A former Manchester City footballer is set be appointed president on Saturday by Georgia’s disputed parliament, after 16 days of pro-EU protests that have swept this country’s towns and cities.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, now 53, is a former MP from the increasingly authoritarian ruling Georgian Dream party and the only candidate for the job.

The four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and have boycotted parliament, insisting that the elections held in October were rigged.

Georgia’s outgoing pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has condemned Kavelashvili’s election as a travesty, insisting she holds Georgia’s only remaining legitimate institution.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has accused the president of trying to harm Georgia’s interests, emphasising that when her term of office ends on 29 December, she will have to retire.

“We have very strong state institutions, so we certainly have no difficulty in bringing the situation under full control,” he was quoted as saying on Friday.

Party colleague Nino Tsilosani told reporters that Zourabichvili was no longer president in the eyes of the public.

Protests against Georgian Dream began immediately after the October elections but they burst into life on 28 November when the government announced it was putting EU accession negotiations on hold until 2028.

An overwhelming majority of Georgians back the country’s path to the European Union and it is part of the constitution.

Every night, the main avenue outside parliament fills with protesters draped in EU flags, demanding new elections.

Saturday’s vote in parliament is expected to take several hours and prompt a spike in anti-government protests. It will involve a direct ballot by a 300-member electoral college made up of MPs and local officials loyal to Georgian Dream from around the country.

Ahead of the vote, the capital Tbilisi was convulsed on Friday by pop-up protests involving IT specialists, public sector workers, creative industry professionals, actors and lawyers.

“We are standing here to create a legal state once and for all, to respect the provisions of the constitution and human rights,” said lawyer Davit Kikaleishvili, 47.

Kavelashvili is a founder of the People’s Power party, known for being the main voice for anti-Western propaganda in Georgia.

He has accused opposition parties of acting as a “fifth column” directed from abroad, and described President Zourabichvili as a a “chief agent”.

Kavelashvili moved into politics after he was disqualified from seeking the leadership of the Georgian football federation because he lacked the qualifications.

Although his party ran alongside Georgian Dream in the October elections, it has now decided to act in parliament as a “healthy opposition”, to fill the place of the “so-called radical opposition funded by foreign forces”.

Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire businessman and former Georgian PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, has been accused of dragging the country back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Both the EU and US have condemned the government for democratic backsliding and more than 460 people have been detained across Georgia over the past two weeks, according to Transparency International.

More than 300 have been ill-treated or tortured, the organisation says, including dozens of people from Georgian media. Last weekend, thugs were filmed attacking a TV reporter and cameraman.

The EU has condemned the “brutal, unlawful force from the police” and foreign ministers are due to consider measures against the government when they meet on Monday.

The US state department has already imposed visa restrictions on Georgian officials, including government ministers and police.

Protesters have called on the international community to impose sanctions on top government officials as well as Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s most powerful man.

Pro-government groups have also waged a campaign of harassment towards civil society activists, beating them outside homes, and carrying out arbitrary arrests.

“There is systematic torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of citizens,” said former public rights defender Nino Lomjaria.

Theatre workers who joined the protests on Friday chanted: “The police are everywhere, justice is nowhere.”

At one point two men scaled a construction crane as protesters marched along an avenue. The pair waved a Georgian flag as the crowds cheered below.

They came in hoodies, they came in masks, shuffling their feet and laughing nervously while waiting for a winner to be announced.

Just a few days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on a New York City sidewalk, these young men had lined up in Washington Square Park to compete in a lookalike contest for the man wanted for his murder.

It was sparsely attended and seen as a joke by those who did turn up, said Talia Jane, a journalist who was there.

But it underlined an obsession with a murder suspect that has gripped social media since the killing on 4 December, fuelled by latent anger directed at America’s private health insurers.

“There was a lot of tinder already there, a lot of discontent, a lot of frustration already there, and [this] sort of threw a match on it,” Ms Jane said.

And it has only grown since the suspect was named as Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League-educated member of a prominent Baltimore family.

In TikTok videos, memes and group chats, a young man accused of shooting a father-of-two in the back on a New York City sidewalk has been fawned over and praised as a kind of folk hero.

This fetishisation was remarkably widespread, not limited to radical corners of the internet or any political affiliation, troubling many observers.

“We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” said Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, where Mr Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s.

“In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

• Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system

Almost immediately after Mr Thompson was shot dead, the internet began to lionise his suspected killer. On TikTok, people posted videos of a “CEO assassin” New York City walking tour. On Spotify, playlists dedicated to the suspect started to appear.

Once Mr Mangione was arrested, these fans came to his defence.

The start of his legal battles prompted anonymous donors to chip in thousands of dollars towards his defence through various online fundraisers.

Etsy was flooded with pro-Mangione apparel, while Amazon pulled similar products from their site.

The McDonald’s worker alleged to have turned him in has become a target for online hate, while the fast-food franchise itself has been spammed with bad reviews.

The police department in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that arrested him even received death threats.

Much of this online reaction has focused on his looks, with the internet dubbing him the “hot assassin”.

Indeed, Mr Mangione’s appearance, which he showed off in shirtless social media posts, is now clearly part of the appeal, said cultural critic Blakely Thornton.

Americans are effectively “programmed” to trust and empathise with men who look like Mr Mangione, he said.

“That’s why they are the protagonists in our movies, books and stories.”

Public adoration for handsome men accused of crimes is not new – from Ted Bundy to Jeremy Meeks, violent men have developed cult followings.

But Professor Tanya Horeck, an expert on digital culture and true crime from Anglia Ruskin University, says that social media has given those sentiments massive visibility, and helped them spread.

The internet has caused “a blurring of the lines between celebrity and criminality”, she told the BBC, adding that when people see a good-looking person pop into their feeds, their first thought is lust, not moral criticism.

“The mood around Luigi Mangione is ‘thirst’,” she said.

Beyond his appearance, a large part of Mr Mangione’s online appeal is clearly his apparent ire against the private healthcare industry and corporate elites in general. US media has reported that Mr Mangione was arrested carrying a handwritten document that said “these parasites had it coming”.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a non-profit extremism research group based in New Jersey, said that after the shooting the hashtag #EatTheRich went viral.

Since Mr Mangione’s arrest, variations of “#FreeLuigi” were posted on X over 50,000 times, likely getting tens of millions of impressions. And by some measures, the NCRI said, engagement with posts about Mr Thompson’s killing across platforms like X, Reddit, and others surpassed that of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July.

An analysis of a sample of comments carried out by market research firm OneCliq found the vast majority – four-fifths – contained criticism of the healthcare system.

Mr Mangione’s X account has gained more than 400,000 followers since the shooting.

The shooting also seemed to inspire others to take action against healthcare insurers – “wanted” posters of other CEOs appeared around New York City, and a woman in Florida was arrested after telling an insurance agent on the phone “Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next,” alluding to the words inscribed on bullet casings found at the murder scene.

Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at the NCRI, called the online reaction a “turning point” and “a catalyst for the normalisation of political violence that was once confined to extremists on the fringes”.

He compared the wave of comments to the online activity following racist mass murders, designed to defend the killers and signal-boost their beliefs – only more widespread, and happening across mainstream social media networks.

“The dynamic we are observing is eerily similar to the activity on platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Discord, and in other dark corners of the internet, where mass shootings are often met with glee,” he said.

Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence, said evidence suggests that the groundswell was authentic – not powered by bots or government influence operations.

“People are pissed off at the healthcare industry and they are using social media to express their frustrations,” he said. “They’re expressing those frustrations by supporting this suspect.”

Recent research by Commonwealth Fund, a health policy institute, found 45% of insured working-age adults were charged for something they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, and 17% of respondents said their insurer denied coverage for care that was recommended by their doctor.

There are indications that the shooting has prompted some introspection on the part of healthcare companies.

“I think all of us are taking a step back and trying to understand what’s happening with patients and their experiences,” Pfizer’s chief sustainability officer Caroline Roan told a conference in New York on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Some of the people who have been protesting against health insurance companies for years, before online criticism about UHC took off, understand some of the darker sentiments, even if they don’t endorse them.

“It’s a horrific act of violence, and I absolutely condemn it no matter the motivation,” Jenn Coffey, who has been fighting to get UHC to cover her medical bills, said of Mr Thompson’s killing. “But I’m not shocked by the reaction.”

Ms Coffey, 53, from Manchester, New Hampshire, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and later fell ill with complex regional pain syndrome, a potentially debilitating neurological condition. When a doctor suggested that she try ketamine therapy, her UHC insurance would not cover the procedure, she said. She has since become involved in a protest campaign organised by activist group People’s Action.

Ms Coffey’s illness forced her to stop working as an emergency medical technician. She said she started a crowdfunding drive and had to sell most of her belongings in order to pay for the treatment herself.

“I get to have some normality. I can sit up and paint, or I can enjoy a meal with my family” because of the treatment, she said. “I can have a life that’s worth living.”

UnitedHealth Group told the BBC they could not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.

At the same time, much of the online discussion has effectively ignored the victim, Brian Thompson, who was 50.

“It’s incredibly bleak that [Thompson’s death] hasn’t been covered as much because, bottom line, a person died, a person was murdered,” Blakely Thornton said.

“The collective rage over [the healthcare industry] is really outweighing what is still a tragedy.”

In his last post on LinkedIn, Mr Thompson talked about efforts to make healthcare more affordable – and was criticised in the comments. CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, obtained a message that UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty sent to staff this week, memorialising Mr Thompson and calling his murdered colleague “one of the good guys”.

“He was certainly one of the smartest guys. I think he was one of the best guys. I’m going to miss him. And I am incredibly proud to call him my friend,” he wrote.

In the email, the company shared messages from customers, including one who wrote about recovering from cancer, saying their treatment was paid for by the insurance company’s benefits.

“I’m thankful to UHC and everyone there who works within a broken system to help as many people as they can,” they wrote, according to the company.

Another message said: “So very sad that this world is so hateful. I have always had great experiences with UHC.”

Ms Coffey, the UHC policyholder and patient, said: “My heart goes out to the family and I can’t imagine what they’re having to struggle with that [killing]. It’s awful to me that this is the catalyst for this debate.”

“I would have much rather sat down and had a conversation with him.”

Prince Andrew has said he “ceased all contact” with a businessman accused of being a Chinese spy after receiving advice from the government.

In a statement, his office said Prince Andrew had met the man “through official channels” and there was “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”.

The alleged spy has been banned from the UK following a judgement by the UK’s semi-secret national security court.

The man, known only as H6, was described in court as a “close confidant” of Prince Andrew who had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with the duke.

In 2023, H6 brought an appeal against his initial ban but the decision has been upheld by the court.

Judges were told the businessman was attempting to leverage Prince Andrew’s influence.

The duke’s office said he was “unable to comment further on matters relating to national security”.

His statement did not specify when he ceased contact with the man nor the duration of their communications.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment, saying they do not act for the prince, who is not a working royal.

• ANALYSIS: Questions over Prince Andrew’s judgement and finances raised again

China’s embassy in the UK has denied the espionage claim saying “some individuals in the UK are always eager to fabricate baseless ‘spy’ stories targeting China”.

“Their purpose is to smear China and disrupt normal exchanges between Chinese and British personnel,” a spokesperson for the embassy said.

The former home secretary Suella Braverman banned H6 from the UK in March 2023.

He then brought his case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a court set up to consider appeals against decisions to ban or remove someone from the country on national security or related grounds.

In the published ruling, the judges upheld Braverman’s decision.

The court was told that H6 was invited to Prince Andrew’s birthday party in 2020 and was told he could act on his behalf when dealing with potential investors in China.

It is not clear how H6 became close to the prince, but in November 2021 police officers stopped and questioned him at the UK border under powers to investigate suspicions of “hostile activity” by a foreign state.

During that stop H6 surrendered a number of electronic devices including a mobile phone.

What officers found on them so concerned the security service MI5, that Braverman used her exceptional powers to ban H6 from the country.

In a letter found on one of his devices, H6 was told by Dominic Hampshire, an adviser to Prince Andrew: “Outside of [the prince’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.”

Mr Hampshire adds: “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor.”

No further details about who the “relevant people” were are given in the excerpt from the letter included in the ruling.

Mr Hampshire also confirmed to H6 that he could act for Prince Andrew in talks “with potential partners and investors in China”.

A document listing “main talking points” for a call with Prince Andrew was also found.

It states: “IMPORTANT: Manage expectations. Really important to not set ‘too high’ expectations – he is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”

The court assessed that this meant H6 was in a position “to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”.

The judges said H6 had won an “unusual degree of trust from a senior member of the Royal Family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him”.

They added that the relationship had developed at a time when the prince was “under considerable pressure” which “could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence”.

The prince faced increasing scrutiny from late 2019 over his friendship with the late US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which included his infamous Newsnight interview in November of that year.

He stepped back from royal duties in November 2019 and the prince has since been dogged by questions about his judgement and his finances.

Questions were raised about the prince’s finances after he reached a settlement – believed to run into the millions – in a civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers. The prince has always denied assaulting Ms Giuffre.

Isabel Hilton, editor at China Dialogue, told BBC News that Chinese state agents would typically look to target “members of the House of Lords or prominent business people, or people who have a voice in the community”.

She added that it was “quite ambitious” to target a royal and “quite unwise for a member of the Royal Family to allow himself to be targeted”.

Security chiefs feared Beijing was attempting to run an “elite capture” operation to influence the Duke of York because of the pressure he was under, a tactic which aims to appoint high profile individuals to Chinese businesses, think tanks or universities.

H6 was subsequently informed that he was believed by UK authorities to be associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tasked with conducting influence operations.

The ruling said MI5 director general Ken McCallum had expressed concern about the threat posed to the UK by political interference by China and that bodies such as the UFWD were “mounting patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence”.

The Home Office said they believed H6 had been engaged in covert and deceptive activity on behalf of the CCP and that his relationship with Prince Andrew could be used for political interference.

Suella Braverman has now called for H6 to lose his anonymity and she told The Daily Telegraph that “disclosing the identity of this person will have a deterrent effect”.

A popular Indian actor was arrested and later released on bail in connection with a crush that killed a person at the premiere of his film.

Allu Arjun, one of the biggest stars of the Telugu film industry, had made a surprise appearance at the screening last week in Hyderabad city.

A 39-year-old woman was killed and her son critically injured in the crush.

A court initially sentenced the actor to 14 days in police custody but hours later, the high court granted him bail.

Police had filed a case against the actor, his security team and the theatre’s management staff on charges of culpable homicide.

The owner and two employees of the theatre were arrested earlier.

On Friday, the police arrived at the actor’s home and took him into custody, following which he was produced in a local court.

Accidents involving large crowds are often reported in India, where lax safety measures and poor crowd management have led to deaths. But it is unusual for big celebrities to be arrested in cases like these.

Pushpa 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2021 blockbuster Pushpa: The Rise, released in theatres earlier this month

Police said Allu Arjun arrived at the theatre at 21:30 local time (16:00GMT) through the main entrance.

“There was no intimation from the side of the theatre management or the actor’s team that they would be visiting,” Hyderabad police chief CV Anand said.

“His personal security team started pushing the public which further aggravated the situation as there was already a huge gathering at the theatre,” a police statement said.

Arjun’s lawyer said in court that the actor could be not held responsible for the incident and that the crush took place on a different floor from where he was.

As chaos broke out, a 39-year-old woman and her nine-year-old son were pulled out of the crowd as they felt “suffocated”, police said.

They were given first aid, before being taken to hospital.

While the woman died there, her son was shifted to a different hospital where he is still being treated.

Shortly after the incident, Allu Arjun wrote on X that he was “heartbroken by the tragic incident”.

“My heartfelt condolences go out to the grieving family during this unimaginably difficult time. I want to assure them they are not alone in this pain and will meet the family personally,” he wrote.

He later announced assistance of 2.5m rupees ($29,480; £23,346) for the woman’s family and promised to take care of the medical expenses for her son.

Mythri Movie Makers, the studio behind the film, also released a statement saying, “We are committed to standing by them and extending all possible support during this difficult time.”

When Bashar al-Assad was toppled on Sunday, it turned the page on not only his 24-year presidency but on more than 50 years of his family ruling Syria.

Before Assad took office in 2000, his late father Hafez was president for three decades.

Now, with rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) forming a transitional government, the future of the deposed president, his wife and their three children is uncertain.

They are now in Russia, where they have been offered asylum, but what lies ahead for them?

Russia was a staunch ally of Assad during Syria’s civil war and has two key military bases in the Middle Eastern country.

In 2015, Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad that turned the tide of the war in the government’s favour.

A UK-based monitoring group reported that more than more than 21,000 people, including 8,700 civilians, were killed in Russian military operations over the following nine years.

However, distracted by its war in Ukraine, Russia was either unwilling or unable to help Assad’s government stop the rebel’s lightning offensive after it began in late November.

Hours after rebel forces seized control of Damascus, it was reported by Russian state media that Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and that they would be granted asylum on “humanitarian grounds”.

But when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked about Assad’s whereabouts and asylum claim by reporters on Monday, he said: “I have nothing to tell you… right now. Of course, such a decision [on granting asylum] cannot be made without the head of state. It is his decision.”

The Assads’ ties to Russia, specifically Moscow, are well-documented.

A 2019 investigation by the Financial Times found that Assad’s extended family had purchased at least 18 luxury apartments in the Russian capital, in a bid to keep tens of millions of dollars out of Syria during the civil war.

Meanwhile, Assad’s eldest son, Hafez, is a PhD student in the city – with a local newspaper reporting just last week about the 22-year-old’s doctoral dissertation.

Amid the chaos at the weekend, Russian state TV reported that officials in Moscow were in talks with “the Syrian armed opposition” to secure Russia’s bases and diplomatic missions.

Assad is married to a dual British-Syrian national, Asma, who was born and raised in west London to Syrian parents.

She attended school and university in London before becoming an investment banker.

Asma moved to Syria full-time in 2000 and married Assad around the time he succeeded his father as president.

Dr Nesrin Alrefaai, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), told BBC News that Asma “holds a British passport, so could return to the UK” instead of remaining in Russia.

“However, the USA [has] imposed sanctions on her father, Dr Fawaz al-Akhras, who is also reported to be in Russia,” she said – suggesting Asma may want to stay put in Moscow for now.

In a report by the Mail Online, neighbours were quoted as saying Asma’s father, a cardiologist, and mother Sahar, a retired diplomat, wanted to be in Moscow to “console” their daughter and son-in-law.

Assad and his wife have three children: Hafez, the PhD student, Zein and Karim.

A 2022 US State Department report to Congress said the extended Assad family’s net worth was between $1bn (£790m) and $2bn (£1.6bn) – though it noted that it was difficult to estimate because their assets are “believed to be spread out and concealed in numerous accounts, real estate portfolios, corporations, and offshore tax havens”.

According to the report, Bashar and Asma maintained “close patronage relationships with Syria’s largest economic players, using their companies to launder money from illicit activities and funnel funds to the regime”.

It also said that Asma had “influence over the economic committee that manages Syria’s ongoing economic crisis” – and had made key decisions on Syria’s “food and fuel subsidies, trade and currency issues”.

She also exerted influence over the Syria Trust for Development, through which most foreign aid for reconstruction in regime-held areas was channelled.

In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged that Asma had “become one of Syria’s most notorious war profiteers” with the help of her husband and her family.

Another senior Trump administration official described her as the “business head of the family” and an “oligarch” who had been competing with Bashar’s cousin Rami Makhlouf.

He is one of Syria’s richest men and the family rift became public knowledge after he posted videos on social media complaining about his treatment.

Following the fall of the Assad dynasty, Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnès Callamard said Syrians had been subjected to what she called “a horrifying catalogue of human rights violations that caused untold human suffering on a vast scale”.

This includes “attacks with chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and other war crimes, as well as murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination that amount to crimes against humanity”.

She called on the international community to ensure that people suspected of breaking international law and other serious human rights violations must be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes.

On Tuesday, the Islamist rebel leader in Syria said any of the ousted regime’s senior officials found to have been involved in torturing political prisoners would be named.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani also said his so-called Syrian Salvation Government would seek to repatriate officials it identified who fled to another country.

In France, investigative judges have sought an arrest warrant for Assad for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, in connection with a deadly chemical attack in Syria in 2013 under the legal concept of universal jurisdiction.

Russia does not extradite its own nationals – a legal process whereby someone is returned to another country or state to face trial for a suspected crime.

Assad is unlikely to leave Russia to go to a country where he could be extradited back to Syria or any other that might charge him with a crime.

An ancient relic said by some to have been placed on the head of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion has returned to Notre-Dame, five years after it was saved from a fire that devastated the cathedral in Paris.

The Crown of Thorns – comprising a circle of rushes encased in a crystal and gold tube – was brought back to the newly restored cathedral in a ceremony overseen by the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich.

The crown was acquired by King Louis IX of France in Constantinople in 1239 for 135,000 livres – nearly half France’s annual expenditure at the time.

Initially kept at the Sainte-Chapelle, it was moved to Notre-Dame’s treasury in 1806 where it remained until the fire which ripped through the 850-year-old building.

Firefighters and police officers formed a human chain to rescue the relic and other historic artefacts in the cathedral.

The fire destroyed the cathedral’s wooden interiors and its spire.

The crown, which was kept at the Louvre Museum at one point while the famed cathedral underwent extensive renovation, has been placed in a newly built reliquary to replace the one from 1806.

The ceremony marking its return was led by a procession attended by members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre – a Catholic order of knighthood.

The Crown of Thorns will be displayed for the public from 10 January, French media reports.

According to the Bible, the Crown of Thorns was used by Jesus’s captors to cause him pain and mock his claim of authority.

The cathedral reopened its doors to the public on 8 December, after extensive restoration works which cost a reported €700m (£582m) and involved an estimated 2,000 masons, carpenters, restorers, roofers, foundry-workers, art experts, sculptors and engineers.

Its reopening ceremony was attended by world leaders. In a speech at the event, French President Emmanuel Macron said of the restoration: “We must treasure this lesson of fragility, humility and will.”

Raj Kapoor, fondly called the “greatest showman of Indian cinema”, was a leading filmmaker, producer and actor whose work continues to shape and inspire Indian films.

Today, almost four decades after his death in 1988, he remains one of India’s most-loved stars.

Kapoor began his film career in India’s post-independence era. His early work often carried a socialistic undertone, mirroring the country’s mood and aspirations of the time.

“Kapoor brought romance, sexuality, song and soul to Indian socialism,” said historian Sunil Khilnani, in Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, a 2015 BBC Radio 4 series on the men and women who made India.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that celebrations to mark what would have been his 100th birthday on Saturday are taking place across the country, honouring his enduring legacy.

Among them is a retrospective showcasing 10 of his iconic films that will screen across 40 cities and 135 cinemas in India at the weekend.

Born as Shrishti Nath Kapoor to actors Prithviraj Kapoor and Ramsarni Kapoor, he later took the name of Ranbir Raj Kapoor and debuted as a child actor in Inquilab (1935).

Before making waves on screen, Kapoor honed his craft behind the scenes – assisting filmmaker Kidar Sharma, working as an art director at his father’s Prithvi Theatre, and appearing in smaller roles.

His breakout came with Neel Kamal (1947), launching a storied career that combined artistic ambition with mass appeal.

In 1948, Kapoor founded the iconic RK Films studio, synonymous with blockbuster films and international acclaim.

He debuted as a director with Aag (1948) and showcased his versatility as an actor and filmmaker in landmark films like Barsaat (1949), Awaara (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Sangam (1964). Other popular works include Mera Naam Joker (1970), Bobby (1973), Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), and Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985).

Swedish clothing brand Djerf Avenue is facing a backlash from fans following claims of bullying and body-shaming against its founder Matilda Djerf.

An investigation by Swedish news outlet Aftonbladet reported that 11 current and former employees described being belittled, called names and yelled at in the workplace.

Ms Djerf, 27, told the BBC she was “deeply sorry” to anyone who has felt mistreated under her leadership.

But customers like 22-year-old Sumi Mrkulic have vowed to “never purchase anything or voice support again”.

Sumi, from London, said she was particularly concerned after Aftonbladet reported that some models were told they didn’t fill out a pair of jeans, while others were called fat.

Djerf Avenue’s website promotes a world “filled with kindness, inspiration, and respect,” and the brand is known for its size inclusivity and diverse model representation.

Sumi told the BBC: “It renders all of their efforts to be inclusive completely performative. I actually find it really spineless.”

Influencer Matilda Djerf launched the brand in 2019 and it quickly became popular with young women. It says it made around $35m (£27.5m) in revenue last year.

It recently held its first 10-day pop-up shop in London, which saw queues forming up to three hours before the store opened.

Giulia Carrozzo, 20, from Germany, received an order from Djerf Avenue the day before the allegations emerged. She said she would be sending it back in light of the report.

“Djerf Avenue has always marketed itself as a body-positive, inclusive and empowering brand, so hearing allegations of body-shaming and a toxic work environment felt like a complete betrayal of the values they claim to uphold,” she said.

“I knew immediately that this wasn’t something I could support.”

Matilda Djerf, who started her online career in 2016, was recognised for her work within retail and e-commerce on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2023.

Giulia said: “To me, supporting a brand led by a woman felt like celebrating progress and uplifting women in business. However, these allegations… directly contradict those values.

“I can’t justify supporting a brand that doesn’t practise the values it promotes. Until there’s real accountability and change, I won’t be purchasing from them.”

Matilda Djerf said in a statement: “If any team member has felt mistreated in their role because of my actions, I am deeply sorry, and I want to sincerely apologize.

“I don’t recognize myself in all the claims that have been made, and I’ve chosen not to comment on individual cases. However, I do believe it’s valuable that these concerns are being raised, as it gives both me and Djerf Avenue the opportunity to grow and improve.

“I want to emphasize that I take full responsibility and see this as a chance to reflect, grow, and contribute to a better culture for everyone at Djerf Avenue.”

Djerf Avenue’s chief operating officer, Pernilla Bonny, said the company acknowledged the challenges in its workplace environment and had taken steps to address them.

These actions include conducting monthly anonymous employee surveys, implementing an independent whistleblower function, strengthening the management team and carrying out an independent workplace assessment with an external psychologist.

The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant’s new iPhone feature generated a false headline about a high-profile murder in the United States.

Apple Intelligence, launched in the UK earlier this week, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications.

This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.

A spokesperson from the BBC said the corporation had contacted Apple “to raise this concern and fix the problem”.

Apple declined to comment.

“BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world,” the BBC spokesperson added.

“It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications.”

The notification which made a false claim about Mangione was otherwise accurate in its summaries about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and an update on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

But the BBC does not appear to be the only news publisher which has had headlines misrepresented by Apple’s new AI tech.

On 21 November, three articles on different topics from the New York Times were grouped together in one notification – with one part reading “Netanyahu arrested”, referring to the Israeli prime minister.

It was inaccurately summarising a newspaper report about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than any reporting about him being arrested.

The mistake was highlighted on Bluesky by a journalist with the US investigative journalism website ProPublica.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshot, and the New York Times declined to comment to BBC News.

Apple says one of the reasons people might like its AI-powered notification summaries is to help reduce the interruptions caused by ongoing notifications, and to allow the user to prioritise more important notices.

It is only available on certain iPhones – those using the iOS 18.1 system version or later on recent devices (all iPhone 16 phones, the 15 Pro, and the 15 Pro Max). It is also available on some iPads and Macs.

Prof Petros Iosifidis, a professor in media policy at City University in London, told BBC News the mistake by Apple “looks embarrassing”.

“I can see the pressure getting to the market first, but I am surprised that Apple put their name on such demonstrably half-baked product,” he said.

“Yes, potential advantages are there – but the technology is not there yet and there is a real danger of spreading disinformation.”

The grouped notifications are marked with a specific icon, and users can report any concerns they have on a notification summary on their devices. Apple has not outlined how many reports it has received.

Apple Intelligence does not just summarise the articles of publishers, and it has been reported the summaries of emails and text messages have occasionally not quite hit the mark.

And this is not the first time a big tech company has discovered AI summaries do not always work.

In May, in what Google described as “isolated examples”, its AI Overviews tool for internet searches told some users looking for how to make cheese stick to pizza should consider using “non-toxic glue”.

The search engine’s AI-generated responses also said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.

A doctor believed to be the last remaining orthopaedic surgeon in northern Gaza has been killed by Israeli tankfire, according to Palestinian officials.

Dr Sayeed Joudeh died on Thursday while he was on his way to work.

He was a surgeon at Kamal Adwan and al-Awda hospitals in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military said it was unaware of the incident, but it was investigating.

The grandfather had come out of retirement to help during the war.

Last month speaking at a press conference at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, he held up a placard that read “Save US”.

It didn’t work.

“On his way to al-Awda Hospital to evaluate a patient, one of the tanks fired on him directly,” according to Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“Unfortunately, he was killed instantly.”

But some eyewitnesses say Dr Joudeh was shot by a drone.

Israel does not allow foreign journalists unrestricted access to Gaza.

But from Jerusalem, I spoke to Louise Wateridge from the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza.

“It’s devastating for his family. It’s devastating for people in the north who are relying on so few doctors,” said Ms Wateridge.

“Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are not hospitals anymore,” she said.

“There’s no sanitation. There are hardly any doctors. There’s no medical equipment. Patients are dying needlessly.”

Ms Wateridge described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as apocalyptic.

For more than two months much of Northern Gaza has been under Israeli siege and bombardment.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas operatives who have been regrouping there.

On 7 October last year, Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

In retaliation, Israel launched a massive operation inside the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of eliminating Hamas.

So far, at least 44,875 people have been killed and more than 100,000 injured – mostly civilians, the Hamas-run health ministry says. The UN regards these figures as reliable.

At least 30 of them were killed – and another 50 wounded – in an Israeli strike on a post office turned shelter for displaced people in central Gaza on Thursday night, according to local medics.

Locals say Gazans displaced by the 14-month conflict were sheltering there and that many members of one extended family had been killed.

The Israeli military said it was targeting a senior Islamic Jihad member behind attacks on Israeli civilians and troops.

It accused the armed group of exploiting Gaza’s civilians as human shields for its activities.

Paula Abdul, the Grammy and Emmy award-winning singer and dancer, has settled her sexual assault lawsuit against British television producer Nigel Lythgoe.

In the legal action filed one year ago, Ms Abdul, 62, accused Mr Lythgoe of twice sexually assaulting her, the first time allegedly when they worked together on the talent show American Idol.

In a statement to the BBC, Ms Abdul said she was relieved for the legal battle to be over.

Mr Lythgoe, 75, said in a statement that he was glad “to put this behind me”. The British TV producer has previously denied the allegations, describing them as “an appalling smear”.

Ms Abdul said on Friday: “I am grateful that this chapter has successfully come to a close and is now something I can now put behind me.

“This has been a long and hard-fought personal battle.

“I hope my experience can serve to inspire other women, facing similar struggles, to overcome their own challenges with dignity and respect, so that they too can turn the page and begin a new chapter of their lives.”

Her attorney, Melissa Eubanks, did not disclose the terms of the settlement.

In his own statement, Mr Lythgoe said: “We live in a troubling time where a person is now automatically assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, a process that can take years.

“That is why, like Paula, I am glad to be able to put this behind me. I know the truth and that gives me great comfort.”

In her 16-page lawsuit, Ms Abdul claimed Mr Lythgoe had sexually assaulted her twice during their time working together.

She said the first alleged incident occurred during their tenure at long-running hit TV programme American Idol, which she starred on as a judge for the first eight seasons.

Ms Abdul alleged he forcibly kissed her in a hotel lift and grabbed her genitals.

The second alleged incident took place in 2015 when they were both on So You Think You Can Dance, she said.

This time, Mr Lythgoe assaulted her on the couch of his Los Angeles home after a work dinner, Ms Abdul claimed.

She again firmly rejected him and “immediately left Mr Lythgoe’s home”, her court filings said.

In October 2024, Abdul filed an amended complaint, alleging a third assault by Mr Lythgoe.

In his court filings rebutting her claims, Mr Lythgoe included text messages between him and Ms Abdul that his lawyers said were friendly and jovial, and therefore inconsistent with her accusation.

“It is unthinkable that Abdul would even tolerate Lythgoe’s physical proximity, let alone send him adoring messages and sexually provocative jokes, if her allegations were true,” Mr Lythgoe’s filing stated.

Ms Abdul’s legal team dismissed Mr Lythgoe’s defence as “classic victim shaming”.

Her team argued that Mr Lythgoe’s position of power as a producer over Ms Abdul played a significant role.

According to court documents, they settled the case earlier this week and filed notice with LA County Superior Court.

Their next step will be filing to dismiss the matter, which had been scheduled to go to trial next year.

Centrist leader François Bayrou has become France’s latest prime minister, chosen by President Emmanuel Macron in a bid to end months of political turmoil.

Bayrou, a 73-year-old mayor from the south-west who leads the MoDem party, said he was fully aware of the “Himalayan” task facing France, and he vowed to “hide nothing, neglect nothing and leave nothing aside”.

He is seen by Macron’s entourage as a potential consensus candidate and his task will be to avoid the fate of his predecessor.

Ex-Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was ousted by MPs nine days ago and welcomed Bayrou to the prime minister’s residence on Friday.

Barnier was voted out over a budget aimed at cutting France’s budget deficit, which is set to hit 6.1% of economic output (GDP) this year. Bayrou said the deficit and public debt were a moral as well as a financial problem – because “passing it on to one’s children is a terrible thing to do”.

Macron is half-way through his second term as president and Bayrou will be his fourth prime minister this year.

French politics has been deadlocked ever since Macron called snap parliamentary elections during the summer and an opinion poll for BFMTV on Thursday suggested 61% of French voters were worried by the political situation.

Although a succession of allies lined up to praise Bayrou’s appointment, Socialist regional leader Carole Delga said the whole process had become a “bad movie”. Far-left France Unbowed (LFI) leader Manuel Bompard complained of a “pathetic spectacle”.

The centre-left Socialists said they were ready to talk to Bayrou but would not take part in his government. Leader Olivier Faure said because Macron had chosen someone “from his own camp”, the Socialists would remain in opposition.

President Macron has vowed to remain in office until his second term ends in 2027, despite Barnier’s downfall last week.

He cut short a trip to Poland on Thursday and had been expected to name his new prime minister on Thursday night, but postponed his announcement until Friday.

He then met Bayrou at the Elysée Palace and a final decision was made hours later. But in an indication of the fraught nature of the talks, newspaper suggested that Macron had preferred another ally, Roland Lescure, but changed his mind when Bayrou threatened to withdraw his party’s support.

Bayrou arrived at the prime minister’s residence at Hôtel Matignon late on Friday afternoon. A red carpet had been rolled out for the transfer of power even before his name was confirmed.

His challenge will be in forming a government that will not be brought down the way his predecessor’s was in the National Assembly. The far left France Unbowed (LFI) have already threatened to demand a vote of no confidence as soon as they can.

Ahead of his appointment, Macron held round-table talks with leaders from all the main political parties, bar the far left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen.

The question is who can be persuaded to join Bayrou’s government, or at least agree a pact so they do not oust him.

When the only possible means of survival for a minority government is to build bridges on left and right, Bayrou has the advantage of having passable relations with both sides, reports BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield.

Michel Barnier was appointed only in September and said on Friday he knew from the outset that his government’s days were numbered.

He was voted out when Le Pen’s National Rally joined left-wing MPs in rejecting his plans for €60bn (£50bn) in tax rises and spending cuts.

His outgoing government has put forward a bill to enable the provisions of the 2024 budget to continue into next year. But a replacement budget for 2025 will have to be approved once the next government takes office.

Bayrou said that reducing France’s deficit and debt was a “moral obligation”.

Barnier wished his successor his best wishes, adding that “our country is in an unprecedented and serious situation”.

Under the political system of France’s Fifth Republic, the president is elected for five years and names a prime minister whose choice of cabinet is then appointed by the president.

Unusually, President Macron called snap elections for parliament over the summer after poor results in the EU elections in June. The outcome left France in political stalemate, with three large political blocs made up of the left, centre and far right.

Eventually he chose Barnier to form a minority government reliant on Marine Le Pen’s National Rally for its survival. Macron is now hoping to restore stability without depending on her party.

Three centre-left parties – the Socialists, Greens and Communists – broke ranks with the more radical left LFI by taking part in talks with Macron.

However, they made clear they wanted a prime minister from the left, rather than a centrist.

“I told you I wanted someone from the left and the Greens and I think Mr Bayrou isn’t one or the other,” Greens leader Marine Tondelier told French TV on Thursday.

Patrick Kanner of the Socialists said that just because his party was not joining Bayrou’s government, “that doesn’t mean we’re going to bash it”.

Sébastien Chenu, a National Rally MP, said for his party it was less about who Macron picked than the “political line” he chose. If Bayrou wanted to tackle immigration and the cost of living crisis then he would “find an ally in us”.

Relations between the centre left and the radical LFI of Jean-Luc Mélenchon appear to have broken down over the three parties’ decision to pursue talks with President Macron.

After the LFI leader called on his former allies to steer clear of a coalition deal, Olivier Faure of the Socialists told French TV that “the more Mélenchon shouts the less he’s heard”.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen has called for her party’s policies on the cost of living to be taken into account by the incoming government, by building a budget that “doesn’t cross each party’s red lines”.

Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been admitted to hospital after sustaining an unspecified injury during an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said on Friday.

US media have reported that Pelosi sustained injuries to her hip after she tripped and fell while at an event, citing sources that were unauthorised to speak publicly on the matter.

Pelosi, 84, is “currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals”, spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement.

The Democrat, who still represents California in the US House, was travelling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation to Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

Krager said Pelosi “looks forward to returning home to the US soon” and continues to work from the hospital.

The San Francisco congresswoman has been a prominent figure in US politics over a career stretching seven presidential administrations.

She first served as House speaker from 2007 to 2011, an influential post second in line to the presidency after the vice-president, then regained the job in 2019 after her party took back control of the chamber.

She resigned from the position in 2023 after two separate four-year terms in the role. But she has continued to serve in the House. Last month, she was elected to another two-year term.

• Nancy Pelosi: How she rose to the top – and stayed there

Pelosi joined 17 other House members in the bipartisan trip to Luxembourg, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office. The delegation is scheduled to take part in anniversary events along with veterans, their families, as well as military officials.

Pelosi will not be able to participate further in the events, her spokesperson said.

Her injury comes just days after outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, suffered a sprained wrist and cuts to his face after falling at the US Capitol.

Thousands of Syrians have thronged the streets of the capital, Damascus, and other cities to celebrate the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In Damascus people gathered at the iconic Umayyad Mosque for prayers before the jubilant rallies called by the Islamist rebels who led the armed uprising against Assad.

Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who has now started using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, had urged Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy” on Friday to mark “the victory of the blessed revolution”.

Assad fled to Russia on Sunday as the regime set up by his father 50 years ago collapsed in just a few tumultuous days.

Damascus’s Umayyad Square had a party-like atmosphere. Speakers were set up, and music played “Raise your head high, you are Syrian.”

People waved the flag of the Syrian opposition and chanted revolutionary songs and slogans.

Among them were men in black combat gear – wearing body armour and carrying guns.

They were members of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Some paused for pictures with civilians. One of them pulled out a piece of paper and started reading poetry he had written praising the country.

Sara al-Zobi, a university student living in Damascus but originally from Deraa – the city the opposition regard as the birthplace of the revolution – said Syrians had gathered to celebrate on Friday and would proceed to build the future “hand-in hand”.

“We are gathering because we’re happy Syria has been freed, we’re happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived,” said another participant, Nour Thi al-Ghina.

• Bowen: Searching for loved ones – and closure
• Inside Aleppo – the first city to fall to Syrian rebels

Away from the celebrations, bereaved families went looking for the bodies of family members who disappeared over the past decade in the notorious prisons of the Assad regime.

At a mortuary in central Damascus, some held up the pictures of relatives trying to compare them to the bodies lying in bags in front of them.

Some have managed to locate their missing fathers, brothers, or sons, while others left sobbing after failing to find any clues.

The mortuary was full of bodies transferred from Saydnaya prison, widely known here as a human slaughterhouse.

“All of the bodies had clear signs of malnourishment, they were so skinny,” Aslan Ibrahim, a forensic expert at the hospital, said.

The body of a journalist bore signs of torture, he said, adding: “His arm was broken, and his leg too, he also had a lot of bruises.”

• Mapping Saydnaya Prison – the Assads’ ‘human slaughterhouse’
• Burying anti-Assad activist tortured to death

Key sites of the sprawling network of intelligence agencies which for decades attempted to brutally crush opposition movements can be found along the same central streets of the Syrian capital.

In the basement of the state security headquarters, in the Kafr Sousa district of the city, stand row after row of tiny cells – each just two metres by one metre and protected by thick steel doors.

Inside, dark stains mark the filthy walls. Detainees could be held in these cells for months while being interrogated and tortured.

They are just below street-level, on a busy road where every day thousands of ordinary Syrians passed by, going about their daily lives just a few metres from where their compatriots were being detained and tortured.

A short distance away is the General Intelligence Directorate, another part of Syria’s former network of spy agencies.

There are a huge numbers of records – evidence of how the Assad regime used to monitor its citizens.

There is row after row of paper files in cabinets and, in some rooms, piles of notebooks stacked from floor to ceiling.

Nearby is a computer server room. The floors and walls are a pristine white and black data storage units hum quietly.

The electricity has been cut to much of Damascus but it seems that this facility was so important it had its own power supply.

On a painted wall outside Damascus’s Mustahed Hospital are photographs of the faces of dead men.

A constantly changing crowd of people examine them, squinting against the low winter sun at men who look as if they died in great pain. Noses, mouths and eye sockets are twisted, damaged and squashed.

Their bodies are in the hospital, brought to the city centre from another on the outskirts of Damascus. The medics say the dead were all prisoners.

A stream of wives, brothers, sisters and fathers come to the hospital looking for information. They’re hoping most of all to find a body to bury.

They get as close as possible to the photos looking hard for anything on the faces that they recognise. Some of them video each picture to take home for a second opinion.

It is a brutal job. A few of the men had been dead for weeks judging by the way faces have decomposed.

From the wall of photos, relatives go on to the mortuary.

Mustahed Hospital received 35 bodies, so many that the mortuary is full and the overflow room packed with trolleys loaded with body bags.

Inside the mortuary, bodies were laid out on a bare concrete floor under a line of refrigerated trays.

Body bags had been opened as families peered inside and opened the refrigerators.

Some corpses were wrapped loosely in shrouds that had fallen away to expose faces, or tattoos or scars that could identify someone.

One of the dead men was wearing a diaper. Another had sticky tape across his chest, scrawled with a number. Even as they killed him, his jailors denied him the dignity of his own name.

All the bodies were emaciated. The doctors who examined them said they had signs of beating including severe bruising and multiple fractures.

Dr Raghad Attar, a forensic dentist, was checking dental records left by families to try to identify bodies. She spoke calmly about how she was assembling a bank of evidence that could be used for DNA tests, then broke down when I asked her how she was coping.

“You hear always that prisoners are lost for a long time, but seeing it is very painful.

“I came here yesterday. It was very difficult for me. We hope the future will be better but this is very hard. I am really sorry for these families. I am very sorry for them.”

Tears rolled down her face when I asked her if Syria could recover from 50 years of the Assads.

“I don’t know. I hope so. I have the feeling that good days are coming but I want to ask all countries to help us.”

“Anything to help us. Anything, anything…”

The families and friends coming in went silently from body to body, hoping to find some end to the pain that started when their loved ones were picked up at one of the regime’s checkpoints or in a raid on their homes and thrown into the Assads’ gulag.

A woman called Noor, holding a facemask over her mouth and nose, said her brother was taken in 2012, when he was 28.

All they had heard since was a mention in a Facebook post that he had been in the notorious Sednaya prison, where the regime left prisoners to rot for decades.

“It is painful,” said Noor. “At the same time, we have hope. Even if we find him between the bodies. Anything so long as he’s not missing. We want to find something of him. We want to know what happened to him. We need an end to this.”

One couple told a doctor their son was hauled away for refusing to open his laptop for inspection.

That was 12 years ago. He hasn’t been heard from since.

During the years I have reported from Syria I have heard many similar stories.

On my phone I have a photo of the haunted face of a woman I met in July 2018 at a camp for people displaced just after the rebel stronghold of Douma in the Damascus suburbs was forced to surrender.

Her son, a young teenager, disappeared after he was taken at a checkpoint by one of the intelligence agencies.

More than 50 years of the Assads means 50 years of disappearances, of incarceration, of killing.

It means pitiless cruelty to the prisoners, to the families trying to find them and to the Syrian people who were outside the Assads’ circle of trust.

At the photo wall and in the mortuary at Mustahed hospital they wanted to find what had happened, some information and if they were very lucky, a body.

They needed a reckoning and many wanted revenge. Most of all, they dreamed and hoped for a life without fear.

A woman at the hospital said that even though she knew Bashar al-Assad was in Russia, the regime had drilled so much fear into her that she was still terrified of what it might do.

Maybe every Syrian who feels like her should go to the crag overlooking Damascus where Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, ordered the construction of a presidential palace, to check that the monumental, marble edifice is empty.

Our driver gathered his own video evidence. He took out his phone to start filming when the car turned into the palace’s long ceremonial driveway.

During the years of the regime, ordinary Syrians made sure they did not slow down near the palace gates in case they were arrested and thrown into prison as a threat to the president.

Mobile phones stopped working as you approached the palace’s security bubble.

The palace looks down on Damascus, visible from most of the city. It told the people that the Assads were always present and always watching via the regime’s web of intelligence agencies.

The system was designed by Hafez, the first Assad president. His secret police spied on each other and spied on the people.

A businessman I knew in Homs told me once that one intelligence branch approached him when he was developing a hotel, asking for the designs early in the project so they could incorporate all the listening devices they needed into the rooms. They explained it was easier than retrofitting them after the building was finished.

The Assad family never lived at the palace. It was for ceremonial occasions, and upstairs there were some workaday offices.

I went there a lot in 2015, to negotiate the terms of an interview with Bashar al-Assad. I had interviewed him twice before, some years before the uprising against him started in 2011.

That was when he was still tantalising Syrians with talk of reform, which turned out to be lies.

He was also encouraging western leaders to believe he might be separated from Iran and if not join the western camp exactly, then be persuaded that it was worth his while not to oppose it.

The US, Israel and the UAE were still trying to persuade him to dump Iran in the weeks before he was forced to flee to Moscow.

Now that Assad has gone, my target at the palace was an opulent villa in the grounds. I wanted to go there because it was where I met Assad for the interviews.

The villa, much more luxurious than the state rooms at the palace, was built, I was told, as a private residence for the Assad family.

Its floors and tables are marble, the wood is polished walnut and the chandeliers are crystal.

The Assads did not like it, so it was used as a guest house and for Bashar’s rare interviews.

I could see why they might have preferred their existing residence, a beautiful French colonial mansion that stands behind a screen of pine trees. It feels like an aristocrat’s retreat on the Riviera.

Until less than two weeks ago in the souk in old Damascus you could buy fridge magnets of Bashar al-Assad and his siblings as children, playing on bikes in a garden as their indulgent parents looked on.

Presumably the photo was taken on the villa’s spacious, immaculate lawns.

• Syrians celebrate fall of Assad regime – follow live

The extended Assad family treated Syria as their own personal possession, enriching themselves and buying trust with their followers at the expense of Syrians who could be thrown into jail or killed if they stepped out of line, or even if they didn’t.

A fighter called Ahmed, who had taken up arms against the regime in 2011, survived the rebel defeat in Damascus, and fought his way back from Idlib with the rebels of Hayat Tahrir al Sham was inspecting the way the Assads lived with his three brothers, all rebel fighters.

“People were living in hell and he was in his palace,” Ahmed said calmly.

“He didn’t care about what they were going through. He made them live in fear, hunger and humiliation. Even after we entered Damascus people would only whisper to us, because they were still afraid.”

I found the marble guesthouse, and walked through the walnut-panelled, marble-floored library where I had interviewed Assad when the regime was fighting for survival in February 2015.

The highlight of the interview were his denials that his forces were killing civilians. He even tried to joke about it.

Now, rebel fighters were on the door and patrolling the corridors. Some of the books had fallen off the library shelves, but the building was intact.

I walked across to an ante room where Assad would grant 10 or 15 minutes of private conversation before the interview.

He was unfailingly polite, even solicitous, enquiring about my family, and the journey to Syria.

Bashar al-Assad’s slightly awkward demeanour made some western observers believe he was a lightweight who might bend to pressure.

In private I found him self-confident to the point of arrogance, convinced he was the all-knowing spider at the heart of the Middle East web, tracking his enemies’ malign intentions and ready to strike.

His father Hafez al-Assad was a kingpin of the Middle East. He was a ruthless man who built the police state that lasted for over fifty years, using fear, guile and a willingness to destroy any threat to impose stability on Syria, a country that had been a byword for violent changes of government until he seized sole power in 1970.

I had the impression that Bashar wanted to be his father’s son, perhaps even to outdo him.

He killed many more Syrians than Hafez and broke the country to try to save the regime.

But Bashar’s stubbornness, refusal to reform or negotiate and his willingness to kill sealed his fate and condemned him to a last terrified drive to the airport with his wife and children on their last flight out of Syria to Moscow.

In a scruffy, bustling neighbourhood not far from the grace and beauty of the old city of Damascus, I had a front row seat as some of the pressures facing Syria and its new rulers surged through an excited crowd.

They had heard that the man who until less than a week ago was the local boss, the mafia-style godfather of their suburb was going to be executed.

The man, known as Abu Muntaja, was one of the military intelligence officers considered responsible for the Tadamon massacre in 2013 of at least 41 local men.

The crowd grew until thousands blocked the streets, delighted that a notorious regime killer was going to be executed in in front of them in the main square that he used to swagger across.

The atmosphere throbbed with excitement, expectation and anger.

Justice meant watching their enemy die, not just because of his crimes, but because of the boundless cruelty of the Assad regime.

An elderly women called Muna Sakar, dressed in a neat coat and hat, was there to see him die as a thief as well as a killer.

“He stole my house and money. Of course I want to see him dead. I would have done it myself with my own hands. But I couldn’t find a way. I wanted to kill him.”

When rumours flew around that the execution was starting, the crowd surged back and forth, jostling for the best position, phones held high in outstretched arms for the video.

No one wanted to miss a thing. When they decided the execution was happening down the street, they stampeded over fences and cars stuck in traffic to get there.

In the end there was no execution, at least not yet. It was probably a rumour, that thousands wanted to be true.

If Syria’s new rulers do not want change to be measured in blood, they will need to control the desire for revenge.

When the weight of dictatorship is lifted, powerful forces are unleashed.

How Syria’s new rulers deal with them will shape what comes next.

When Donald Trump sat with world leaders in Paris last weekend to marvel at the restored Notre Dame cathedral, armed Islamist fighters in Syria were in jeeps on the road to Damascus finalising the fall of the Assad regime.

In this split screen moment of global news, the US president-elect, seated between the French first couple, still had an eye on the stunning turn of events in the Middle East.

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend,” he posted the same day on his Truth Social network.

He added: “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”

This post, and another the next day, were a reminder of the president-elect’s powerful mandate to not intervene in foreign policy.

It also raised big questions about what comes next. Given the way the war has drawn in and affected regional and global powers, can Trump really have “nothing to do” with Syria now that President Bashar al-Assad’s government has fallen?

Will Trump pull US troops out?

Does his policy differ drastically from President Biden’s, and if so, what’s the point of the White House doing anything in the five weeks before Trump takes over?

• Inside Aleppo, the first city to fall to Syrian rebel
• What just happened in Syria and who’s in charge
• Syria in maps: Who controls the country now Assad has gone?
• Syrians celebrate fall of Assad regime – follow live updates

The current administration is involved in a frantic round of diplomacy in response to the fall of Assad and the rise to power of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Syrian Islamist armed group that the US designates as a terrorist organisation.

I’m writing this onboard Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s plane, as he shuttles between Jordan and Turkey trying to get key Arab and Muslim countries in the region to back a set of conditions Washington is placing on recognising a future Syrian government.

The US says it must be transparent and inclusive, must not be a “base for terrorism”, cannot threaten Syria’s neighbours, and must destroy any chemical and biological weapons stocks.

For Mike Waltz, Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, who has yet to be confirmed, there is one guiding principle to his foreign policy.

“President Trump was elected with an overwhelming mandate to not get the United States dug into any more Middle Eastern wars,” he told Fox News this week.

He went on to list America’s “core interests” there as the Islamic State (IS) group, Israel and “our Gulf Arab allies”.

Waltz’s comments were a neat summary of the Trump view of Syria as a small jigsaw piece in his bigger regional policy puzzle.

His goals are to ensure that remnants of IS remain contained and to see that a future government in Damascus can’t threaten Washington’s most important regional ally, Israel.

Trump is also focused on what he sees as the biggest prize: a historic diplomatic and trade deal to normalise relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which he believes would further weaken and humiliate Iran.

The rest, Trump believes, is Syria’s “mess” to work out.

Trump’s rhetoric harkens back to how he talked about Syria during his first term, when he derided the country – which has an extraordinary cultural history dating back millennia – as a land of “sand and death”.

“Donald Trump, himself, I think really wanted very little to do with Syria during his first administration,” said Robert Ford, who served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Syria from 2011-14, and who argued within that administration for more American intervention in the form of support for Syrian moderate opposition groups to counter Assad’s brutal suppression of his population.

“But there are other people in his circle who are much more concerned about counterterrorism,” he told the BBC.

The US currently has around 900 troops in Syria east of the Euphrates river and in a 55km (34 miles) “deconfliction” zone bordering Iraq and Jordan.

Their official mission is to counter the IS group, now much degraded in desert camps, and to train and equip the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF – Kurdish and Arab allies of the US who control the territory).

The SDF also guards camps containing IS fighters and their families.

In practice, the US presence on the ground has also gone beyond this, helping to block a potential weapons transit route for Iran, which used Syria to supply its ally Hezbollah.

Mr Ford, like other analysts, believes that while Trump’s isolationist instincts play well on social media, the realities on the ground and the views of his own team could end up moderating his stance.

That view is echoed by Wa’el Alzayat, a former adviser on Syria at the US Department of State.

“He is bringing on board some serious people to his administration who will be running his Middle East file,” he told the BBC, specifically noting that Senator Marco Rubio, who has been nominated for secretary of state, “is a serious foreign policy player”.

These tensions – between isolationist ideals and regional goals – also came to a head during his first term, when Trump withdrew remaining CIA funding for some “moderate” rebels, and ordered the withdrawal of US forces from northern Syria in 2019.

At the time, Waltz called the move “a strategic mistake” and, fearing an IS resurgence, Trump’s own officials partially rowed back his decision.

Trump also diverged from his non-interventionist ideals by launching 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, after Assad allegedly ordered a chemical weapons attack that killed scores of civilians in 2017.

He also doubled down on sanctions against Syria’s leadership.

The blurred lines of Trump’s “it’s not our fight” pledge were summed up by Waltz.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not willing to absolutely step in,” he told Fox News.

“President Trump has no problem taking decisive action if the American homeland is threatened in any way.”

Adding to the possibility of tension is another key figure, Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump has nominated as director of national intelligence. The controversial former Democrat-turned-Trump ally met Assad in 2017 on a “fact-finding” trip, and at the time criticised Trump’s policies.

Her nomination is likely to be heavily scrutinised by US senators amid accusations – that she has denied – of being an apologist for Assad and Russia.

Anxiety over the continuing mission in Syria, and a desire to be able to end it, is not exclusive to Trump.

In January, three American soldiers were killed at a US base in Jordan in a drone strike by Iran-backed militias operating in Syria and Iraq, as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza threatened to spread farther in the region.

This attack and others have continued to raise questions to the Biden administration over US force levels and their exposure in the area.

In fact, many of the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump administrations’ positions on Syria match more than they diverge.

Despite the sharp differences in the tone and rhetoric, both leaders want Damascus run by a government amenable to US interests.

Both Biden and Trump want to build on Iran and Russia’s humiliation in Syria.

Trump’s “this is not our fight, let it play out” is his equivalent of the Biden administration’s “this is a process that needs to be led by Syrians, not by the United States”.

But the “major” difference, and that which raises the most anxiety among Biden supporters, is in Trump’s approach to US forces on the ground and American backing for the SDF, said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat in Washington who helped opposition figures flee the Assad regime.

“Biden has more sympathy, connection, passion towards [the Kurds]. Historically, he was one of the first senators to visit the Kurdish areas [of northern Iraq] after Saddam Hussein’s Kuwait invasion,” he said.

“Trump and his people they don’t care as much… they take it into consideration not to leave their allies out, they get this, [but] the way they implement it is different.”

Mr Barabandi, who said he supports Trump’s non-interventionist rhetoric, thinks the president-elect will pull out US troops “for sure”, but over a gradual timeframe and with a clear plan in place.

“It will not be like Afghanistan, within 24 hours,” he said. “He will say within six months, or whatever time, a deadline for that and for the arrangement of everything.”

Much may revolve around Trump’s discussions with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he is thought to have a close relationship.

American backing for the SDF has long been a source of tension with Turkey, which views the People’s Defense Units (YPG) – the Kurdish force that makes up the SDF’s military backbone – as a terrorist organisation.

Since Assad fell, Turkey has been carrying out air strikes to force Kurdish fighters out of strategic areas, including the town of Manbij.

Trump may want to cut a deal with his friend in Ankara that allows him to withdraw US troops and could see Turkey’s hand strengthen further.

But the possibility of Turkish-backed groups taking control of some areas worries many, including Wa’el Alzayat, the former US State Department Syria expert.

“You can’t have different groups running different parts of the country, controlling different resources,” he added.

“There’s either the political process, which I do think the US has a role to play, or something else, and I hope they avoid that latter scenario.”

Warning: This article contains graphic details of torture

“We gave our blood and soul to the revolution,” crowds chanted, as they carried Mazen Al-Hamada’s coffin through the streets of Damascus, draped in the green, white and black flag adopted by protesters back in 2011, now ubiquitous in the city since the fall of Bashar Al-Assad.

As the funeral procession moved forward, more and more people joined it. “Mazen is a martyr,” many shouted, some weeping.

If the world knew before this about the extent of the brutality of Assad’s regime against its own people, it was in part because of Mazen, an activist who was an outspoken critic of the regime.

On Sunday, his body was found in the notorious “slaughterhouse”, Seydnaya prison in Damascus. It bore signs of horrific torture.

A doctor who examined it told the BBC he had fractures, burn marks and contusions all over his body, allegations corroborated by Mazen’s family.

“It’s impossible to count the wounds on his body. His face was smashed and his nose was broken,” his sister Lamyaa said.

A protester when the uprising in Syria began in 2011, Mazen Al-Hamada was arrested and tortured. Released in 2013, he was given asylum in the Netherlands. He began to speak openly about what he was subjected to in prison.

In the documentary Syria’s Disappeared by Afshar Films, Mazen describes how he was raped, his genitals clamped, and how his ribs were broken by a guard jumping on his chest over and over again.

• Syrians celebrate fall of Assad regime – follow live updates

While in asylum, Mazen’s nephew Jad Al-Hamada says he began suffering from severe depression and other mental health issues. During this time, he was seen in a video claiming he was being threatened by members of Syria’s ethnic minority Kurds, and called for violence against them in response. His family says he was not of sound mind at the time.

In 2020, he decided to return to Syria.

“The government told him he had a deal and that he would be safe. He was also told that his family would be arrested and killed if he didn’t return,” Lamyaa said.

He was arrested as soon as he arrived in the country. And his family believes he was killed after rebels took Hama last week, shortly before the regime fell.

“I am happy that we are free, but I wish he had lived to see it. He paid the price for our freedom,” said Lamyaa.

Mazen’s story is just a small glimpse into the atrocities committed by the Assad regime. More than 100,000 people disappeared under his rule, most believed to be dead. Now their families are searching for their bodies.

At the Damascus hospital, the bodies brought from Seydnaya were laid out in a morgue, and when they ran out of space, the most decomposed ones were kept in a shed-like structure just outside. The stench was overwhelming.

One body was decapitated. The others bore marks of severe torture.

In one corner, there was a plastic bag with a human skull and bones. Families were looking through it to identify their loved ones.

Nineteen-year-old Ahmad Sultan Eid’s disfigured body was identified by his mother and brother. His mother nearly collapsed after she saw it, and nurses took her to the emergency room.

“Oh my boy, my baby, you were only 19,” she wailed. “There’s nothing left for us anymore.”

Ahmad’s brother leaned his face against a wall and wept.

All around us, people were holding up the photos of the loved ones they were searching for.

“I haven’t been able to find anything. How can you find anything if you’re looking through skeletons?” said Mustafa Khair-ul-Inam, an elderly man who had come looking for his two sons Omar and Mohammad who disappeared in 2011.

Amhad Masri meanwhile had come looking for his brother Khalil.

“Until now we weren’t allowed to ask where our loved ones are, otherwise we would be arrested. Can you imagine our feelings? They didn’t do anything and just like that they are gone. Maybe they are in a mass grave somewhere. Living in a jungle was better than living in Syria,” he said.

Grief and rage – which couldn’t be expressed openly until just a week ago – were pouring out.

“Every mother who is looking for her son should get revenge against Assad. Putin should not give him refuge. He should send Assad back so we can execute him in a public square,” one woman shouted loudly.

I asked Mazen’s sister Lamyaa what justice she wanted for her brother.

“The perpetrators of the crimes have all escaped. But I want them brought back so we can get justice in a court of law.”

The end, when it came for the BGP5 barracks, was loud and brutal. First, a crackly speaker calling out for their surrender; then, a thunderous barrage of artillery, rockets and rifle fire that tore chunks out of the buildings in which hundreds of soldiers were hiding.

BGP5 – the letters stand for Border Guard Police – was the Myanmar military junta’s last stand in northern Rakhine State, which lies along the border with Bangladesh.

Video by the insurgent Arakan Army (AA) which was besieging the base shows their rag-tag fighters, many barefoot, firing an assortment of weapons into the base, while air force jets roar over their heads.

It was a ferocious battle – perhaps the bloodiest of the civil war which has consumed Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in 2021.

“They had dug deep ditches filled with spikes around the base,” an AA source told the BBC.

“There were bunkers and reinforced buildings. They laid more than a thousand mines. Many of our fighters lost limbs, or their lives, trying to get through.”

For the coup leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, this has been yet another humiliating defeat after a year of military setbacks.

For the first time his regime has lost control of an entire border: the 270km (170 miles) dividing Myanmar from Bangladesh now wholly under AA control.

And with only the Rakhine State capital Sittwe still firmly in military hands, though cut off from the rest of the country, the AA is likely to be the first insurgent group to take complete control of a state.

• ‘My 17-year-old was brutally killed, but I’m glad she fought for freedom’
• Young people attempt to flee Myanmar ahead of conscription order

The army has been in headlong retreat from the Arakan Army since the beginning of the year, losing town after town.

The last army units withdrew in September to BGP5, a compound covering around 20 hectares just outside the border town of Maungdaw, where the AA laid siege.

BGP5 was built on the site of a Muslim Rohingya village, Myo Thu Gyi, which was burned down during the violent expulsion of much of the Rohingya population by the armed forces in 2017.

It was the first of many burned villages I saw on a visit to Maungdaw right after the military operation in September of that year, a mass of charred debris in among the lush tropical vegetation, its inhabitants killed or forced to flee to Bangladesh.

When I returned two years later, the new police complex had already been built, with all the trees removed, giving defenders a clear view of any attacking force.

The AA source told us their advance towards it was painfully slow, requiring the insurgents to dig their own ditches for cover.

It does not publish its own casualties. But judging from the intensity of fighting in Maungdaw, which began in June, it is likely to have lost hundreds of its own troops.

Throughout the siege, the Myanmar air force kept up a constant bombardment of Maungdaw, driving the last civilians out of the town.

Its planes dropped supplies to the besieged soldiers at night, but it was never enough. They had plenty of rice stored in the bunkers, a local source told us, but they could not get any treatment for their injuries, and the soldiers became demoralised.

They started to surrender last weekend.

AA video shows them coming out in a pitiful state, waving white cloths. Some are hobbling on makeshift crutches, or hopping, their injured legs wrapped in rags. Few are wearing shoes.

Inside the wrecked buildings the victorious insurgents filmed piles of bodies.

The AA says more than 450 soldiers died in the siege. It has published images of the captured commander, Brigadier-General Thurein Tun, and his officers kneeling beneath the flagpole, now flying the insurgents’ banner.

Pro-military commentators in Myanmar have been venting their frustration on social media.

“Min Aung Hlaing, you have not asked any of your children to serve in the military,” wrote one. “Is this how you use us? Are you happy seeing all those deaths in Rakhine?”

“At this rate, all that will be left of the Tatmadaw [military] will be Min Aung Hlaing and a flagpole,” wrote another.

The capture of BGP5 also shows the Arakan Army to be one of the most effective fighting forces in Myanmar.

Formed only in 2009 – much later than most of Myanmar’s other insurgent groups – by young ethnic Rakhine men who had migrated to the Chinese border on the other side of the country in search of work, the AA is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance which has inflicted most of the defeats suffered by the junta since last year.

The other two members of the alliance have stayed on the border, in Shan State.

But the AA moved back to Rakhine eight years ago to start its armed campaign for self-government, tapping into historic resentment among the Rakhine population of the poverty, isolation and central government neglect of their state.

The AA leaders have proven to be smart, disciplined and able to motivate their fighters.

They are already administering the large areas of Rakhine State they control as though they were running their own state.

And they also have good weapons, thanks to their links with the older insurgent groups on the Chinese border, and appear to be well-funded.

There is a bigger question, though, over how much the various ethnic insurgent groups are willing to prioritise the goal of overthrowing the military junta.

Publicly they say they do, alongside the shadow government which was deposed by the coup, and the hundreds of volunteer peoples’ defence forces which have sprung up to support it.

In return for the support it is getting from the ethnic insurgents, the shadow government is promising a new federal political system which will give Myanmar’s regions self-rule.

But already the other two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance have accepted China’s request for a ceasefire.

China is seeking a negotiated end to the civil war which would almost certainly leave the military with much of its power intact.

The opposition insists the military must be reformed and removed from politics. But having already made so many territorial gains at the expense of the junta, the ethnic insurgents may be tempted to strike a deal with China’s blessing rather than keep fighting to oust the generals.

The AA’s victory poses more worrying questions.

The group’s leadership is tight-lipped about its plans. But it takes over a state that was always poor and which has suffered greatly from the intense fighting of the past year.

“Eighty per cent of the housing in Maungdaw and the surrounding villages has been destroyed,” one Rohingya man who left Maungdaw recently for Bangladesh told the BBC.

“The town is deserted. Almost all the shops and houses have been looted.”

Last month the United Nations, whose agencies are being given very little access to Rakhine, warned of looming famine, because of the huge numbers of displaced people and the difficulty of getting any supplies in, past a military blockade.

The AA is trying to set up its own administration, but the BBC has been told by some of those displaced by the fighting that the group cannot feed or shelter them.

It is also unclear how the AA will treat the Rohingya population, still thought to number around 600,000 in Rakhine, even after the expulsion of 700,000 in 2017.

The largest number live in northern Rakhine State and Maungdaw has long been a predominantly Rohingya town. Relations with the ethnic Rakhine majority, the support base for the AA, have long been fraught.

They are now a great deal worse after Rohingya militant groups, which have their power base in the vast refugee camps in Bangladesh, chose to take sides with the military, against the AA, despite the army’s track record of persecuting Rohingyas.

Many Rohingyas do not like these groups, and some say they are happy to live in an AA-run Rakhine State.

But tens of thousands have been expelled by the AA from towns it has conquered, and not been allowed back.

The AA has promised to include all communities in its vision for a future independent of the central government, but it has also denounced the Rohingyas it found itself fighting alongside the army. In August dozens of Rohingyas, many of them women and children trying to cross over to Bangladesh, were killed by bombs, almost certainly dropped from AA drones.

“We cannot deny the fact that Rohingyas have been persecuted by Myanmar governments for many years, and the Rakhine people supported that,” said the Rohingya man we spoke to in Bangladesh.

“The government wants to keep Rohingyas from becoming citizens, but the Rakhine people believe there should be no Rohingyas at all in Rakhine State. Our situation today is even more difficult than it was under the rule of the military junta.”

The news is moving so quickly in South Korea, the papers can no longer keep up. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s shock attempt to impose martial law last Tuesday night was so short-lived it failed to make the front page.

By the time he despatched the troops, the press had already gone to print. By the following day’s editions, the failed power-grab had already been defeated.

Within the week, the president has morphed from being contrite and apologetic, hoping to avoid impeachment, to brazenly defiant, vowing to fight on as the net closed in on him.

Banned from leaving the country while he is investigated for treason – a crime punishable by death – he is facing a second impeachment vote this weekend, as support from his party trickles away. Meanwhile, the roars of anger from the thousands of people on the street every night are getting louder.

For a short while this week it looked as if he had struck a deal with his party to stand down early, in return for them not booting him out of office in last Saturday’s vote. But as the week sped by, there was no sign of the president nor the details of such a plan, and it gradually became obvious Yoon had zero intention of resigning.

On Thursday, he emerged obstinate. “I will fight until the end,” he declared, as he defended his decision to seize control of the country.

His speech was rambling and filled with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, including a vague suggestion that North Korea could have rigged the previous elections, in which he had failed to win control of parliament. The parliament was a “monster”, he said; the opposition party “dangerous”, and he, by declaring martial law, was trying to protect the people and save democracy.

Yoon spent much of this week in hiding, while police attempted to raid his offices to gather evidence. To try and temper public anger, his party announced that he would not be allowed to make decisions going forward – even though legal experts agreed there was nothing in the constitution that allowed for this.

This has left everyone with the same, pressing question – who is running the country? – especially as senior commanders of Yoon’s army have said they would defy his orders if he tried to impose martial law again.

There is now an unnerving power vacuum in a country that lives with the continuous threat of being attacked by North Korea. “There is no legal basis for this arrangement. We are in a dangerous and chaotic situation,” said Lim Ji-bong, a law professor at Sogang University.

It was evident to all those on the outside that this destabilising and bizarre situation could not be allowed to continue much longer. But it took the president’s party, the People Power Party (PPP), some time to realise Yoon’s impeachment was unavoidable.

Initially his party members protected him, eager to save their own political skins, and consumed by their hatred of South Korea’s opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, who they fear will become president if Yoon is removed. But on Thursday, after stalling for days, the PPP leader, Han Dong-hoon, came out to urge all MPs to impeach him. “The president must be suspended from office immediately,” he said.

For the impeachment to pass, two-thirds of parliament must vote in favour, meaning eight ruling party MPs must join the opposition. A handful have so far declared their intention to do so. One of the first to change his mind was Kim Sang-wook. “The president is no longer qualified to lead the country, he is totally unfit,” he told the BBC from his office at the National Assembly.

But Kim said not all MPs would follow his lead; there is a core that will stay loyal to Yoon. In his very conservative constituency, Kim said he had received death threats for switching sides. “My party and supporters have called me a traitor,” he said, labelling South Korean politics as “intensely tribal”.

The vast majority of anger, however, has been directed at the MPs who have shielded Yoon up to this point.

At a protest on Wednesday night the chants had changed from merely “impeach Yoon” to “impeach Yoon, dissolve the party”.

“I hate them both so much right now, but I think I hate the MPs even more than the president,” said a 31-year-old graduate student Chang Yo-hoon, who had joined tens of thousands of others, in freezing temperatures, to voice his disillusionment.

All week, lawmakers have been bombarded with thousands of abusive messages and phone calls from the public, in what one member of parliament described to me as “phone terrorism”, while some have been sent funeral flowers.

Even if enough MPs vote to impeach Yoon this weekend, his party, now divided and widely detested, faces political oblivion. “We don’t even know who we are or what we stand for anymore,” one exasperated party official told me.

The defecting lawmaker Kim Sang-wook thinks it will take time to regain voters’ trust. “We will not disappear, but we need to rebuild ourselves from scratch,” he said. “There is a saying that South Korea’s economy and culture are first class, but its politics are third class. Now is the chance to reflect on that.”

Yoon has dealt a severe blow to South Korea’s reputation as a well-established, albeit young, democracy. There was pride when MPs swiftly overturned the president’s martial law decision, that the country’s democratic institutions were functioning after all. But the fragility of the system was exposed again, as the party manoeuvred to keep him in office, with the opposition branding this a “second coup”.

But Professor Yun Jeong-in, a research professor at Korea University’s Legal Research Institute, insisted the country was dealing with “an aberration, not a systemic failure of democracy”, pointing to the mass protests every night. “People are not panicking; they are fighting back. They see democracy as something that is rightfully theirs,” she said.

Damage has also been done to South Korea’s international relationships, and ironically to much of what Yoon wanted to achieve. He had a vision that South Korea would become a “global pivotal state”, playing a bigger role on the world stage. He even hoped to earn Seoul an invitation to join the elite group of G7 countries.

A Western diplomat told me they were hoping for a “swift resolution” to the crisis. “We need South Korea to be a stable partner. Impeachment would be a step in the right direction.”

If Yoon is suspended from office on Saturday, he will not leave without a fight. A prosecutor by trade, who knows the law inside out, he has decided he would rather be impeached, and challenge the decision when it goes to court, than go quietly. And the shockwaves he has set off are going to ripple through the country for years, perhaps decades, to follow.

A former Love Island contestant says it “took her breath away” to discover that someone removing a condom during sex is classified as rape.

Stealthing, as it is known, happens when someone removes a condom during consensual sex without informing the other person.

Megan Barton-Hanson says she experienced this up to six times, with a man claiming the condom had split on each occasion, leading to her having an abortion.

“I didn’t know it was a crime,” the 30-year-old tells the BBC.

“I just thought that’s something between partners that you have to discuss with them.”

Megan added that she knew his actions were “unfair and unjust” but it was only in a recording of the We Need to Talk podcast, when host Paul C Brunson told her, that she realised the man’s actions were rape.

“I’d never heard of stealthing, ever,” she says.

“When we started to have sex, the condom was obviously on – that was fine – and then at the end, he’d removed it intentionally but his excuse was ‘it split and it broke’.

“It was shocking.”

The Metropolitan Police says stealthing is a slang word but the practice is legally considered rape, although prosecutions are rare due to under-reporting, as many do not realise it is an offence.

In October, a University College London (UCL) survey showed just over one in 10 people aged 18-25 did not consider non-consensual condom removal to be sexual assault.

Andrea Simon, executive director of End Violence Against Women and Girls, says although sex can start off consensually, if someone violates that consent by removing a condom, it is considered rape and it can be prosecuted as rape.

“It’s very hard to know the prevalence of stealthing, as not many people may understand it as actually an act of sexual violence or a crime,” she explains.

“It’s really important that men, in particular, understand that it’s criminal behaviour to intentionally remove a condom during sex without consent and we know that it speaks very much to men’s sense of entitlement over women’s bodies and it’s a violation of women’s bodily autonomy.”

The issue was explored in the fourth episode of BBC drama I May Destroy You in 2020, where the main character Arabella has sex with a man who removes the condom without her knowledge.

Arabella doesn’t realise it’s rape until she hears it discussed on a podcast.

The seriousness of this form of sexual violence is accurately reflected in the language we use to talk about it, according to Ciara Bergman, chief executive of Rape Crisis England and Wales.

“So-called stealthing is a form of rape under English and Welsh law,” she says.

“If someone has received consent for sex on the basis that they will wear a condom and they then remove the condom without the other person’s knowledge or permission, consent for sex from that point is lost.”

Megan’s advice to someone who may have concerns is clear.

She says: “I think if you’ve got any kind of suspicions, red flags, tell a friend, tell someone and then you can go together and share to the police.

“You don’t have to make it a big old deal; you can call from the comfort of your own home, but I think definitely reach out to somebody because it’s not fair and it’s not OK.”

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

Dola Posh has multiple identities: Photographer; woman; Nigerian; mother; Briton.

Yet after giving birth, she no longer felt sure who she was.

Six days after her daughter was born, she was lying in a bed in an English hospital, in the midst of a covid lockdown.

She worried about how her life had changed and if she would ever again do what she loved – taking pictures.

Unable to visit, relatives kept on calling to check up on her and the baby. After a difficult pregnancy, Dola felt under pressure.

Her mother was thousands of miles away in the place she had left two years earlier – Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city.

All this put her “brain in a very dark place… I thought: ‘I’m me; the baby’s out, I’m still me.’ But no, I wasn’t me any more.”

The loss of identity can be one of the causes of postnatal depression, which disproportionately affects black women. Though she did not recognise it at the time, this was what Dola was suffering from.

Once out of hospital, she was almost immediately being bombarded with unsolicited advice.

There was “too much talk, too much control around how I should raise the child. In a way that also affected my mind. It made me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t given the chance to be a mother.”

There is a matter-of-factness to the way the 33-year-old speaks about the events of 2020. She resists the tears this time, but she has cried – a lot.

One night, worn down from feeling like a zombie, because of a lack of sleep, and the isolation and mundanity of her new existence, a voice in her head told her to take her own life.

Emotionally unmoored, she clung on to her blanket as if it was a life jacket. Her baby girl – Monioluwa, meaning “I have God” in Yoruba – was by her side. She sang songs from home.

She then made a middle-of-the-night call to her health visitor who, fortunately, picked up and agreed to come round.

“I buried my head in shame, I just felt so much shame because it’s like I’m not even a good mother. I don’t have the strength to be a mother.”

Dola was persuaded to see a therapist, who encouraged her to use her camera as a way of dealing with her feelings.

Learning the craft in Nigeria, while studying for a marine biology degree, she stood out from the crowd with her dyed-gold hair and pink boots.

Dola began to build a reputation in Lagos’s male-dominated worlds of fashion and celebrity photography. But she gravitated towards portraiture as it allowed her to document people’s lives and encouraged subjects to share something more profound.

For the therapy she turned the lens on herself – and, using an app on her phone to remotely control the camera, began to produce a portfolio of shots of her with Monioluwa.

The mother-and-baby portrait, drawing on representations of the Madonna and child, is one of the fundamental motifs of the Western art tradition.

Dola’s photographs fit into this mode but the connection was unconscious at first and it took a mentor to point it out.

She was raised in a religious household – her father was a bishop in a Nigerian church. Paintings of Mary and Jesus were on the walls of her home, and the image of the mother and child was in the Bibles and hymn books.

“The colours: the green, red and gold; the gold frames and the light glow – growing up in that environment, it was all there in my subconscious.”

This all then came out in the way that she composed and lit her portraits.

“Sometimes you do things, you don’t even know why you do them and then when you sit down and reflect it’s like: ‘Oh!’”

The veil, or head covering, that had been part of her church-going uniform, also became an essential element of her work.

“When I put on the veil, it didn’t feel like that empty person any more. It felt more me… I was reconnecting with my family, it felt like I had their essence with me.”

The project was beginning to help Dola better understand her emotions.

She says that when she started sharing her story “that motherhood was not all joys and I suffered from postnatal depression, that opened a door for me not to have shame any more.

“Now I am starting to work on the stories of what actually happened and the darkness, how I crawled out of it, and try to depict that through images.”

Earlier this year, Dola won an award from camera manufacturer Leica to allow her to continue her series and encourage more women – particularly black women – to break the stigma around postnatal depression.

“I want a world where black mothers don’t have to carry so much burden and feel like they have to go through that journey alone and I want them to look in the media and see a reflection of themselves trying to make things work.”

In the UK, black women are more likely to experience postnatal depression than others, the Mental Health Foundation charity says. The reasons are complex, but Dola believes that being more open is vital in addressing the issue.

“It’s new for a woman to stand there and say: ‘I almost ended my life, I’m not ashamed of it – I am still an artist, I am still a woman and I have something to say.’”

• The NHS has lots of useful information about the signs of postnatal depression
• BBC Action Line: Information and support for your mental health

• How old Ugandan negatives are bringing families back to life
• Kenya’s Thandiwe Muriu: Standing out in camouflage
• ‘I want it to be normal for women to take photos’
• The continent through its own lens

As Argentina’s maverick libertarian President Javier Milei marks one year in office, his efforts to revive the economy are still a work in progress – but his policies are proving influential in the US.

Milei came to power with a mission to cut state spending in a country that had been living beyond its means for years.

Despite his tough austerity measures and a continued rise in poverty rates, he is still supported by just over half the population, according to a survey carried out earlier this month by the CB Consultora organisation.

That level of popularity is similar to that of Donald Trump right now. Roughly half of US voters backed the president-elect in last month’s presidential contest – and Trump has hailed Milei as a man who can “make Argentina great again”.

Meanwhile, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who looks set to play a key role in the incoming US administration, has also praised Milei, saying Argentina is “experiencing a giant improvement” under his leadership.

But what is it that Trump and Musk see in Milei? And are they as close ideologically as is often assumed?

Milei’s biggest achievement so far, the one which is most prized by Argentines, is his success in cutting inflation. But he has caused a stir in the US because of his deregulation drive, which has been seized on by small-government activists keen to shrink the size of the state in Washington along the lines of what is happening in Buenos Aires.

In Milei’s initial package of measures, he slashed state subsidies for fuel and cut the number of government ministries by half.

Now he is trying to force through plans for a mass sell-off of state-run companies, including the country’s flagship airline Aerolineas Argentinas, which has already been privatised once before being renationalised in 2008.

All this is music to the ears of Elon Musk, who is being tasked with similar cost-cutting initiatives under the banner of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency – a misleading name, since it is an advisory body, not an official government department.

Musk and his co-leader in the department, fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, have said they want to slash federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and shut down some agencies entirely.

Musk has spoken of cutting federal government spending by $2tn (£1.6tn) – about one-third of annual expenditure. According to him, Milei is doing “a fantastic job” in Argentina by “deleting entire departments” – and he would like to follow suit in the US, with Trump’s blessing.

But long-time Latin America observers are sceptical.

Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, says that “taking inspiration from Milei to reduce the size of government doesn’t make any sense”.

“The situation in Argentina is very particular to Argentina, because it was about the removal of decades of mismanagement of public resources. That has nothing to do with the US.”

Ms de Bolle says Argentina had no choice but to take action, because government overspending was so excessive that the country was “bursting into crisis every few years”.

“That is appropriate for Argentina, but for nobody else.”

Marcelo J García, Buenos Aires-based director for the Americas at global consulting firm Horizon Engage, says Milei’s decision to wield a chainsaw on the campaign trail as a sign of his approach to government was a “masterpiece” of political marketing that has “captured the imagination of small-state activists across the globe”.

But he argues that while Musk’s own business interests would benefit from less government regulation, that’s not necessarily what Trump wants.

“I’m not sure that the Trump platform is compatible with a Milei-type chainsaw small government,” he told the BBC.

He points out that Trump’s policies “require big government in some areas”, such as the building of border walls and mass deportations of illegal immigrants. “You can’t do those kinds of massive programmes with small government.”

In Milei’s view, infrastructure projects are best left to the private sector and have nothing to do with government.

Milei and Trump are on the same side in the global culture wars, denouncing what they see as the “woke agenda”. But in economic terms, their ideas are very different.

Milei is a passionate free-trader, and Argentina is a member of the South American trading bloc Mercosur, which also includes Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

While he is in favour of Mercosur’s recent free-trade deal with the European Union, he doesn’t like the way that the organisation refuses to let its individual member countries strike their own deals. As a result, he says Mercosur “has ended up becoming a prison”.

“If the bloc is not a dynamic engine that facilitates trade, boosts investment and improves the quality of life of all the citizens of our region, what is the point of it?” he said at the Mercosur summit in Uruguay earlier this month where the deal with the EU was signed.

Trump also has beef with his own regional trade alliance, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but for reasons that are the opposite of Milei’s.

Trump wants to renegotiate the USMCA, a deal that he himself put together during his first term in office, as a way of protecting US manufacturing and safeguarding US jobs.

He has even found a way of weaponising the alliance by threatening to impose a blanket 25% tariff on goods from both Canada and Mexico unless they secure their shared borders with the US.

Monica de Bolle doubts that Trump shares Musk’s enthusiasm for a smaller state: “You can’t be a populist nationalist and care about the size of government. So Trump doesn’t care. He put Elon there because it’s kind of fun to have someone there making noise.”

The economic debate is set to run and run, in both the US and Argentina. But ultimately, if one half of your population supports you, it means the other half doesn’t. Trump will have to deal with that after his inauguration on 20 January, but Milei is already having to cope with his own polarised population.

As Marcelo J García sees it, Milei is a “divisive leader” who has made no attempt to win over his opponents.

“The other half of the country that did not support him will arguably never support him, no matter how well the economy does, because he doesn’t want them to support him,” he says.

“Leaders tend to want to be liked by everyone. That’s not the case with Milei,” he adds.

In his view, this is a real weakness: “You don’t build a long-term sustainable political project if you don’t move towards the people who didn’t vote for you.”

Milei’s next big test of public opinion will come in October 2025, when Argentina holds midterm elections. That could prove crucial in deciding whether his small-government revolution determines the country’s future – or whether, like previous attempts at reform, it runs out of steam.

US President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to end daylight saving time (DST), arguing it is “inconvenient” and “very costly” to Americans.

In a post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said DST had “a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t” and that his Republican party would work to end it.

DST is the practice of moving the clock ahead by one hour in the spring and back an hour in the autumn to make better use of natural daylight.

It is observed in a third of the world’s countries, according to Pew Research Center, including most of Europe. Some in the US, however, have long advocated to end the timeworn tradition.

Those who want to stick with standard time say it benefits our health, as it is better to have more light in the morning, paving the way for improved sleep cycles on darker evenings. They say DST can be disorienting to sleep schedules.

But others want to make DST permanent instead, arguing that brighter evenings, especially for those commuting from work or school, would reduce crime, conserve energy and even save lives in terms of reduced road accidents.

Both sides say their preferred option would be better for the economy.

Trump’s plan is not the first attempt to alter the biannual practice of changing clocks seasonally in the US.

• Places around the world that opt out of daylight savings – and why

Making daylight saving time permanent was the aim of a 2022 bill that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But the Sunshine Protection Act, which was introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, never made it to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Rubio has since been picked by Trump for the role of secretary of state under his incoming administration.

The US first began changing its clocks seasonally in 1918 during World War One in an effort to conserve fuel. It was unpopular with farmers, and was repealed after the war.

But DST returned again during World War Two, and was made permanent in 1966, though states could opt out.

Hawaii and most of Arizona currently do not follow time changes under DST.

Research by Joan Costa-i-Font, a professor at the London School of Economics, found that DST has had “detrimental effects on sleep and physical health, and on feelings of fatigue, stress, time stress and mental health”.

Prof Costa-i-Font’s study found that, in monetary terms, an end to DST would lead to an increase in economic output of €754 ($792; £627) per person per year.

Countries that have ended the practice include Mexico in 2022, though DST is still maintained in regions near the US border for economic and logistical reasons. Jordan also ended the practice that year.

Others, like Turkey and Russia, have implemented a permanent DST instead in the past decade.

In a Monmouth University Poll, researchers found that about two-thirds of people in the US want make DST permanent.

The Canadian government is moving to end a nearly month-long postal workers’ strike that has disrupted mail delivery across the country ahead of the holidays.

On Friday, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon ordered the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to send Canada Post employees back to work if an agreement is not reached soon with their employer.

Around 55,000 postal workers began striking on 15 November over pay and working conditions. The two sides have since failed to reach an agreement, with federal mediators concluding a few weeks ago that negotiations were too far apart.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) denounced the government’s order “in the strongest terms”.

In a statement on Friday, the CUPW called the move an “assault on our constitutionally protected right to collectively bargain and to strike”.

Meanwhile, Canada Post said in a statement that it looks forward to welcoming its employees back to work and resuming its services.

The Crown corporation added that it remains committed to reaching a negotiated agreement with the union, but said it wants to do so while “also meeting the postal needs of Canadians.”

The Canadian Industrial Relations Board is expected to rule on Minister MacKinnon’s request next week.

The strike has impacted businesses during one of the biggest shopping periods of the year. With deliveries halted, inventory has sat in warehouses across the country while shipping costs have increased.

Lorne James, an Ontario business owner, told the BBC last week that he fears the strike is “going to wipe out a good number of businesses” due to steep financial losses.

In Canada’s northern communities – where Canada Post is the sole mail delivery provider – the strike has had a profound impact on those who rely on the postal service for the delivery of essentials, like medicine and cheque payments.

Service Canada has also reportedly withheld the delivery of 85,000 passports and other important documents while the strike is ongoing.

Announcing the order on Friday, Minister MacKinnon said “Canadians are rightly fed up” with the strike. He added that it is not a decision he takes lightly, “but in this situation, it is the right one.”

The order would ask striking employees to go back to work under their existing collective agreement until 22 May, by which then the minister hopes a new agreement will be in place.

The union has been trying to negotiate a wage increase of 19% over the next four years – higher than the 11.5% increase initially proposed by Canada Post. They are also negotiating issues around benefits, sick leave, job conditions and security.

“Our demands are reasonable: fair wages, safe working conditions, the right to retire with dignity and the expansion of services at the public post office,” the union has said.

CUPW national president Jan Simpson has since accused Canada Post of dragging its feet so the federal government can intervene. Meanwhile, Canada Post accused the union of increasing their demands instead of reaching a compromise.

When the strike began, Canada Post warned that its services would continue to be disrupted even if an agreement is reached due to backlogs in deliveries.

It added that it has already felt a financial impact, with customers switching to private competitors or stopping use of its services altogether as the strike is ongoing.

The last Canada post began in October 2018 and ended after more than a month when the federal government mandated that employees go back to work through legislation.

That job action cost Canada Post around C$135m ($96.7m; £76.27m).

Mystery continues to swirl after nearly a month of drone sightings over New Jersey, sparking fear among residents and furious debate about what the flying objects are – and if they are drones at all.

US authorities have been unable to provide definitive answers, saying only that the objects are not believed to pose a danger to the public or national security.

On Thursday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that available images suggested that many of the reported drone sightings were actually manned aircraft.

But some lawmakers have criticised the government’s handling of the drones and the lack of information available to the public.

Here’s what we know.

Dozens of drone sightings have been reported over New Jersey since 18 November, according to local authorities.

The drones were initially spotted near the Raritan river, a waterway which feeds into the Round Valley Reservoir – the largest in New Jersey, the Associated Press reported.

The sightings soon spread to other parts of the state, including New Jersey’s coast.

Some of the flights were spotted near Picatinny Arsenal – a sensitive military research facility – as well as near President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in the town of Bedminster, New Jersey.

In nearby New York City, several drones were reported flying over the Bronx on 12 December, a police official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Officers who responded to the incident saw the drones flying overhead, but they disappeared soon afterwards.

Drones have also been reported in other parts of the state, according to New York State Police.

Police in Connecticut have also confirmed that “suspicious drone activity” has taken place in various parts of the state. A drone detection system has been deployed around the towns of Groton and New London.

• FBI investigates possible drones seen over Trump golf course

In Maryland, former Republican Governor Larry Hogan claimed he saw what appeared to be “dozens” of drones over his residence in Davidsonville, about 25 miles (40km) from Washington DC.

“Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security,” he wrote on X. “But the public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government.”

In late November, the United States Air Force also confirmed that unidentified drones were spotted over three US airbases in the UK: RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk.

UK defence sources told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

In October, the Wall Street Journal also reported that mysterious drones were seen for 17 days near US military facilities in Virginia.

Both federal and state authorities have said that they do not believe the drones are dangerous or pose a threat to US national security.

Following a briefing with the Department of Homeland Security on 11 December, New Jersey assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia said the drones appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio.

Fantasia said the drones are up to 6ft (1.8m) in diameter, travel with lights turned off and “operate in a co-ordinated manner”.

Her comments stand in stark contrast to the White House, which has suggested that these are “manned aircraft”.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security also said that the majority of sightings appear to be lawful, manned flights.

None have been reported in restricted airspace, the statement added.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a statement on Friday saying more and more people are using drones, meaning more people are noticing them in the sky.

It added that while drones can be flown in most locations below 400ft (121m), drones can’t be flown within controlled airspace around an airport without FAA authorisation; over designated, national security-sensitive facilities; in certain military bases, infrastructure and national landmarks; and in airspace covered by temporary flight restrictions.

If the objects are confirmed to be drones – which at this point is unconfirmed – it is unclear who might be operating them.

Citing anonymous “high sources”, New Jersey Republican representative Jeff Van Drew said that they were coming from an Iranian “mothership” in the Atlantic.

The Pentagon swiftly dismissed the comment, saying “there is no truth to that”.

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States,” deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Another lawmaker, Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi – who is on a congressional committee that looks at China’s Communist Party – told media outlet NewsNation that there is a “non-trivial” chance that China could be involved.

“It’s definitely a possibility and the likelihood that they can then access data that is collected by these drones is very high,” he said.

The Pentagon and White House have both insisted that there is no foreign origin for the objects.

Van Drew and other lawmakers have pushed back on those denials.

“Here’s the deal: they don’t know what it is. They don’t know what it’s about,” Van Drew told Fox News. “They have no idea where it comes from, but they know what it’s not about? That’s nonsense.”

In a separate incident across the country, a northern California man was charged on 11 December with flying a drone over and taking pictures of Vandenberg Space Force Base, located near Santa Barbara.

The incident is alleged to have taken place on 30 November, according to prosecutors.

The man, 39-year-old Chinese national Yinpiao Zhou was arrested just before he boarded a flight to China. He appeared in court on Tuesday and no plea was was taken.

There has been no suggestion that the incident is related to the spate of reported drone sightings on the east coast.

Several lawmakers have suggested that the drones should be shot down and analysed to determine their origin and intentions.

Among them is President-elect Donald Trump, who took to his Truth Social media platform to suggest that drones couldn’t be flying without the government’s knowledge.

“Let the public know, and now,” he wrote. “Otherwise, shoot them down”.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has also established temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drone flights over Bedminster and Picatinny.

In a statement, the FAA also warned that drone operators who conduct unsafe or dangerous operations could face fines of up to $75,000 (£59,000) and have their drone pilot certificates revoked.

In a letter to US President Joe Biden published on 13 December, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy urged federal agencies to “work together” to solve the mystery, as well as push Congress to extend counter-drone capabilities to local law enforcement.

Some residents have suggested they may take action against the drones themselves – something authorities have strongly warned against doing, as it is illegal.

“A good shotgun will fix that problem,” a man commented on a video of a drone on social media.

The US military has flown an American citizen out of Syria, just days after he was released from months of captivity during the chaotic last days of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Travis Timmerman, 29, was handed over to a US garrison in Syria, close to the borders with Iraq and Jordan. He is now reportedly in Jordan, where he met US state department officials.

He was found by local residents near Damascus this week after he was freed by hammer-wielding armed men.

Mystery has swirled over how exactly Mr Timmerman came to be in Syria. The White House says it had no prior indication that he was even in Syria or being held in captivity.

Two US government sources have told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that an American military helicopter flew Mr Timmerman out of the country after Syrian rebels from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group brought him to US forces in the town of Tanf.

According to AP news agency, he has told American officials he hopes to remain in the Middle East rather than return to the US.

It is unclear what Mr Timmerman was doing in Syria.

Police in his native US state of Missouri, as well as in Hungary, have said that Mr Timmerman was reported missing in May, having last been seen in Budapest.

His parents have said he went missing in June.

Mr Timmerman has told US news outlets he was on a religious “pilgrimage” when he crossed into Syria from Lebanon.

• Jubilant Syrians crowd squares for victory rallies
• Trump says Syria ‘not our fight’. Staying out may not be so easy

He told CBS he was well-treated during his time in Syrian captivity. Speaking to NBC News, he said his imprisonment was “a time of solace, of meditation, and I’m stronger for it”.

Mr Timmerman’s family has expressed surprise that he was in Syria and said they were elated that he is safe.

His cousin, Mandy Pendridge, told CBS. “It’s hard not to think of negative thoughts at that time.

“We were kind of thinking it was going to be the worst outcome for us.”

Speaking to CNN on Friday, his parents said they had no idea how Mr Timmerman ended up in Syria, although his stepfather suggested he wanted to write a book about “old churches”.

His mother, Stacey Gardiner, said she believed her son “looked different” and had “gone through a lot”.

Another cousin, Miranda Collins, said finding him was the “best Christmas gift”.

“For seven months all we knew was that he disappeared,” she said. “We didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”

Mr Timmerman’s flight from Jordan comes as US officials and Syrian groups continue the search for Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist who was taken captive close to Damascus in 2012 while covering the country’s civil war.

He was last seen in a video, blindfolded and in apparent distress – posted online weeks after his capture. The US believes he was being held by the Assad regime.

President Joe Biden has said the US believes Mr Tice is alive, but that his location remains unknown.

A popular Indian actor was arrested and later released on bail in connection with a crush that killed a person at the premiere of his film.

Allu Arjun, one of the biggest stars of the Telugu film industry, had made a surprise appearance at the screening last week in Hyderabad city.

A 39-year-old woman was killed and her son critically injured in the crush.

A court initially sentenced the actor to 14 days in police custody but hours later, the high court granted him bail.

Police had filed a case against the actor, his security team and the theatre’s management staff on charges of culpable homicide.

The owner and two employees of the theatre were arrested earlier.

On Friday, the police arrived at the actor’s home and took him into custody, following which he was produced in a local court.

Accidents involving large crowds are often reported in India, where lax safety measures and poor crowd management have led to deaths. But it is unusual for big celebrities to be arrested in cases like these.

Pushpa 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2021 blockbuster Pushpa: The Rise, released in theatres earlier this month

Police said Allu Arjun arrived at the theatre at 21:30 local time (16:00GMT) through the main entrance.

“There was no intimation from the side of the theatre management or the actor’s team that they would be visiting,” Hyderabad police chief CV Anand said.

“His personal security team started pushing the public which further aggravated the situation as there was already a huge gathering at the theatre,” a police statement said.

Arjun’s lawyer said in court that the actor could be not held responsible for the incident and that the crush took place on a different floor from where he was.

As chaos broke out, a 39-year-old woman and her nine-year-old son were pulled out of the crowd as they felt “suffocated”, police said.

They were given first aid, before being taken to hospital.

While the woman died there, her son was shifted to a different hospital where he is still being treated.

Shortly after the incident, Allu Arjun wrote on X that he was “heartbroken by the tragic incident”.

“My heartfelt condolences go out to the grieving family during this unimaginably difficult time. I want to assure them they are not alone in this pain and will meet the family personally,” he wrote.

He later announced assistance of 2.5m rupees ($29,480; £23,346) for the woman’s family and promised to take care of the medical expenses for her son.

Mythri Movie Makers, the studio behind the film, also released a statement saying, “We are committed to standing by them and extending all possible support during this difficult time.”

Prosecutors reportedly began to share evidence in their case against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, with a grand jury on Thursday.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office hopes to move quickly in their effort to obtain an indictment in New York City where Mangione allegedly shot and killed Thompson on 4 December, according CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reported.

Mr Mangione’s lawyer is continuing to fight his extradition from Pennsylvania – where the suspected shooter was arrested on gun-related charges – to New York.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on Thursday that she is also working to get Mr Mangione back to her state from Pennsylvania “because that horrific attack occurred on our streets”.

“The people of our city deserve to have that sense of calm that this perpetrator has been caught and he will never see the light of day again,” she added.

• How the six-day manhunt unfolded
• What is a ghost gun, the weapon allegedly used in shooting?
• Who is the CEO shooting suspect?
• Who was UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?

But Mr Mangione’s lawyer, Thomas Dickey, has said he plans to fight the extradition and maintains he has not seen evidence that link Mr Mangione’s gun with the crime.

“A lot of guns look the same,” he said earlier this week on ABC News.

On Wednesday, however, police found a positive match between Mr Mangione’s fingerprints and those discovered at the scene of the crime, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

Investigators are also looking at how the suspect may have travelled into and out of New York City. Carlos Nieves, an assistant police commissioner in New York City, told CBS News that his office is working with Pennsylvania police to track Mr Mangione’s alleged movements.

Authorities previously alleged that the suspect took a bike through Central Park after shooting Mr Thompson, and then took a taxi to a bus terminal near the northern point of Manhattan. From there, officials claimed, he boarded a bus that left the island.

They now believe that he may have taken the subway from the bus terminal to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan. Authorities are looking into whether he may have travelled by train to Pennsylvania, rather than by bus.

While Mr Mangione awaits his fate in the New York court system, he remains in in his own cell under maximum security at Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.

He was denied bail at his hearing on Thursday.

His next court appearance is 30 December.

When Bashar al-Assad was toppled on Sunday, it turned the page on not only his 24-year presidency but on more than 50 years of his family ruling Syria.

Before Assad took office in 2000, his late father Hafez was president for three decades.

Now, with rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) forming a transitional government, the future of the deposed president, his wife and their three children is uncertain.

They are now in Russia, where they have been offered asylum, but what lies ahead for them?

Russia was a staunch ally of Assad during Syria’s civil war and has two key military bases in the Middle Eastern country.

In 2015, Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad that turned the tide of the war in the government’s favour.

A UK-based monitoring group reported that more than more than 21,000 people, including 8,700 civilians, were killed in Russian military operations over the following nine years.

However, distracted by its war in Ukraine, Russia was either unwilling or unable to help Assad’s government stop the rebel’s lightning offensive after it began in late November.

Hours after rebel forces seized control of Damascus, it was reported by Russian state media that Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and that they would be granted asylum on “humanitarian grounds”.

But when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked about Assad’s whereabouts and asylum claim by reporters on Monday, he said: “I have nothing to tell you… right now. Of course, such a decision [on granting asylum] cannot be made without the head of state. It is his decision.”

The Assads’ ties to Russia, specifically Moscow, are well-documented.

A 2019 investigation by the Financial Times found that Assad’s extended family had purchased at least 18 luxury apartments in the Russian capital, in a bid to keep tens of millions of dollars out of Syria during the civil war.

Meanwhile, Assad’s eldest son, Hafez, is a PhD student in the city – with a local newspaper reporting just last week about the 22-year-old’s doctoral dissertation.

Amid the chaos at the weekend, Russian state TV reported that officials in Moscow were in talks with “the Syrian armed opposition” to secure Russia’s bases and diplomatic missions.

Assad is married to a dual British-Syrian national, Asma, who was born and raised in west London to Syrian parents.

She attended school and university in London before becoming an investment banker.

Asma moved to Syria full-time in 2000 and married Assad around the time he succeeded his father as president.

Dr Nesrin Alrefaai, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), told BBC News that Asma “holds a British passport, so could return to the UK” instead of remaining in Russia.

“However, the USA [has] imposed sanctions on her father, Dr Fawaz al-Akhras, who is also reported to be in Russia,” she said – suggesting Asma may want to stay put in Moscow for now.

In a report by the Mail Online, neighbours were quoted as saying Asma’s father, a cardiologist, and mother Sahar, a retired diplomat, wanted to be in Moscow to “console” their daughter and son-in-law.

Assad and his wife have three children: Hafez, the PhD student, Zein and Karim.

A 2022 US State Department report to Congress said the extended Assad family’s net worth was between $1bn (£790m) and $2bn (£1.6bn) – though it noted that it was difficult to estimate because their assets are “believed to be spread out and concealed in numerous accounts, real estate portfolios, corporations, and offshore tax havens”.

According to the report, Bashar and Asma maintained “close patronage relationships with Syria’s largest economic players, using their companies to launder money from illicit activities and funnel funds to the regime”.

It also said that Asma had “influence over the economic committee that manages Syria’s ongoing economic crisis” – and had made key decisions on Syria’s “food and fuel subsidies, trade and currency issues”.

She also exerted influence over the Syria Trust for Development, through which most foreign aid for reconstruction in regime-held areas was channelled.

In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged that Asma had “become one of Syria’s most notorious war profiteers” with the help of her husband and her family.

Another senior Trump administration official described her as the “business head of the family” and an “oligarch” who had been competing with Bashar’s cousin Rami Makhlouf.

He is one of Syria’s richest men and the family rift became public knowledge after he posted videos on social media complaining about his treatment.

Following the fall of the Assad dynasty, Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnès Callamard said Syrians had been subjected to what she called “a horrifying catalogue of human rights violations that caused untold human suffering on a vast scale”.

This includes “attacks with chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and other war crimes, as well as murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination that amount to crimes against humanity”.

She called on the international community to ensure that people suspected of breaking international law and other serious human rights violations must be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes.

On Tuesday, the Islamist rebel leader in Syria said any of the ousted regime’s senior officials found to have been involved in torturing political prisoners would be named.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani also said his so-called Syrian Salvation Government would seek to repatriate officials it identified who fled to another country.

In France, investigative judges have sought an arrest warrant for Assad for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, in connection with a deadly chemical attack in Syria in 2013 under the legal concept of universal jurisdiction.

Russia does not extradite its own nationals – a legal process whereby someone is returned to another country or state to face trial for a suspected crime.

Assad is unlikely to leave Russia to go to a country where he could be extradited back to Syria or any other that might charge him with a crime.

A former Manchester City footballer is set be appointed president on Saturday by Georgia’s disputed parliament, after 16 days of pro-EU protests that have swept this country’s towns and cities.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, now 53, is a former MP from the increasingly authoritarian ruling Georgian Dream party and the only candidate for the job.

The four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and have boycotted parliament, insisting that the elections held in October were rigged.

Georgia’s outgoing pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has condemned Kavelashvili’s election as a travesty, insisting she holds Georgia’s only remaining legitimate institution.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has accused the president of trying to harm Georgia’s interests, emphasising that when her term of office ends on 29 December, she will have to retire.

“We have very strong state institutions, so we certainly have no difficulty in bringing the situation under full control,” he was quoted as saying on Friday.

Party colleague Nino Tsilosani told reporters that Zourabichvili was no longer president in the eyes of the public.

Protests against Georgian Dream began immediately after the October elections but they burst into life on 28 November when the government announced it was putting EU accession negotiations on hold until 2028.

An overwhelming majority of Georgians back the country’s path to the European Union and it is part of the constitution.

Every night, the main avenue outside parliament fills with protesters draped in EU flags, demanding new elections.

Saturday’s vote in parliament is expected to take several hours and prompt a spike in anti-government protests. It will involve a direct ballot by a 300-member electoral college made up of MPs and local officials loyal to Georgian Dream from around the country.

Ahead of the vote, the capital Tbilisi was convulsed on Friday by pop-up protests involving IT specialists, public sector workers, creative industry professionals, actors and lawyers.

“We are standing here to create a legal state once and for all, to respect the provisions of the constitution and human rights,” said lawyer Davit Kikaleishvili, 47.

Kavelashvili is a founder of the People’s Power party, known for being the main voice for anti-Western propaganda in Georgia.

He has accused opposition parties of acting as a “fifth column” directed from abroad, and described President Zourabichvili as a a “chief agent”.

Kavelashvili moved into politics after he was disqualified from seeking the leadership of the Georgian football federation because he lacked the qualifications.

Although his party ran alongside Georgian Dream in the October elections, it has now decided to act in parliament as a “healthy opposition”, to fill the place of the “so-called radical opposition funded by foreign forces”.

Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire businessman and former Georgian PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, has been accused of dragging the country back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Both the EU and US have condemned the government for democratic backsliding and more than 460 people have been detained across Georgia over the past two weeks, according to Transparency International.

More than 300 have been ill-treated or tortured, the organisation says, including dozens of people from Georgian media. Last weekend, thugs were filmed attacking a TV reporter and cameraman.

The EU has condemned the “brutal, unlawful force from the police” and foreign ministers are due to consider measures against the government when they meet on Monday.

The US state department has already imposed visa restrictions on Georgian officials, including government ministers and police.

Protesters have called on the international community to impose sanctions on top government officials as well as Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s most powerful man.

Pro-government groups have also waged a campaign of harassment towards civil society activists, beating them outside homes, and carrying out arbitrary arrests.

“There is systematic torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of citizens,” said former public rights defender Nino Lomjaria.

Theatre workers who joined the protests on Friday chanted: “The police are everywhere, justice is nowhere.”

At one point two men scaled a construction crane as protesters marched along an avenue. The pair waved a Georgian flag as the crowds cheered below.

They came in hoodies, they came in masks, shuffling their feet and laughing nervously while waiting for a winner to be announced.

Just a few days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on a New York City sidewalk, these young men had lined up in Washington Square Park to compete in a lookalike contest for the man wanted for his murder.

It was sparsely attended and seen as a joke by those who did turn up, said Talia Jane, a journalist who was there.

But it underlined an obsession with a murder suspect that has gripped social media since the killing on 4 December, fuelled by latent anger directed at America’s private health insurers.

“There was a lot of tinder already there, a lot of discontent, a lot of frustration already there, and [this] sort of threw a match on it,” Ms Jane said.

And it has only grown since the suspect was named as Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League-educated member of a prominent Baltimore family.

In TikTok videos, memes and group chats, a young man accused of shooting a father-of-two in the back on a New York City sidewalk has been fawned over and praised as a kind of folk hero.

This fetishisation was remarkably widespread, not limited to radical corners of the internet or any political affiliation, troubling many observers.

“We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” said Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, where Mr Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s.

“In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

• Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system

Almost immediately after Mr Thompson was shot dead, the internet began to lionise his suspected killer. On TikTok, people posted videos of a “CEO assassin” New York City walking tour. On Spotify, playlists dedicated to the suspect started to appear.

Once Mr Mangione was arrested, these fans came to his defence.

The start of his legal battles prompted anonymous donors to chip in thousands of dollars towards his defence through various online fundraisers.

Etsy was flooded with pro-Mangione apparel, while Amazon pulled similar products from their site.

The McDonald’s worker alleged to have turned him in has become a target for online hate, while the fast-food franchise itself has been spammed with bad reviews.

The police department in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that arrested him even received death threats.

Much of this online reaction has focused on his looks, with the internet dubbing him the “hot assassin”.

Indeed, Mr Mangione’s appearance, which he showed off in shirtless social media posts, is now clearly part of the appeal, said cultural critic Blakely Thornton.

Americans are effectively “programmed” to trust and empathise with men who look like Mr Mangione, he said.

“That’s why they are the protagonists in our movies, books and stories.”

Public adoration for handsome men accused of crimes is not new – from Ted Bundy to Jeremy Meeks, violent men have developed cult followings.

But Professor Tanya Horeck, an expert on digital culture and true crime from Anglia Ruskin University, says that social media has given those sentiments massive visibility, and helped them spread.

The internet has caused “a blurring of the lines between celebrity and criminality”, she told the BBC, adding that when people see a good-looking person pop into their feeds, their first thought is lust, not moral criticism.

“The mood around Luigi Mangione is ‘thirst’,” she said.

Beyond his appearance, a large part of Mr Mangione’s online appeal is clearly his apparent ire against the private healthcare industry and corporate elites in general. US media has reported that Mr Mangione was arrested carrying a handwritten document that said “these parasites had it coming”.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a non-profit extremism research group based in New Jersey, said that after the shooting the hashtag #EatTheRich went viral.

Since Mr Mangione’s arrest, variations of “#FreeLuigi” were posted on X over 50,000 times, likely getting tens of millions of impressions. And by some measures, the NCRI said, engagement with posts about Mr Thompson’s killing across platforms like X, Reddit, and others surpassed that of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July.

An analysis of a sample of comments carried out by market research firm OneCliq found the vast majority – four-fifths – contained criticism of the healthcare system.

Mr Mangione’s X account has gained more than 400,000 followers since the shooting.

The shooting also seemed to inspire others to take action against healthcare insurers – “wanted” posters of other CEOs appeared around New York City, and a woman in Florida was arrested after telling an insurance agent on the phone “Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next,” alluding to the words inscribed on bullet casings found at the murder scene.

Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at the NCRI, called the online reaction a “turning point” and “a catalyst for the normalisation of political violence that was once confined to extremists on the fringes”.

He compared the wave of comments to the online activity following racist mass murders, designed to defend the killers and signal-boost their beliefs – only more widespread, and happening across mainstream social media networks.

“The dynamic we are observing is eerily similar to the activity on platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Discord, and in other dark corners of the internet, where mass shootings are often met with glee,” he said.

Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence, said evidence suggests that the groundswell was authentic – not powered by bots or government influence operations.

“People are pissed off at the healthcare industry and they are using social media to express their frustrations,” he said. “They’re expressing those frustrations by supporting this suspect.”

Recent research by Commonwealth Fund, a health policy institute, found 45% of insured working-age adults were charged for something they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, and 17% of respondents said their insurer denied coverage for care that was recommended by their doctor.

There are indications that the shooting has prompted some introspection on the part of healthcare companies.

“I think all of us are taking a step back and trying to understand what’s happening with patients and their experiences,” Pfizer’s chief sustainability officer Caroline Roan told a conference in New York on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Some of the people who have been protesting against health insurance companies for years, before online criticism about UHC took off, understand some of the darker sentiments, even if they don’t endorse them.

“It’s a horrific act of violence, and I absolutely condemn it no matter the motivation,” Jenn Coffey, who has been fighting to get UHC to cover her medical bills, said of Mr Thompson’s killing. “But I’m not shocked by the reaction.”

Ms Coffey, 53, from Manchester, New Hampshire, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and later fell ill with complex regional pain syndrome, a potentially debilitating neurological condition. When a doctor suggested that she try ketamine therapy, her UHC insurance would not cover the procedure, she said. She has since become involved in a protest campaign organised by activist group People’s Action.

Ms Coffey’s illness forced her to stop working as an emergency medical technician. She said she started a crowdfunding drive and had to sell most of her belongings in order to pay for the treatment herself.

“I get to have some normality. I can sit up and paint, or I can enjoy a meal with my family” because of the treatment, she said. “I can have a life that’s worth living.”

UnitedHealth Group told the BBC they could not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.

At the same time, much of the online discussion has effectively ignored the victim, Brian Thompson, who was 50.

“It’s incredibly bleak that [Thompson’s death] hasn’t been covered as much because, bottom line, a person died, a person was murdered,” Blakely Thornton said.

“The collective rage over [the healthcare industry] is really outweighing what is still a tragedy.”

In his last post on LinkedIn, Mr Thompson talked about efforts to make healthcare more affordable – and was criticised in the comments. CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, obtained a message that UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty sent to staff this week, memorialising Mr Thompson and calling his murdered colleague “one of the good guys”.

“He was certainly one of the smartest guys. I think he was one of the best guys. I’m going to miss him. And I am incredibly proud to call him my friend,” he wrote.

In the email, the company shared messages from customers, including one who wrote about recovering from cancer, saying their treatment was paid for by the insurance company’s benefits.

“I’m thankful to UHC and everyone there who works within a broken system to help as many people as they can,” they wrote, according to the company.

Another message said: “So very sad that this world is so hateful. I have always had great experiences with UHC.”

Ms Coffey, the UHC policyholder and patient, said: “My heart goes out to the family and I can’t imagine what they’re having to struggle with that [killing]. It’s awful to me that this is the catalyst for this debate.”

“I would have much rather sat down and had a conversation with him.”

Prince Andrew has said he “ceased all contact” with a businessman accused of being a Chinese spy after receiving advice from the government.

In a statement, his office said Prince Andrew had met the man “through official channels” and there was “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”.

The alleged spy has been banned from the UK following a judgement by the UK’s semi-secret national security court.

The man, known only as H6, was described in court as a “close confidant” of Prince Andrew who had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with the duke.

In 2023, H6 brought an appeal against his initial ban but the decision has been upheld by the court.

Judges were told the businessman was attempting to leverage Prince Andrew’s influence.

The duke’s office said he was “unable to comment further on matters relating to national security”.

His statement did not specify when he ceased contact with the man nor the duration of their communications.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment, saying they do not act for the prince, who is not a working royal.

• ANALYSIS: Questions over Prince Andrew’s judgement and finances raised again

China’s embassy in the UK has denied the espionage claim saying “some individuals in the UK are always eager to fabricate baseless ‘spy’ stories targeting China”.

“Their purpose is to smear China and disrupt normal exchanges between Chinese and British personnel,” a spokesperson for the embassy said.

The former home secretary Suella Braverman banned H6 from the UK in March 2023.

He then brought his case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a court set up to consider appeals against decisions to ban or remove someone from the country on national security or related grounds.

In the published ruling, the judges upheld Braverman’s decision.

The court was told that H6 was invited to Prince Andrew’s birthday party in 2020 and was told he could act on his behalf when dealing with potential investors in China.

It is not clear how H6 became close to the prince, but in November 2021 police officers stopped and questioned him at the UK border under powers to investigate suspicions of “hostile activity” by a foreign state.

During that stop H6 surrendered a number of electronic devices including a mobile phone.

What officers found on them so concerned the security service MI5, that Braverman used her exceptional powers to ban H6 from the country.

In a letter found on one of his devices, H6 was told by Dominic Hampshire, an adviser to Prince Andrew: “Outside of [the prince’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.”

Mr Hampshire adds: “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor.”

No further details about who the “relevant people” were are given in the excerpt from the letter included in the ruling.

Mr Hampshire also confirmed to H6 that he could act for Prince Andrew in talks “with potential partners and investors in China”.

A document listing “main talking points” for a call with Prince Andrew was also found.

It states: “IMPORTANT: Manage expectations. Really important to not set ‘too high’ expectations – he is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”

The court assessed that this meant H6 was in a position “to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”.

The judges said H6 had won an “unusual degree of trust from a senior member of the Royal Family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him”.

They added that the relationship had developed at a time when the prince was “under considerable pressure” which “could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence”.

The prince faced increasing scrutiny from late 2019 over his friendship with the late US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which included his infamous Newsnight interview in November of that year.

He stepped back from royal duties in November 2019 and the prince has since been dogged by questions about his judgement and his finances.

Questions were raised about the prince’s finances after he reached a settlement – believed to run into the millions – in a civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers. The prince has always denied assaulting Ms Giuffre.

Isabel Hilton, editor at China Dialogue, told BBC News that Chinese state agents would typically look to target “members of the House of Lords or prominent business people, or people who have a voice in the community”.

She added that it was “quite ambitious” to target a royal and “quite unwise for a member of the Royal Family to allow himself to be targeted”.

Security chiefs feared Beijing was attempting to run an “elite capture” operation to influence the Duke of York because of the pressure he was under, a tactic which aims to appoint high profile individuals to Chinese businesses, think tanks or universities.

H6 was subsequently informed that he was believed by UK authorities to be associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tasked with conducting influence operations.

The ruling said MI5 director general Ken McCallum had expressed concern about the threat posed to the UK by political interference by China and that bodies such as the UFWD were “mounting patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence”.

The Home Office said they believed H6 had been engaged in covert and deceptive activity on behalf of the CCP and that his relationship with Prince Andrew could be used for political interference.

Suella Braverman has now called for H6 to lose his anonymity and she told The Daily Telegraph that “disclosing the identity of this person will have a deterrent effect”.

US President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to end daylight saving time (DST), arguing it is “inconvenient” and “very costly” to Americans.

In a post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said DST had “a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t” and that his Republican party would work to end it.

DST is the practice of moving the clock ahead by one hour in the spring and back an hour in the autumn to make better use of natural daylight.

It is observed in a third of the world’s countries, according to Pew Research Center, including most of Europe. Some in the US, however, have long advocated to end the timeworn tradition.

Those who want to stick with standard time say it benefits our health, as it is better to have more light in the morning, paving the way for improved sleep cycles on darker evenings. They say DST can be disorienting to sleep schedules.

But others want to make DST permanent instead, arguing that brighter evenings, especially for those commuting from work or school, would reduce crime, conserve energy and even save lives in terms of reduced road accidents.

Both sides say their preferred option would be better for the economy.

Trump’s plan is not the first attempt to alter the biannual practice of changing clocks seasonally in the US.

• Places around the world that opt out of daylight savings – and why

Making daylight saving time permanent was the aim of a 2022 bill that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But the Sunshine Protection Act, which was introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, never made it to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Rubio has since been picked by Trump for the role of secretary of state under his incoming administration.

The US first began changing its clocks seasonally in 1918 during World War One in an effort to conserve fuel. It was unpopular with farmers, and was repealed after the war.

But DST returned again during World War Two, and was made permanent in 1966, though states could opt out.

Hawaii and most of Arizona currently do not follow time changes under DST.

Research by Joan Costa-i-Font, a professor at the London School of Economics, found that DST has had “detrimental effects on sleep and physical health, and on feelings of fatigue, stress, time stress and mental health”.

Prof Costa-i-Font’s study found that, in monetary terms, an end to DST would lead to an increase in economic output of €754 ($792; £627) per person per year.

Countries that have ended the practice include Mexico in 2022, though DST is still maintained in regions near the US border for economic and logistical reasons. Jordan also ended the practice that year.

Others, like Turkey and Russia, have implemented a permanent DST instead in the past decade.

In a Monmouth University Poll, researchers found that about two-thirds of people in the US want make DST permanent.

An ancient relic said by some to have been placed on the head of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion has returned to Notre-Dame, five years after it was saved from a fire that devastated the cathedral in Paris.

The Crown of Thorns – comprising a circle of rushes encased in a crystal and gold tube – was brought back to the newly restored cathedral in a ceremony overseen by the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich.

The crown was acquired by King Louis IX of France in Constantinople in 1239 for 135,000 livres – nearly half France’s annual expenditure at the time.

Initially kept at the Sainte-Chapelle, it was moved to Notre-Dame’s treasury in 1806 where it remained until the fire which ripped through the 850-year-old building.

Firefighters and police officers formed a human chain to rescue the relic and other historic artefacts in the cathedral.

The fire destroyed the cathedral’s wooden interiors and its spire.

The crown, which was kept at the Louvre Museum at one point while the famed cathedral underwent extensive renovation, has been placed in a newly built reliquary to replace the one from 1806.

The ceremony marking its return was led by a procession attended by members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre – a Catholic order of knighthood.

The Crown of Thorns will be displayed for the public from 10 January, French media reports.

According to the Bible, the Crown of Thorns was used by Jesus’s captors to cause him pain and mock his claim of authority.

The cathedral reopened its doors to the public on 8 December, after extensive restoration works which cost a reported €700m (£582m) and involved an estimated 2,000 masons, carpenters, restorers, roofers, foundry-workers, art experts, sculptors and engineers.

Its reopening ceremony was attended by world leaders. In a speech at the event, French President Emmanuel Macron said of the restoration: “We must treasure this lesson of fragility, humility and will.”

Mystery continues to swirl after nearly a month of drone sightings over New Jersey, sparking fear among residents and furious debate about what the flying objects are – and if they are drones at all.

US authorities have been unable to provide definitive answers, saying only that the objects are not believed to pose a danger to the public or national security.

On Thursday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that available images suggested that many of the reported drone sightings were actually manned aircraft.

But some lawmakers have criticised the government’s handling of the drones and the lack of information available to the public.

Here’s what we know.

Dozens of drone sightings have been reported over New Jersey since 18 November, according to local authorities.

The drones were initially spotted near the Raritan river, a waterway which feeds into the Round Valley Reservoir – the largest in New Jersey, the Associated Press reported.

The sightings soon spread to other parts of the state, including New Jersey’s coast.

Some of the flights were spotted near Picatinny Arsenal – a sensitive military research facility – as well as near President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in the town of Bedminster, New Jersey.

In nearby New York City, several drones were reported flying over the Bronx on 12 December, a police official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Officers who responded to the incident saw the drones flying overhead, but they disappeared soon afterwards.

Drones have also been reported in other parts of the state, according to New York State Police.

Police in Connecticut have also confirmed that “suspicious drone activity” has taken place in various parts of the state. A drone detection system has been deployed around the towns of Groton and New London.

• FBI investigates possible drones seen over Trump golf course

In Maryland, former Republican Governor Larry Hogan claimed he saw what appeared to be “dozens” of drones over his residence in Davidsonville, about 25 miles (40km) from Washington DC.

“Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security,” he wrote on X. “But the public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government.”

In late November, the United States Air Force also confirmed that unidentified drones were spotted over three US airbases in the UK: RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk.

UK defence sources told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

In October, the Wall Street Journal also reported that mysterious drones were seen for 17 days near US military facilities in Virginia.

Both federal and state authorities have said that they do not believe the drones are dangerous or pose a threat to US national security.

Following a briefing with the Department of Homeland Security on 11 December, New Jersey assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia said the drones appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio.

Fantasia said the drones are up to 6ft (1.8m) in diameter, travel with lights turned off and “operate in a co-ordinated manner”.

Her comments stand in stark contrast to the White House, which has suggested that these are “manned aircraft”.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security also said that the majority of sightings appear to be lawful, manned flights.

None have been reported in restricted airspace, the statement added.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a statement on Friday saying more and more people are using drones, meaning more people are noticing them in the sky.

It added that while drones can be flown in most locations below 400ft (121m), drones can’t be flown within controlled airspace around an airport without FAA authorisation; over designated, national security-sensitive facilities; in certain military bases, infrastructure and national landmarks; and in airspace covered by temporary flight restrictions.

If the objects are confirmed to be drones – which at this point is unconfirmed – it is unclear who might be operating them.

Citing anonymous “high sources”, New Jersey Republican representative Jeff Van Drew said that they were coming from an Iranian “mothership” in the Atlantic.

The Pentagon swiftly dismissed the comment, saying “there is no truth to that”.

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States,” deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Another lawmaker, Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi – who is on a congressional committee that looks at China’s Communist Party – told media outlet NewsNation that there is a “non-trivial” chance that China could be involved.

“It’s definitely a possibility and the likelihood that they can then access data that is collected by these drones is very high,” he said.

The Pentagon and White House have both insisted that there is no foreign origin for the objects.

Van Drew and other lawmakers have pushed back on those denials.

“Here’s the deal: they don’t know what it is. They don’t know what it’s about,” Van Drew told Fox News. “They have no idea where it comes from, but they know what it’s not about? That’s nonsense.”

In a separate incident across the country, a northern California man was charged on 11 December with flying a drone over and taking pictures of Vandenberg Space Force Base, located near Santa Barbara.

The incident is alleged to have taken place on 30 November, according to prosecutors.

The man, 39-year-old Chinese national Yinpiao Zhou was arrested just before he boarded a flight to China. He appeared in court on Tuesday and no plea was was taken.

There has been no suggestion that the incident is related to the spate of reported drone sightings on the east coast.

Several lawmakers have suggested that the drones should be shot down and analysed to determine their origin and intentions.

Among them is President-elect Donald Trump, who took to his Truth Social media platform to suggest that drones couldn’t be flying without the government’s knowledge.

“Let the public know, and now,” he wrote. “Otherwise, shoot them down”.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has also established temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drone flights over Bedminster and Picatinny.

In a statement, the FAA also warned that drone operators who conduct unsafe or dangerous operations could face fines of up to $75,000 (£59,000) and have their drone pilot certificates revoked.

In a letter to US President Joe Biden published on 13 December, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy urged federal agencies to “work together” to solve the mystery, as well as push Congress to extend counter-drone capabilities to local law enforcement.

Some residents have suggested they may take action against the drones themselves – something authorities have strongly warned against doing, as it is illegal.

“A good shotgun will fix that problem,” a man commented on a video of a drone on social media.

The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant’s new iPhone feature generated a false headline about a high-profile murder in the United States.

Apple Intelligence, launched in the UK earlier this week, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications.

This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.

A spokesperson from the BBC said the corporation had contacted Apple “to raise this concern and fix the problem”.

Apple declined to comment.

“BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world,” the BBC spokesperson added.

“It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications.”

The notification which made a false claim about Mangione was otherwise accurate in its summaries about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and an update on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

But the BBC does not appear to be the only news publisher which has had headlines misrepresented by Apple’s new AI tech.

On 21 November, three articles on different topics from the New York Times were grouped together in one notification – with one part reading “Netanyahu arrested”, referring to the Israeli prime minister.

It was inaccurately summarising a newspaper report about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than any reporting about him being arrested.

The mistake was highlighted on Bluesky by a journalist with the US investigative journalism website ProPublica.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshot, and the New York Times declined to comment to BBC News.

Apple says one of the reasons people might like its AI-powered notification summaries is to help reduce the interruptions caused by ongoing notifications, and to allow the user to prioritise more important notices.

It is only available on certain iPhones – those using the iOS 18.1 system version or later on recent devices (all iPhone 16 phones, the 15 Pro, and the 15 Pro Max). It is also available on some iPads and Macs.

Prof Petros Iosifidis, a professor in media policy at City University in London, told BBC News the mistake by Apple “looks embarrassing”.

“I can see the pressure getting to the market first, but I am surprised that Apple put their name on such demonstrably half-baked product,” he said.

“Yes, potential advantages are there – but the technology is not there yet and there is a real danger of spreading disinformation.”

The grouped notifications are marked with a specific icon, and users can report any concerns they have on a notification summary on their devices. Apple has not outlined how many reports it has received.

Apple Intelligence does not just summarise the articles of publishers, and it has been reported the summaries of emails and text messages have occasionally not quite hit the mark.

And this is not the first time a big tech company has discovered AI summaries do not always work.

In May, in what Google described as “isolated examples”, its AI Overviews tool for internet searches told some users looking for how to make cheese stick to pizza should consider using “non-toxic glue”.

The search engine’s AI-generated responses also said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.

A former Love Island contestant says it “took her breath away” to discover that someone removing a condom during sex is classified as rape.

Stealthing, as it is known, happens when someone removes a condom during consensual sex without informing the other person.

Megan Barton-Hanson says she experienced this up to six times, with a man claiming the condom had split on each occasion, leading to her having an abortion.

“I didn’t know it was a crime,” the 30-year-old tells the BBC.

“I just thought that’s something between partners that you have to discuss with them.”

Megan added that she knew his actions were “unfair and unjust” but it was only in a recording of the We Need to Talk podcast, when host Paul C Brunson told her, that she realised the man’s actions were rape.

“I’d never heard of stealthing, ever,” she says.

“When we started to have sex, the condom was obviously on – that was fine – and then at the end, he’d removed it intentionally but his excuse was ‘it split and it broke’.

“It was shocking.”

The Metropolitan Police says stealthing is a slang word but the practice is legally considered rape, although prosecutions are rare due to under-reporting, as many do not realise it is an offence.

In October, a University College London (UCL) survey showed just over one in 10 people aged 18-25 did not consider non-consensual condom removal to be sexual assault.

Andrea Simon, executive director of End Violence Against Women and Girls, says although sex can start off consensually, if someone violates that consent by removing a condom, it is considered rape and it can be prosecuted as rape.

“It’s very hard to know the prevalence of stealthing, as not many people may understand it as actually an act of sexual violence or a crime,” she explains.

“It’s really important that men, in particular, understand that it’s criminal behaviour to intentionally remove a condom during sex without consent and we know that it speaks very much to men’s sense of entitlement over women’s bodies and it’s a violation of women’s bodily autonomy.”

The issue was explored in the fourth episode of BBC drama I May Destroy You in 2020, where the main character Arabella has sex with a man who removes the condom without her knowledge.

Arabella doesn’t realise it’s rape until she hears it discussed on a podcast.

The seriousness of this form of sexual violence is accurately reflected in the language we use to talk about it, according to Ciara Bergman, chief executive of Rape Crisis England and Wales.

“So-called stealthing is a form of rape under English and Welsh law,” she says.

“If someone has received consent for sex on the basis that they will wear a condom and they then remove the condom without the other person’s knowledge or permission, consent for sex from that point is lost.”

Megan’s advice to someone who may have concerns is clear.

She says: “I think if you’ve got any kind of suspicions, red flags, tell a friend, tell someone and then you can go together and share to the police.

“You don’t have to make it a big old deal; you can call from the comfort of your own home, but I think definitely reach out to somebody because it’s not fair and it’s not OK.”

Paula Abdul, the Grammy and Emmy award-winning singer and dancer, has settled her sexual assault lawsuit against British television producer Nigel Lythgoe.

In the legal action filed one year ago, Ms Abdul, 62, accused Mr Lythgoe of twice sexually assaulting her, the first time allegedly when they worked together on the talent show American Idol.

In a statement to the BBC, Ms Abdul said she was relieved for the legal battle to be over.

Mr Lythgoe, 75, said in a statement that he was glad “to put this behind me”. The British TV producer has previously denied the allegations, describing them as “an appalling smear”.

Ms Abdul said on Friday: “I am grateful that this chapter has successfully come to a close and is now something I can now put behind me.

“This has been a long and hard-fought personal battle.

“I hope my experience can serve to inspire other women, facing similar struggles, to overcome their own challenges with dignity and respect, so that they too can turn the page and begin a new chapter of their lives.”

Her attorney, Melissa Eubanks, did not disclose the terms of the settlement.

In his own statement, Mr Lythgoe said: “We live in a troubling time where a person is now automatically assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, a process that can take years.

“That is why, like Paula, I am glad to be able to put this behind me. I know the truth and that gives me great comfort.”

In her 16-page lawsuit, Ms Abdul claimed Mr Lythgoe had sexually assaulted her twice during their time working together.

She said the first alleged incident occurred during their tenure at long-running hit TV programme American Idol, which she starred on as a judge for the first eight seasons.

Ms Abdul alleged he forcibly kissed her in a hotel lift and grabbed her genitals.

The second alleged incident took place in 2015 when they were both on So You Think You Can Dance, she said.

This time, Mr Lythgoe assaulted her on the couch of his Los Angeles home after a work dinner, Ms Abdul claimed.

She again firmly rejected him and “immediately left Mr Lythgoe’s home”, her court filings said.

In October 2024, Abdul filed an amended complaint, alleging a third assault by Mr Lythgoe.

In his court filings rebutting her claims, Mr Lythgoe included text messages between him and Ms Abdul that his lawyers said were friendly and jovial, and therefore inconsistent with her accusation.

“It is unthinkable that Abdul would even tolerate Lythgoe’s physical proximity, let alone send him adoring messages and sexually provocative jokes, if her allegations were true,” Mr Lythgoe’s filing stated.

Ms Abdul’s legal team dismissed Mr Lythgoe’s defence as “classic victim shaming”.

Her team argued that Mr Lythgoe’s position of power as a producer over Ms Abdul played a significant role.

According to court documents, they settled the case earlier this week and filed notice with LA County Superior Court.

Their next step will be filing to dismiss the matter, which had been scheduled to go to trial next year.