Lawmakers in South Korea have narrowly failed to impeach the nation’s president over his short-lived attempt to declare martial law.

A bill to censure Yoon Suk Yeol fell three votes short of the 200 needed to pass, with many members of parliament in the ruling People Power Party (PPP) boycotting the vote.

The South Korean premier sparked widespread shock and anger when he declared military rule – associated with authoritarianism in the country – on Tuesday, in a bid to break out of a political stalemate.

Yoon’s declaration was quickly overturned by parliament, before his government rescinded it a few hours later in the midst of large protests.

• As it happened: South Korea’s impeachment vote
• Why did South Korea’s president declare martial law?
• Six hours that shook South Korea

The impeachment bill needed a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly to pass, meaning at least eight PPP MPs would have to vote in favour.

However, all but three walked out of the chamber earlier on Saturday.

One of those who remained, Cho Kyung-tae, credited Yoon’s apology for the martial law decree on Saturday morning – after three days out of public view – as having influenced his decision not to back impeachment this time.

“The president’s apology and his willingness to step down early, as well as delegating all political agendas to the party, did have an impact on my decision,” he told the BBC ahead of the vote.

Cho said he believed impeachment would hand the presidency to the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Lee Jae-myung.

He added that Yoon’s “irrational and absurd decision” to declare martial law had “overshadowed” what he described as the DPK’s “many extreme actions” while in power.

DPK lawmaker Lee Unjoo told the BBC that she had cried when PPP politicians walked out.

“We did know there was a possibility they might boycott the vote, but we didn’t believe they would actually go through with it when tens of thousands of citizens were watching right outside,” she said.

Following Saturday’s vote, Lee insisted his party “will not give up” with its attempts to impeach Yoon, who he said had become “the worst risk” to South Korea.

“We will definitely return this country to normal by Christmas and the end of the year,” he told a crowd gathered outside the parliament in the capital, Seoul.

Prior to Tuesday, martial law – temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, during which civil rights are usually curtailed – had not been declared in South Korea since before it became a parliamentary democracy in 1987.

Yoon claimed the measures were needed to defeat “anti-state forces” in the parliament and referred to North Korea.

But others saw the move as an extreme reaction to the political stalemate that had arisen since the DPK won a landslide in April, reducing his government to vetoing the bills it passed, as well as Yoon’s increasing unpopularity in the wake of a scandal surrounding the First Lady.

The president’s late-night address caused dramatic scenes at the National Assembly, with protesters descending en masse as military personnel attempted to block entry to the building.

Lawmakers tussled with the soldiers, with 190 MPs making it into the building to vote down the order.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Yoon’s cabinet rescinded the martial law declaration.

However, the short-lived military takeover has seen daily protests on the streets. Some came out in support of Yoon, though they were drowned out by angry mobs.

Authorities have since revealed more about the events of Tuesday night.

The commander charged with the military takeover said he had learned of the decree on TV along with everyone else in the country.

He said he had refused to make his troops arrest lawmakers inside parliament, and did not give them live ammunition rounds.

The National Intelligence Service later confirmed rumours that Yoon had ordered the arrest and interrogation of his political rivals – and even some of his supposed political allies, such as his own party leader Han Dong-hoon.

These revelations saw some members of Yoon’s own party signal their support for impeachment.

The president’s apology on Saturday morning appeared to be a last-ditch effort to shore up support.

He said the martial law declaration had been made out of “desperation” and pledged he would not make another.

Yoon did not offer to resign, but said he would leave decisions on how to stabilise the country to his party.

Were he to be impeached, it would not be unprecedented. In 2016, then-President Park Geun-hye was impeached after being accused of helping a friend commit extortion.

If South Korea’s parliament passes an impeachment bill, a trial would be held by a constitutional court. Two-thirds of that court would have to sustain the majority for him to be removed permanently from office.

Koh Jae-hak can still vividly remember when he saw soldiers gunning down a group of young women in cold blood.

It was April 1960. Students had launched protests calling for the resignation of the dictatorial president Syngman Rhee. Mr Koh was working in a government building when he looked out of the window and saw protesters clashing with police.

“There were demonstrations from various universities, and they all gathered in front… that’s when shots were fired,” the 87-year-old said. Days later, martial law was declared.

South Korea is widely considered a peaceful beacon of democracy in Asia, but that wasn’t always the case. This is a country that saw 16 bouts of martial law during its first four decades ruled largely by dictators.

It is why democracy is now deeply treasured by South Koreans as a hard-won right. It is also why President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law this week – the first to happen in 45 years and during democratic rule – was particularly triggering and prompted such a visceral response.

Almost immediately, lawmakers jumped out of bed and rushed to the national assembly, clambering over fences to reverse martial law.

Hundreds of ordinary citizens gathered to hold back troops who had been ordered to throw out MPs.

Some soldiers, apparently unwilling to carry out their orders, reportedly dragged their feet in clearing the crowd and entering the building.

When Yoon declared martial law on Tuesday night, he said it was necessary to get rid of “pro-North anti-state” forces. Initially, it caused confusion with some South Koreans who believed there was a genuine threat from the North.

But as they continued watching Yoon’s televised announcement, many grew sceptical. He gave no evidence of such forces at work, nor explained who they were. As Yoon had previously used similar language to describe the opposition that had been stymying his reforms, the public concluded he was actually trying to crush his political foes.

Previous periods of martial law had also been justified by leaders as necessary to stabilise the country, and sometimes stamp out what they alleged were communist subversives planted by North Korea.

They curtailed freedom of press and freedom of movement. Night curfews and arrests were common.

Violent clashes sometimes took place, most indelibly in 1980, when then President Chun Doo-hwan extended martial law to deal with student protesters calling for democracy in the southern city of Gwangju. A brutal military crackdown was launched, and it has since been labelled a massacre – while the official death toll is 193, some experts believe hundreds more died.

South Korea eventually transitioned to democracy in 1988, when the government held its first free and fair presidential election following mounting public pressure. But the preceding decades had permanently and profoundly shaped the nation’s consciousness.

“Most Koreans have trauma, deep trauma, about martial law,” said Kelly Kim, 53, an environmental activist. “We don’t want to repeat the same thing over and over.”

Ms Kim was a young child when martial law was last in place and has little memory of it. Still, she shudders at the thought of it returning.

“The government would control all the media, our normal activities. I’m working in civil society, so all our activities, like criticising the government, would not be possible under the martial law. So that’s really horrible.”

The freedoms afforded by democracy have not just led to a thriving civil society.

In the more than 35 years since that first democratic election, South Korea’s creative industries have flourished, with its dramas, TV shows, music and literature becoming world famous. Those creative industries have turned their own lenses onto the country’s past, bringing history to life for those too young to remember.

The country has seen a proliferation of shows about its dictatorship past, immortalising incidents such as the Gwangju uprising in popular culture.

Some were blockbusters featuring South Korea’s biggest stars, such as last year’s 12.12 The Day, a historical drama starring popular actor Hwang Jung-min. The movie depicts the political chaos that took place in 1979 as martial law was declared following the assassination of then president Park Chung-hee.

“As soon as I saw the images [of Yoon’s declaration of martial law], it reminded me of that movie… it made me question, are we about to repeat that history now?” said Marina Kang, a 37-year-old web designer.

“Korea’s got a wealth of visual representational works [of that era] in films and documentaries. Though we only have indirect experience of the horrific past through these works… that still makes me feel very strongly that such events should not happen again.”

Among younger citizens, there is a sense of disbelief that it could have returned. Despite never knowing life under martial law, they have been taught by their parents and older relatives to fear it.

“At first [when I heard Yoon’s announcement], I was excited at the thought of getting a day off from school. But that joy was fleeting, and I was overwhelmed by the fear of daily life collapsing. I couldn’t sleep,” said 15-year-old Kwon Hoo.

“My father was concerned that under martial law, he wouldn’t be able to stay out late even though his work required him to… when he heard the news about the possibility of a curfew being imposed again, he started swearing while watching the news.”

Not all South Koreans feel this way about their past.

“The vast majority of Koreans appreciate democracy enormously and regret the authoritarianism of the post-war period,” said Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

But, he added, “the country remains very divided regarding numerous aspects of the authoritarian past, notably how justified certain repressive measures were in order to prevent communist subversion.”

There is the view among a significant portion of the population, especially among older folk, that martial law was necessary in the past for stability and democracy.

“Back then, it was a time defined by ideological warfare between democracy and communist socialism,” said Kang Hyo-san, 83. He was sitting next to his friend Mr Koh in a cafe at Gwanghwamun, Seoul’s main square and focal point for the city’s protest rallies.

The competing ideologies would lead to clashes and “when the military intervened, the situation would stabilise… it was a process to restore order and properly establish free democracy.

“Given the circumstances, we couldn’t help but view it positively,” he said, adding that he felt each period of martial law left the country in a more “favourable” position. Martial law in South Korea “fundamentally differed” from other nations, where it “wasn’t about killing people or senseless violence”, he insisted.

But this time, it’s different. Both octogenarians felt that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unacceptable. “Even though we’ve experienced martial law many times throughout our lives, this time there’s no justification for its declaration,” said Mr Koh.

Like them, Ms Kim, the environmental activist, was glad Yoon did not succeed and democracy prevailed in the end. “Because we fought so hard to get it, right? We don’t want to lose it again.

“Without democracy and freedom of living, what is life?”

At least two people have died, and three others injured, after explosions rocked a block of flats in The Hague, authorities have said.

Firefighters rushed to the three-storey building following the blasts that caused the collapse of several homes in the Tarwekamp area at around 06:15 (05:15 GMT) on Saturday.

The city’s mayor, Jan van Zanen, said it was not known how many people were still missing.

The cause of the explosions is not yet clear, but Dutch police said a car drove away “at very high speed” shortly after, and have appealed for witnesses.

Jan van Zanen said the chance of survivors being pulled from the rubble was slim, and urged the community to prepare for a “worst case scenario”.

It was earlier thought up to 20 people may have been in the flats at the time of the blast, but the mayor refused to speculate on this.

While authorities said earlier that four people were injured, the mayor revised that number down to three.

Dutch media reported five flats were destroyed in the explosion.

Rescue teams with sniffer dogs have been deployed to sift through the debris, but parts of the site remain too dangerous to access.

A large excavator has been brought in to remove debris.

Fourteen-year-old Adam Muller told the AFP news agency the explosion “felt like an earthquake”.

“I was asleep and suddenly there was this huge bang,” he said.

“I looked out of the window and just saw flames. It’s a massive shock,” he added.

National police commissioner in the Netherlands Janny Knol said there was “disbelief and uncertainty” in the community.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima said in a statement: “We sympathise with all those who have been personally affected or who fear for the fate of their loved ones.”

“Daya, darwaaza tod do.” (Daya, break down the door)

Most Indians will instantly recognise this dialogue from the popular detective show CID, which ran from 1998 to 2018, making it one of India’s longest-running television shows.

The whodunnit featured three intrepid policemen – ACP Pradyuman, inspector Daya and inspector Abhijeet – solving case after case, as no criminal was ever a match for them. The low-budget episodes had comically simple plots, iffy acting, and all it took for a suspect to confess was a good slap from ACP Pradyuman.

But over the years, the show has achieved cult status, and its characters and dialogues have spawned a wealth of jokes, memes and reels.

CID is set to return later this month, sparking mixed reactions among its fans. Some are eager to see the three policemen back in action but others say that the show’s old-world charm might not fit in with the gritty realism of modern-day crime shows.

Over the past few days, the creators of the show have been releasing teasers for upcoming episodes on Instagram, each garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.

Apart from the three main characters, the teasers feature familiar tropes and dialogues. These include Inspector Daya kicking open doors to reveal a suspect’s hideout and ACP Pradyuman muttering his iconic line, ‘kuch toh gadbad hai, Daya’ (something’s not right, Daya), signaling to both his team and the audience that a crime has taken place.

Trisha Shah, 35, a content creator from Mumbai and a fan of the show, says that the teasers make her nostalgic.

“CID was one of the few crime shows on television back then and my parents didn’t mind me watching it because of its family-friendly content,” Ms Shah says.

“Despite being a crime show, it never showed gruesome violence, sexual crimes, foul language or anything that was not suitable for family viewing.”

In an interview to Film Companion, an entertainment journalism platform, one of the writers of the show said that they even avoided giving surnames to the characters to avoid hurting anyone’s sentiments.

But the show’s outlandish plots more than made up for its primness, whether that was ACP Pradyuman coming back from the dead or inspector Daya single-handedly manoeuvring a poison-gas filled plane to safety.

In an interview to Forbes magazine, the producer of the show, BP Singh, described these scenes and plots as “believable nonsense”.

“You may later laugh at it [the scene]. But for those five minutes, it is so engrossing that you don’t mind it,” he told the magazine.

In a rather comical fashion, the characters would also explain plots and technologies used to solve crimes through their dialogues, making it easy for even children to grasp what was happening.

“The bad guys always got caught and that was comforting to watch,” Ms Shah says. “I don’t think I’ll enjoy the show today, but back then, it was a big deal.”

In the 1990s, TV was a big deal as it was the only form of home entertainment. At the start of the decade, India eased broadcasting rights, making more channels available.

“Initially, channels like Star began showing reruns of American shows like Baywatch and The Bold and The Beautiful. But new entrants like Zee TV and Sony began producing original shows to cater to the Indian audience,” says Harsh Taneja, an associate professor of media at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Producers often adapted Western shows for Indian audiences by importing format Bibles – guidelines outlining story structure – and modifying them for local context, he says. So, a show like CID often featured plots that closely resembled those of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, an American crime drama.

The 1990s and 2000s saw television become a staple in households as people’s spending power grew. Many homes had not just one but two televisions, leading producers to create content targeting different age groups, says Mr Taneja.

Interestingly, the target audience of CID, when it was released in the 1990s, was children in the age group of six to 14. After CID, several other crime-focussed shows began to populate channels – from Crime Patrol to Savadhan India. But one could say that it was CID that created an appetite for crime shows among viewers.

Priya Ravi, 40, remembers waiting eagerly for each CID episode to air when she was a child. She confesses that it was the show that made her push her parents to get a television set at their home.

“Episodes used to air twice a week, and initially I used to go to a friend’s place to watch them. But then I convinced my parents to get a TV so that I could watch the episodes at home. I was so happy the day the TV arrived,” Ms Ravi says.

She says that though she won’t watch the new CID episodes, she’ll definitely encourage her two children, aged seven and nine, to watch them.

“If the show remains as clean as it was back in the day, I think it’s a great way to introduce children to some of the realities of life and make them vigilant about their safety and surroundings,” she says.

“I’m looking forward to the heroic trio making a comeback.”

The “brazen and targeted” killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, outside a New York hotel this week shocked America. The reaction to the crime also exposed a simmering rage against a trillion-dollar industry.

“Prior authorisation” does not seem like a phrase that would generate much passion.

But on a hot day this past July, more than 100 people gathered outside the Minnesota headquarters of UnitedHealthcare to protest against the insurance firm’s policies and denial of patient claims.

“Prior authorisation” allows companies to review suggested treatments before agreeing to pay for them.

Eleven people were arrested for blocking a road during the protest.

Police records indicate they came from around the country, including Maine, New York, Texas and West Virginia, to the rally organised by the People’s Action Institute.

Unai Montes-Irueste, media strategy director of the Chicago-based advocacy group, said those protesting had personal experience with denied claims and other problems with the healthcare system.

• What we know about NYC killing of healthcare executive
• Who was Brian Thompson?

“They are denied care, then they have to go through an appeals process that’s incredibly difficult to win,” he told the BBC.

The latent anger felt by many Americans at the healthcare system – a dizzying array of providers, for profit and not-for-profit companies, insurance giants, and government programmes – burst into the open following the apparent targeted killing of Thompson in New York City on Wednesday.

Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance unit of health services provider UnitedHealth Group. The company is the largest insurer in the US.

Police are still on the hunt for the suspected killer, whose motivation is unknown, but authorities have revealed messages written on shell casings found at the scene.

The words “deny”, “defend”, and “depose” were discovered on the casings, which investigators believe could refer to tactics which critics say insurance companies use to avoid payouts and to increase profits.

A scroll through Thompson’s LinkedIn history reveals that many were angry about denied claims.

One woman responded to a post the executive had made boasting of his firm’s work on making drugs more affordable.

“I have stage 4 metastatic lung cancer,” she wrote. “We’ve just left [UnitedHealthcare] because of all the denials for my meds. Every month there is a different reason for the denial.”

Thompson’s wife told US broadcaster NBC that he had received threatening messages before.

“There had been some threats,” Paulette Thompson said. “Basically, I don’t know, a lack of [medical] coverage? I don’t know details.”

“I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

A security expert says that frustration at high costs across a range of industries inevitably results in threats against corporate leaders.

Philip Klein, who runs the Texas-based Klein Investigations, which protected Thompson when he gave a speech in the early 2000s, says that he’s astonished the executive didn’t have security for his trip to New York City.

“There’s lot of anger in the United States of America right now,” Mr Klein said.

“Companies need to wake up and realise that their executives could be hunted down anywhere.”

Mr Klein says he’s been inundated with calls since Thompson was killed. Top US firms typically spend millions of dollars on personal security for high-level executives.

In the wake of the shooting, a number of politicians and industry officials expressed shock and sympathy.

Michael Tuffin, president of insurance industry organistion Ahip, said he was “heartbroken and horrified by the loss of my friend Brian Thompson”.

“He was a devoted father, a good friend to many and a refreshingly candid colleague and leader.”

In a statement, UnitedHealth Group said it had received many messages of support from “patients, consumers, health care professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people”.

But online many people, including UnitedHealthcare customers and users of other insurance services, reacted differently.

Those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was “thoughts and prior authorisations”, a play on the phrase “thoughts and prayers”) to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms.

At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death.

The online anger seemed to bridge the political divide.

Animosity was expressed from avowed socialists to right-wing activists suspicious of the so-called “deep state” and corporate power. It also came from ordinary people sharing stories about insurance firms denying their claims for medical treatments.

Mr Montes-Irueste of People’s Action said he was shocked by the news of the killing.

He said his group campaigned in a “nonviolent, democratic” way – but he added he understood the bitterness online.

“We have a balkanised and broken healthcare system, which is why there are very strong feelings being expressed right now by folks who are experiencing that broken system in various different ways,” he said.

Mr Tuffin, head of the health insurance trade association, condemned any threats made against his colleagues, describing them as “mission-driven professionals working to make coverage and care as affordable as possible”.

The posts underlined the deep frustration many Americans feel towards health insurers and the system in general.

“The system is incredibly complicated,” said Sara Collins, a senior scholar at The Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare research foundation.

“Just navigating and understanding how you get covered can be challenging for people,” she said. “And everything might seem fine until you get sick and need your plan.”

Recent Commonwealth Fund research found that 45% of insured working-age adults were charged for something they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, and less than half of those who reported suspected billing errors challenged them. And 17% of respondents said their insurer denied coverage for care that was recommended by their doctor.

Not only is the US health system complicated, it’s expensive, and huge costs can often fall directly on individuals.

Prices are negotiated between providers and insurers, Ms Collins says, meaning that what’s charged to patients or insurance companies often bears little resemblance to the actual costs of providing medical services.

“We find high rates of people saying that their healthcare costs are unaffordable, across all insurance types, even (government-funded) Medicaid and Medicare,” she said.

“People accumulate medical debt because they can’t pay their bills. This is unique to the United States. We truly have a medical debt crisis.”

A survey by researchers at health policy foundation KFF found that around two-thirds of Americans said insurance companies deserve “a lot” of blame for high healthcare costs. Most insured adults, 81%, still rated their health insurance as “excellent” or “good”.

Christine Eibner, a senior economist at the nonprofit think tank the RAND Corporation, said that in recent years insurers have been increasingly issuing denials for treatment coverage and making use of prior authorisations to decline coverage.

She said premiums are about $25,000 (£19,600) per family.

“On top of that, people face out-of-pocket costs, which could easily be in the thousands of dollars,” she said.

UnitedHealthcare and other insurance providers have faced lawsuits, media investigations and government probes over their practices.

Last year, UnitedHealthcare settled a lawsuit brought by a chronically ill college student whose story was covered by news site ProPublica, which says he was saddled with $800,000 of medical bills when his doctor-prescribed drugs were denied.

The company is currently fighting a class-action lawsuit that claims it uses artificial intelligence to end treatments early.

The BBC has contacted UnitedHealth Group for comment.

Koh Jae-hak can still vividly remember when he saw soldiers gunning down a group of young women in cold blood.

It was April 1960. Students had launched protests calling for the resignation of the dictatorial president Syngman Rhee. Mr Koh was working in a government building when he looked out of the window and saw protesters clashing with police.

“There were demonstrations from various universities, and they all gathered in front… that’s when shots were fired,” the 87-year-old said. Days later, martial law was declared.

South Korea is widely considered a peaceful beacon of democracy in Asia, but that wasn’t always the case. This is a country that saw 16 bouts of martial law during its first four decades ruled largely by dictators.

It is why democracy is now deeply treasured by South Koreans as a hard-won right. It is also why President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law this week – the first to happen in 45 years and during democratic rule – was particularly triggering and prompted such a visceral response.

Almost immediately, lawmakers jumped out of bed and rushed to the national assembly, clambering over fences to reverse martial law.

Hundreds of ordinary citizens gathered to hold back troops who had been ordered to throw out MPs.

Some soldiers, apparently unwilling to carry out their orders, reportedly dragged their feet in clearing the crowd and entering the building.

When Yoon declared martial law on Tuesday night, he said it was necessary to get rid of “pro-North anti-state” forces. Initially, it caused confusion with some South Koreans who believed there was a genuine threat from the North.

But as they continued watching Yoon’s televised announcement, many grew sceptical. He gave no evidence of such forces at work, nor explained who they were. As Yoon had previously used similar language to describe the opposition that had been stymying his reforms, the public concluded he was actually trying to crush his political foes.

Previous periods of martial law had also been justified by leaders as necessary to stabilise the country, and sometimes stamp out what they alleged were communist subversives planted by North Korea.

They curtailed freedom of press and freedom of movement. Night curfews and arrests were common.

Violent clashes sometimes took place, most indelibly in 1980, when then President Chun Doo-hwan extended martial law to deal with student protesters calling for democracy in the southern city of Gwangju. A brutal military crackdown was launched, and it has since been labelled a massacre – while the official death toll is 193, some experts believe hundreds more died.

South Korea eventually transitioned to democracy in 1988, when the government held its first free and fair presidential election following mounting public pressure. But the preceding decades had permanently and profoundly shaped the nation’s consciousness.

“Most Koreans have trauma, deep trauma, about martial law,” said Kelly Kim, 53, an environmental activist. “We don’t want to repeat the same thing over and over.”

Ms Kim was a young child when martial law was last in place and has little memory of it. Still, she shudders at the thought of it returning.

“The government would control all the media, our normal activities. I’m working in civil society, so all our activities, like criticising the government, would not be possible under the martial law. So that’s really horrible.”

The freedoms afforded by democracy have not just led to a thriving civil society.

In the more than 35 years since that first democratic election, South Korea’s creative industries have flourished, with its dramas, TV shows, music and literature becoming world famous. Those creative industries have turned their own lenses onto the country’s past, bringing history to life for those too young to remember.

The country has seen a proliferation of shows about its dictatorship past, immortalising incidents such as the Gwangju uprising in popular culture.

Some were blockbusters featuring South Korea’s biggest stars, such as last year’s 12.12 The Day, a historical drama starring popular actor Hwang Jung-min. The movie depicts the political chaos that took place in 1979 as martial law was declared following the assassination of then president Park Chung-hee.

“As soon as I saw the images [of Yoon’s declaration of martial law], it reminded me of that movie… it made me question, are we about to repeat that history now?” said Marina Kang, a 37-year-old web designer.

“Korea’s got a wealth of visual representational works [of that era] in films and documentaries. Though we only have indirect experience of the horrific past through these works… that still makes me feel very strongly that such events should not happen again.”

Among younger citizens, there is a sense of disbelief that it could have returned. Despite never knowing life under martial law, they have been taught by their parents and older relatives to fear it.

“At first [when I heard Yoon’s announcement], I was excited at the thought of getting a day off from school. But that joy was fleeting, and I was overwhelmed by the fear of daily life collapsing. I couldn’t sleep,” said 15-year-old Kwon Hoo.

“My father was concerned that under martial law, he wouldn’t be able to stay out late even though his work required him to… when he heard the news about the possibility of a curfew being imposed again, he started swearing while watching the news.”

Not all South Koreans feel this way about their past.

“The vast majority of Koreans appreciate democracy enormously and regret the authoritarianism of the post-war period,” said Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

But, he added, “the country remains very divided regarding numerous aspects of the authoritarian past, notably how justified certain repressive measures were in order to prevent communist subversion.”

There is the view among a significant portion of the population, especially among older folk, that martial law was necessary in the past for stability and democracy.

“Back then, it was a time defined by ideological warfare between democracy and communist socialism,” said Kang Hyo-san, 83. He was sitting next to his friend Mr Koh in a cafe at Gwanghwamun, Seoul’s main square and focal point for the city’s protest rallies.

The competing ideologies would lead to clashes and “when the military intervened, the situation would stabilise… it was a process to restore order and properly establish free democracy.

“Given the circumstances, we couldn’t help but view it positively,” he said, adding that he felt each period of martial law left the country in a more “favourable” position. Martial law in South Korea “fundamentally differed” from other nations, where it “wasn’t about killing people or senseless violence”, he insisted.

But this time, it’s different. Both octogenarians felt that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unacceptable. “Even though we’ve experienced martial law many times throughout our lives, this time there’s no justification for its declaration,” said Mr Koh.

Like them, Ms Kim, the environmental activist, was glad Yoon did not succeed and democracy prevailed in the end. “Because we fought so hard to get it, right? We don’t want to lose it again.

“Without democracy and freedom of living, what is life?”

As 2024 draws to a close, and winter arrives, Russian forces are continuing to push their Ukrainian opponents back.

In total, Russia has captured and retaken about 2,350 sq km of territory (907 sq miles) in eastern Ukraine and in Russia’s western Kursk region.

But the cost in lives has been horrendous.

Britain’s defence ministry says that in November Russia suffered 45,680 casualties, more than during any month since its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to the latest UK Defence Intelligence estimate, Russia lost a daily average of 1,523 men, killed and wounded.

On 28 November, it says, Russia lost more than 2,000 men in a single day, the first time this has happened.

“We’re seeing the Russians grinding out more advances,” one official said, on condition of anonymity. “But at enormous cost.”

Officials said the casualty figures were based on open-source material, sometimes cross-referenced with classified data.

All in all, Russia is estimated to have lost about 125,800 soldiers over the course of its autumn offensives, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Russia’s “meat-grinder” tactics, the ISW says, mean that Moscow is losing more than 50 soldiers for each square kilometre of captured territory.

Ukraine does not allow publication of its own military casualties, so there are no official estimates covering the last few months.

The Russian defence ministry says more than 38,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been lost (killed and wounded) in Kursk alone – a number that is impossible to verify.

Yuriy Butusov, a well-connected but controversial Ukrainian war correspondent, says that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since February 2022, with another 35,000 missing.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied US media reports that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian troops had died, saying it was “much less”.

He did not offer his own figure.

But taken together, the Russian and Ukrainian casualty figures point to the terrifying intensity of fighting going on in Kursk and Ukraine’s eastern regions.

Western officials see no sign of this changing.

“The Russian forces are highly likely to continue to attempt to stretch Ukrainian forces by using mass to overwhelm defensive positions and achieve tactical gains,” one said.

The pace of Russia’s advance has increased in recent weeks (while still nothing like the speed of its rapid advances in the first months of the war), stemmed only by a significant change in the ratio of artillery fire between the two sides.

Where once Russia was able to fire as many as 13 shells for every one Ukraine fired back, the ratio is now around 1.5 to 1.

This dramatic turnaround is partly explained by increased domestic production, as well as successful Ukrainian attacks on depots containing Russian and North Korean ammunition.

But artillery, while important, no longer plays such a decisive role.

“The bad news is that there’s been a massive increase in Russian glide bomb use,” one Western official said, “with devastating effects on the front line.”

Russia’s use of glide bombs – launched from jets flying well inside Russian-controlled airspace – has increased 10-fold over the past year, the official said.

Glide bombs and drones have transformed the conflict, as each side races to innovate.

“We’re at the point where drone warfare made infantry toothless, if not obsolete,” Serhiy, a front line soldier told me via WhatsApp.

As for manpower, both Ukraine and Russia continue to experience difficulties, but for different reasons.

Ukraine has been unwilling to reduce its conscription age below 25, depriving it of all 18- to 24-year-olds – except those who volunteer.

Russia, meanwhile, is still able to replace its losses, although President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to conduct a fresh round of mobilisation points to a number of domestic considerations.

Soaring inflation, overflowing hospitals and problems with compensation payments to bereaved families are all factors.

In some regions of Russia, bonuses offered to volunteers willing to sign up for the war in Ukraine have risen as high as three million roubles (about £23,500; $30,000).

“I’m not suggesting that the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse,” the official said. “I’m just saying that pressures continue to mount there.”

Recent events in Syria could add to Moscow’s woes, as the Kremlin decides what resources it can afford to devote to its defence of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But with the situation in Syria developing rapidly, officials say it’s too early to know what impact events there will have on the war in Ukraine.

“There’s certainly potentially longer-term prioritisation dilemmas for Russia,” one official said.

“It depends how the situation in Syria goes.”

More than 150 illegal miners have been rescued from an abandoned mine in South Africa’s eastern Mpumalanga province.

Police say three bodies were recovered earlier this week on the first day of the rescue operation.

Most of those rescued, reportedly foreign nationals, claim they were forced underground against their will to search for gold.

A police spokesperson confirmed the miners have been arrested, and investigations are continuing into illegal mining activities in the region.

Days earlier, the national police head Fannie Masemola also confirmed officers were investigating “allegations of human trafficking and forced labour in these mining operations by those who have resurfaced”.

On Friday night, the final miner to emerge from the disused shaft blew a whistle as he was received by army officers.

He appeared exhausted but could not hide his relief after surfacing.

A police spokesperson confirmed the rescue operation at the Mpumalanga mine is now complete, though investigations will continue before the site is shut down.

Meanwhile, rescue efforts are still under way at another abandoned mine in Stilfontein, south-west of Johannesburg.

Authorities plan to deploy more equipment on Monday to assist with removing those still trapped underground.

Illegal mining is widespread across South Africa, costing the economy millions in lost revenue.

Gen Masemola has described Mpumalanga as a hotspot for such activities.

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A new nightclub is opening this week with a strict rule that your smartphone camera must be covered with a sticker.

Amber’s in Manchester is the latest in a handful of venues in the UK to enforce the policy – but in cities like Berlin, renowned for its nightclubs, it’s the norm.

Amber’s director Jeremy Abbott told the BBC the club made the decision because “we really want the music and the experience to be front and centre”, but the issue is being debated on social media.

Some posted on Instagram concerns that clubs could suffer as social media videos of their night act as free adverts, while others welcomed the move as “partying with privacy”.

“It is the fear of being put on the internet isn’t it?” one woman told the BBC when we asked young people in Manchester how they feel about a no camera phones in clubs rule.

“Being really drunk and that embarrassing picture of you ending up on Insta, waking up and seeing the events of last night.”

Another woman said: “It does make the vibe better, because the less people [are] on their phone, engaging more with the DJ and stuff, that’s the better environment to have.”

So are Britain’s clubs at a turning point? Is now the time to get phones off the dancefloor and people’s minds back on the music?

Sacha Lord, night time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, thinks so. “These phones are killing the dancefloor, they’re killing the atmosphere,” he says.

“DJs hate it. To look out into a sea of phones and no-one’s dancing is really demoralising.”

Smokin Jo, who has been DJing since 1990, remembers when the rave and club scene was burgeoning in the late 80s and early 90s.

“Everyone’s got their hands in the air, there’s joy, there’s happiness.

“Now there’s these videos being posted of people standing still with their phone in the air. It’s so sad,” she says.

But Dr Lee Hadlington, senior lecturer in cyberpsychology at Nottingham Trent University, says for those clubbers, “part of their enjoyment is to document their night in terms of photos and memories”.

At Amber’s, phones are not banned outright but clubbers will be required to put a sticker over the camera lens to prevent photos being taken. A content team will be on hand to take and post photos online instead.

People violating the rule will be “politely asked to stop”, says Abbott. “If you are seen doing it again, you will be asked to leave the venue.”

The rule comes at a tricky time for Britain’s nightclub scene, which has struggled to recover from the numerous Covid lockdowns.

Between June 2020 and June this year, the number of clubs has fallen from 1,266 to 786, according to figures from the Night Time Industries Association and research firm NeilsenIQ.

Abbott concedes Amber’s no phones rules is a risk but says the club has been “blown away” by the response.

Lord says the policy could be a “shot in the arm” for the industry and “bring back the energy to the dancefloor”.

Graeme Park, one of Britain’s best-known DJs and a leading figure from Manchester’s legendary Hacienda nightclub, says: “I totally, totally understand and think that no smartphones on the dancefloor is a great idea.

“However, I’ve got a 20-year-old son. He makes music, he DJs, he goes clubbing and he’s like, ‘why’s your generation telling our generation we can’t use our smartphones?'”

Ben Park, Graeme’s son, says: “Personally, I’ve got nothing against phones being in clubs. I understand the whole no phone policy but at the same time people want to post pictures of them or their friends on social media, people want to promote it online.”

But he understands why some clubbers – and DJs – get annoyed by so-called TikTok ravers who “literally go to events just to show that they’ve been there and just post it on TikTok,” he says.

Cyberpsychologist Dr Hadlington says for these clubbers, it could be about a fear of missing out on social media action.

“The paradox is they’re spending more time posting about it than they’re enjoying the good time,” he says.

It might be a relatively new concept in the UK, but in Berlin, 90% of venues have a no phones on the dancefloor code, according to Lutz Leichsenring, former spokesperson for Clubcommission Berlin and co-founder of VibeLab.

He says that with more tourists coming to the German capital to enjoy the scene, “I think people really appreciated that this policy was a part of clubbing”.

And, on a personal note, he says that for him, “it is very, very weird when I’m in a club where people around me take pictures and film the whole time”.

Amber’s is adopting the same policy that London nightclub fabric has had in place since reopening in 2021 after Covid. The venue has actually been camera-free since it opened its doors in 1999 but as technology changed and smartphones became more ubiquitous it has tweaked its policy.

“When people come in at the point of search, we put a sticker on the camera lens and just really sort of invite people not to use it, that’s all it is,” says fabric’s co-founder Cameron Leslie.

He says for the most part clubbers abide by the rule. “It’s not an aggressive enforcement,” he says. “We have posters up in the club and then beyond that if people do use it and our team do see them we invite them not to.”

Smokin Jo reckons there are steps DJs can take themselves.

“Maybe DJs need to have a clause in their contract saying ‘I’ll do the gig but you need to have some sort of policy’ because we’re losing the identity of the scene and the roots of it.”

Fellow DJ Graeme Park thinks there is no easy answer to smartphones in nightclubs but says: “It is a really, really good thing that people are talking about it.

“It’s the cultural zeitgeist changing and that’s the great thing about clubbing, the attitudes change every decade or every few years.”

TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.

The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.

But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.

TikTok says it will now take its fight to the US Supreme Court, the country’s highest legal authority.

The US wants TikTok sold or banned because of what it says are its owners links to the Chinese state – links TikTok and parent company Bytedance have always denied.

The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”

But TikTok said it was not the end of its legal fight.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.

They added that the law was based on “inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information” and a ban would censor US citizens.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US Presidential Election may also present a lifeline for the app.

Despite unsuccessfully attempting to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, he said in the run-up to the November elections he would not allow the ban on TikTok to take effect.

Trump will be inaugurated on 20 January – the day after the law says TikTok must be be banned or sold.

However, it remains to be seen whether he will follow through on his pre-election vow.

Professor James Grimmelmann of Cornell University said the president-elect would be “swimming upstream to give TikTok a reprieve”.

“The anti-China sentiment in the US Congress is very strong, so there are now substantial constituencies in both parties that want TikTok to be restricted from the US market,” he told BBC News.

The court case has been closely watched both by those who use TikTok- and the app’s rivals.

Tiffany Cianci, a small business advocate and TikTok creator, said she was “not shocked” by Friday’s decision – but told BBC News she would not be shifting her TikTok content or presence to the platform’s rivals, such as Instagram.

“I’m not going to do what they want and take my content to their platforms where it’s not as successful where it’s more likely to be censored, where I am more likely to have less control over my audience,” she said.

Nonetheless, other platforms are positioning themselves for a post-TikTok social media landscape.

Meta, which owns Facebook as well as Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, has sought to build rivals to TikTok’s short form videos within its own apps, and made changes that users have likened to TikTok amid questions over the app’s US future.

Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at eMarketer, said there would be “major upheaval” if a TikTok appeal were to fail at the Supreme Court and a ban was enforced.

She said this would be “benefitting Meta, YouTube and Snap, while hurting content creators and small businesses that rely on the app to make a living.”

But TikTok won’t be easily recreated, said Cory Johnson, Chief Market Strategist at Epistrophy Capital Research. Johnson said deep learning models power TikTok’s recommendation engine.

“Enabling such complex AI and big data processing at TikTok’s immense scale requires a colossal and expensive technical infrastructure,” Johnson said.

He said TikTok’s hyper-targeting and China’s data laws pose significant risks, and pointed to Elon Musk’s alterations to algorithms at his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as a cautionary tale.

In the run-up to the U.S. election, Musk’s political posts received more views than all U.S. political campaign ads on X’s disclosure dataset, Johnson said.

“We have very real and very recent experience in America with a social media network tweaking its algorithms to favor certain voices,” he added.

Authorities in the Dominican Republican say cocaine discovered in the country’s largest-ever seizure was headed to Europe.

Hidden in a banana shipment, officials found 9,500kg of the drug at a port in the capital, Santo Domingo.

The cocaine was hidden in 320 bags with an estimated street value of $250 million (£196 million).

At least 10 people linked to the port are under investigation with early investigations showing the bananas had arrived from Guatemala, according to the National Drug Control Directorate.

Communications chief Carlos Denvers said: “Many unknown individuals tried to transfer the drugs to another container that would be shipped on a vessel to Belgium.”

The haul far exceeds the 2,580kg seizure made by Dominican authorities at the same port in 2006.

Monitoring agencies have reported that the Caribbean is resurfacing as a major drug trafficking route from Colombia to Europe.

A report last year found the use of cocaine is increasing in several western European countries including the UK, Belgium, France and Spain.

Europe accounted for 21% of the world’s cocaine users in 2020, according to a United Nations report.

Evidence suggests use of the drug is bringing dire health consequences, with recent data showing drug-poisoning deaths in England and Wales hit the highest level in 30 years, fuelled by a 30% rise in fatalities involving cocaine.

Romania’s constitutional court has scrapped the recent presidential election and ordered its rerun, following allegations and evidence of possible Russian interference.

This is a shock ruling by Romania’s constitutional court, but it comes after two weeks of high political tension here.

All predictions, any certainty, have flown out of the window.

So far, the streets are calm in Bucharest as people absorb the news.

Annulling the entire presidential election is a bold choice, but it follows another unprecedented move when the outgoing president ordered intelligence documents to be declassified and made public.

The document that talked of a massive online influence campaign to sway the vote in favour of fringe politician Calin Georgescu blamed a “state-sponsored actor”.

Another, on attempts to hack electoral websites, talked of links to cyber-crime sites in Russia. A third file said that Russia was engaged in hybrid war here.

Romanians have joined the dots and they blame Moscow. That brings dark memories for many people.

At a rally on Thursday night, outside the university, I met people who recalled their years living under communist dictatorship and were genuinely scared that today’s Russia could be meddling here.

In a bookshop, a children’s writer told me she would “leave the country immediately” if there was any sign Romania was turning away from its European path, becoming less free.

It’s certainly true that Georgescu’s policies – ending aid to Ukraine, comments that question the point of Nato or undermine the EU – are helpful to Moscow.

In the Kremlin, though they deny any role in these events, I am sure people are happy Russia is seen as so powerful; its tentacles so far-reaching they can even stir up Romanian politics. A Nato country, long seen as a stable and reliable partner.

But when I met the man at the heart of all this controversy, Calin Georgescu brushed off any idea his meteoric rise – from fringe to election frontrunner – was down to Russian meddling.

In fact, he laughed out loud.

He did tell me that Vladimir Putin was a “leader and a patriot”, though he claimed he was “not a fan”.

Suave and smooth-talking, he says he’s being blocked because he’s challenging the political establishment. He thinks his “Romania First” politics have genuine appeal to people here.

On that last point, he’s probably right.

I haven’t actually met anyone in Bucharest – outside Georgescu’s immediate team – who’s admitted to voting for him. But his online content – which flooded TikTok – had many messages that will appeal in a culturally conservative country, especially beyond the capital.

He talks of sovereignty and of God and of fighting “the System”. He tells people their lives should be better.

Will his followers, whoever they are, believe the reports that he is a Russian project and accept the cancellation of the vote? Or might they emerge from behind their computer screens and phones to protest?

So far, the calls are to stay at home and stay calm. The election re-run might not be until spring. That’s a long time in Romanian politics.

Storm Darragh has caused disruption throughout the country after its 90mph winds caused power cuts, trees to be uprooted and events and travel to be cancelled.

A rare red weather warning was issued by the Met Office to around three million people in parts of Wales and south-west England on Friday meaning that dangerous, potentially life-threatening winds were expected imminently.

While that warning has now ended, yellow and amber alerts remain in place as winds could still reach up to 70-80mph and the risk of structural damage, fallen trees, flying debris and large waves remains high.

According to the National Grid, tens of thousands of people have been left without power and a number of events and attractions – including Christmas markets, sporting fixtures and all Royal Parks – have already been cancelled today, with millions urged to stay at home.

We have put together a selection of pictures showcasing the weather and disruption around the UK. Some have been sent into us through the BBC Weather Watchers group. Scroll down to have a look.

• Follow our live coverage of Storm Darragh

• ‘It’s like sandpaper’: BBC reporter battered by Storm Darragh winds
• Millions urged to stay at home as Storm Darragh hits
• UK weather warnings: What you need to know
• Storm names 2024/25: How do storms like Bert get their names?

Megumi and Gordon McKillop didn’t meet on a dating app, or at work, or through a mutual friend.

Instead, they met when Megumi was attempting a tricky climbing route at their local bouldering centre, and was – by her own admission – falling off the wall.

Gordon, who’d been climbing for more than 10 years, asked if Megumi wanted some advice. Then, later that day, when Megumi, a relative newbie at the sport, cut her hand on the wall, Gordon jumped in to offer her an antiseptic wipe.

That night, Gordon, now 42, decided to look Megumi, 33, up on Facebook to check how her name was spelt. But he accidentally sent her a friend request.

That was in November 2021, shortly after Megumi had relocated from Canada to Scotland. Ten months later, they moved in together. In February 2024, the couple got married – and, true to form, the wedding was dominated by climbing.

Their wedding reception was a picnic at Dumbarton Rock, a popular climbing sport in western Scotland, the photographer was one of Gordon’s climbing friends, and they spent their honeymoon in Kalymnos, a popular rock climbing destination in Greece.

To this day, they still go climbing at the Newsroom in Glasgow, the climbing wall where they met. They’ve befriended a number of other couples who met through bouldering, too.

Where people find love is always changing. Dating apps, a common way to meet a partner, have seen a significant drop in user numbers this year, says communications regulator Ofcom.

But other more traditional pathways to finding love, such as meeting someone at work or on a night out, have also seen a lot of disruption recently.

Shifting attitudes towards working from home are seen by many as good for work/life balance, but spending less time with colleagues can also mean less opportunity to meet new people. This autumn, more than 10% of Britons were working remotely and over a quarter were working hybrid patterns (a mix of home and office working), according to ONS data – significantly higher than pre-pandemic figures.

Meanwhile, NHS data shows that average weekly alcohol consumption had declined slightly in the decade to 2022 and the Night Time Industries Association warns that UK night clubs are closing at a rapid rate.

But if dating apps, offices and nightclubs are all becoming less of a feature of people’s social lives, then what replaces them?

Managers at climbing centres across the UK say their venues are one of the unlikely places people are meeting potential partners.

Sarah Moran, manager at Climbing Works in Sheffield, says that she’s been on dates with people she’s met through climbing.

“They’ve come up to me and we’ve chatted a little bit, maybe climbed a little bit together, and at the end we exchanged numbers,” she says.

The managers say the sport has boomed in popularity since the pandemic, which they mainly put down to its introduction at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, as well as British rock climber Toby Roberts’ win at the Paris 2024 Games.

About 400,000 people climb at least twice a month, according to the British Mountaineering Council. There are more than 400 climbing gyms across the UK.

Climbers say that it’s a “hyper-social” sport where you’re constantly in close proximity with other people.

Gill Peet, manager at Blackburn climbing wall Onyx, likens climbing centres to a “grown-up youth club”. She says climbers are “almost forced” to socialise because of the time spent on the mats between each climb, catching their breath, planning out their next route or asking for advice.

The socialising often continues post-workout, too, with climbers grabbing a coffee or pizza together with many climbing centres having their own cafes.

“I do more talking at the climbing wall than I do climbing,” Rose Henderson says.

Rose met her partner, Mark Garbe, in 2015 at a climbing group organised through the socialising app Meetup. The pair, both 33, quickly hit it off and now live together in Ayrshire.

Mark says their social life is “based entirely around climbing”. They’ve been on group holidays to Fontainebleau, a climbing hotspot in France, and cycled the Hebridean Way with their climbing friends. They choose their holiday destinations based on whether there are climbing centres nearby and watch climbing world cups together.

Many climbing centres host social events, including women’s and LBGT nights, where climbers of a range of abilities can get to know other people.

Kaloyan Galev, 21, met his partner Samuel Prentice, 22, at a student climbing event in early 2020. Kaloyan has taken part in multiple sports competitively but says climbing is the only one he knows of that hosts specific “LGBT nights”.

Climbing walls are “very accepting”, he says.

Millions of Brits use dating apps – about 10% of UK adults who use the internet and 4.9 million people used online dating services in May, according to a new report from Ofcom. But after soaring in popularity following the introduction of Tinder in 2014, user numbers are now falling.

The four most popular dating apps in the UK – Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr – all lost UK users between May 2023 and May 2024, says Ofcom’s report.

The number of UK adults using Tinder dropped 23% and Bumble users fell 26%. Hinge, which has the youngest user base of the mainstream dating apps, experienced a 9% drop in users.

Mariko Visserman, a psychology lecturer at the University of Sussex who studies romantic relationships, says “choice overload” is causing some people to become tired of online dating. This, combined with some users’ “very high expectations and standards”, often leads to disappointment, she says.

Before he met Kaloyan at a climbing event, Samuel had tried out dating apps.

“I find it just hard to get something going with a stranger just through an online profile,” he says. “Almost feels like squeezing water from a stone sometimes.”

Climbing, in comparison, is “such a low pressure place to meet,” Gill says. “You’re not specifically there to find someone, you’re just there to climb.”

And when you climb together, you “quickly learn a lot about someone”, says James Lister, marketing manager at Depot Climbing, a chain of climbing walls. You can see how they react when they’re frustrated at a route, happy with an achievement and socialising with a group of people, he adds.

It’s a lot of “red or green flag ticking,” he says.

“I’d find it hard to be with someone who didn’t climb,” says Kellie Burston, 35, who works as a planning and permitting manager. “I said to friends, ‘I couldn’t date someone who wasn’t a climber.'”

She’d filled her dating apps with photos of her climbing and doing outdoor activities in the hope of finding a match with similar interests but had no luck.

Kellie met her partner Jack Toon, 32, a HGV driver, at Depot Climbing in Sheffield.

They were both hooked on the sport, and “we just kept seeing each other,” Jack says.

After a while, Kellie and Jack struck up a conversation on Instagram. Their first date was climbing together – a “cheap date”, Kellie says, since they both had membership.

Kellie says she’d always hoped to meet someone this way, but thought it was a pipe dream.

The couple have now been together four years and are getting married in Las Vegas next year. They usually climb together about four times a week and live just a 15 minute drive from the wall they met at.

Wedged into the middle of a three storey-high pile of rubble and charred possessions in southern Beirut is a twisted and cracked metal sign. “Spare parts. Jeep Cherokee,” it says.

It is the only indication that the ground floor of this destroyed building had been occupied by a busy car parts dealership – one of many such businesses destroyed by Israel’s heavy bombing of Dahieh, the largely Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of the capital.

“We were so confident we wouldn’t be hit, because of the nature of the people here – ordinary, people, business owners,” said Imad Abdelhak, staring up at the smashed building.

Abdelhak’s garage, next door, had survived the worst of the air strike, but he was waiting to find out if the whole structure would have to be torn down because of the impact.

All over Lebanon, business owners are reeling after an intense conflict between Israel and Hezbollah saw Israeli bombs rain down on residential, commercial and industrial parts of the country, destroying shops, warehouses and stocks of goods.

A US- and French-brokered ceasefire, which is largely holding, halted the war last week, but for many of the country’s business owners and workers the pain is only beginning.

“I have lost $20,000 and my only source of income,” said Ibrahim Mortada, another car parts dealer in Dahieh whose building was hit. “I have no idea how we can survive,” he said.

Like Abdelhak, Mortada was waiting for engineers to assess the building, but it was clear to anyone standing underneath it that the structure was unsafe. The top seven floors had been destroyed by a direct strike. Huge slabs of concrete and loose rubble hung precariously over Mortada’s head as he attempted to clear up what was left of his premises.

“My business has been open here for 23 years,” he said, dejectedly. “We are counting on God to help us now.”

The business owners of Dahieh and beyond are also counting on Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese political and militant group, which said it will begin this week to assess the damage to homes and businesses and dole out cash for people to pay rent, buy new furniture, and begin to rebuild.

In the southern city of Nabatieh on Wednesday, where its Ottoman-era market and surrounding businesses were completely destroyed, people were still waiting for the Hezbollah assessors to arrive.

“Nobody has contacted us – nobody from the government, nobody from any group,” said Niran Ali, a 56-year-old woman whose shop, Zen Baby Fashion, had disappeared with virtually all of its stock.

Scanning the rubble, Ali caught sight of a pink, soot-covered pair of girls’ tracksuit bottoms, hanging from a steel girder jutting out of the heap. “These were mine,” she said, running her finger across the blackened fabric. “Maybe they are the only thing left of my business.”

Like others in Nabatieh, Ali had heard that Hezbollah was going to begin by assessing homes (the group has pledged $5,000 per household to help pay for rent, and $8,000 to replace furniture) and then move on to businesses, where the losses are much higher.

Jalal Nasser, who owned a large complex containing a coffee shop, restaurant and library, returned to the city on the first day of the ceasefire to find the complex transformed into a charred husk by a massive air strike across the road. He estimated he had lost up to $250,000.

He set up a small table and chair on the edge of the shell of the building, overlooking the main street, and smoked his shisha. “To give people hope”, he said.

As for where the money was going to come from to rebuild, “that is the big question,” he said, shrugging. “But we are waiting for Hezbollah. I’m sure they will give.”

The World Bank estimates this war has caused at least $8.5bn worth of damage to Lebanon’s economy. It would be a huge sum for any similar nation, but for Lebanon it comes on the heels of a financial crisis in 2019 and the devastating port blast the following year.

In the aftermath of the previous war with Israel, in 2006, money poured in from Iran and from gulf states to rebuild Lebanon. This time around, it is unclear if that tap will turn on.

“There is nothing yet in terms of allocation for reconstruction,” Nasser Yasin, the environment minister and head of the government’s crisis cell told the BBC on Wednesday.

“We have some good indications, some pledges from friends of Lebanon,” he said. “But we estimate we are going to need billions of dollars this time. The level of destruction is probably six to 10 times what it was in 2006.”

Israel has said it was acting solely against Hezbollah in its strikes on Nabatieh, and not against the Lebanese population. Yasin accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of “urbicide” for its widespread destruction of the city.

On a visit to Nabatieh on Wednesday afternoon, Imran Riza, the UN’s deputy special co-ordinator for Lebanon, told the BBC the scale of what needed to be done was “enormous”.

“The past two and a half months, particularly, have been massively destructive,” he said. “It is a very long road back.”

The historic market in Nabatieh dates back about 500 years. It has repeatedly come under attack from Israel in the decades since 1978. Unlike previous attacks, this time the destruction was total.

“This is the worst for Nabatieh, the worst war we have seen,” said Yusuf Mouzzain, who owned a clothes shop in the market. In his shop, a few surviving clothes hung on a rail, coated in soot. He estimated he had suffered about $80,000 worth of damage.

In 2006, Hezbollah gave a good sum to the affected business owners. This time, he had no idea what they would receive, or who from. “But we have lost everything, he said. “So someone has to give us something.”

“Daya, darwaaza tod do.” (Daya, break down the door)

Most Indians will instantly recognise this dialogue from the popular detective show CID, which ran from 1998 to 2018, making it one of India’s longest-running television shows.

The whodunnit featured three intrepid policemen – ACP Pradyuman, inspector Daya and inspector Abhijeet – solving case after case, as no criminal was ever a match for them. The low-budget episodes had comically simple plots, iffy acting, and all it took for a suspect to confess was a good slap from ACP Pradyuman.

But over the years, the show has achieved cult status, and its characters and dialogues have spawned a wealth of jokes, memes and reels.

CID is set to return later this month, sparking mixed reactions among its fans. Some are eager to see the three policemen back in action but others say that the show’s old-world charm might not fit in with the gritty realism of modern-day crime shows.

Over the past few days, the creators of the show have been releasing teasers for upcoming episodes on Instagram, each garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.

Apart from the three main characters, the teasers feature familiar tropes and dialogues. These include Inspector Daya kicking open doors to reveal a suspect’s hideout and ACP Pradyuman muttering his iconic line, ‘kuch toh gadbad hai, Daya’ (something’s not right, Daya), signaling to both his team and the audience that a crime has taken place.

Trisha Shah, 35, a content creator from Mumbai and a fan of the show, says that the teasers make her nostalgic.

“CID was one of the few crime shows on television back then and my parents didn’t mind me watching it because of its family-friendly content,” Ms Shah says.

“Despite being a crime show, it never showed gruesome violence, sexual crimes, foul language or anything that was not suitable for family viewing.”

In an interview to Film Companion, an entertainment journalism platform, one of the writers of the show said that they even avoided giving surnames to the characters to avoid hurting anyone’s sentiments.

But the show’s outlandish plots more than made up for its primness, whether that was ACP Pradyuman coming back from the dead or inspector Daya single-handedly manoeuvring a poison-gas filled plane to safety.

In an interview to Forbes magazine, the producer of the show, BP Singh, described these scenes and plots as “believable nonsense”.

“You may later laugh at it [the scene]. But for those five minutes, it is so engrossing that you don’t mind it,” he told the magazine.

In a rather comical fashion, the characters would also explain plots and technologies used to solve crimes through their dialogues, making it easy for even children to grasp what was happening.

“The bad guys always got caught and that was comforting to watch,” Ms Shah says. “I don’t think I’ll enjoy the show today, but back then, it was a big deal.”

In the 1990s, TV was a big deal as it was the only form of home entertainment. At the start of the decade, India eased broadcasting rights, making more channels available.

“Initially, channels like Star began showing reruns of American shows like Baywatch and The Bold and The Beautiful. But new entrants like Zee TV and Sony began producing original shows to cater to the Indian audience,” says Harsh Taneja, an associate professor of media at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Producers often adapted Western shows for Indian audiences by importing format Bibles – guidelines outlining story structure – and modifying them for local context, he says. So, a show like CID often featured plots that closely resembled those of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, an American crime drama.

The 1990s and 2000s saw television become a staple in households as people’s spending power grew. Many homes had not just one but two televisions, leading producers to create content targeting different age groups, says Mr Taneja.

Interestingly, the target audience of CID, when it was released in the 1990s, was children in the age group of six to 14. After CID, several other crime-focussed shows began to populate channels – from Crime Patrol to Savadhan India. But one could say that it was CID that created an appetite for crime shows among viewers.

Priya Ravi, 40, remembers waiting eagerly for each CID episode to air when she was a child. She confesses that it was the show that made her push her parents to get a television set at their home.

“Episodes used to air twice a week, and initially I used to go to a friend’s place to watch them. But then I convinced my parents to get a TV so that I could watch the episodes at home. I was so happy the day the TV arrived,” Ms Ravi says.

She says that though she won’t watch the new CID episodes, she’ll definitely encourage her two children, aged seven and nine, to watch them.

“If the show remains as clean as it was back in the day, I think it’s a great way to introduce children to some of the realities of life and make them vigilant about their safety and surroundings,” she says.

“I’m looking forward to the heroic trio making a comeback.”

Ivory Coast’s national dish attiéké has gained UN cultural heritage status, along with Japanese sake, Thai prawn soup and Caribbean cassava bread. But what makes this West African staple so popular? BBC Africa correspondent Mayeni Jones grew up in Ivory Coast and is a self-professed superfan.

One of my earliest childhood memories is hearing vendors sing “Attiéké chaud! Attiéké chaud!” or “Hot attiéké!” as they strolled the streets of my neighbourhood, balancing large baskets of this national delicacy on their heads.

Fast-forward 25 years and women carrying individually wrapped portions of the fermented cassava couscous still walk across Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s biggest city, selling this now Unesco-recognised dish.

An alternative to rice, it’s hard to find any hospitality venue in the Ivory Coast that doesn’t serve attiéké. From the most basic eateries to the fanciest restaurants and even on the beach, it’s everywhere.

Attiéké’s popularity has spilled over the country’s borders, and it is now found across Africa, especially in French-speaking countries.

It’s also very popular in neighbouring Ghana and my home country Sierra Leone, where they have some fairly unorthodox serving suggestions.

The distinctive tangy taste of attiéké comes from the cassava tubers mixed with fermented cassava, which gives it its unique flavour and texture.

The cassava is grated, dried and then steamed before serving.

Filling and versatile, Ivorian chef Rōze Traore describes its texture as “fluffy yet granular, similar to couscous”.

Mr Traore adds that the slight tanginess of attiéké provides a unique depth to meals, perfectly balancing spicy or savoury sauces.

For Paule-Odile Béké, an Ivorian chef who competed on the UK TV programme Masterchef: The Professionals, “sour, zingy and sweet” are the words that come to mind when she describes the taste of attiéké.

Gluten-free and available in different grain sizes, the finest is often the most expensive. Some places even sell red attiéké, which has been soaked in palm oil.

Eaten with a variety of dishes, the most popular version is with chargrilled chicken or fish, a simple, spicy tomato-based sauce and a salsa of chopped tomatoes and onions.

It was one of the first dishes I cooked for my husband when we met 15 years ago. He liked it so much, he suggested we open a restaurant serving just that.

Attiéké is unpretentious, although traditionally reserved for special occasions like weddings and birthdays, people now eat it every day.

Ms Béké, who comes from a family of attiéké-makers, explained some nuances.

“Our attieke will be a bit more yellow than some other regions due to the proximity of the sea,” she said.

A native of Jacqueville, a small coastal town where attiéké is made, she features it heavily in the menu of her New York supper clubs.

Although I left Ivory Coast at the age of 14 as civil unrest broke out, I have never been able to let go of attiéké.

In London, I’d travel miles to Congolese shops to excavate bags of attiéké from the permafrost at the bottom of a chest freezer, stockpiling it for dinner guests I could evangelise.

When I moved to Nigeria, I mandated relatives to bring me care packages from Abidjan or Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital.

It was one of the first things I looked for when I moved to Johannesburg in South Africa three months ago.

Where to find it is always one of the first questions I have for any Ivorians I meet outside Ivory Coast.

Obviously it tastes delicious, but it’s hard to describe what makes attiéké so special.

Ivorian chef Charlie Koffi says “attiéké is a dish that symbolizes togetherness”.

Like injera, the fermented Ethiopian pancake, or thieboudienne, Senegal’s rice-and-fish dish, attiéké is best enjoyed in a group.

Across Ivory Coast, friends and family will gather around a big plate, eating with their hands and washing it down with a cold beer or soft drink.

For me, it’s also a reminder of a childhood which was cut short. I was just 13 years old when on Christmas Eve 1999, as I waited for my friends to come round for a play date, a military coup rocked Ivory Coast.

As soldiers drove through the city shooting in the air and telling people to head indoors, my little sister and I clung to each other in a hallway, the only windowless space in our house.

Our mum was stuck in town, unable to join us.

Six months later, my mum sent us to the UK to live with our grandmother, fearing the rising political tension in the run-up to the 2000 presidential elections would result in further unrest.

Just two years later, the country’s first civil war would break out, and it would be another 15 years before I was able to return to my childhood home.

But even when I couldn’t return to Babi (Abidjan’s nickname), attiéké was always a way to connect to the place we had left behind.

Even though I’m not Ivorian, like many of the expatriates and economic migrants who moved to the country during the prosperous 1990s, Ivory Coast is home.

We all speak Nouchi, the French slang that peppers Ivorian music and the streets of its cities, and we all eat attiéké.

Ivory Coast has a way of making people feel at home, and attiéké is part of that.

When I finished university, I returned to Ivory Coast for a year to work for an international NGO.

On our way back from one of our assignments in the west of the country, an Ivorian colleague explained that traditionally, attiéké was mostly eaten with kedjenou, a rich, smoky stew made with tomatoes, onions, and chillies.

This is slow-cooked with local chicken or game in a clay pot over a wood fire, infusing the dish with a deep, flavourful essence.

He claimed that it was only after the French arrived that Ivorians started serving attiéké with grilled fish and chicken.

This is not something that I’ve been able to confirm, but it always rang true.

Ivorians, although fiercely proud of their culture, have always been open to foreign influences in their cuisine and many regional dishes have become local staples.

Now that attiéké has been added to the list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding, perhaps more people outside the region will become aware of this delicious treat.

• Attiéké – Ivory Coast’s answer to champagne
• Congolese rumba wins Unesco protected status
• West Africa’s Michelin-starred cuisine wows London
• Nigerians turn to ‘throw-away’ rice for food

The manhunt for a suspect who gunned down a healthcare chief executive in New York is now in its third day, with police chasing several different leads.

UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson, 50, was fatally shot in the back on Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

Police say Thompson was targeted in a pre-planned killing, for which they do not yet have a motive.

Investigators are using surveillance photos, bullet casings with cryptic messages written on them, and the suspect’s movements to track him down. They are also working with the FBI and authorities in other states as the search expands beyond New York.

Here’s what we know about the suspect and the investigation.

Police are working with “a lot of leads”, said former FBI special agent Michael Tabman.

Police have put together more than 200 images of the suspect from his arrival in New York until he fled Midtown Manhattan after shooting Thompson, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

On Thursday they shared two images – the clearest ones so far – of the suspect, one which shows him smiling with his black face mask pulled down.

A hostel receptionist reportedly told police that the photo was taken when she asked him to show his face, in a flirtatious moment.

The man was staying at the hostel on the Upper West Side in New York, where he reportedly used a fake New Jersey license as identification. Police say they have executed a search warrant at the hostel.

Authorities have also been doing a “full sweep” of Central Park – a 2.5 mile (4km) long and 0.5 miles (0.8km) wide area in the heart of the city – and on Friday found a backpack they believe the suspect was carrying at the time of the attack. It has been sent for forensic testing, CBS reports.

Officials are also attempting to make use of DNA evidence, including a water bottle and candy wrapper from the crime scene, as well as a Starbucks coffee cup, that they believe are linked to the suspect.

A mobile phone was also discovered in an alley along the suspect’s escape route.

So far, fingerprints found left behind have been unusable for identification, police said.

Authorities have been able to put together an incomplete timeline of his movements in the city, from his arrival on 24 November to when he fled after the attack on 4 December.

New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said on Friday that the suspect arrived in the city on a bus that originated from Atlanta, though it’s unclear where he caught the bus along its route.

He then took a cab to the vicinity of the Hilton, the hotel where he would later kill Thompson, and spent about 30 minutes there before heading to the hostel.

At the hostel he had two roommates but neither saw his face as he wore his mask while he was around them, Mr Kenny said.

The suspect left the hostel early on Wednesday, returned to the vicinity of the Hilton and stopped at a Starbucks.

Thompson was shot at around 06:45 EST (11:45 GMT).

At 06:48, the suspect entered Central Park. Shortly before 07:00 he left the park and at 07:04 took a cab to the Port Authority bus terminal.

The shooting took place in a busy part of Manhattan close to Times Square and Central Park. Thompson had been scheduled to speak at an investor conference later in the day.

According to police, the suspect – who was clad in his mask and light brown or cream-coloured jacket – appeared to be waiting for Thompson for five minutes outside the Hilton hotel where he was expected to speak.

Thompson, who arrived on foot, was shot in the back and leg, and was pronounced dead about half an hour later at a local hospital.

The NYPD said that the suspect’s weapon appeared to jam, but that he was able to quickly fix it and keep shooting.

CCTV footage appears to show the gunman had fitted a suppressor, also known as a silencer, to the weapon.

Investigators reportedly believe the firearm is a BT Station Six 9, a weapon which is marketed as tracing its roots back to pistols used in World War Two.

Police have reportedly visited gun stores in Connecticut to try to determine where the weapon was purchased.

After the shooting, video shows the suspect fleeing the scene on foot. Officials say he later got on an e-bike, which he rode toward Central Park.

Police believe he left New York, possibly on a bus headed for Atlanta, Georgia, sources familiar with the matter have told CBS News.

Atlanta police released a statement on Friday confirming they are helping New York authorities in the investigation.

Investigators have so far not identified a motive in the killing, but they are focusing in part on words written in Sharpie on bullet casings discovered at the scene of the crime.

The words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” were discovered on the casings.

Investigators believe this could be a reference to the “three D’s of insurance” – a known reference made by opponents of the industry.

The terms refer to tactics used by insurance companies to refuse payment claims by patients in America’s complicated and mostly privately run healthcare system.

The words resemble – but are not exactly the same as – the title of a book called Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.

The book, published in 2010, was written by Jay Feinman, a legal scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It’s billed as an exposé of the insurance industry and a how-to guide for Americans on how to navigate the system.

Professor Feinman declined to comment when the BBC contacted him.

Thompson joined UnitedHealth, the biggest private insurer in the US, from accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2004.

He rose through the ranks and became CEO in 2021, leading the company through some very profitable years.

• Who was Brian Thompson?

In an interview with MSNBC, Thompson’s wife said that there had “been some threats” against him earlier, although she was unable to provide details.

“I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him,” she said.

According to police in Thompson’s hometown of Maple Grove, Minnesota, there had previously been one suspicious incident at his home in 2018.

The incident was cleared with no criminal activity detected. No additional details were provided.

For 12 years Sophie had been experiencing painful periods, weight gain, depression and fatigue.

She had been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal condition that affects about one in 10 women, but she struggled to get medical help.

She felt her only option was to take her health into her own hands, and it was at this moment that Kourtney Simmang came up on her recommended page on Instagram.

Kourtney promised to treat the “root cause” of PCOS, even though researchers have not yet identified one. She offered customers laboratory tests, a “health protocol”- a diet and supplement plan – and coaching for $3,600 (£2,800). Sophie signed up, paying hundreds of dollars more for supplements through Kourtney’s affiliate links.

Dr Jen Gunter, a gynaecologist and women’s health educator, said Kourtney wasn’t qualified to order the tests she was selling, and that they had limited clinical use.

After nearly a year Sophie’s symptoms hadn’t improved, so she gave up Kourtney’s cure.

“I left the programme with a worse relationship to my body and food, [feeling] that I didn’t have the capacity to improve my PCOS,” she said.

Kourtney did not respond to requests for comment.

Medically unqualified influencers – many with more than a million followers – are exploiting the absence of an easy medical solution for PCOS by posing as experts and selling fake cures.

Some describe themselves as nutritionists or “hormone coaches”, but these accreditations can be done online in a matter of weeks.

The BBC World Service tracked the most-watched videos with a “PCOS” hashtag on TikTok and Instagram during the month of September and found that half of them spread false information.

Up to 70% of women with PCOS worldwide have not been diagnosed, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and even when diagnosed, women struggle to find treatments that work.

“Whenever there’s a gap in medicine, predators take advantage,” said Dr Gunter.

The main false or misleading claims shared by these influencers include:

• PCOS can be cured with dietary supplements
• PCOS can be cured with a diet, such as the low-carbohydrate high-fat keto diet
• Birth control pills cause PCOS or worsen symptoms
• Mainstream medication may suppress PCOS, but doesn’t address its “root cause”

There is no evidence that highly restricted calorie diets have any positive effect, and the keto diet may make symptoms worse. Birth control pills do not cause PCOS and in fact help many women, though they don’t work for everyone. There is no known root cause for PCOS and there is no cure.

A spokesperson for TikTok said the company does not allow misleading or false content on the platform that may cause significant harm.

A spokesperson for Meta said user content on women’s health is allowed on the platform with “no restrictions”. The company said it consulted with third parties to debunk health misinformation.

• PCOS is a chronic hormonal condition that affects an estimated 8-13% of women, according to the WHO
• The NHS says symptoms include painful irregular periods, excessive hair growth and weight gain
• PCOS is one of the most common causes of infertility, the NHS says, but most women can get pregnant with treatment

The BBC has spoken to 14 women from Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, US, and Australia who tried different products promoted by influencers.

Nearly all mentioned Tallene Hacatoryan who has more than two million followers across TikTok and Instagram.

A registered dietician, Tallene sells supplements at $219 (£172) and access to her weight loss app for $29 (£23) a month. She warns people against pharmaceuticals such as the birth control pill, or the diabetes drug, metformin, both of which have been found to be helpful for many women with PCOS.

Instead she encourages her audience to heal “naturally”, with her supplements. She puts a lot of emphasis on weight and what she calls “PCOS belly”, referring to fat around the abdomen.

Amy from Northern Ireland, decided to follow some of Tallene’s advice after struggling to get help through her GP.

“PCOS belly was exactly where my insecurities were,” she told me.

Tallene’s advice is to reduce gluten and dairy, and to follow the keto diet. But while a healthy diet can help with PCOS symptoms there is no evidence that gluten and dairy have a negative effect.

In Amy’s case, the keto diet regularly made her sick, and she found it hard to cut out gluten and dairy products.

“It makes you feel like you failed,” she said. “Looking back, I wasn’t as heavy then, but these people would make me feel worse, and you’d want to do more diets, or buy more supplements.”

Dr Gunter told the BBC influencer diet plans such as these could “absolutely create an eating disorder”.

Tallene did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Amy said her GP had offered her hormonal birth control to manage her symptoms, but didn’t have any other ideas for treatment. She was told to come back if in future she wanted to get pregnant.

Dr Gunter said this is a vulnerable patient group that may struggle with feelings of helplessness without access to treatment. She said misinformation often caused patients to delay seeking medical help, and that this could lead to the development of further conditions, such as type 2 diabetes.

In Nigeria, Medlyn, a medical student, is trying to tackle some of the shame surrounding PCOS. After trying diets and supplements to no avail, she now encourages other women to consult with their doctors and embrace evidence-based treatment.

“When you’re diagnosed with PCOS it comes with so much stigma. People think you’re lazy, you don’t look after yourself, that we can’t get pregnant,” she said. “So nobody wants to date you, nobody wants to marry you.”

But she is now embracing some of her PCOS features. “It’s been a hard journey to accept my PCOS, my hair, my weight,” she said. “These things make me different.”

Sasha Ottey of the US-based charity PCOS Challenge said medical treatment usually enables people with the condition to get pregnant.

“Women with PCOS have the same number of children as those without,” she said. “You just might need a bit of help getting there.”

Dr Gunter said that women who aren’t getting help from a general practitioner should ask to see a specialist.

“Some women need a trusted endocrinologist or a trusted obstetrics and gynaecology specialist for that next level of management.”

Sophie and her doctors are still trying out possible treatments, looking for one that works for her.

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram and Facebook. Join the conversation using #BBC100Women.

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

As voting continues in Ghana’s general election, police say four men have been arrested following the fatal shooting of one person and the wounding of another.

It happened in northern town of Nyankpala where soldiers have since been sent to restore calm.

Elsewhere election day has been peacefully conducted, with some Ghanaians queuing before dawn to make sure they cast their ballots.

A debt crisis and high living costs mean the economy is uppermost in the minds of many voters.

The West African nation is guaranteed a new president as Nana Akufo-Addo steps down after reaching the official limit of two terms in office.

But he could be replaced with a familiar face, if former President John Mahama succeeds in his comeback attempt for the NDC party.

His main challenger is expected to be Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, who would become the country’s first Muslim leader if he wins for the governing NPP party.

Other candidates include Nana Kwame Bediako, a businessman popular with young voters and Alan Kyerematen, who defected from the ruling NPP party last year.

Close to 19 million Ghanaians are registered to vote.

Despite Ghana recently bringing in tougher legislation to drive up the numbers of women in frontline politics, only one woman is in the running to become president – Nana Akosua Sarpong Frimpomaa of the Convention People’s Party (CPP).

The only other female presidential candidate in this election – Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party – died in October. Yet her name will still be listed on ballot papers because the candidate chosen to succeed her was disqualified.

Saturday’s general election also sees voters in 275 constituencies across the country choosing their members of parliament.

• What an accountant-turned-mechanic says about Ghana’s election

Since the return of multi-party politics to Ghana in 1992, only candidates from either the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) have won the presidency.

No party has ever won more than two consecutive terms in power.

Voters have a 10-hour window on Saturday to cast their ballots – 07:00-17:00 GMT.

Ghana’s land borders have been closed until Sunday evening, in a move that correspondents describe as unusual.

Election results are set to be announced within three days.

In order to win in the first round, a presidential candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. Failing that, the top two contenders will enter a run-off vote to take place by the end of December.

Voting for the first time, 18-year-old Serwaa Yeboah Joshebeth told the BBC “it is important for you to vote to choose the best for your country”.

The recent graduate wants to see more job opportunities, “not for me alone but for others who need them [too].”

Kojo Yeboah, 95, agrees.

“The next leader must focus on education and jobs for the youth,” the retired university worker told the BBC outside a polling booth in the city of Kumasi.

“I benefit from stipends from the state at my age already,” he adds.

As campaigns came to a close on Friday, Bawumia said of his main rival: “What is clear is that notwithstanding the challenges we’ve had, we have performed better than the government of John Dramani Mahama.”

While Mahama told supporters “it is a choice between the Ghana we have today and the Ghana we want together. A Ghana of opportunity, prosperity, and justice for all.”

Ghanaians have been hit particularly hard by inflation in recent years, which reached a peak of 54.1% in 2022. Although it has since come down, many thousands of people have been pushed into poverty and living standards have suffered, says the World Bank.

That same year, Ghana defaulted on its debt repayments and the government is still in lengthy negotiations with international lenders to try and restructure the loans.

Unemployment is also at a high – particularly among the young, whose views could have a big impact on the outcome of the election.

• EXPLAINER: What’s at stake in Ghana’s elections?
• CHARTS: What’s on the minds of voters?
• PROFILE: Who is John Mahama?
• PROFILE: Who is Mahamudu Bawumia?
• IN BRIEF: Ghana – a basic guide

Mary Poppins actor Dick Van Dyke has taken a starring role in Coldplay’s latest music video, as he prepares to celebrate his 99th birthday.

Filmed in his beachside home in Malibu, the moving video sees the star reminisce about his life and reflect on old age.

“I’m acutely aware that I could go any day now,” he says, “but I don’t know why it doesn’t concern me. I’m not afraid of it. I have the feeling that I’m gonna be alright.”

Set to the ballad All My Love, the video was co-directed by Mary Wigmore and Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Jonze, whose movies include Being John Malkovich, Her and Adaptation.

Running for seven minutes, it’s a touching and intimate portrait of the beloved actor, whose other credits include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bye Bye Birdie and the TV show Diagnosis: Murder.

He allows the filmmakers to tour his home, showcasing memorabilia from his movies – including a lifesize replica of Bert, his chimney-sweeping character from Mary Poppins.

The star also recreates The Twizzle (an impossibly flexible routine from his 1960s TV sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show) as Chris Martin serenades him on the patio of his house; and dances barefoot with his wife, Arlene Silver.

But the most emotional moment comes as he talks about his four children, Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth.

Van Dyke gazes lovingly at a photo of Stacy being read a bedtime story, and reveals: “I’ve had dreams where I’m depressed or lonely or hurt, and she comes to comfort me. She actually comes to comfort me.”

His family – including dozens of grandchildren – arrive later in the video, dancing and singing with the actor, who tells Martin he is particularly taken with one line of All My Love: ““

The video ends with Martin improvising a song for the star, who watches in astonishment as the music comes to life.

“Have we got that on film?” he asks. “Can you believe this man?”

All My Love is the latest single from Coldplay’s 10th studio album, Moon Music, which went to number one in October.

The group have taken a quirky approach to promoting the record, hosting a segment on the shopping channel QVC, and filming an impromptu video for the song We Pray in the middle of Dublin’s Grafton Street, shortly before they played a show at the city’s Croke Park Stadium.

An earlier video for All My Love also saw Chris Martin walking the streets of Las Vegas in disguise, singing karaoke and handing out balloons to strangers… a scene which Van Dyke briefly recreates in the latest clip.

In an interview on the US chat show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Martin revealed that he and Van Dyke are neighbours in California, and that they had been friends for years.

“This really may be the most fun thing I’ve ever done,” he said of the video.

“It makes me so grateful. It’s a big deal for me.”

The video premiered on the band’s YouTube channel. A shorter edit will be released on 13 December, to mark Van Dyke’s 99th birthday.

For about two months each year, fisherman Faustino Mauloko da Cunha transforms his home along the South Pacific coast into a whale monitoring station.

From the morning, villagers and student volunteers gather at the house in Subaun, a village in the north of Timor-Leste. Armed with binoculars and telephoto cameras, they watch the cobalt waters for one of its great treasures – pygmy blue whales.

When there is a sighting, it’s all systems go.

Faustino’s son, Zacarias, dispatches a drone. Then the team’s leader, Australian marine ecologist Karen Edyvane, guides him to take the best photographs. When the drone returns, the team reviews the pictures, taking notes on a white board.

It’s a small and thrifty operation in Timor-Leste, which is part of an archipelago that lies between South East Asia and the South Pacific. But it has generated a wealth of information about pygmy blue whales – one of the largest animals on earth, whose vast habitats and elusive nature make them challenging to study.

These citizen science researchers, all of them locals, have spotted nearly 3,000 pygmy blue whales over the past 10 years – Prof Edyvane considers that a “truly extraordinary” number.

Timor-Leste has one of the world’s highest concentrations of marine mammals.

During the migration season – October and November – hundreds of pygmy blue whales pass through the country’s waters as they make the epic journey spanning thousands of kilometres from the Banda Sea, which lies to the north of Timor-Leste, to southern Australia.

But the area has been under-researched, says Prof Edyvane, who started the citizen science monitoring programme in 2014.

During the last two whale seasons, she has based herself in Subaun, about 50km (31 miles) from the capital Dili, working with fishermen, students and dive tour operators to document the cetaceans.

They have documented “some of the lesser known, intimate reproductive behaviours of blue whales, some for the very first time,” says Prof Edyvane, a researcher at Charles Darwin University and Australian National University.

In 2022, for instance, tourists with a local tour operator invovlved in the programme captured underwater footage of a mother nursing her calf, offering a glimpse into the species’ reproductive behaviours, which have remained largely unknown.

“It’s very, very exciting,” she adds.

The programme started as a Facebook group, inviting local tour operators, fishermen and residents to share sightings of cetaceans.

Prof Edyvane trained them on surveying methods and taught them how to use telephoto cameras and drones so that they could conduct aerial and boat surveys.

“When locals see the whales swimming by, they will post pictures on Facebook and WhatsApp. Updates come on a real-time basis and when someone shares something, everyone gets very excited,” Prof Edyvane says.

In 2016, the team worked with a dive tour operator to launch the first whale-watching tour.

It was only last year that they set up a “research station” outside the da Cunha’s village home – photos show a simple hut overlooking the bay. Outside are two tables, plastic chairs and white boards mounted on the hut’s walls.

During this year’s whale season, undergraduates from the National University of East Timor and University Oriental Timor-Leste gathered at the research station to help with the sightings.

Even such a basic structure has made the task easier.

“We’re able to monitor all day and all night,” Prof Edyvane says. “We’ve also been able to get the most incredible footage. The whales come in so close sometimes we can actually hear their blows.”

Citizen researchers like these have become powerful eyes and ears on the ground for marine scientists, says wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta.

“The combination of people having access to tools like drones and social media means we have insights into things that are happening while we may be behind the desk writing grants to fund our work,” she said.

The increase in research activity in Subaun has also led to a rise in tourism.

The demand for whale-watching tours has increased, diving instructor Cassio Schumacher tells the BBC, adding that these tours are “booked up years in advance”.

Local non-profits have warned of the risks of unregulated whale tourism and the government has said it intends to use Prof Edyvane’s research to “fully protect and conserve” the marine life that pass through Timor-Leste’s waters.

Prof Edyvane believes that with regulation, whale tourism has the potential to create jobs and grow Timor-Leste’s economy.

The country is one of the poorest in the world, where average annual incomes in cities hover around $1,500, according to the International Monetary Fund. In Subaun, most villagers work as subsistence fishermen and farmers, earning just about $600 to $900 a year.

The da Cunha family has now started preparing meals from local produce and the day’s catch for the students and tourists – an additional source of income.

“We enjoyed having the guests around and will love to do it again,” Faustino, 51, tells the BBC on a WhatsApp video call. “We will make it a better experience [next season].”

His son, Zacarias, has also been contracted to provide drone services for the project. Prof Edyvane says she plans to train him to give talks about whales in English.

The 26-year-old says what he appreciates is that the visitors are learning to protect the area: “The university students learn fast and well to defend this area.”

As for the tourists, he says the locals are happy to teach them. “We remind tourists not to swim with the whales but instead watch them from a distance.”

The Prince of Wales will meet US President-elect Donald Trump while visiting France for the ceremonial reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral.

Prince William will join other world leaders in Paris to mark the restoration of the world-famous landmark, which was devastated by a fire five years ago.

He will hold meetings with the president-elect and US First Lady Jill Biden, Kensington Palace said.

It is expected that the prince will discuss the importance of the US-UK “special relationship” with both Trump and the first lady during their respective meetings.

He last met Trump in 2019 when the then-president made a state visit to the UK.

Prince William, who is attending at the request of the UK government, will join French President Emmanuel Macron and dozens of other heads of state at the ceremony.

The prince’s last official trip to Paris was in 2017, when he visited with the Princess of Wales for a two-day trip in the aftermath of the Brexit result.

He joined other world leaders in Normandy earlier this year for the 80th anniversary commemorations of the Second World War D-Day landings.

The medieval cathedral has been closed since a major fire tore through it in 2019, destroying its stained-glass windows and wooden interiors before toppling its spire.

Some 600 firefighters battled the blaze for 15 hours. The main structure of the 850-year-old building was saved, including its two bell towers.

Macron set a five-year goal for the reconstruction of the Catholic church shortly after the fire.

An estimated 2,000 masons, carpenters, restorers, roofers, foundry-workers, art experts, sculptors and engineers worked on the project, which reportedly cost €700m (£582m).

Tickets for the first week of Masses in the cathedral sold out in 25 minutes, the cathedral’s rector said.

Archbishop Laurent Ulrich will lead more than 1,500 guests through the reopening service on Saturday.

Prince William has been scrambled, like in his old air ambulance days, to rush to this meeting in Paris with President-elect Donald Trump.

Although what’s in need of rescue on this occasion is the well-being of the special relationship between the US and the UK.

It’s an important connection for both sides – and for wider military links such as Nato – but there’s not a lot of obvious empathy between Starmer’s Labour government and the incoming Republicans.

So the royals, who are funded by taxpayers, are being deployed to smooth the path, with Prince William taking on the statesman role, meeting Trump before attending the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.

Trump is a royal fan, so that might make for a more positive connection. Prince William last met Trump in 2019, during the then-president’s visit to the UK, where Trump spoke very enthusiastically about his meeting with the late Queen Elizabeth II.

But there’s a massive contrast in their styles. Prince William’s flagship project is his Earthshot environmental awards, while Trump has dismissed efforts to boost green energy as a “scam”.

This week Prince William went to serve dinner at the Passage homelessness charity and on Friday night he was helping with a “kindness tree” outside Westminster Abbey.

A kindness tree and campaigning on housing and climate-change aren’t exactly the ‘Make America Great Again’ style.

But the aim of this hurriedly-arranged meeting will be for a royal charm offensive to help build bridges at an uncertain time for western alliances.

Romania’s constitutional court has scrapped the recent presidential election and ordered its rerun, following allegations and evidence of possible Russian interference.

This is a shock ruling by Romania’s constitutional court, but it comes after two weeks of high political tension here.

All predictions, any certainty, have flown out of the window.

So far, the streets are calm in Bucharest as people absorb the news.

Annulling the entire presidential election is a bold choice, but it follows another unprecedented move when the outgoing president ordered intelligence documents to be declassified and made public.

The document that talked of a massive online influence campaign to sway the vote in favour of fringe politician Calin Georgescu blamed a “state-sponsored actor”.

Another, on attempts to hack electoral websites, talked of links to cyber-crime sites in Russia. A third file said that Russia was engaged in hybrid war here.

Romanians have joined the dots and they blame Moscow. That brings dark memories for many people.

At a rally on Thursday night, outside the university, I met people who recalled their years living under communist dictatorship and were genuinely scared that today’s Russia could be meddling here.

In a bookshop, a children’s writer told me she would “leave the country immediately” if there was any sign Romania was turning away from its European path, becoming less free.

It’s certainly true that Georgescu’s policies – ending aid to Ukraine, comments that question the point of Nato or undermine the EU – are helpful to Moscow.

In the Kremlin, though they deny any role in these events, I am sure people are happy Russia is seen as so powerful; its tentacles so far-reaching they can even stir up Romanian politics. A Nato country, long seen as a stable and reliable partner.

But when I met the man at the heart of all this controversy, Calin Georgescu brushed off any idea his meteoric rise – from fringe to election frontrunner – was down to Russian meddling.

In fact, he laughed out loud.

He did tell me that Vladimir Putin was a “leader and a patriot”, though he claimed he was “not a fan”.

Suave and smooth-talking, he says he’s being blocked because he’s challenging the political establishment. He thinks his “Romania First” politics have genuine appeal to people here.

On that last point, he’s probably right.

I haven’t actually met anyone in Bucharest – outside Georgescu’s immediate team – who’s admitted to voting for him. But his online content – which flooded TikTok – had many messages that will appeal in a culturally conservative country, especially beyond the capital.

He talks of sovereignty and of God and of fighting “the System”. He tells people their lives should be better.

Will his followers, whoever they are, believe the reports that he is a Russian project and accept the cancellation of the vote? Or might they emerge from behind their computer screens and phones to protest?

So far, the calls are to stay at home and stay calm. The election re-run might not be until spring. That’s a long time in Romanian politics.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog has told the BBC Iran’s decision to begin producing significantly more highly enriched uranium was “very worrisome”.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iran was increasing its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, just below the level of purity needed for a nuclear weapon.

This will be seen by many in the region as Tehran’s response to its military and diplomatic setbacks in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza in recent months.

Mr Grossi said it was “no secret” some politicians in Iran were calling for the development of a nuclear weapon – but after holding talks in Tehran in recent weeks, he said that “doesn’t seem to be the path of choice” by the current leadership.

Mr Grossi was speaking on the margins of the Manama Dialogue conference in Bahrain run by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He warned Israel against attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, saying the consequences would be “very, very serious indeed” in terms of Tehran’s retaliation and the potential spread of radiation.

He also said it was “extremely concerning” that more countries were thinking of acquiring nuclear weapons and that the public conversation about their use had become “normalised”.

In a report to IAEA governors on Friday, Mr Grossi said his inspectors had confirmed Iran was feeding more partially enriched uranium into the cascades of two centrifuges at its Fordow nuclear plant south of Tehran.

“The facility’s updated design information showed that the effect of this change would be to significantly increase the rate of production of UF6 (uranium) enriched up to 60%,” the report said. It assessed the facility would produce 34kg (75lb) of 60% uranium per month compared previously with 4.7kg.

The IAEA had demanded further “safeguard measures” at Fordow “as a matter of urgency to enable the agency to provide timely and technically credible assurances that the facility is not being misused to produce uranium of an enrichment level higher than that declared by Iran, and that there is no diversion of declared nuclear material”.

Iran denies having a military nuclear programme. But Mr Grossi told the BBC its nuclear energy facilities had increased over the last decade.

“They have a nuclear programme that has grown, has spawned in every possible direction.

“The Iran of 2015 has nothing to do with Iran of 2025. Iran is starting production of 60% [uranium] at a much higher level of production, which means they will have the amounts necessary – if they so choose – to have a nuclear device in a much faster way. So we see an escalation in this regard, which is very worrisome.”

On a visit to Tehran last month, Mr Grossi said he had been given an assurance by Iranian leaders that they would limit their production of 60% enriched uranium.

Iran’s decision to increase production comes after little progress was made in nuclear talks between European and Iranian officials last week.

Mr Grossi said there were groups in Iran that were “very vocal” calling for the country to “do its own thing” on nuclear weapons.

“In my conversations with the government, that doesn’t seem to be the path of choice, but they sometimes refer to this as something they might need to reconsider. I hope not. I have told them this would be a regrettable choice.”

Israel has not yet launched a full-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – but its ministers have openly discussed the possibility.

Asked about the consequences of any such Israeli attack, Mr Grossi said: “I don’t think this would go without an answer, militarily speaking, so I think we need to avoid this.

“One should not forget that a big part of the nuclear programme in Iran is underground and very well protected. So kinetic action against the programme would require a vast deployment of force.

“I just hope that we are not going to get there. I know the radiological consequences if you attack a nuclear facility.”

Mr Grossi also warned that the world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime was under stress, as established nuclear powers “seem to be relying more on nuclear weapons or modernising their arsenals”.

As a result, other nations were talking more about acquiring nuclear weapons.

“There are countries saying: well, why not us? If we see that we have a world… with new conflicts, the big [countries] are saying that perhaps they might use the nuclear weapons they have, maybe we should think about our own security.”

Lawmakers in South Korea have narrowly failed to impeach the nation’s president over his short-lived attempt to declare martial law.

A bill to censure Yoon Suk Yeol fell three votes short of the 200 needed to pass, with many members of parliament in the ruling People Power Party (PPP) boycotting the vote.

The South Korean premier sparked widespread shock and anger when he declared military rule – associated with authoritarianism in the country – on Tuesday, in a bid to break out of a political stalemate.

Yoon’s declaration was quickly overturned by parliament, before his government rescinded it a few hours later in the midst of large protests.

• As it happened: South Korea’s impeachment vote
• Why did South Korea’s president declare martial law?
• Six hours that shook South Korea

The impeachment bill needed a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly to pass, meaning at least eight PPP MPs would have to vote in favour.

However, all but three walked out of the chamber earlier on Saturday.

One of those who remained, Cho Kyung-tae, credited Yoon’s apology for the martial law decree on Saturday morning – after three days out of public view – as having influenced his decision not to back impeachment this time.

“The president’s apology and his willingness to step down early, as well as delegating all political agendas to the party, did have an impact on my decision,” he told the BBC ahead of the vote.

Cho said he believed impeachment would hand the presidency to the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Lee Jae-myung.

He added that Yoon’s “irrational and absurd decision” to declare martial law had “overshadowed” what he described as the DPK’s “many extreme actions” while in power.

DPK lawmaker Lee Unjoo told the BBC that she had cried when PPP politicians walked out.

“We did know there was a possibility they might boycott the vote, but we didn’t believe they would actually go through with it when tens of thousands of citizens were watching right outside,” she said.

Following Saturday’s vote, Lee insisted his party “will not give up” with its attempts to impeach Yoon, who he said had become “the worst risk” to South Korea.

“We will definitely return this country to normal by Christmas and the end of the year,” he told a crowd gathered outside the parliament in the capital, Seoul.

Prior to Tuesday, martial law – temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, during which civil rights are usually curtailed – had not been declared in South Korea since before it became a parliamentary democracy in 1987.

Yoon claimed the measures were needed to defeat “anti-state forces” in the parliament and referred to North Korea.

But others saw the move as an extreme reaction to the political stalemate that had arisen since the DPK won a landslide in April, reducing his government to vetoing the bills it passed, as well as Yoon’s increasing unpopularity in the wake of a scandal surrounding the First Lady.

The president’s late-night address caused dramatic scenes at the National Assembly, with protesters descending en masse as military personnel attempted to block entry to the building.

Lawmakers tussled with the soldiers, with 190 MPs making it into the building to vote down the order.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Yoon’s cabinet rescinded the martial law declaration.

However, the short-lived military takeover has seen daily protests on the streets. Some came out in support of Yoon, though they were drowned out by angry mobs.

Authorities have since revealed more about the events of Tuesday night.

The commander charged with the military takeover said he had learned of the decree on TV along with everyone else in the country.

He said he had refused to make his troops arrest lawmakers inside parliament, and did not give them live ammunition rounds.

The National Intelligence Service later confirmed rumours that Yoon had ordered the arrest and interrogation of his political rivals – and even some of his supposed political allies, such as his own party leader Han Dong-hoon.

These revelations saw some members of Yoon’s own party signal their support for impeachment.

The president’s apology on Saturday morning appeared to be a last-ditch effort to shore up support.

He said the martial law declaration had been made out of “desperation” and pledged he would not make another.

Yoon did not offer to resign, but said he would leave decisions on how to stabilise the country to his party.

Were he to be impeached, it would not be unprecedented. In 2016, then-President Park Geun-hye was impeached after being accused of helping a friend commit extortion.

If South Korea’s parliament passes an impeachment bill, a trial would be held by a constitutional court. Two-thirds of that court would have to sustain the majority for him to be removed permanently from office.

The “brazen and targeted” killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, outside a New York hotel this week shocked America. The reaction to the crime also exposed a simmering rage against a trillion-dollar industry.

“Prior authorisation” does not seem like a phrase that would generate much passion.

But on a hot day this past July, more than 100 people gathered outside the Minnesota headquarters of UnitedHealthcare to protest against the insurance firm’s policies and denial of patient claims.

“Prior authorisation” allows companies to review suggested treatments before agreeing to pay for them.

Eleven people were arrested for blocking a road during the protest.

Police records indicate they came from around the country, including Maine, New York, Texas and West Virginia, to the rally organised by the People’s Action Institute.

Unai Montes-Irueste, media strategy director of the Chicago-based advocacy group, said those protesting had personal experience with denied claims and other problems with the healthcare system.

• What we know about NYC killing of healthcare executive
• Who was Brian Thompson?

“They are denied care, then they have to go through an appeals process that’s incredibly difficult to win,” he told the BBC.

The latent anger felt by many Americans at the healthcare system – a dizzying array of providers, for profit and not-for-profit companies, insurance giants, and government programmes – burst into the open following the apparent targeted killing of Thompson in New York City on Wednesday.

Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance unit of health services provider UnitedHealth Group. The company is the largest insurer in the US.

Police are still on the hunt for the suspected killer, whose motivation is unknown, but authorities have revealed messages written on shell casings found at the scene.

The words “deny”, “defend”, and “depose” were discovered on the casings, which investigators believe could refer to tactics which critics say insurance companies use to avoid payouts and to increase profits.

A scroll through Thompson’s LinkedIn history reveals that many were angry about denied claims.

One woman responded to a post the executive had made boasting of his firm’s work on making drugs more affordable.

“I have stage 4 metastatic lung cancer,” she wrote. “We’ve just left [UnitedHealthcare] because of all the denials for my meds. Every month there is a different reason for the denial.”

Thompson’s wife told US broadcaster NBC that he had received threatening messages before.

“There had been some threats,” Paulette Thompson said. “Basically, I don’t know, a lack of [medical] coverage? I don’t know details.”

“I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

A security expert says that frustration at high costs across a range of industries inevitably results in threats against corporate leaders.

Philip Klein, who runs the Texas-based Klein Investigations, which protected Thompson when he gave a speech in the early 2000s, says that he’s astonished the executive didn’t have security for his trip to New York City.

“There’s lot of anger in the United States of America right now,” Mr Klein said.

“Companies need to wake up and realise that their executives could be hunted down anywhere.”

Mr Klein says he’s been inundated with calls since Thompson was killed. Top US firms typically spend millions of dollars on personal security for high-level executives.

In the wake of the shooting, a number of politicians and industry officials expressed shock and sympathy.

Michael Tuffin, president of insurance industry organistion Ahip, said he was “heartbroken and horrified by the loss of my friend Brian Thompson”.

“He was a devoted father, a good friend to many and a refreshingly candid colleague and leader.”

In a statement, UnitedHealth Group said it had received many messages of support from “patients, consumers, health care professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people”.

But online many people, including UnitedHealthcare customers and users of other insurance services, reacted differently.

Those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was “thoughts and prior authorisations”, a play on the phrase “thoughts and prayers”) to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms.

At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death.

The online anger seemed to bridge the political divide.

Animosity was expressed from avowed socialists to right-wing activists suspicious of the so-called “deep state” and corporate power. It also came from ordinary people sharing stories about insurance firms denying their claims for medical treatments.

Mr Montes-Irueste of People’s Action said he was shocked by the news of the killing.

He said his group campaigned in a “nonviolent, democratic” way – but he added he understood the bitterness online.

“We have a balkanised and broken healthcare system, which is why there are very strong feelings being expressed right now by folks who are experiencing that broken system in various different ways,” he said.

Mr Tuffin, head of the health insurance trade association, condemned any threats made against his colleagues, describing them as “mission-driven professionals working to make coverage and care as affordable as possible”.

The posts underlined the deep frustration many Americans feel towards health insurers and the system in general.

“The system is incredibly complicated,” said Sara Collins, a senior scholar at The Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare research foundation.

“Just navigating and understanding how you get covered can be challenging for people,” she said. “And everything might seem fine until you get sick and need your plan.”

Recent Commonwealth Fund research found that 45% of insured working-age adults were charged for something they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, and less than half of those who reported suspected billing errors challenged them. And 17% of respondents said their insurer denied coverage for care that was recommended by their doctor.

Not only is the US health system complicated, it’s expensive, and huge costs can often fall directly on individuals.

Prices are negotiated between providers and insurers, Ms Collins says, meaning that what’s charged to patients or insurance companies often bears little resemblance to the actual costs of providing medical services.

“We find high rates of people saying that their healthcare costs are unaffordable, across all insurance types, even (government-funded) Medicaid and Medicare,” she said.

“People accumulate medical debt because they can’t pay their bills. This is unique to the United States. We truly have a medical debt crisis.”

A survey by researchers at health policy foundation KFF found that around two-thirds of Americans said insurance companies deserve “a lot” of blame for high healthcare costs. Most insured adults, 81%, still rated their health insurance as “excellent” or “good”.

Christine Eibner, a senior economist at the nonprofit think tank the RAND Corporation, said that in recent years insurers have been increasingly issuing denials for treatment coverage and making use of prior authorisations to decline coverage.

She said premiums are about $25,000 (£19,600) per family.

“On top of that, people face out-of-pocket costs, which could easily be in the thousands of dollars,” she said.

UnitedHealthcare and other insurance providers have faced lawsuits, media investigations and government probes over their practices.

Last year, UnitedHealthcare settled a lawsuit brought by a chronically ill college student whose story was covered by news site ProPublica, which says he was saddled with $800,000 of medical bills when his doctor-prescribed drugs were denied.

The company is currently fighting a class-action lawsuit that claims it uses artificial intelligence to end treatments early.

The BBC has contacted UnitedHealth Group for comment.

A new nightclub is opening this week with a strict rule that your smartphone camera must be covered with a sticker.

Amber’s in Manchester is the latest in a handful of venues in the UK to enforce the policy – but in cities like Berlin, renowned for its nightclubs, it’s the norm.

Amber’s director Jeremy Abbott told the BBC the club made the decision because “we really want the music and the experience to be front and centre”, but the issue is being debated on social media.

Some posted on Instagram concerns that clubs could suffer as social media videos of their night act as free adverts, while others welcomed the move as “partying with privacy”.

“It is the fear of being put on the internet isn’t it?” one woman told the BBC when we asked young people in Manchester how they feel about a no camera phones in clubs rule.

“Being really drunk and that embarrassing picture of you ending up on Insta, waking up and seeing the events of last night.”

Another woman said: “It does make the vibe better, because the less people [are] on their phone, engaging more with the DJ and stuff, that’s the better environment to have.”

So are Britain’s clubs at a turning point? Is now the time to get phones off the dancefloor and people’s minds back on the music?

Sacha Lord, night time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, thinks so. “These phones are killing the dancefloor, they’re killing the atmosphere,” he says.

“DJs hate it. To look out into a sea of phones and no-one’s dancing is really demoralising.”

Smokin Jo, who has been DJing since 1990, remembers when the rave and club scene was burgeoning in the late 80s and early 90s.

“Everyone’s got their hands in the air, there’s joy, there’s happiness.

“Now there’s these videos being posted of people standing still with their phone in the air. It’s so sad,” she says.

But Dr Lee Hadlington, senior lecturer in cyberpsychology at Nottingham Trent University, says for those clubbers, “part of their enjoyment is to document their night in terms of photos and memories”.

At Amber’s, phones are not banned outright but clubbers will be required to put a sticker over the camera lens to prevent photos being taken. A content team will be on hand to take and post photos online instead.

People violating the rule will be “politely asked to stop”, says Abbott. “If you are seen doing it again, you will be asked to leave the venue.”

The rule comes at a tricky time for Britain’s nightclub scene, which has struggled to recover from the numerous Covid lockdowns.

Between June 2020 and June this year, the number of clubs has fallen from 1,266 to 786, according to figures from the Night Time Industries Association and research firm NeilsenIQ.

Abbott concedes Amber’s no phones rules is a risk but says the club has been “blown away” by the response.

Lord says the policy could be a “shot in the arm” for the industry and “bring back the energy to the dancefloor”.

Graeme Park, one of Britain’s best-known DJs and a leading figure from Manchester’s legendary Hacienda nightclub, says: “I totally, totally understand and think that no smartphones on the dancefloor is a great idea.

“However, I’ve got a 20-year-old son. He makes music, he DJs, he goes clubbing and he’s like, ‘why’s your generation telling our generation we can’t use our smartphones?'”

Ben Park, Graeme’s son, says: “Personally, I’ve got nothing against phones being in clubs. I understand the whole no phone policy but at the same time people want to post pictures of them or their friends on social media, people want to promote it online.”

But he understands why some clubbers – and DJs – get annoyed by so-called TikTok ravers who “literally go to events just to show that they’ve been there and just post it on TikTok,” he says.

Cyberpsychologist Dr Hadlington says for these clubbers, it could be about a fear of missing out on social media action.

“The paradox is they’re spending more time posting about it than they’re enjoying the good time,” he says.

It might be a relatively new concept in the UK, but in Berlin, 90% of venues have a no phones on the dancefloor code, according to Lutz Leichsenring, former spokesperson for Clubcommission Berlin and co-founder of VibeLab.

He says that with more tourists coming to the German capital to enjoy the scene, “I think people really appreciated that this policy was a part of clubbing”.

And, on a personal note, he says that for him, “it is very, very weird when I’m in a club where people around me take pictures and film the whole time”.

Amber’s is adopting the same policy that London nightclub fabric has had in place since reopening in 2021 after Covid. The venue has actually been camera-free since it opened its doors in 1999 but as technology changed and smartphones became more ubiquitous it has tweaked its policy.

“When people come in at the point of search, we put a sticker on the camera lens and just really sort of invite people not to use it, that’s all it is,” says fabric’s co-founder Cameron Leslie.

He says for the most part clubbers abide by the rule. “It’s not an aggressive enforcement,” he says. “We have posters up in the club and then beyond that if people do use it and our team do see them we invite them not to.”

Smokin Jo reckons there are steps DJs can take themselves.

“Maybe DJs need to have a clause in their contract saying ‘I’ll do the gig but you need to have some sort of policy’ because we’re losing the identity of the scene and the roots of it.”

Fellow DJ Graeme Park thinks there is no easy answer to smartphones in nightclubs but says: “It is a really, really good thing that people are talking about it.

“It’s the cultural zeitgeist changing and that’s the great thing about clubbing, the attitudes change every decade or every few years.”

As 2024 draws to a close, and winter arrives, Russian forces are continuing to push their Ukrainian opponents back.

In total, Russia has captured and retaken about 2,350 sq km of territory (907 sq miles) in eastern Ukraine and in Russia’s western Kursk region.

But the cost in lives has been horrendous.

Britain’s defence ministry says that in November Russia suffered 45,680 casualties, more than during any month since its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to the latest UK Defence Intelligence estimate, Russia lost a daily average of 1,523 men, killed and wounded.

On 28 November, it says, Russia lost more than 2,000 men in a single day, the first time this has happened.

“We’re seeing the Russians grinding out more advances,” one official said, on condition of anonymity. “But at enormous cost.”

Officials said the casualty figures were based on open-source material, sometimes cross-referenced with classified data.

All in all, Russia is estimated to have lost about 125,800 soldiers over the course of its autumn offensives, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Russia’s “meat-grinder” tactics, the ISW says, mean that Moscow is losing more than 50 soldiers for each square kilometre of captured territory.

Ukraine does not allow publication of its own military casualties, so there are no official estimates covering the last few months.

The Russian defence ministry says more than 38,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been lost (killed and wounded) in Kursk alone – a number that is impossible to verify.

Yuriy Butusov, a well-connected but controversial Ukrainian war correspondent, says that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since February 2022, with another 35,000 missing.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied US media reports that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian troops had died, saying it was “much less”.

He did not offer his own figure.

But taken together, the Russian and Ukrainian casualty figures point to the terrifying intensity of fighting going on in Kursk and Ukraine’s eastern regions.

Western officials see no sign of this changing.

“The Russian forces are highly likely to continue to attempt to stretch Ukrainian forces by using mass to overwhelm defensive positions and achieve tactical gains,” one said.

The pace of Russia’s advance has increased in recent weeks (while still nothing like the speed of its rapid advances in the first months of the war), stemmed only by a significant change in the ratio of artillery fire between the two sides.

Where once Russia was able to fire as many as 13 shells for every one Ukraine fired back, the ratio is now around 1.5 to 1.

This dramatic turnaround is partly explained by increased domestic production, as well as successful Ukrainian attacks on depots containing Russian and North Korean ammunition.

But artillery, while important, no longer plays such a decisive role.

“The bad news is that there’s been a massive increase in Russian glide bomb use,” one Western official said, “with devastating effects on the front line.”

Russia’s use of glide bombs – launched from jets flying well inside Russian-controlled airspace – has increased 10-fold over the past year, the official said.

Glide bombs and drones have transformed the conflict, as each side races to innovate.

“We’re at the point where drone warfare made infantry toothless, if not obsolete,” Serhiy, a front line soldier told me via WhatsApp.

As for manpower, both Ukraine and Russia continue to experience difficulties, but for different reasons.

Ukraine has been unwilling to reduce its conscription age below 25, depriving it of all 18- to 24-year-olds – except those who volunteer.

Russia, meanwhile, is still able to replace its losses, although President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to conduct a fresh round of mobilisation points to a number of domestic considerations.

Soaring inflation, overflowing hospitals and problems with compensation payments to bereaved families are all factors.

In some regions of Russia, bonuses offered to volunteers willing to sign up for the war in Ukraine have risen as high as three million roubles (about £23,500; $30,000).

“I’m not suggesting that the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse,” the official said. “I’m just saying that pressures continue to mount there.”

Recent events in Syria could add to Moscow’s woes, as the Kremlin decides what resources it can afford to devote to its defence of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But with the situation in Syria developing rapidly, officials say it’s too early to know what impact events there will have on the war in Ukraine.

“There’s certainly potentially longer-term prioritisation dilemmas for Russia,” one official said.

“It depends how the situation in Syria goes.”

Koh Jae-hak can still vividly remember when he saw soldiers gunning down a group of young women in cold blood.

It was April 1960. Students had launched protests calling for the resignation of the dictatorial president Syngman Rhee. Mr Koh was working in a government building when he looked out of the window and saw protesters clashing with police.

“There were demonstrations from various universities, and they all gathered in front… that’s when shots were fired,” the 87-year-old said. Days later, martial law was declared.

South Korea is widely considered a peaceful beacon of democracy in Asia, but that wasn’t always the case. This is a country that saw 16 bouts of martial law during its first four decades ruled largely by dictators.

It is why democracy is now deeply treasured by South Koreans as a hard-won right. It is also why President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law this week – the first to happen in 45 years and during democratic rule – was particularly triggering and prompted such a visceral response.

Almost immediately, lawmakers jumped out of bed and rushed to the national assembly, clambering over fences to reverse martial law.

Hundreds of ordinary citizens gathered to hold back troops who had been ordered to throw out MPs.

Some soldiers, apparently unwilling to carry out their orders, reportedly dragged their feet in clearing the crowd and entering the building.

When Yoon declared martial law on Tuesday night, he said it was necessary to get rid of “pro-North anti-state” forces. Initially, it caused confusion with some South Koreans who believed there was a genuine threat from the North.

But as they continued watching Yoon’s televised announcement, many grew sceptical. He gave no evidence of such forces at work, nor explained who they were. As Yoon had previously used similar language to describe the opposition that had been stymying his reforms, the public concluded he was actually trying to crush his political foes.

Previous periods of martial law had also been justified by leaders as necessary to stabilise the country, and sometimes stamp out what they alleged were communist subversives planted by North Korea.

They curtailed freedom of press and freedom of movement. Night curfews and arrests were common.

Violent clashes sometimes took place, most indelibly in 1980, when then President Chun Doo-hwan extended martial law to deal with student protesters calling for democracy in the southern city of Gwangju. A brutal military crackdown was launched, and it has since been labelled a massacre – while the official death toll is 193, some experts believe hundreds more died.

South Korea eventually transitioned to democracy in 1988, when the government held its first free and fair presidential election following mounting public pressure. But the preceding decades had permanently and profoundly shaped the nation’s consciousness.

“Most Koreans have trauma, deep trauma, about martial law,” said Kelly Kim, 53, an environmental activist. “We don’t want to repeat the same thing over and over.”

Ms Kim was a young child when martial law was last in place and has little memory of it. Still, she shudders at the thought of it returning.

“The government would control all the media, our normal activities. I’m working in civil society, so all our activities, like criticising the government, would not be possible under the martial law. So that’s really horrible.”

The freedoms afforded by democracy have not just led to a thriving civil society.

In the more than 35 years since that first democratic election, South Korea’s creative industries have flourished, with its dramas, TV shows, music and literature becoming world famous. Those creative industries have turned their own lenses onto the country’s past, bringing history to life for those too young to remember.

The country has seen a proliferation of shows about its dictatorship past, immortalising incidents such as the Gwangju uprising in popular culture.

Some were blockbusters featuring South Korea’s biggest stars, such as last year’s 12.12 The Day, a historical drama starring popular actor Hwang Jung-min. The movie depicts the political chaos that took place in 1979 as martial law was declared following the assassination of then president Park Chung-hee.

“As soon as I saw the images [of Yoon’s declaration of martial law], it reminded me of that movie… it made me question, are we about to repeat that history now?” said Marina Kang, a 37-year-old web designer.

“Korea’s got a wealth of visual representational works [of that era] in films and documentaries. Though we only have indirect experience of the horrific past through these works… that still makes me feel very strongly that such events should not happen again.”

Among younger citizens, there is a sense of disbelief that it could have returned. Despite never knowing life under martial law, they have been taught by their parents and older relatives to fear it.

“At first [when I heard Yoon’s announcement], I was excited at the thought of getting a day off from school. But that joy was fleeting, and I was overwhelmed by the fear of daily life collapsing. I couldn’t sleep,” said 15-year-old Kwon Hoo.

“My father was concerned that under martial law, he wouldn’t be able to stay out late even though his work required him to… when he heard the news about the possibility of a curfew being imposed again, he started swearing while watching the news.”

Not all South Koreans feel this way about their past.

“The vast majority of Koreans appreciate democracy enormously and regret the authoritarianism of the post-war period,” said Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

But, he added, “the country remains very divided regarding numerous aspects of the authoritarian past, notably how justified certain repressive measures were in order to prevent communist subversion.”

There is the view among a significant portion of the population, especially among older folk, that martial law was necessary in the past for stability and democracy.

“Back then, it was a time defined by ideological warfare between democracy and communist socialism,” said Kang Hyo-san, 83. He was sitting next to his friend Mr Koh in a cafe at Gwanghwamun, Seoul’s main square and focal point for the city’s protest rallies.

The competing ideologies would lead to clashes and “when the military intervened, the situation would stabilise… it was a process to restore order and properly establish free democracy.

“Given the circumstances, we couldn’t help but view it positively,” he said, adding that he felt each period of martial law left the country in a more “favourable” position. Martial law in South Korea “fundamentally differed” from other nations, where it “wasn’t about killing people or senseless violence”, he insisted.

But this time, it’s different. Both octogenarians felt that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unacceptable. “Even though we’ve experienced martial law many times throughout our lives, this time there’s no justification for its declaration,” said Mr Koh.

Like them, Ms Kim, the environmental activist, was glad Yoon did not succeed and democracy prevailed in the end. “Because we fought so hard to get it, right? We don’t want to lose it again.

“Without democracy and freedom of living, what is life?”

“Daya, darwaaza tod do.” (Daya, break down the door)

Most Indians will instantly recognise this dialogue from the popular detective show CID, which ran from 1998 to 2018, making it one of India’s longest-running television shows.

The whodunnit featured three intrepid policemen – ACP Pradyuman, inspector Daya and inspector Abhijeet – solving case after case, as no criminal was ever a match for them. The low-budget episodes had comically simple plots, iffy acting, and all it took for a suspect to confess was a good slap from ACP Pradyuman.

But over the years, the show has achieved cult status, and its characters and dialogues have spawned a wealth of jokes, memes and reels.

CID is set to return later this month, sparking mixed reactions among its fans. Some are eager to see the three policemen back in action but others say that the show’s old-world charm might not fit in with the gritty realism of modern-day crime shows.

Over the past few days, the creators of the show have been releasing teasers for upcoming episodes on Instagram, each garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.

Apart from the three main characters, the teasers feature familiar tropes and dialogues. These include Inspector Daya kicking open doors to reveal a suspect’s hideout and ACP Pradyuman muttering his iconic line, ‘kuch toh gadbad hai, Daya’ (something’s not right, Daya), signaling to both his team and the audience that a crime has taken place.

Trisha Shah, 35, a content creator from Mumbai and a fan of the show, says that the teasers make her nostalgic.

“CID was one of the few crime shows on television back then and my parents didn’t mind me watching it because of its family-friendly content,” Ms Shah says.

“Despite being a crime show, it never showed gruesome violence, sexual crimes, foul language or anything that was not suitable for family viewing.”

In an interview to Film Companion, an entertainment journalism platform, one of the writers of the show said that they even avoided giving surnames to the characters to avoid hurting anyone’s sentiments.

But the show’s outlandish plots more than made up for its primness, whether that was ACP Pradyuman coming back from the dead or inspector Daya single-handedly manoeuvring a poison-gas filled plane to safety.

In an interview to Forbes magazine, the producer of the show, BP Singh, described these scenes and plots as “believable nonsense”.

“You may later laugh at it [the scene]. But for those five minutes, it is so engrossing that you don’t mind it,” he told the magazine.

In a rather comical fashion, the characters would also explain plots and technologies used to solve crimes through their dialogues, making it easy for even children to grasp what was happening.

“The bad guys always got caught and that was comforting to watch,” Ms Shah says. “I don’t think I’ll enjoy the show today, but back then, it was a big deal.”

In the 1990s, TV was a big deal as it was the only form of home entertainment. At the start of the decade, India eased broadcasting rights, making more channels available.

“Initially, channels like Star began showing reruns of American shows like Baywatch and The Bold and The Beautiful. But new entrants like Zee TV and Sony began producing original shows to cater to the Indian audience,” says Harsh Taneja, an associate professor of media at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Producers often adapted Western shows for Indian audiences by importing format Bibles – guidelines outlining story structure – and modifying them for local context, he says. So, a show like CID often featured plots that closely resembled those of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, an American crime drama.

The 1990s and 2000s saw television become a staple in households as people’s spending power grew. Many homes had not just one but two televisions, leading producers to create content targeting different age groups, says Mr Taneja.

Interestingly, the target audience of CID, when it was released in the 1990s, was children in the age group of six to 14. After CID, several other crime-focussed shows began to populate channels – from Crime Patrol to Savadhan India. But one could say that it was CID that created an appetite for crime shows among viewers.

Priya Ravi, 40, remembers waiting eagerly for each CID episode to air when she was a child. She confesses that it was the show that made her push her parents to get a television set at their home.

“Episodes used to air twice a week, and initially I used to go to a friend’s place to watch them. But then I convinced my parents to get a TV so that I could watch the episodes at home. I was so happy the day the TV arrived,” Ms Ravi says.

She says that though she won’t watch the new CID episodes, she’ll definitely encourage her two children, aged seven and nine, to watch them.

“If the show remains as clean as it was back in the day, I think it’s a great way to introduce children to some of the realities of life and make them vigilant about their safety and surroundings,” she says.

“I’m looking forward to the heroic trio making a comeback.”

Rebel forces have launched the largest offensive against the Syrian government in years.

In just over a week they have taken control of the country’s second-biggest city Aleppo, the city of Hama and were gathering outside the major city of Homs further south.

In southern Syria close to the Jordanian border, local rebels have reportedly captured most of the Deraa region, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The surprise offensive in the north met little resistance from the Syrian military, which pulled its troops back from Aleppo, as well as from Hama and other areas.

The attack was led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which has a long and involved history in the Syrian conflict.

HTS is designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, Turkey and other countries.

HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda.

The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.

It was regarded as one of the most effective and deadly of the groups ranged against President Assad.

But its jihadist ideology appeared to be its driving force rather than revolutionary zeal – and it was seen at the time as at odds with the main rebel coalition under the banner of Free Syria.

And in 2016, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, publicly broke ranks with Al Qaeda, dissolved Jabhat al-Nusra and set up a new organisation, which took the name Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when it merged with several other similar groups a year later.

For some time now, HTS has established its power base in the north-western province of Idlib where it is the de facto local administration, although its efforts towards legitimacy have been tarnished by alleged human rights abuses.

It has also been involved in some bitter infighting with other groups.

Its ambitions beyond Idlib had become unclear.

Since breaking with Al Qaeda, its goal has been limited to trying to establish fundamentalist Islamic rule in Syria rather than a wider caliphate, as IS tried and failed to do.

It had shown little sign of attempting to reignite the Syrian conflict on a major scale and renew its challenge to Assad’s rule over much of the country – until now.

In March 2011, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in the southern city of Deraa, inspired by uprisings in neighbouring countries against repressive rulers.

When the Syrian government used deadly force to crush the dissent, protests demanding the president’s resignation erupted nationwide.

The unrest spread and the crackdown intensified. Opposition supporters took up arms, first to defend themselves and later to rid their areas of security forces. Mr Assad vowed to crush what he called “foreign-backed terrorism”.

Hundreds of rebel groups sprang up, foreign powers began to take sides and extremist jihadist organisations such as the Islamic State (IS) group and al-Qaeda, became involved.

The violence rapidly escalated and the country descended into a full-scale civil war drawing in regional and world powers.

More than half a million people have been killed and 12 million have been forced to flee their homes, about five million of whom are refugees or asylum seekers abroad.

The war in Syria had for the past four years felt as if it were effectively over.

President Bashar al-Assad’s rule had essentially been uncontested in the country’s major cities, while some other parts of Syria remained out of his direct control.

These include Kurdish majority areas in the east, which have been more or less separate from Syrian state control since the early years of the conflict.

There had been some continued, though relatively muted unrest, in the south where the revolution against Assad’s rule began in 2011.

In the vast Syrian desert, holdouts from the group calling themselves Islamic State still pose a security threat, particularly during the truffle hunting season when people head to the area to find the highly profitable delicacy.

And in the north-west, the province of Idlib has been held by militant groups driven there at the height of the war.

HTS, the dominant force in Idlib, is the one that has launched the surprise attack on Aleppo.

For several years, Idlib remained a battleground as Syrian government forces tried to regain control.

But a ceasefire deal in 2020 brokered by Russia, which has long been Assad’s key ally, and Turkey, which has backed the rebels, has largely held.

About four million people live there – most of them displaced from towns and cities that Assad’s forces won back from rebels in a brutal war of attrition.

Aleppo was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds and represented one of the rebels’ biggest defeats.

To achieve victory, President Assad could not depend on the country’s under-equipped and poorly motivated conscript army alone, which soon became dangerously stretched and regularly unable to hold positions against rebel attacks.

Instead, he came to rely heavily on Russian airpower and Iranian military help on the ground – mainly through militias sponsored by Tehran.

These included Hezbollah.

There is little doubt that the setback Hezbollah has suffered recently from Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, as well as Israeli strikes on Iranian military commanders in Syria, has played a significant part in the decision by jihadist and rebel groups in Idlib to make their sudden, unexpected move on Aleppo.

In the past few months, Israel has intensified its attacks on Iranian-linked groups as well as their supply lines, inflicting serious damage on the networks that have kept these militias, including Hezbollah, operative in Syria.

Without them, President Assad’s forces have been left exposed.

At least two people have died, and three others injured, after explosions rocked a block of flats in The Hague, authorities have said.

Firefighters rushed to the three-storey building following the blasts that caused the collapse of several homes in the Tarwekamp area at around 06:15 (05:15 GMT) on Saturday.

The city’s mayor, Jan van Zanen, said it was not known how many people were still missing.

The cause of the explosions is not yet clear, but Dutch police said a car drove away “at very high speed” shortly after, and have appealed for witnesses.

Jan van Zanen said the chance of survivors being pulled from the rubble was slim, and urged the community to prepare for a “worst case scenario”.

It was earlier thought up to 20 people may have been in the flats at the time of the blast, but the mayor refused to speculate on this.

While authorities said earlier that four people were injured, the mayor revised that number down to three.

Dutch media reported five flats were destroyed in the explosion.

Rescue teams with sniffer dogs have been deployed to sift through the debris, but parts of the site remain too dangerous to access.

A large excavator has been brought in to remove debris.

Fourteen-year-old Adam Muller told the AFP news agency the explosion “felt like an earthquake”.

“I was asleep and suddenly there was this huge bang,” he said.

“I looked out of the window and just saw flames. It’s a massive shock,” he added.

National police commissioner in the Netherlands Janny Knol said there was “disbelief and uncertainty” in the community.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima said in a statement: “We sympathise with all those who have been personally affected or who fear for the fate of their loved ones.”

A man has admitted creating more than 400 child abuse images and videos and having a pornographic picture involving a dog.

Gary Cary, from Ipswich, pleaded guilty to three counts of making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child and one count of having a prohibited image of a child.

The 30-year-old, of Rapier Street, was also charged with possessing an extreme pornographic image, or images, portraying an act of intercourse or oral sex with a dead or alive animal.

Cary entered his pleas at Ipswich Magistrates’ Court and is due to be sentenced at the town’s crown court on 3 January.

Cary made 75 Category A images (those defined by law as the most severe) of a child between 17 May and 15 December 2022, as well as 85 in Category B and 133 in Category C.

During the same period he also created 86 Category A videos, 53 Category B and 30 Category C.

The court heard the age of the children in the images ranged from six months to teenaged.

Cary was also found with an “extreme pornographic image” portraying a person performing a sexual act with a dog.

He was told sentencing would need to take place at Ipswich Crown Court rather than at magistrates’ court due to the offences being “so serious”.

For about two months each year, fisherman Faustino Mauloko da Cunha transforms his home along the South Pacific coast into a whale monitoring station.

From the morning, villagers and student volunteers gather at the house in Subaun, a village in the north of Timor-Leste. Armed with binoculars and telephoto cameras, they watch the cobalt waters for one of its great treasures – pygmy blue whales.

When there is a sighting, it’s all systems go.

Faustino’s son, Zacarias, dispatches a drone. Then the team’s leader, Australian marine ecologist Karen Edyvane, guides him to take the best photographs. When the drone returns, the team reviews the pictures, taking notes on a white board.

It’s a small and thrifty operation in Timor-Leste, which is part of an archipelago that lies between South East Asia and the South Pacific. But it has generated a wealth of information about pygmy blue whales – one of the largest animals on earth, whose vast habitats and elusive nature make them challenging to study.

These citizen science researchers, all of them locals, have spotted nearly 3,000 pygmy blue whales over the past 10 years – Prof Edyvane considers that a “truly extraordinary” number.

Timor-Leste has one of the world’s highest concentrations of marine mammals.

During the migration season – October and November – hundreds of pygmy blue whales pass through the country’s waters as they make the epic journey spanning thousands of kilometres from the Banda Sea, which lies to the north of Timor-Leste, to southern Australia.

But the area has been under-researched, says Prof Edyvane, who started the citizen science monitoring programme in 2014.

During the last two whale seasons, she has based herself in Subaun, about 50km (31 miles) from the capital Dili, working with fishermen, students and dive tour operators to document the cetaceans.

They have documented “some of the lesser known, intimate reproductive behaviours of blue whales, some for the very first time,” says Prof Edyvane, a researcher at Charles Darwin University and Australian National University.

In 2022, for instance, tourists with a local tour operator invovlved in the programme captured underwater footage of a mother nursing her calf, offering a glimpse into the species’ reproductive behaviours, which have remained largely unknown.

“It’s very, very exciting,” she adds.

The programme started as a Facebook group, inviting local tour operators, fishermen and residents to share sightings of cetaceans.

Prof Edyvane trained them on surveying methods and taught them how to use telephoto cameras and drones so that they could conduct aerial and boat surveys.

“When locals see the whales swimming by, they will post pictures on Facebook and WhatsApp. Updates come on a real-time basis and when someone shares something, everyone gets very excited,” Prof Edyvane says.

In 2016, the team worked with a dive tour operator to launch the first whale-watching tour.

It was only last year that they set up a “research station” outside the da Cunha’s village home – photos show a simple hut overlooking the bay. Outside are two tables, plastic chairs and white boards mounted on the hut’s walls.

During this year’s whale season, undergraduates from the National University of East Timor and University Oriental Timor-Leste gathered at the research station to help with the sightings.

Even such a basic structure has made the task easier.

“We’re able to monitor all day and all night,” Prof Edyvane says. “We’ve also been able to get the most incredible footage. The whales come in so close sometimes we can actually hear their blows.”

Citizen researchers like these have become powerful eyes and ears on the ground for marine scientists, says wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta.

“The combination of people having access to tools like drones and social media means we have insights into things that are happening while we may be behind the desk writing grants to fund our work,” she said.

The increase in research activity in Subaun has also led to a rise in tourism.

The demand for whale-watching tours has increased, diving instructor Cassio Schumacher tells the BBC, adding that these tours are “booked up years in advance”.

Local non-profits have warned of the risks of unregulated whale tourism and the government has said it intends to use Prof Edyvane’s research to “fully protect and conserve” the marine life that pass through Timor-Leste’s waters.

Prof Edyvane believes that with regulation, whale tourism has the potential to create jobs and grow Timor-Leste’s economy.

The country is one of the poorest in the world, where average annual incomes in cities hover around $1,500, according to the International Monetary Fund. In Subaun, most villagers work as subsistence fishermen and farmers, earning just about $600 to $900 a year.

The da Cunha family has now started preparing meals from local produce and the day’s catch for the students and tourists – an additional source of income.

“We enjoyed having the guests around and will love to do it again,” Faustino, 51, tells the BBC on a WhatsApp video call. “We will make it a better experience [next season].”

His son, Zacarias, has also been contracted to provide drone services for the project. Prof Edyvane says she plans to train him to give talks about whales in English.

The 26-year-old says what he appreciates is that the visitors are learning to protect the area: “The university students learn fast and well to defend this area.”

As for the tourists, he says the locals are happy to teach them. “We remind tourists not to swim with the whales but instead watch them from a distance.”