to protect his flock at night, and in the daytime too,” the farmer says.

On Tuesday, 45 years of strict protection for grey wolves in Europe came to an end, after conservation officials adopted EU measures to downgrade the animal’s protected status.

The news means that grey wolves will be moved from Annex II (strictly protected) to Annex III (protected) of the Bern Convention.

This will remove many of the safeguards that have allowed the animals to flourish in Europe and means each EU country will be able to set an annual quota of wolves to kill.

The Commission argued that the number of wolves in the EU has almost doubled, from 11,000 in 2012 to over 20,000 today, and that they were causing too much damage to livestock.

But wildlife campaigners say improved protection methods, including trained sheep dogs, would be a better solution than removing safeguards. They say that wolves keep down numbers of deer and wild boar, which damage trees and crops. Wolves also prevent the spread of diseases by eating sick animals.

In the town of Baile Tusnad, in a valley near József’s village, wildlife experts met recently to discuss large carnivores. Most, though not all, oppose the hunting of wolves and bears.

“African swine fever is spreading all over Europe,” said Michal Haring, a biologist from Slovakia, “and the wolf is a very good ‘doctor’ for this, suppressing the disease. Wolves cannot catch it.”

Another argument against shooting wolves is that they hunt in packs of five to eight, usually a pair and their offspring. If the older wolves are shot, the pack fragments, making it harder for them to catch deer and wild boar.

“Individual wolves are more likely to attack sheep and other domesticated animals,” Mr Haring explains.

Campaigners also pointed to a 2023 EU report, which states that only around 50,000 of Europe’s 68 million sheep and goats are killed by wolves each year – 0.065% of the total number – adding that the overall impact of wolves on EU livestock is “very small”.

Moreover, it says there have been no fatal wolf attacks on humans for 40 years.

“If we expect countries like India or Indonesia to protect their tigers,” says Laurent Schley, head of the Wildlife department in the Luxembourg government, “and Africans to protect lions and elephants, then we as relatively rich Europeans should be willing to tolerate some wolves.” Luxembourg is one of the few western European countries where no wolves have been sighted yet, Mr Schley believes it’s only a matter of time.

“We have very high densities of deer and wild boar, so the conditions for the wolf are there.

“Of course, if individual wolves or packs start killing too much livestock, or were to show aggression towards humans, we would have to draw the line. Human safety always comes first.”

But back on the mountainside, József says wolves are dangerous because “they’re clever animals”. He favours tougher legal measures to cull the predators.

Bears approach through the forest, treading on branches and alerting his dogs, József says: if they break into the wickerwork enclosure where his herd stay at night, they will only grab one animal.

If a pack of wolves get in though, they can kill dozens of sheep at a time.

Last year, József’s favourite dog, Moody, was killed by wolves, in broad daylight, as they moved from one pasture to the next. All they found was his bloodied pelt.

The more wolves there are, József says, the more likely they will take his sheep.

And it takes a long time to train a good dog.

Replicas of a sword featured in the Harry Potter film franchise have been recalled in Japan for violating the country’s strict weapons law.

The full-sized replicas of Godric Gryffindor’s sword – which measure 86cm (34 inches) and are affixed to a wooden display plaque – were sold by Warner Bros. Studio Japan LLC from May 2023 to late April of this year.

But it was only in November that authorities told the company those pieces were sharp enough to be categorised as an actual sword.

More than 350 replicas of Godric Gryffindor’s sword were sold, reports add, with each one going for 30,000 yen ($200; £158).

The sword was sold at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo: The Making of Harry Potter, which opened in 2023 in Tokyo. It is billed as the first such studio tour in Asia and the largest indoor Harry Potter attraction in the world.

Warner Bros. Studios Japan LLC has published a recall notice for the sword on its site, citing “a distribution issue in Japan” and requesting people who bought it to get in contact for “necessary action including logistics and refund”.

The company did not respond immediately to the BBC’s request for comment.

Under Japan’s strict weapons law, carrying knives over 6cm (2 inches) is banned, with violators facing up to two years in prison. Replicas that are sharp enough to be classified as swords under the Firearms and Swords control law must be registered with authorities – unless the swords are meant for training or decoration and cannot be sharpened.

Japan has very low levels of violence, though crimes involving weapons do occasionally take place.

Last year, a 78-year-old man was arrested in Yokohama after attacking his neighbour with a ceremonial samurai sword during an dispute. In 2017, a samurai sword was found along with other knives in a Tokyo shrine after an attack that left three people dead.

A man trying to recover a Bitcoin hard drive in a landfill site which he says is now worth about £600m is “seeking to bribe the council”, it has been claimed in court.

Newport council has asked a High Court judge to strike out a claim by James Howells, who is attempting to sue the local authority to gain access to the site or get £495m in compensation.

Council barrister James Goudie KC said Mr Howells’ offer to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local community was encouraging the council to “play fast and loose” by “signing up for a share of the action”.

Dean Armstrong KC, for Mr Howells, said the “bribery” remark was “an unfortunate and pointless phrase” and said his client had a right to access the site to retrieve his Bitcoin.

Following the hearing in Cardiff, Judge Keyser KC said he would reserve his decision until a later date.

Mr Howells wants access to the Docksway landfill site, where he claims a digital wallet was mistakenly dumped by his former partner.

The hearing was to determine whether the case should go to a full trial.

Mr Howells has argued that his former partner erroneously dumped the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet in 2013.

After Mr Howells launched legal proceedings, the council applied for a High Court hearing to ask a judge to dismiss the claim before going to trial.

Mr Goudie said there was “no duty” on the council to excavate its landfill site at the request of Mr Howells.

The council argued that the law stated that property deposited at landfill sites belonged to the local authority, and that its environmental permits forbade it from disrupting the area in pursuit of the hard drive.

He said the council was “bound by the law” and it was “not obliged to mediate” a claim that it believed was detrimental to the public interest.

“Bitcoin enthusiasts are not above the law,” Mr Goudie added.

Mr Goudie also said that the time that had passed since the hard drive was thrown into the landfill meant any claims should no longer be considered.

In asking the judge to allow the case to go to a full trial, Mr Howells’ legal team said there were arguments around the ownership of the hard drive which needed to be developed.

Mr Howells’ barrister also argued that the search for the hard drive would not be “a needle in a haystack case”.

He said that “considerable expertise” was involved in planning the excavation, rendering the “haystack much, much smaller”.

Mr Armstrong said the court must be “very, very wary of causing a grave injustice to Mr Howells” by refusing to allow the case to go to a full trial.

“We seek, plainly and candidly, a declaration of rights over the ownership of the Bitcoin,” Mr Armstrong said.

PlayStation’s boss says artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to “revolutionise” gaming, but he believes it will never replace the “human touch” of games made by people.

Hermen Hulst and his co-CEO Hideaki Nishino spoke to the BBC as Sony celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of the console being launched.

The company has had a year marked by highs and lows, with the phenomenal success of its PlayStation 5 console and games offset by big job losses, in a pattern repeated across the industry.

Game developers have been hit by slowing demand after the pandemic – but some are also concerned about the impact of AI on jobs.

Advances in the technology have the potential to allow many of the mundane parts of game development to become automated.

But it has also caused deep unease that AI systems will also take over the creative process, with voice actors in the US striking over fears the tech could be used to replace them.

Mr Hulst acknowledged AI was changing gaming – but said there would always be a future for human developers.

“I suspect there will be a dual demand in gaming: one for AI-driven innovative experiences and another for handcrafted, thoughtful content,” he told the BBC.

“Striking the right balance between leveraging AI and preserving the human touch will be crucial.”

Since taking over in June, the two bosses have faced a number of difficult moments.

The much-anticipated shooting game Concord turned into a high-profile failure, with players who bought it being refunded, and the studio closed.

“Certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline,” Mr Hulst said at the time.

The firm also faced criticism over the £699.99 price tag for its new PlayStation 5 Pro console – hardware capable of playing games at higher fidelity.

The firm’s two-person leadership model has also raised eyebrows in the industry. Mr Hulst mostly oversees software and Mr Nishino looks after hardware.

“We can achieve greater focus in our respective areas and then come together to develop the best experiences for the PlayStation community,” said Mr Nishino.

They point to the example of surprise hit Astro Bot, which released to acclaim in September and has since received several game of the year nominations.

“I cannot express how happy we are with the reception of Astro Bot,” Mr Hulst said.

Despite that success there are a number of issues for Sony to wrestle with.

Its handheld consoles haven’t historically fared as well as its home offerings, and the CEOs wouldn’t be drawn on whether there may be a new PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the future.

But Mr Nishino said the way players play games is changing, and pointed to its handheld PlayStation Portal – a cross between a controller and a screen – which he said has been “a huge success”.

And while previously it exclusively allowed players to stream games from a PS5 they already own, that is about to change.

“Recently, we just announced a beta programme… allowing Cloud streaming directly to the handheld,” he said.

“We’re always exploring various options for how players can play games.”

One area where the firm wants to continue to expand into is turning games into films.

Early attempts by rivals – such as 1993’s Super Mario Bros and 1994’s Street Fighter – were panned by critics.

But recent adaptions, including movie versions of the Mario, Sonic and Pokemon franchises, have met with much more success.

Sony has shared in that with 2023 series The Last of Us, and 2022’s Uncharted, both based on games by Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog.

And Mr Hulst said his vision for the future included more transfers to the big screen.

He pointed to 2018’s God of War, which is being developed as a show for Amazon Prime, as his favourite PlayStation game from the past 30 years.

“I am hoping to raise the PlayStation IP outside of just the gaming category and elevate it so it sits comfortably within the larger entertainment industry,” he said.

While looking to the future, the company is also reflecting on the enduring appeal of the PlayStation console.

Though it originally launched in December 1994 in Japan, those in the UK and US had to wait until September 1995 to get their hands on it.

It has proved to be a runaway success, with Sony’s four home consoles prior to the PlayStation 5 each becoming one of the top ten best-selling gaming machines in history. The PS5 is on its way to joining them, too.

Despite his role as CEO, Mr Nishino said he did not have a home console when he started gaming – instead going to a friend’s house to play.

“I started to convince my parents to buy Nintendo’s Family Computer [known as the NES in the UK], but it was not an easy task,” he said.

“Together with my little brother, we finally convinced our parents to give us one, but I felt it took forever.”

For his joint CEO it was the other way round – he was prompted his mother, a toy store owner, to game.

“She was a bit scared of technology and would always call on me to demo the gaming devices to customers,” Mr Hulst said.

“After hours, I would sneak into the store”, he added.

“I surely developed my passion for games at this wonderful time in my life.”

Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan has lost her appeal against her death sentence for masterminding the world’s biggest bank fraud.

The 68-year-old is now in a race for her life because the law in Vietnam states that if she can pay back 75% of what she took, her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

In April the trial court found that Truong My Lan had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44bn (£34.5bn).

Of that prosecutors say $27bn was misappropriated, and $12bn was judged to have been embezzled, the most serious financial crime for which she was sentenced to death.

It was a rare and shocking verdict – she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

On Tuesday, the court said there was no basis to reduce Truong My Lan’s death sentence. However, she could still avoid execution if she returns $9bn, three-quarters of the $12bn she embezzled. It’s not her final appeal and she can still petition the president for amnesty.

During her trial Truong My Lan was sometimes defiant, but in the recent hearings for her appeal against the sentence she was more contrite.

She said she was embarrassed to have been such a drain on the state, and that her only thought was to pay back what she had taken.

Born into a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother. She began buying land and property after the Communist Party introduced economic reform in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

When she was convicted and sentenced in April, she was the chairwoman of a prominent real estate firm, Van Thinh Phat Group. It was a dramatic moment in the “Blazing Furnaces” anti-corruption campaign led by then-Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

All of the remaining 85 defendants were convicted. Four were sentenced to life in jail, while the rest -including Truong My Lan’s husband and niece – were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended.

The State Bank of Vietnam is believed to have spent many billions of dollars recapitalising Saigon Commercial Bank to prevent a wider banking panic. The prosecutors argued that her crimes were “huge and without precedent” and did not justify leniency.

Truong My Lan’s lawyers said she was working as fast as she could to find the $9bn needed. But cashing in her assets has proven difficult.

Some are luxury properties in Ho Chi Minh City which could, in theory, be sold quite quickly. Others are in the form of shares or stakes in other businesses or property projects.

In all the state has identified more than a thousand different assets linked to the fraud. These have been frozen by the authorities for now. The BBC understands the tycoon has also reached out to friends to raise loans for her to help reach the target.

Her lawyers have argued for leniency from the judges on financial grounds. They said that while she is under sentence of death it would be hard for her to negotiate the best price for selling her assets and investments, and so harder for her to raise $9bn.

She could do much better if under a life sentence instead, they say.

“The total value of her holdings actually exceeds the required compensation amount,” lawyer Nguyen Huy Thiep told the BBC before her appeal was rejected.

“However, these require time and effort to sell, as many of the assets are real estate and take time to liquidate. Truong My Lan hopes the court can create the most favourable conditions for her to continue making compensation.”

Few had expected the judges to be moved by these arguments. She is now, in effect, in a race with the executioner to raise the funds she needs.

Vietnam treats the death penalty as a state secret. The government does not publish how many people are on death row, though human rights groups say there are more than 1,000 and that Vietnam is one of the world’s biggest executioners.

Typically there are long delays, often many years before sentences are carried out, although prisoners are given very little notice.

If Truong My Lan can recover the $9bn before that happens, her life will most likely be spared.

A US woman has pleaded guilty to drink-driving charges over an incident in which she killed a newlywed bride who was travelling in a golf cart on her wedding night.

Jamie Lee Komoroski was sentenced to 25 years in prison over the crash in South Carolina last year that killed Samantha Miller while she was still wearing her wedding dress.

The victim’s husband, Aric Hutchinson, was among three others who were hurt, along with two of his family members who were also in the vehicle.

He wept as he told the court his new wife had “wanted the night to never end”, Associated Press reported.

The collision occurred in the city of Folly Beach in April 2023 as the newlyweds were being taken back to their accommodation just hours after their ceremony.

Komoroski was accused by prosecutors of drinking at several bars and then driving at 65mph (104km/h) in a 25 mph zone. Her car hit the golf cart carrying the couple, driven by Mr Hutchinson’s brother-in-law.

A blood test showed that she was three times over the drinking limit, according to a report released by state officials after the crash. She had earlier refused to provide officers with breath samples, a police incident report said.

At Charleston County Courthouse on Monday, Komoroski admitted charges including felony DUI resulting in death. She received multiple sentences that will run at the same time.

Addressing the court before being sentenced, she spoke of her regret and said she took full responsibility.

Mr Hutchinson, who sustained a brain injury and broken bones in the crash, also spoke. Although he has said he has no memory of the incident itself, he was able to recount his final conversation with his wife.

“On the golf cart, she told me she didn’t want the night to end and I kissed her on the forehead and then the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital,” he said.

After the sentencing, he said he felt “the punishment fit the crime”, according to CBS News affiliate WCSC.

“I do think she’s sorry,” Mr Hutchinson said. “However, that doesn’t change the fact that Sam’s not here, my wife’s not here, the family we planned, all of our injuries. So that’ll take some time for sure.”

Deadly Israeli air strikes and a mortar attack by Hezbollah have raised fears that the ceasefire in Lebanon could collapse.

Ten people were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday night, the health ministry said, after Israel carried out its biggest wave of air strikes since both sides agreed last week to end 14 months of conflict.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah fighters, launchers and infrastructure and urged Lebanese authorities to prevent what it called the group’s “hostile activity”.

Hezbollah had earlier fired two mortars at an Israeli army base in a disputed border area, saying they were a warning over what it saw as “repeated violations” by Israel. No casualties were reported.

The US, which along with France brokered the agreement and is monitoring compliance, said that “largely speaking” the ceasefire was holding despite the violence.

Under the deal, Hezbollah has been given 60 days to end its armed presence between the Blue Line – the unofficial border between Lebanon and Israel – and the Litani river, about 30km (20 miles) to the north.

Israeli forces must withdraw from the area over the same period, and Lebanese army troops and UN peacekeepers are due to deploy there.

The conflict began on 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Israel launched an intense air campaign and ground invasion against the Iran-backed group in late September, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by the rocket attacks.

Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed during the hostilities, many of them civilians, and one million others were displaced from areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Israeli authorities say more than 80 Israeli soldiers and 47 civilians were killed.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that Israeli warplanes carried out strikes in at least 11 areas of southern Lebanon on Monday night.

They included the town of Haris, where the health ministry said six people were killed and two injured.

Another four people were killed and one was injured in the town of Tallousseh, according to the ministry.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it “struck Hezbollah terrorists, dozens of launchers, and terrorist infrastructure throughout Lebanon”.

It also said it hit the Hezbollah launcher in Berghoz that was used to fire two mortars towards the disputed Mount Dov/Shebaa Farms area in the occupied Golan Heights. The projectiles fell in an open area and nobody was hurt.

“Hezbollah’s launches tonight constitute a violation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon,” it warned.

“The State of Israel demands that the relevant parties in Lebanon fulfil their responsibilities and prevent Hezbollah’s hostile activity from within Lebanese territory.”

Israel‘s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it was “determined to continue enforcing the ceasefire and will respond to every Hezbollah violation – minor and major”.

Hezbollah confirmed it carried out the mortar attack, saying it was a “defensive and warning response” to what it described as “repeated violations by the Israeli enemy of the ceasefire agreement”.

It said they included firing on civilians and conducting air strikes, as well breaches of Lebanese airspace by Israeli aircraft.

Earlier on Monday, Lebanese authorities said two people had been killed in Israeli strikes in the south of the country.

The health ministry said one person was killed in Marjaoun, where a motorcycle was reportedly targeted, while Lebanese State Security agency said a drone strike killed one of its personnel who was on duty in Nabatieh.

The Lebanese army also said a soldier was wounded when a drone targeted an army bulldozer near the north-eastern town of Hermel, in the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli military said it had “operated in southern Lebanon in response to several acts by Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed a threat to Israeli civilians, in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.

“We are aware of reports regarding a soldier from the Lebanese military who was injured in one of the strikes and the incident is under investigation,” it added.

Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who helped negotiate the deal, said: “The aggressive actions carried out by Israeli occupation forces… represent a flagrant violation of the terms of the ceasefire.”

He added that Lebanese authorities had asked the committee formed to monitor enforcement of the ceasefire – comprising the US, France, Israel, Lebanon and the UN peacekeeping force (Unifl) – to declare “where it stands on ongoing violations… that have exceeded 54 breaches”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot meanwhile told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, in a call that there was a need “for all sides to respect the ceasefire in Lebanon”, the foreign ministry said.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan also reported that US envoy Amos Hochstein had warned Israel over alleged violations.

In a video posted online, Saar said: “We hear claims that Israel is violating the ceasefire understandings in Lebanon. On the contrary!”

He warned that Israel would take action when armed Hezbollah fighters were identified south of the Litani river or they attempted to move weapons.

“Their presence south of the Litani river is the most basic violation of the understandings,” he said. “They must move north immediately.”

“I want to emphasize – Israel is committed to the successful implementation of the ceasefire, but we will not accept a return to the situation as it stood [before the conflict].”

US officials said the ceasefire had been broadly successful, but there was “a lot more work to do.”

“We’ve gone from dozens of [Israeli] strikes down to one a day maybe two a day,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We’re going to keep trying and see what we can do to get it down to zero.”

Shaun Flores was 11 years old when he first started watching porn, after being introduced to it by a friend.

“I was hooked almost immediately,” the now 30-year-old says.

“It was just like, wow, what is this that people are doing where they look like they’re just having the time of their lives.”

Shaun’s curiosity quickly turned into something that he found difficult to stop.

He describes watching porn morning, noon and night, saying it became as “common as brushing your teeth”.

Shaun has shared his story in a new BBC iPlayer series, Sex After.

“I realised there was an issue when I had no energy to do anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to play football, I just wanted to be inside.

“But there was the guilt and the shame that came with it, and no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t stop watching it.

“That’s when I knew there was something up.”

While not everyone who watches porn will develop an unhealthy relationship with it, Shaun isn’t alone in his viewing habits.

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report suggests 29% of UK adults accessed online porn in May 2024. Additionally, new research from addiction treatment centre, UKAT, suggests that millions of Britons are viewing pornography regularly – with 1.8 million watching daily, some multiple times a day.

According to treatment providers, more people are seeking help for problematic porn use.

Dr Paula Hall, a UKCP-accredited sexual and relationship psychotherapist at The Laurel Centre, in London, specialises in helping people affected by sex addiction and porn addiction.

“The numbers of clients seeking help with pornography problems at The Laurel Centre have doubled over recent years, as have our requests from health professionals for further training,” she tells the BBC.

Dr Hall explains that they have also seen a growing number of younger people seeking help.

“Ten years ago the majority of our clients would have been married men in their 40s and 50s who were seeking help because their partner had discovered their use of sex workers,” she says.

“But increasingly, our clients are in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are single, who are recognising the growing toll of porn use on their lives and on their ability to get or maintain a relationship.”

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at the UKAT Group, also says the number of people they treat for problematic porn use has risen “significantly” in recent years.

They now receive multiple enquiries for help from people struggling with their porn use every single day. Prior to 2020, it was one or two enquiries a week

Fernandes explains that advancements in technology and the subsequent easy accessibility of porn is making it easier for people of all ages to access sexual content online. He believes his is contributing to the increase in people seeking help that he has experienced.

“It’s not very hard for someone to pull out their phone, go onto a site and look at porn, whether they’re 12 years old or 60 years old,” he says. “It is quite troubling.”

According to Fernandes, other reasons for people watching porn online include curiosity, boredom, stress relief and lack of sexual satisfaction.

While porn use might start for these reasons, Fernandes describes it as being “very addictive”.

“It fulfils that dopamine reward system,” he explains. “Once you start it’s quite difficult to stop.”

However, while problematic porn use might mimic an addiction, it isn’t diagnostically recognised as such.

Instead, it is categorised as problematic online pornography use (POPU), or compulsive behaviour.

For people who develop this relationship with porn, the effects can be negative.

And for the youngest in society who are growing up with free, hardcore content at their fingertips, the impact of early overexposure can be far reaching.

The Children’s Commissioner for England promotes and protects the rights of children.

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

“Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old,” Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

“Pornography is no longer confined to dedicated adult sites – children tell me they can see violent content, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sexual acts on social media.

“The implications of seeing this kind of material are vast – my research has found that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.”

De Souza adds that it is “vital” for high-quality relationship and sex education to be given parity of importance with other subjects to help young people understand that pornography is unrealistic.

Silva Neves, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of compulsive sexual behaviours, agrees that viewing porn at a young age can have a negative impact.

However, he emphasises that the lack of quality sex education for young people leads to them looking for information elsewhere.

“They’re then going to see hairless vulvas,” he says. “They’re going to see 9in penises.

“They’re going to see hard intercourse lasting for 30 minutes and choking, and all these things, and they’re going to think, ‘ok, so this is sex’.

“But it’s much easier to point the finger at porn and say porn is the problem.”

Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, first started watching porn when she was at primary school.

For her, it was partly driven by the lack of proper sex education available to her. She explains that her classes at school were focussed on the biology of reproduction, rather than the experience of sex.

She says that the taboo that seemed to exist around it made it even more fascinating to try and understand it.

“I ended up searching for sex videos,” she explains. “It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.”

Courtney started off watching sporadically, sometimes on the weekends or occasionally before school. But then, she says, it turned into almost every day.

“That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I’m doing this way too often,” she says.

Courtney lost her virginity when she was 18 – a moment she describes as “terrible”.

“It never felt like real life matched up to the hype…that I got from watching porn or masturbating,” she says.

Courtney eventually realised that she had an unhealthy dependency on porn.

“I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,” she said.

She stopped watching porn in her early 20s and decided to become celibate. Along with her fiancé, they have committed to abstinence until after their wedding.

For Shaun, his excessive porn habit led to him being “exhausted” from masturbating.

“I think the role that it [porn] had to play was that it distorted my sense of self, and gave me a dysmorphia around sex, or my body, or my penis,” he says.

However, experts say it is important to recognise that, for many people, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with porn. For some, there may even be benefits.

For example, research conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) suggests that porn provides a way for young people unsure of their sexuality to understand themselves better.

‘’We must remember that an unhealthy relationship with porn only occurs when the individual has lost the power of choice; they cannot function normally in their day to day lives without watching porn,” concludes Fernandes.

“We would urge anyone who thinks they fall into this category to seek professional help.”

“It’s left me with a lot of unlearning to do,” says Courtney. “I have had to learn what realistic sex was.

“I have had to learn to love my body and not compare it to other women’s bodies.

“I have had to learn to love and not objectify people, men and women. And not just see them as sexual objects, but actually see them as people.

“If I could rewind the clock, I wouldn’t have started it.”

For Shaun, giving up is one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made.

“The addiction made me lose connections and now I’m trying to be connected to people that I generally love and I really care about,” he says.

Luxury car maker Jaguar has unveiled its new electric concept car and, like a recent controversial teaser video, it has divided opinion.

Some on social media said the new Type 00 car was “exciting” and “absolutely stunning”, while others called it “rubbish” and told Jaguar’s designers to “go back to the drawing board”.

The carmaker, which is embarking on the biggest change in its history, announced a new logo and released a so-called “social media tease” last month, ahead of its relaunch as an electric-only brand.

Many critics pointed out that the promotional video did not feature an actual car but the firm was also praised by some for its bold new approach.

Last month, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) stopped selling new Jaguar cars in the UK ahead of its relaunch as an electric-only brand in 2026.

Sales of its cars have been plummeting in recent years, and some have argued that as its traditional, heritage image does not seem to be working, the rebranding is a gamble with a limited downside.

Following the deluge of publicity following last month’s teaser video, Jaguar urged people to “trust and reserve judgement” over the rebrand of the business, which has a history dating back more than a century.

The Type 00 model unveiled at a Miami art fair is a concept car and so will not go into production for sale to the public.

However, it gives a pointer to the direction of the brand’s new models, which are expected to cost in excess of £100,000 when they go on sale.

Jaguar’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern, said he welcomed the attention the new direction had been getting.

“It has already stirred emotions and it will continue to,” he said. “Jaguar has no desire to be loved by everybody.”

Car industry analyst Karl Brauer was sceptical. The company seems to be “sacrificing Jaguar’s past to the hopes of a better future,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

Many on social media said the new model looked similar to existing cars, and James May, broadcaster and former presenter of Top Gear, said he was “slightly disappointed” by it.

“I wanted something more futuristic,” he told the BBC. “I mean, Jaguar have been saying they will copy nothing, but there’s quite a bit of other concept cars in that new Jag.”

Beatrix Keim, director at the Center of Automotive Research, said that Jaguar’s concept car was “too big, too unreal”.

“This is not the way to go,” she said, given that there are already big cars in the market and “electric cars cannot only be for the rich”.

“Of course, Jaguar is a luxury brand,” she added. “But I don’t think that this is the direction which Jaguar at current point of time needs, because it’s losing out on volume as well. And this is not a volume car.”

Amanda Stretton, a racing driver and motoring journalist, also agreed the Jaguar concept car was too big.

“It’s an absolute nonsense,” she said. “It needs to be shrunk by about 50% to be practical.”

But Andy Palmer, a former boss of Aston Martin and Nissan’s ex-chief operating officer, said Jaguar needed to change as it had been “failing as a brand for a long time now”.

He called the new design “a brave change of direction” although he agreed it was “huge”.

“The rhetoric around electric cars has to be one of how you move the cars to being more affordable,” he said. “Jaguar is an outlier.”

Stretton also said Jaguar was going in the “wrong direction” on price.

“The market for cars in excess of £100,000 is not enormous. So Jaguar’s trying to break into a market that’s already tightly fought.”

May said Jaguar cars had traditionally been “very reasonably priced compared with, for example, Aston Martin”.

“So I’d like to see something more like half the price that they’re toting at the moment.”

JLR said the decision to stop selling new Jaguar cars in the UK last month was a deliberate move to “create some breathing space” before unveiling its new look.

It announced the transition to electric vehicles in 2021, keeping all of its three British plants open as part of the strategy.

Jaguar has been the weakest link within the JLR group, which has been owned by Tata Motors for almost a decade.

Jaguar sold 180,000 cars in 2018, but last year sales were down to 67,000.

The Range Rover and Land Rover Defender were behind JLR’s highest profits since 2015, which were announced earlier this year.

The White House has defended President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, after repeatedly insisting he had no plans to grant such executive clemency.

The press secretary said Biden had pardoned his son, who was facing sentencing later this month in two federal cases, to shield him from potential persecution by the outgoing president’s political foes.

The sweeping pardon covers any potential federal crimes that 54-year-old Hunter may have committed over the course of a decade.

Republicans have lambasted the move, with President-elect Donald Trump calling it “an abuse and miscarriage of justice”.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday that Biden had “wrestled” over the decision during the family’s Thanksgiving break on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, at the weekend.

The Democratic president issued the pardon on Sunday evening before heading off on an official trip to Africa.

Ms Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One en route to Angola: “He believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the raw politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”

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Ms Jean-Pierre said Biden believed Hunter was “singled out” because of who he is and that “they [the president’s opponents] would continue to go after his son”.

“This is why the president took this action,” she added. As recently as last month, Ms Jean-Pierre was still telling reporters that Biden would not pardon his son.

In June, Hunter Biden became the first child of a sitting US president to be criminally convicted after a jury in Delaware found him guilty of three charges for lying about his drug use on a form when buying a handgun.

In September, he also pleaded guilty to federal tax charges that included failure to file and pay his taxes, tax evasion and filing a false return.

The pardon – which covers any potential federal crimes that he may have committed between January 2014 and December 2024 – spans a period beyond the tax and gun offences.

It dates back to the year in which he became a board member at Ukrainian energy company Burisma – a time when his father, then US vice-president, had a key role in American policy towards Kyiv.

A congressional inquiry this summer accused Biden of lying when he disavowed any involvement in his son’s business dealings, though the impeachment effort by Republican lawmakers fizzled. Biden denied wrongdoing.

The special counsel overseeing both cases, David Weiss, has flatly rejected claims that the younger Biden was singled out because of his family background.

“There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case,” Mr Weiss’ team wrote in a court filing on Monday.

US First Lady Jill Biden said on Monday from the White House: “Of course I support the pardon of my son.”

The president’s decision sparked furious reaction from Trump and other top Republicans, who have long accused the Biden administration of “weaponising” the justice department against their enemies.

House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said that “trust in our justice system has almost been irreparably damaged by the Bidens and abuse of it”.

House oversight committee chairman James Comer said Biden had “lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities”.

Criticism from Democrats – who have regularly accused Trump of disregarding the rule of law – was more muted.

“President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all,” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Congressman Greg Stanton, an Arizona Democrat, rejected Biden’s claim that the case was unfair.

“This wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution,” he said. “Hunter committed felonies and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”

Others defended the president.

Among them was Texas Democrat – and former defence lawyer – Jasmine Crockett, who told BBC Newshour that she believes that “we would be hard pressed” to find prosecutions similar to the younger Biden’s across the US.

“Let me be clear – this is a father and a president who did not only what was right by his son, but also did right to basically correct what I would consider a wrong,” she said.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told the BBC that he believed Biden had misled the American people.

“President Biden was disingenuous this entire time when he said that he would not pardon his son,” Mr Rahmani said.

“A pardon was the plan from the beginning, but President Biden misled the American people because he, then Kamala Harris, were in the middle of an election.”

When he takes office in January, Trump will not be able to rescind his predecessor’s pardon, said Mr Rahmani.

The president’s power to pardon people is “absolute”, he said.

“There is nothing Donald Trump or the Republicans can do to stop it,” Mr Rahmani added.

Critics of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI have expressed doubts that he is qualified to lead the US government’s principal law enforcement agency.

Some also raised fears that Kash Patel, a behind-the-scenes figure in Trump’s first administration known for his loyalty, aims to dismantle an apolitical federal security service and refashion it into a means of partisan retribution.

“Look, 99.9% of the bureau is made up of hard working agents who adhere to the principles of fidelity, bravery and integrity,” Jeff Lanza, a former FBI agent, said. “But he’s said that he’s coming in to just decimate the agency. How is that going to go well and how will that play into the morale of the agents who have to work under him?”

Trump selected Patel, an unconventional nominee and vocal critic of the FBI, because of his agenda to carry out a radical overhaul of the agency he’s been tapped to lead.

The FBI director leads 37,000 employees across 55 US field offices. They also oversee 350 satellite offices and more than 60 other foreign locations expected to cover almost 200 countries.

Former FBI and Department of Justice officials who spoke to BBC said the job is difficult, and it would be nearly impossible for someone like Patel, who has limited management experience, to operate effectively.

Gregory Brower, a former FBI assistant director and deputy general counsel who worked closely with the past two directors, called the job “nonstop”.

“It’s relentless. It’s high stakes. It requires expert judgment, stamina, experience, and a strong ethical and moral compass,” he told the BBC.

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When he announced his pick for FBI director, Trump called Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People”.

Patel began his career as a federal public defender in Miami before working as a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice between 2014 and 2017. He then spent two years as senior aide to Republicans who led the House Intelligence Committee, reportedly fighting the investigation of Trump and Russian collusion in the 2016 election.

When Democrats took control of the House in 2019, he was hired as a staffer on Trump’s National Security Council. In February 2020, he became principal deputy in the Office of Director of National Intelligence – then led by acting director Richard Grenell.

By November of that year, he had moved to the Pentagon to serve as chief ofstaff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller – a position he held until Trump left office two months later.

“Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic Director,” Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition spokesman, told the BBC.

Those critical of Patel cite past FBI directors, many of whom worked their way up through the justice department or FBI for decades, as a better measure of the qualifications needed to lead the agency.

“It’s certainly not like the backgrounds that we’ve seen other directors of the FBI and those who have overseen other similarly sized and important federal agencies bring to their jobs,” Brower said of Patel’s experience.

Some pointed to former US Attorney General Bill Barr’s recollection in his 2022 memoir of Trump’s attempt to place Patel in a senior FBI position in his first term to stress the point further.

“I categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director. I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body,’” he wrote. “Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the bureau.”

Since leaving office, Patel has promised in interviews that, if Trump returns to office, he and others will use the government to go after political opponents – including politicians and members of the media who he alleges without evidence helped overturn the 2020 US presidential election results.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel told Steve Bannon, a White House chief strategist in Trump’s first term, on the War Room podcast.

“We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice… We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

Trump said during his reelection campaign that he considers Patel’s book – titled Government Gangsters – to be a “blueprint” for his next administration.

In the memoir, which criticises the so-called deep state, Patel calls for “comprehensive housecleaning” of the FBI by firing “the top ranks”.

On a recent podcast, he said the incoming Trump administration intends to retain about 50 members of the FBI’s Washington staff, and the remaining workforce would be put into the field. They would, in essence, “close that building down”, he said, referring to FBI headquarters.

“Open it up the next day as the museum to the deep state,” he added.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Grenell and other former Trump administration officials who worked with Patel have praised his nomination and characterised him as a hardworking public servant.

“I have no doubt that Kash Patel will inspire our line FBI agents who want to fight crime, destroy the cartels, capture spies, and jail mobsters, thugs, fraudsters and traffickers,” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, said on X.

Few, however, mentioned current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump after the then-president fired the agency’s last leader – James Comey – or that he still has three years remaining on his term.

Ultimately, it remains up to the Senate who will vote on whether Patel’s nomination will be confirmed.

While most senators have remained relatively quiet about Patel and a few Republicans have praised the pick, there is some apparent scepticism.

Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, seemed to raise some doubt that he would receive the necessary votes.

“I think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term,” Rounds told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“We’ll see what his (Trump’s) process is, and whether he actually makes that nomination,” Rounds commented about Patel. “We still go through a process, and that process includes advice and consent, which, for the Senate, means advice or consent sometimes.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat who will soon hand his gavel to Republicans, stressed that Trump knows Wray’s term has not yet expired and called for his colleagues to block Patel’s confirmation.

“The President-elect wants to replace his own appointee with an unqualified loyalist,” Durbin said in a statement. “The Senate should reject this unprecedented effort to weaponise the FBI for the campaign of retribution that Donald Trump has promised.”

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

Yasmin – not her real name – came from Iran to study for a master’s degree at a new university in the UK, but she was “shocked” to find many of her fellow students had limited English, and only one or two were British.

“How is it possible to continue this coursework without understanding a British accent or English properly?” she tells BBC File on 4.

Most students paid other people to do their coursework, she explains, and some would pay people to register their attendance at lectures for them.

Yasmin’s experience reflects a growing concern. The University and College Union (UCU) says some institutions are overlooking language skills to receive high fees from overseas students, and one professor tells us 70% of his recent master’s students had inadequate English.

Universities UK – which represents 141 institutions – rejects the claims and says there are strict language requirements for students coming from abroad.

Jo Grady from the UCU, which represents 120,000 lecturers and university staff, says it is an open secret that students who lack English skills find ways to come to the UK to study.

“When we speak to members we hear about the tricks that are pulled in order to have people pass the relevant language test and get on to courses,” she says.

About seven out of 10 students studying on master’s courses in England are now from overseas, far higher than on other types of higher education course, says Rose Stephenson from the Higher Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank.

In England, university tuition fees for undergraduate domestic students are capped at £9,250, rising to £9,535 per year in 2025-26. Each of the other UK nations set their own fees. But fees for overseas students studying in England have no upper limit.

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“You can charge a foreign student as much as they’re willing to pay,” says Ms Stephenson.

Post-graduate fees are not capped either, so a master’s degree at an elite university could cost £50,000.

Because undergraduate tuition fees for domestic students in England have not kept up with inflation, there has been a real-terms cut in university funding, says Ms Stephenson – with international students, in effect, subsidising the below-cost fees of home students.

One whistleblower who worked at an education provider that prepares international students for university, told us agents would target families abroad who had the money to pay.

The whistleblower – who has previously also spoken to the Sunday Times – said: “We knew that those universities are increasingly desperate and would go along with our plans without much scrutiny into how those students were being found.

“No independent party is looking at the grades or the examinations. It’s the Wild West, in a way.”

The whistleblower worked for Study Group, one of dozens of providers feeding the UK university system, and taking fees from students in the process.

Based in the UK, Study Group is a registered provider which says it works for more than 50 universities with a network of 3,500 agents in 99 countries.

Study Group strongly disputes the whistleblower’s claims, saying overseas students earn their places on merit. It adds that any decision to admit a student on to a course is taken by the university, not Study Group, and rejects the claim that entry criteria are waived for any reason.

It says courses it runs are robustly “scrutinised by partner universities”.

Yasmin paid £16,000 for her course in international finance at a university in southern England. She later found out that of the 100 students on most of her modules, “maybe 80 or 90 of them bought assignments” from so-called “essay mills” based overseas. In England it is a criminal offence to complete work for a student which they can pass off as their own.

When Yasmin told her tutor what was happening, he took no action. Yasmin says she now feels her master’s degree has been “devalued”.

A Russell Group university professor, who has taught at several universities and wants to remain anonymous, echoes Yasmin’s concerns. He tells File on 4 that 70% of his students at master’s degree level over the past five years did not have sufficient English language skills to be on the course.

“There have certainly been occasions when very simple questions have not been able to be understood by students who I am teaching,” he says.

The professor told us he has had to adapt his teaching technique, and says students even use translation apps in class. But he insists fault does not lie with international students themselves, who are mostly trying their best, and says the situation varies from subject to subject.

They pass, he says, because courses are often assessed through assignments, rather than exams. Some students use essay mills and pay for others to write their work or, increasingly, use artificial intelligence (AI). Both methods, he says, can defeat current anti-plagiarism software.

UCU’s Jo Grady says it is hardly surprising some students with poor English skills feel they need help from other people, or even use AI to do their work, as an “act of desperation”.

She says her members tell their managers that enrolling students without good English “is a bad idea… they will struggle, and we will also struggle to teach them”. However, she says “university managers and leaders pursue it regardless, because of the money and income it will bring in”.

Some universities are in financial crisis, says Ms Grady, and have become dependent on high-fee paying overseas students who “pay eye-watering sums of money”.

“Institutions are chasing money. They’re not necessarily chasing the best candidates. And it’s a corruption of what higher education should be.”

Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, rejects the suggestion some overseas students are being allowed on courses with poor English language skills as a way of boosting income.

She says universities carry out strict checks on those they enrol – including minimum language levels, as set by the UK government.

“Students will need to be able to afford the fee to study in the UK, but beyond that it’s a question of taking students who apply, and applying a merit-based criteria,” she says. “It is absolutely central that this is a system that people trust.”

Ms Stern says international students are attracted by the quality of the UK’s universities and says it would be “unwise” to rely on international income to fund domestic education and research, because overseas student numbers could be affected by geopolitics or shifts in exchange rates.

Meanwhile, international student numbers are falling. Data on UK student visa applications from the first half of this year shows there has been a 16% decline in applications, resulting in a loss of income for some institutions. This drop is, in part, being attributed to changes in UK student visa rules preventing most postgraduate students from bringing dependents.

It is contributing to the worst financial crisis for universities since fees were first introduced. Last month, the government regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), estimated that by 2025-26, 72% of universities could be spending more money than they have coming in, and warned that “rapid and decisive action is necessary”.

The Department for Education told the BBC a reliance on overseas students has been identified as a risk, and many universities will have to change their business models, adding that the government is committed to managing migration carefully.

US President-elect Donald Trump has issued an apparent warning to Hamas, threatening “all hell to pay” if hostages held in Gaza are not released by the time he returns to the White House on 20 January.

Dozens of people taken during the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack remain unaccounted for. On Monday, the Israeli military said an Israeli-American soldier who it believed to be a captive had in fact been killed last October.

Without mentioning Hamas by name, Trump posted online the same day: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.”

Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “strong statement”.

Trump has generally spoken of ending foreign conflicts, and of reducing US involvement.

He has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel during its campaign in Gaza, but has urged the American ally to end its military operation.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 44,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Tens of thousands of others have been injured and much of the Palestinian enclave is in ruins.

On Monday, Israel attributed a new death to the 2023 assault by Hamas – saying Israeli-American soldier Omer Neutra was killed that day, and his body taken to Gaza. He was previously believed to have been in captivity but alive.

US President Joe Biden was among those who paid tribute to the 21-year-old, saying he was “devastated and outraged” at Neutra’s death.

In recent days, Hamas also released a video purporting to show another Israeli-American caught up in the attacks, hostage Edan Alexander.

In the clip, in which he appears distressed, the man calls on Trump and Netanyahu to negotiate for his freedom.

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Monday’s Truth Social post by Trump gave few specifics, but appeared to refer to the hostages still held captive in Gaza by Hamas.

“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world, in the Middle East – but it’s all talk, and no action!” he wrote.

He went on to say: “If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity.”

The 20 January date refers to Trump’s inauguration, following his win in last month’s US presidential election.

His post continued: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

In response, senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters that Netanyahu had sabotaged all efforts to secure a deal that involved exchanging the hostages for Palestinians prisoners held by Israel.

“Therefore, we understand [Trump’s] message is directed first at Netanyahu and his government to end this evil game,” he told the news agency.

Netanyahu said Trump’s message was aimed at the “responsibility of Hamas” to release the hostages, and said the president-elect’s comment “adds another force to our continued effort to release all the hostages”.

His words echoed comments made during July’s Republican National Convention, when he threatened a “very big price” if hostages were not returned.

During the recent election campaign, Trump presented himself as the anti-war candidate, suggesting for example that he could end the conflict in Ukraine “in a day”.

A ceasefire in a linked conflict in Lebanon – between Israel and Hezbollah, a group allied to Hamas – came into effect last week, but has been threatened by fire from both sides.

After the Lebanon ceasefire was agreed, the US said it would make another push with regional powers for a ceasefire in Gaza, involving the release of hostages and the removal of Hamas from power.

Updating reporters on Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters: “The main stumbling block continues to be Hamas.”

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More than two years after the Supreme Court granted bail and ordered “immediate release” of Mohammed Zubair from prison, the leading Indian fact-checker and journalist is once again back in court.

On Tuesday, the Allahabad high court briefly heard his petition in a fresh case as police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh seek his arrest, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

The charge is non-bailable and a conviction could mean a minimum of seven years in jail and fine or even life imprisonment.

Zubair, who’s a co-founder of the fact-checking website called AltNews, denies all the accusations against him. “I feel I’m being targeted because of the work I do,” he told the BBC.

Just 20 minutes into Tuesday’s hearing, the judges recused themselves from hearing the case – now the case will have to be taken up by another court in the coming days.

Described by some as “a thorn in the side for the government because he’s single-handedly taking on hate crimes”, Zubair is wanted in connection with a post he put out on X spotlighting hate speech by a controversial Hindu priest.

Shared on 3 October, the post included a video that showed Yati Narsinghanand delivering comments against Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims found hurtful.

The 60-year-old priest is the head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad town and has been repeatedly in the news for openly calling for violence against Muslims. In 2022, he was arrested for making Islamophobic and misogynistic comments and spent a month in jail.

A day after Zubair’s post pointed out his latest offensive comments, Muslims protested outside the temple. Police said 10 people were arrested for allegedly pelting stones during the protest, PTI reported.

Several Muslim groups lodged police complaints against Narsinghanand and the priest disappeared from public view amid reports that he had been arrested. Police, however, denied that.

A few days later, hundreds of Narsinghanand’s supporters surrounded the local police station, demanding action against Zubair. Police opened a case against the fact-checker after Uditya Tyagi – a politician from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a close aide of the priest – lodged a complaint.

In the initial complaint, Zubair faced somewhat milder charges – including promoting enmity between different religious groups, defamation and giving false evidence. But last week, police added Section 152 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita – as India’s new legal code is called – to the list of charges, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

This, legal experts say, allows police to arrest Zubair. His lawyer has sought interim bail and also asked the court to throw out the case.

In his defence, Zubair says he was not the only one who had posted Narsinghanand’s remarks and that a number of journalists, politicians and media channels had tweeted the video even before him.

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“Police have registered a case against me based on complaints from the followers of a man who routinely gives hate speeches. And they are going after someone who’s reporting hate speeches, while people giving hate speeches are going free,” he says.

“This is an attempt to gag people trying to hold the government to account,” he adds.

Pratik Sinha, Zubair’s colleague and the other co-founder of AltNews, says the authorities go after Zubair because of the work he does and because it makes an impact.

“It’s a classic case of shooting the messenger. It’s a witch-hunt,” he told the BBC.

“Why are the police invoking more stringent charges against him nearly two months later? It’s not just Narsinghanand and his supporters going after him – this is actually the government going after him.”

The addition of the draconian charge against Zubair has also been criticised by rights organisations and groups representing journalists and media in India who say that Section 152 is a “new version” of the colonial-era sedition law.

Amnesty International India said it was an example of how the law was being used “to harass, intimidate, and persecute human rights defenders, activists, journalists, students, filmmakers, singers, actors and writers for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression”.

The Press Club of India condemned the move and demanded withdrawal of the police case against Zubair.

“All sane minds have been opposing this section as it has potential to silence the free thinkers and media. It can also be imposed against those who are critical of dispensation,” it said in a statement.

Digipub, an association of digital media organisations, condemned the “escalating harassment” of Zubair and described the allegations against him as “unfounded”.

“This is a vindictive and unreasonable over-reach by agencies of the state,” it said.

The government had faced similar criticism in 2022 when Zubair was arrested and spent more than three weeks in jail before the Supreme Court freed him on bail.

Delhi police had arrested him over a 2018 tweet which was a screengrab from a popular 1980s Bollywood film, but they accused him of “insulting Hindu religious beliefs”. Later, police in Uttar Pradesh also registered cases against him, accusing him of other misdemeanours including criminal conspiracy and receiving foreign funds.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia had accused him of being “selective and politically biased” in his fact-checking and said his tweets “hurt the religious sentiments of a large number of Hindus”.

But many at the time linked his arrest to the controversial Islamophobic comments made by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. The Hindu newspaper said Zubair was “being made to pay for a tweet that had drawn wide attention to Sharma’s vile remarks” against Prophet Mohammad and described it as an instance of the government’s “intolerance towards fact-checkers who frequently expose its claims”.

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International rights groups and the United Nations had also expressed concern, with a spokesperson for the UN chief Antonio Guterres saying that “journalists should not be jailed for what they write, tweet, and say”.

But critics say that’s exactly what the authorities are using to pick on Zubair and other journalists.

India has been consistently sliding on the Global Press Freedom rankings – it is now placed at 159 out of 180 countries – according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“Journalists critical of the government are routinely subjected to online harassment, intimidation, threats and physical attacks, as well as criminal prosecutions and arbitrary arrests,” the annual RSF report said.

In the past, the Indian government has rejected the report, saying its methodology was “questionable and non-transparent”.