The five remaining members of the infamous “Bali Nine” drug ring say they are “relieved and happy” to be home in Australia, after serving nearly 20 years in Indonesian prisons.

Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens, Si Yi Chen, and Michael Czugaj arrived in Darwin on Sunday following years of lobbying by Australia on their behalf.

“They look forward, in time, to reintegrating back into and contributing to society,” said a statement issued on behalf of the men and their families.

The high-profile case began in 2005 when Indonesia caught nine young Australians trying to smuggle 8.3kg (18lb) of heroin out of Bali strapped to their bodies.

The eight men and one woman were arrested at an airport and hotel in Bali after a tip-off from Australian police.

The case made global headlines when two of the gang’s ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed by firing squad in 2015 – sparking a diplomatic row between neighbours Indonesia and Australia.

Other members of the Bali Nine – most of whom were aged under 21 – were handed sentences of either 20 years or life in prison.

The case put a spotlight on Indonesia’s strict drug laws, some of the most stringent in the world.

One of the nine, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died of cancer in prison in 2018. Shortly afterwards, Renae Lawrence, then 41, the only woman among the group, had her sentence commuted after spending almost 13 years in prison and returned to Australia the same year.

Indonesia did not commute the sentences of the remaining five, now aged 38 to 48, and they were transported back to Australia as prisoners. However the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has reported that the men are effectively free to live unhindered in Australian society.

The five are banned for life from entering Indonesia, a spokesman for the government there said in a statement.

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had spoke to several of the men’s “grateful” parents.

“They did a serious crime and they have rightly paid a serious price for it. But it was time for them to come home,” he told reporters.

He said the deal did not come with conditions or favours Australia would have to repay: “This is an act of compassion by President Prabowo [Subianto] and we thank him for it.”

The men and their families also said they were “immensely grateful” to Prabowo.

They also thanked the lawyers, diplomats and government figures who had helped advocate for them over the past two decades, before asking for privacy.

“The welfare of the men is a priority, they will need time and support, and we hope and trust our media and community will make allowance for this.”

The five men were being put through medical checks at Darwin’s Howard Springs facility – which was used for quarantine during the pandemic – and then will begin a voluntary “rehabilitation process”, Education Minister Jason Clare said. It is not clear what that entails, or how long the men will stay there.

“When you’ve been in prison for the best part of two decades, it’s going to take some time for these men to rehabilitate and to reintegrate into Australian society,” Mr Clare told the ABC.

He added that normal visa processes would apply to any Indonesian family members of the men, who did not follow them to Australia.

Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people are feared dead in Mayotte after the French Indian Ocean territory was devastated by a powerful cyclone.

Rescue workers are still attempting to reach some communities as they search for survivors.

Entire settlements were flattened when Cyclone Chido brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph), with the poorest living in makeshift shelters particularly hard hit.

Some of Mayotte’s population of 320,000 have said they are struggling with severe shortages of food, water and shelter.

One resident of the capital city, Mamoudzou, waiting in line for supplies said: “We’ve had no water for three days now, so it’s starting to be a lot.

“We’re trying to get the bare minimum to live on, because we don’t know when the water will come back.”

Another Mamoudzou resident, John Balloz, said he was surprised he did not die when the cyclone struck.

“It was the wind, the wind blowing, and I was panicked, I screamed, ‘We need help, we need help.’ I was screaming because I could see the end coming for me,” he said.

Mohamed Ishmael, who also lives in the capital, told Reuters news agency the situation there was “a tragedy” and said: “You feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war… I saw an entire neighbourhood disappear.”

Another said they had used a nearby school for shelter, adding: “We can still take refuge with our neighbours, and we’re still sticking together and being cautious. We need everyone to hold hands.”

Mayotte’s impoverished communities, including undocumented migrants who have travelled to the French territory in an effort to claim asylum, are thought to have been particularly hard hit due to the vulnerable nature of their housing

Its population is heavily dependent on French financial aid and has long struggled with poverty, unemployment and political instability.

About 75% of the population lives below the national poverty line and unemployment hovers at around one in three.

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts are with “our compatriots in Mayotte, who have gone through the most horrific few hours and who have, for some, lost everything, lost their lives”.

While some French aid and rescue workers have reached Mayotte, efforts to get to some communities are still under way.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the island’s prefect, told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage is fully assessed. He warned it will “definitely be several hundred” and could reach the thousands.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who is scheduled to visit the island, acknowledged the “exceptional severity” of the cyclone and assured that efforts to assist the population are being ramped up.

Cyclone Chido also brought strong winds and heavy rainfall to Mozambique, making landfall early Sunday about 25 miles (40.2km) south of the northern city of Pemba, according to weather services.

The cyclone caused structural damage and power outages in the northern coastal provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado on Saturday morning, authorities reported.

Guy Taylor, a spokesperson for aid agency Unicef in Mozambique, said “we were hit very hard in the early hours of this morning”.

“Many houses were destroyed or seriously damaged, and healthcare facilities and schools are out of action,” he added.

Mr Taylor said Unicef is concerned about “loss of access to critical services”, including medical treatment, clean water and sanitation, and also “the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria”.

A man from Ghana has told the BBC how he was seized at gunpoint by jihadists in neighbouring Burkina Faso, before being taken to their vast desert camp where he gained a rare insight into their lives – from the children he believed were trained as suicide bombers, to the tunnels they had dug to shield themselves and their armoured tanks from air strikes.

In his first media interview since his 2019 ordeal, the man – whom we are calling James to protect his identity – said his first day at the camp was terrifying as a huge number of Islamist fighters returned from an operation, firing shots in the air.

“I thought that was the end. I was just sweating,” James said, adding that he also ended up wetting his pants when some fighters hit him with their guns – and laughed.

James, who is in his 30s and follows a traditional African religion, said the insurgents later attempted to recruit him, enticing him with the allure of power by saying he could one day become the commander of a battalion.

“The commander brought out a sack. It contained different weapons, AK-47, M16, and G3 [rifles]. So he asked me which of them I could operate, and I said I had never operated one before. He said: ‘We have bigger weapons, so if I give you a battalion to handle, no-one can harm you’,” James added.

He said he was lucky to be released about two weeks later after he begged for his freedom, claiming that he had a sick child at home and promising the camp commander that he would become his recruiting-sergeant in Ghana – a promise he says he never kept.

Ghana’s National Commission on Civic Education, a government body which is spearheading a public campaign to prevent young people from joining the jihadists, told the BBC that it was aware of James’ experience.

“I met him in an attempt to sensitise tertiary-level students,” said Mawuli Agbenu, the commission’s regional director in the capital, Accra.

“We will definitely have a way of engaging with him so that he will be an ambassador or an influencer within his community,” Mr Agbenu added.

Long a stable democracy, Ghana has so far been spared the violence that has seen the insurgency spread, causing havoc in Burkina Faso and its West African neighbours.

The insurgents who kidnapped James belonged to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), or The Support Group for Islam and Muslims. An affiliate of al-Qaeda, it was officially launched in 2017 as an umbrella body for various jihadist groups in the region.

In Burkina Faso, they are strongest in the north, where they control large areas, but they have also expanded to the south, along the porous 550km-long (340 mile) border with Ghana.

More than 15,000 people from Burkina Faso have fled into northern Ghana to escape the conflict, aid agencies say.

Apart from Burkina Faso, the jihadists have also gained territory in Niger and Mali, and have carried out attacks in Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo – all former French colonies – raising fears that the insurgency was spreading south towards the coast.

In April, a senior UN official said that “the epicentre of terrorism has shifted from the Middle East and North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated largely in the Sahel region [which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger]”.

Jihadists linked to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group operate in the region.

A Ghanaian security officer stationed along the border with Burkina Faso told the BBC that the jihadists often crossed over to regroup when under pressure from Burkina Faso’s military – and they also used the country to smuggle weapons, food and fuel.

“It’s not safe for Ghana. They hide in towns like Pusiga. Residents of border communities are worried because there’s no tight security,” he added.

In a report released in July, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations think-tank said the “absence of real attacks on Ghanaian soil seems to result from JNIM’s calculus of not disturbing supply lines and places of rest as well as not provoking a relatively strong army”.

“Examples of people who are spared by JNIM by showing their Ghanaian identity cards fits this reading,” it added.

Most Ghanaians are Christians, but the population near the border with Burkina Faso is mainly Muslim – and parts of the region have also been riven with ethnic tensions, raising fears that the jihadists could exploit them to their advantage.

The think-tank said that JNIM had attempted in a “very small number” of instances to recruit or incite Ghana’s small, largely Muslim Fulani community to carry out attacks.

JNIM claimed that they were marginalised, but its recruitment efforts had “minimal success” as the Fulani were “aware of the chaos that has enveloped the Sahel due to familial networks” and did not want it to occur in Ghana, the think-tank added.

A Fulani Muslim preacher in Burkina Faso, Amadou Koufa, is the co-founder of JNIM and is its second-in-command. He recruits most of his fighters from the Fulani community in Burkina Faso.

The military has been accused by rights groups of retaliating by stigmatising Fulanis, and carrying out indiscriminate attacks on their villages in Burkina Faso.

In 2022, a France-based NGO, Promediation, said its research showed that the jihadists had recruited between 200 and 300 young Ghanaians.

Although some were operating in insurgency-hit countries like Burkina Faso, others had been sent back to their villages in northern Ghana to preach their “radical faith”, it added.

This could eventually lead to the jihadists gaining “a sustainable foothold in remote and peripheral areas in the north”, the NGO said.

Since 2022, Ghana has been at the forefront of efforts to create a new Western-backed, 10,000-strong regional force to combat the Islamist insurgency.

Tamale – the biggest city in northern Ghana – is supposed to be the force’s headquarters.

However, the headquarters has not yet opened, and the fate of the initiative is unclear after the region split between pro-Western and pro-Russian states.

Burkina Faso – along with Mali and Niger – have pivoted towards Russia. The three countries have formed their own alliance to fight the insurgents, and have also relied on help from Russian mercenaries.

Ghana and other regional states have remained allied with the West.

Ghana’s military has established bases in the north, but newly installed border surveillance equipment was not yet working, the security officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the BBC.

However, more troops have been sent since JNIM carried out two attacks, late last month and earlier this month, on the Burkina Faso side of the border, the officer added.

Ghana’s government did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

However, its ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila Adagbila, told the BBC the two countries were helping each other to fight the insurgents, warning that if Burkina Faso fails “Ghana may likely to be the next place”.

Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) party – which will form the next government after winning elections on 7 December – promised in its campaign manifesto to “enhance” border security with “international partners”, as well as improve the country’s intelligence capabilities.

In August 2023, the European Union announced that as part of a 20m euro ($21.6m; £16.6m) aid package it would supply Ghana with about 100 armoured vehicles, as well as surveillance equipment such as drones.

Many civilians and refugees cross the Ghana-Burkina Faso border through footpaths and back roads to work, trade or visit relatives despite the security risk – and James said he was one of them. He was travelling all the way to Senegal on his motorbike when he was taken captive.

After riding for nearly a day, he said he encountered the insurgents in north-western Burkina Faso, as he was nearing the border with Mali.

A handful of jihadists, also on motorbikes, stopped him and took him to their camp where he was interrogated until their commander was convinced that he was not a spy, James said.

He added that his blindfold – the trademark black jihadist flag – was then removed.

James said he found about 500 insurgents – mostly young men, including one who identified himself as a doctor – living in the camp.

Located in desert-like terrain, it was made up of thatch-roofed huts, with small electricity-generating solar panels, he said.

He added that the camp was divided into three sections – for commanders and their families, lower-ranking jihadists and captured villagers and soldiers.

James said he was detained in the latter section, but got “closer” to the jihadists in the second week as he increasingly acted as though he had become a sympathiser of their cause.

They sat around in groups of five or 10, and listened to the songs of Salif Keïta, the Malian musician known as the Golden Voice of Africa, James said.

Other jihadist groups have banned music, saying it is un-Islamic.

James said that while the atmosphere at the camp was generally relaxed, groups of jihadists regularly went to fight, firing celebratory shots when they returned, claiming to have achieved battlefield success.

James said he realised that this was the gunfire he had heard on the first day, and got used to it.

He added that the insurgents parked their tanks and pick-up trucks in two inter-connected tunnels to ensure they were not destroyed if there was an air strike, while only a few vehicles remained outside “on stand-by, for an emergency”.

He said the jihadists also revealed their darkest sides – telling him they captured women during raids on villages and sold them to each other.

“They trade the women they’ve captured. Others sell wives that they are fed up with. Those who resist are gang-raped into submission by two or three fighters,” James added, though he did not see them do this.

James said the women at the camp included the wives of jihadists who performed domestic chores like cooking and cleaning, while those who were captured were either sex-slaves or were forced to become fighters.

He explained that he saw fully veiled women, with AK-47 rifles hidden under their clothes, leave the camp to raid villages for livestock to feed people at the camp – or to sell at markets in nearby towns.

James said he also saw dozens of children, including those of jihadists, being trained in the use of weapons and explosives.

“You’ll see a small kid holding a gun and telling you that if he goes to meet some people, this is how he is going to kill them,” James added.

He said he twice saw four children being taken to another location, before returning to the camp with suicide vests.

They wore long, loose outfits over them, and left the camp with begging bowls, James said.

Jihadists told him that when they anticipate a tough battle in a town or military camp, they send children disguised as beggars who then blow themselves up, so the fighters can enter amid the chaos, James said.

He added that three jihadists had told him that they “sacrifice their children as suicide bombers and they get paid after every mission”, though they did not disclose the amount.

He said the jihadists tried to indoctrinate him, preaching that “anything Western is evil” and showing him propaganda videos every night, including one of the US invasion of Iraq and the killing of Palestinians in the current conflict with Israel.

According to James, as the insurgency was being waged in French-speaking countries, all the jihadists were Francophone, but one spoke English with a Ghanaian accent, and always kept his face covered so that he could not see him.

In a sign that the jihadists were also influenced by pan-Africanism, James said some of them invoked the names of revolutionaries like Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and told him that people should “rise up” against “bad leaders” and free themselves from “bondage”.

James said the jihadists also expressed the view that if Sankara and Nkrumah had “lived long”, then “the whole of Africa would have been a better place – nobody would have travelled from Africa to the West. People would have been travelling from the West to Africa”.

James, unemployed at the time, said their rhetoric was powerful, and only “strength of heart” prevented him from joining their ranks.

On how exactly he was captured, James said that two Muslim friends were travelling with him at the time, promising to introduce him to a Muslim spiritual leader in Senegal who could pray for him and improve his fortunes.

All three of them were intercepted by the jihadists as they were coming to the end of the first leg of their trip, he said.

James added one of his friends was shot dead as he attempted to flee, while his other friend was taken with him to the camp.

James said the commander did not release his friend, making him fear that he had been forced to join the jihadists – or was dead.

“The commander told me that: ‘I will let you go if you assure me you will get me more fighters’,” James said.

He added that before driving him to a bus rank and giving him the fare for the trip back home, the insurgents gave him a contact number to keep in touch, but, James said, he never did and changed his number.

According to James, the jihadists also gave him charms, which supposedly had supernatural powers.

Again, many other jihadists reject the use of amulets, believing them to be contrary to the teachings of Islam.

James showed the BBC the amulets, which were made of fowl feathers, animal skins and herbs, covered in leather and cloth.

They included one which the jihadists falsely told him offered protection from bullets.

James said he never got the impression that the insurgents wanted to destabilise Ghana, seeing it as the “safest place” to hide when under pressure from Burkina Faso’s military.

Their focus was on waging an insurgency in countries where France and the US “exists”, believing that these two countries exploit Africa’s resources, to the detriment of its people, James said. This is denied by both countries.

Ghana-based security analyst Adib Saani expressed concern about the growing insurgency in West Africa, and said he did not see a military solution to it.

“We need to go beyond the militarised posture. We must address the socio-economic and geopolitical deficits that are creating the environment for terrorism to strive,” he told the BBC.

Ghana’s National Commission for Civic Education has been carrying out a public awareness campaign dubbed “see something, say something” to encourage residents in the north to report suspicious activity.

The campaign has also been extended to Accra, to educate young people about the dangers of jihadism.

The commission’s Mr Agbanu told the BBC that the campaign was vital as Ghanaians were vulnerable to recruitment.

“There’s a high rate of corruption, unequal development across the country, and huge youth unemployment,” he said.

James, who is now a subsistence farmer, said that he was just relieved to be alive as the jihadist commander had told him that he was making an exception by releasing him because normally it was “either your dead body that will go home or nobody will ever hear of you again”.

• More jobs and no ‘nuisance taxes’ – Ghanaians’ great expectations
• The anaesthetist forced to go to the front lines in Burkina Faso
• Why Russia’s Africa propaganda warrior was sent home
• ‘France takes us for idiots’ – Inside coup-hit Niger
• Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers

Israel’s government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.

Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.

Israeli forces moved into a buffer zone separating the Golan Heights from Syria in the days following Assad’s departure, saying the change of control in Damascus meant ceasefire arrangements had “collapsed”.

• ‘We just need peace’: BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion

Despite the move, Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday evening that Israel has “no interest in a conflict with Syria”.

“We will determine Israeli policy regarding Syria according to the reality on the ground,” he said.

There are more than 30 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, which are home to an estimated 20,000 people. They are considered illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.

The settlers live alongside some 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze Arabs who did not flee when the area came under Israeli control.

Netanyahu said Israel would “continue to hold on to [the territory], make it flourish and settle it”.

However, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said he did not “see any reason” for the country to expand into Golan Heights.

“The prime minster [Netanyahu] said we are not interested in expanding the confrontation with Syria and we hope we will not need to fight against the new rebels that are presently taking over Syria. So why do we do precisely the opposite?” he told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

He added: “We have enough problems to deals with.”

Netanyahu’s announcement comes a day after Syria’s new de-facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa criticised Israel for its ongoing strikes on military targets in the country, which have reportedly targeted military facilities.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented more than 450 Israeli air strikes in Syria since 8 December, including 75 since Saturday evening.

Al-Sharaa – also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – said the strikes “crossed red lines” and risked escalating tensions in the region, though he said Syria was not seeking a conflict with any neighbouring state.

Speaking to Syria TV, which was seen as pro-opposition during the civil war, al-Sharaa said the country’s “war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations”, Reuters reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented on his remarks, but previously said the strikes were necessary to stop weapons falling “into the hands of extremists”.

President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia and took up asylum when al-Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led other rebel factions in a lightning offensive on Damascus.

The groups are continuing to form a transitional government in Syria, of which al-Sharaa is the theoretical head.

On Saturday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had made direct contact with HTS, which the US and other Western governments still designates as a terrorist organisation.

• From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself

United Nations’ Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to sanctions on the country to help facilitate an economic recovery.

“We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria,” Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria’s caretaker government and other officials.

Elsewhere, Turkey’s Defence Minister Yasar Guler said Ankara was ready to provide military support to Syria’s new government.

“It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance,” Guler said of HTS, according to state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.

Seven foreigners in Fiji have been sent to hospital with suspected alcohol poisoning after reportedly drinking cocktails at a five-star resort’s bar.

Four are Australian tourists, aged between 18 and 56. One is American and two are foreigners living in Fiji, according to local media reports citing the health ministry.

Some were previously reported to be seriously ill, but local officials say their symptoms have since improved and all are now in stable condition.

The incident comes weeks after the deaths of six tourists in the South East Asian nation of Laos because of suspected methanol poisoning.

Fiji tourism chief Brent Hill told RNZ they were keenly aware of the Laos incident, but added that the case in Fiji was “a long way from that”.

It is believed the seven people drank cocktails at the Warwick Fiji resort bar on the Coral Coast on Saturday night local time. Shortly afterwards, they displayed nausea, vomiting and neurological symptoms.

They were initially taken to Sigatoka Hospital, and later transferred to Lautoka Hospital, according to the Fiji Times.

A 56-year-old Australian woman was under constant surveillance in hospital and a 19-year-old woman, also from Australia, had suffered “serious medical episodes”, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Two other Australian women, aged 49 and 18, were in a critical but less serious condition, the ABC reported.

At least one local is also believed to have been hospitalised over the same incident, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.

The Warwick Fiji hotel said in a statement to the BBC that they are taking the matter “very seriously” and are “conducting a thorough investigation” while awaiting a “test result report” from the health authorities to “gather all necessary information”.

Fiji police are said to be investigating the circumstances of the incident.

Two Australian families in Fiji are receiving consular assistance, an Australian foreign ministry spokesperson told the BBC.

A New Zealand foreign affairs ministry spokesperson told the BBC it had “not received any requests for assistance” after the apparent alcohol poisoning incident.

The BBC also understands that no British persons were affected in the incident.

“There’s a real terrifying sense of deja vu,” Australian minister Jason Clare told the ABC. Two 19-year-old Australian girls had died from suspected methanol poisoning in the Laos incident.

Tourists have been advised to “be alert to the potential risks around drink spiking and methanol poisoning through consuming alcoholic drinks in Fiji” by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The guidance said tourists should “get urgent medical help if you suspect drink spiking”.

Zakir Hussain, one of the world’s greatest tabla players, has died at the age of 73.

The Indian classical music icon died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease, at a hospital in San Francisco, his family said in a statement.

Hussain was a four-time Grammy award winner and has received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award.

The son of tabla maestro Ustad Alla Rakha Khan, Hussain was a child prodigy who performed his first concert at the age of seven.

Tributes have started pouring in from across the world.

Last year, India nudged past China to become the world’s most populous country, according to UN estimates.

With nearly 1.45 billion people now, you’d think the country would be quiet about having more children. But guess what? The chatter has suddenly picked up.

Leaders of two southern states – Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – have recently advocated more children.

Andhra Pradesh is mulling providing incentives, citing low fertility rates and ageing population. The state also scrapped its “two-child policy” for local body elections, and reports say neighbouring Telangana may soon do the same. Next-door Tamil Nadu is also making similar, more exaggerated, noises.

India’s fertility rate has fallen substantially – from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to the current rate of two.

Fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level of two births per woman in 17 of the 29 states and territories. (A replacement level is one at which new births are sufficient to maintain a stable population.)

The five southern Indian states lead India’s demographic transition, achieving replacement-level fertility well ahead of others. Kerala reached the milestone in 1988, Tamil Nadu in 1993, and the rest by the mid-2000s.

Today, the five southern states have total fertility rates below 1.6, with Karnataka at 1.6 and Tamil Nadu at 1.4. In other words, fertility rates in these states match or are less than many European countries.

But these states fear that India’s shifting demographics with varying population shares between states, will significantly impact electoral representation and state wise-allocation of parliamentary seats and federal revenues.

“They fear being penalised for their effective population control policies, despite being better economic performers and contributing significantly to federal revenues,” Srinivas Goli, a professor of demography at the International Institute for Population Sciences, told the BBC.

Southern states are also grappling with another major concern as India prepares for its first delimitation of electoral seats in 2026 – the first since 1976.

This exercise will redraw electoral boundaries to reflect population shifts, likely reducing parliamentary seats for the economically prosperous southern states. As federal revenues are allocated based on state populations, many fear this could deepen their financial struggles and limit policy-making freedom.

Demographers KS James and Shubhra Kriti project that populous northern states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar stand to gain more seats from delimitation, while southern states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh could face losses, further shifting political representation.

Many, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have hinted that changes to fiscal shares and parliamentary seat allocations will not be rushed through.

“As a demographer, I don’t think states should be overly concerned about these issues. They can be resolved through constructive negotiations between federal and state governments,” says Mr Goli. “My concern lies elsewhere.”

The key challenge, according to demographers, is India’s rapid ageing driven by declining fertility rates. While countries like France and Sweden took 120 and 80 years respectively to double their aging population from 7% to 14%, India is expected to reach this milestone in just 28 years, says Mr Goli.

This accelerated ageing is tied to India’s unique success in fertility decline. In most countries, improved living standards, education, and urbanisation naturally lower fertility as child survival improves.

But in India, fertility rates fell rapidly despite modest socio-economic progress, thanks to aggressive family welfare programmes that promoted small families through targets, incentives, and disincentives.

The unintended consequence? Take Andhra Pradesh, for instance. Its fertility rate is 1.5, on par with Sweden, but its per capita income is 28 times lower, says Mr Goli. With mounting debt and limited resources, can states like these support higher pensions or social security for a rapidly aging population?

Consider this. More than 40% of elderly Indians (60+ years) belong to the poorest wealth quintile – the bottom 20% of a population in terms of wealth distribution, according to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s latest India Ageing Report.

In other words, Mr Goli says, “India is getting old before getting rich”.

Fewer children also mean a rising old-age dependency ratio, leaving fewer caregivers for an expanding elderly demographic. Demographers warn that India’s healthcare, community centres and old-age homes are unprepared for this shift.

Urbanisation, migration, and changing labour markets are further eroding traditional family support – India’s strong point – leaving more elderly people behind.

While migration from populous to less populous states can ease the working-age gap, it also sparks anti-migration anxieties. “Robust investments in prevention, palliative care, and social infrastructure are urgently needed to look after the ageing,” says Mr Goli.

As if the southern states’ concerns weren’t enough, earlier this month, the chief of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers’ Organisation), the ideological backbone of Mr Modi’s BJP – urged couples to have at least three children to secure India’s future. “According to population science, when growth falls below 2.1, a society perishes on its own. Nobody destroys it,” Mohan Bhagwat reportedly said at a recent meeting.

While Mr Bhagwat’s concerns may have some basis, they are not entirely accurate, say demographers. Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics, told the BBC that after a decade or two, continuing “very low levels of fertility will lead to rapid population decline”.

A fertility rate of 1.8 births per woman leads to a slow, manageable population decline. But a rate of 1.6 or lower could trigger “rapid, unmanageable population decline”.

“Smaller numbers of people will enter the reproductive – and main working – ages, and this will be socially, politically and economically disastrous. This is a demographic process and it is extremely difficult to reverse,” says Mr Dyson.

This is already happening in some countries.

In May, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared the country’s record-low birth rate a “national emergency” and announced plans for a dedicated government ministry. Greece’s fertility rate has plummeted to 1.3, half of what it was in 1950, sparking warnings from Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis about an “existential” population threat.

But demographers say that urging people to have more children is futile. “Considering the societal shifts, including the significant reduction in gender disparities as women’s lives have become increasingly similar to those of men, this trend is unlikely to reverse,” says Mr Dyson.

For Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, grappling with a declining workforce, the key question is: who will step in to fill the gap? Developed countries, unable to reverse declining fertility, are focusing on healthy and active ageing – prolonging working life by five to seven years and enhancing productivity in older populations.

Demographers say India will need to extend retirement ages meaningfully, and policies must prioritise increasing healthy years through better health screenings, and stronger social security to ensure an active and productive older population – a potential “silver dividend”.

India must also leverage its demographic dividend better – economic growth that occurs when a country has a large, working-age population. Mr Goli believes there’s a window of opportunity until 2047 to boost the economy, create jobs for the working-age population, and allocate resources for the ageing. “We’re only reaping 15-20% of the dividend – we can do much better,” he says.

Bitcoin has surged to a new record high, extending a rally that has seen the cryptocurrency’s price rise by more than 50% since Donald Trump’s victory in the 5 November election.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly passed $106,000 (£83,890), before falling back to around $104,500 in Asia trade on Monday morning.

The incoming Trump administration is seen as being far more friendly towards cryptocurrencies than the Biden White House.

On Thursday, the US president-elect reiterated that he is considering creating a national stockpile of the digital currency, similar to the country’s strategic oil reserve.

Earlier this month, Trump named Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Sacks as his artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency tsar.

Mr Sacks is former PayPal executive and a close friend of Trump adviser and mega-donor Elon Musk.

Trump has also said he would nominate pro-cryptocurrency Washington attorney Paul Atkins as the new head of the Wall Street regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Last month, the SEC’s current head, Gary Gensler, said he would resign from the role on the day of Trump’s inauguration, on 20 January next year.

“I thank President Biden for entrusting me with this incredible responsibility. The SEC has met our mission and enforced the law without fear or favor,” Mr Gensler wrote on the social media platform X.

Trump had previously revealed plans to sack Mr Gensler on “day one” of his new administration after the SEC chairman took legal action against cryptocurrency firms, sparking controversy in some quarters.

An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road into the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet Israel’s army.

Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear man an impromptu checkpoint – a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved us through.

It was evidence of Israel’s incursion into Syrian territory – the temporary seizure, it said, of a UN-monitored buffer zone, set up in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.

“Maybe they’ll leave, maybe they’ll stay, maybe they’ll make the area safe then go away,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

The village chief, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the Golan Heights territory Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from Hadar’s terraces.

Many residents here have relatives still living there.

Now, they see Israeli forces routinely moving around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the hillside.

A week after President Assad’s regime fell, the sense of freedom here comes tinged with fatalism.

Jawdat al-Tawil told me proudly how the village had defended itself against militia groups during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of the dozens of men who had died doing so.

“We don’t allow anyone to transgress on our land,” he said. “[But] Israel is a state – we can’t stand against it. We used to stand up to individuals, but Israel is a super-power.”

Since the fall of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel has also carried out hundreds of airstrikes on military targets across Syria.

And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced new plans to double the population of Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, saying the move was needed because of “the new front” that had opened up in Syria.

Speaking before that plan was unveiled, Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa warned Israel’s military manoeuvres risked unwarranted escalation in the region and said his administration did not want conflict with Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said its actions were necessary because of threats posed by jihadist groups operating along the ceasefire line with Syria, describing its military incursions there as “limited and temporary”.

The residents of Hadar belong mainly to the Druze community – a tight-knit, introverted group which splintered from mainstream Shia Islam centuries ago.

When Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, and later unilaterally annexed it, some of the Druze there opted to remain and take Israeli citizenship.

Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that forced President Assad from power this month, has his family roots in the occupied Golan Heights.

Some here on the Syrian-controlled side fear Israel’s plan is to grab more territory for itself.

For years, Israel has been battling the Iran-backed militia there that supported Assad. This border region is a key weapons-supply route between Tehran and the proxy forces it maintains, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

Assad’s fall has left those groups – and Iran – weaker. But Israel has since stepped up its military campaign, taking advantage of the political vacuum to extend its reach.

It has also been targeting military equipment left by Assad’s forces at bases across the country, worried about who might end up using it in the future.

Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that the “immediate risks” to Israel remained, and the recent developments in Syria had increased the threat, “despite the moderate appearance that rebel leaders claim to present”.

Marginalised by the Assad regime, and targeted as infidels by Sunni jihadist groups like HTS, Syria’s Druze are more tolerant of Israel than many other communities here.

The village used to fight against the Iran-backed groups Israel sees as a threat here, but Jawdat al-Tawil told me that alliances in the area were shifting, and that he was now talking to these groups about reaching a deal.

Syria is not a place where people have relied on only one ally, or fight only one enemy.

“We just need peace,” resident Riyad Zaidan told me. “We’ve had enough war, enough blood, enough hard life – we need to stop.”

Religious minorities like the Druze suffered under Assad. The country’s new leaders from HTS have promised tolerance and respect for Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups.

But eight years ago the group was still aligned with global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda.

It was around the time HTS split from al-Qaeda in 2016 that Jawdat al-Tawil’s son, Abdo, was killed by their militiamen on the outskirts of Hadar, while fighting for the Syrian Army.

He showed me the path where 30-year-old Abdo died and I asked how he felt about HTS taking control of Syria now.

“At first, they were gangs. Now they have got rid of the tyrant [Assad], and have come to power,” he said. “They’re supposed to rule with justice, provide safety and ensure people’s rights.”

“It’s not clear yet if they’ve changed,” he said. “I hope so.”

Sipping a glass of local wine is likely not what springs to mind when visiting Scandinavia, but this colder, northerly region is emerging as a new wine frontier.

Hundreds of commercial vineyards are now dotted across Denmark, Sweden, and even Norway, as a first generation of professional winemakers transform what was once a niche hobby into a small but flourishing industry.

Far north of France’s Bordeaux or California’s Napa Valley, more than 10,000 vines grow on a hillside on Zealand, Denmark’s biggest island.

“People have found out that it is actually possible to grow wine in Denmark, so newcomers are coming, year after year,” says Nina Fink, as she shows the BBC her three-hectare (seven-acre) winery, Vejrhøj Vingård.

Nina and her husband Niels started their operation 13 years ago, after retiring from business jobs in Copenhagen. They grow predominantly green grapes, producing floral white wines, as well as sparkling and rosé.

“We have longer summer days with more sunlight than you have in France or in Italy, so the conditions are different,” she explains.

For most Scandinavian vineyards, solaris is the grape of choice – an aromatic, hybrid variety that’s well-adapted to colder climes, ripens easily, and is more disease resistant, allowing vineyards to avoid spraying pesticides.

The grape was first bred in Germany in 1975, but only adopted in Scandinavia from 2004, after which winemaking took off.

Niels Fink says that people are positively surprised when they taste the wines from Vejrhøj Vingård. “There’s a little twinkle in their eye, then comes this half smile,” he chuckles. “People like it.”

The Finks sell their bottles direct from the winery, but they also supply some of Copenhagen’s top restaurants, including the three Michelin star Geranium.

Initially they made just 4,000 bottles annually, but now they sell 20,000. “We are limited by the supply we are able to offer,” says Mr Fink.

Commercial vineyards in Denmark and Sweden have only been allowed under European Union rules since 2000. Winemaking picked up around 2010, seeing a shift from amateur growers to more ambitious production.

Curiosity, and the fact “it’s possible”, has attracted wine entrepreneurs, explains Jean Becker, from the Danish Wine Association.

“I was one of the ones that started in the year 2000. We were six growers,” says Mr Becker, standing in his vineyard 25km (15 miles) north of Copenhagen.

There are now 150 commercial wineries in Denmark with a combined 125 hectares of vines, plus more than 1,000 hobby growers.

Meanwhile, Sweden has 47 commercial operators spanning 193 hectares, according to the Swedish Wine Association, and the biggest has 125,000 vines.

“I began with 500 vines,” said Jean Becker, “Today, new winegrowers are starting with 15,000-25,000. They start bigger in scale. Is there a market for it? The answer is yes.”

But it’s an industry still in its infancy, compared to the 800,000 hectares cultivated in France, and almost a million hectares in Spain.

In southern Zealand, Jesper Rye Jensen, who runs Vesterhave Vingaard, produces red wines from varieties like pinot noir and merlot, usually associated with France.

“It is very challenging because it’s new for us,” he says. “We have to learn it. It’s not like southern Europe, where they had generation after generation.”

Data shows that both Denmark and Sweden have seen average temperatures rise almost two degrees celsius over the past 40-50 years, resulting in milder winters and a longer fruit-growing season. But there remains a risk of frost damage.

Jesper Rye Jensen says that as a northerly wine producer climate change works in his favour. “We wine growers in Denmark are happy that we are getting a little bit better weather.”

But Niels Fink reckons that the warming climate is a double-edged sword. “Climate change is accompanied by all kinds of evils, such as more extreme weather phenomena, long drought, heavy rain. That is as threatening here as it is elsewhere.”

However, Prof Torben Bo Toldam-Andersen, a fruit science researcher from the University of Copenhagen, says that rather than a longer growing season, it is the emergence of new, hardier grapes that largely kick-started the rise of Scandinavian wineries. “Climate change makes it easier for sure, but the main driver is the new cultivars.”

He is leading a programme called “FastGrapes”, which tests varieties of vines, to find the most robust and best suited to northern Europe.

They are selected according to how quickly their grapes ripen, and their resilience to pests, disease, and other environmental stresses. New seedlings can then be grown on a higher scale.

“There are so many things that go into the perfect wine,” says the researcher. “Part of that search happens in the lab… you can see the genes that make it strong.”

The first chosen vines are now growing in 15 test locations, across Scandinavia, Lithuania, northern Germany and Belgium.

But even with the best possible grape varieties and warmer weather, Scandinavian wineries face numerous challenges, such as high labour costs and strict rules on the use of chemical treatments to tackle any disease in the vineyards.

Romain Chichery says it can also be difficult for wineries to find workers. Born and raised in France, he moved to Sweden shortly after completing his studies in winemaking and viticulture.

Now 27, the winemaker works at Thora Vineyard on the country’s southwestern Bjäre peninsula. “We need to train workers, or we have to bring them from outside [the country],” he says.

But ”starting from scratch” in Sweden, he adds that he enjoys the freedom to experiment. “It’s not just copy paste, which has been done for decades, or centuries, in the older viticulture world.”

Thora’s owner, American expat Heather Öberg says all the effort and expense is worth it. “We can compete with other European wines,” she says.

Yet, home-grown Scandinavian wine currently makes up just a fraction of the consumer market, and bottles are expensive. Danish wine in Denmark costs from 200 kroner ($27; £22) a bottle upwards, more than twice the price of the cheapest French and Spain imports. Only a negligible amount is exported.

“We will never get in competition with France, Italy and Spain because they have very low prices,” says Mr Becker.

At his central Copenhagen wine shop, Vino Fino, owner Nicolai Christiansen mostly sells French wine. Yet he says he has recently sold a case of Danish wine to a bar owner in France.

“If you can sell it to a French guy, you can probably sell it to everybody,” he jokes.

However, he is still to be convinced about Danish wine. “The Danish wine is still too expensive,” he says. “It’s coming up. but I still think there’s some way to go before the quality is there.”

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the British government has had “diplomatic contact” with the Syrian rebel group that toppled the Assad regime.

Lammy said Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) remains a proscribed terrorist organisation, but the UK “can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect”.

His US counterpart Antony Blinken said on Saturday that the US had made “direct contact” with the HTS rebels now in control of Syria.

Lammy’s remarks come as the government announced a £50m humanitarian aid package for vulnerable Syrians, including refugees in the region.

Speaking on Sunday, Lammy said: “We want to see a representative government, an inclusive government. We want to see chemical weapons stockpiles secured, and not used, and we want to ensure that there is not continuing violence.

“For all of those reasons, using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and of course intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to.”

The diplomatic contact with HTS does not mean the foreign secretary has personally been in touch with the rebel group.

Whitehall sources say the contact referred to is permitted under the terms of existing terrorism legislation, under which, for example, NGOs would be able to have contact in order to provide humanitarian assistance.

Such contact does not mean that the UK’s listing of HTS as a terrorist group is being lifted. But it does indicate that the UK government has embarked on a process of judging HTS on the basis of its actions.

Both the UK and the US have a vested interest in what happens next in Syria. Blinken told reporters on Saturday that the US interaction with HTS was in particular over the fate of the missing American journalist, Austin Tice.

The US State Department said Blinken and Lammy spoke on Sunday, as the secretary of state told the foreign secretary Washington will back “an accountable and representative” government in Syria, “chosen by the Syrian people”.

Asked whether HTS could be removed from the UK’s list of proscribed terror groups, Lammy said the rebel group remains a proscribed organisation that came out of al-Qaeda.

“Al-Qaeda is responsible for a tremendous loss of life on British soil,” Lammy said, adding: “We will judge them [HTS] on their actions, I won’t comment on future proscription but of course we recognise that this is an important moment for Syria.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said no decision had been made yet on HTS’s proscription status.

On the cash pledge to the Middle Eastern country, Lammy said it followed talks on Saturday in Aqaba.

Hosted by Jordan, delegates from several countries agreed on the importance of a “non-sectarian and representative government”, protecting human rights, unfettered access for humanitarian aid, the safe destruction of chemical weapons and combatting terrorism.

The talks were attended by the UK, US, France, Germany, the Arab Contact Group, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the EU and UN.

HTS was not present at the meeting in Jordan.

However, everybody in Aqaba felt it was important to engage with HTS, and that engagement should be on the basis of humanitarian access and the principles outlined above.

The UK said £30m will be channelled within Syria for food, shelter and emergency healthcare, while £10m will go to the World Food Programme (WFP) in Lebanon and £10m to WFP and the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, in Jordan.

As well as the £50m in aid for Syrians in the region, the UK government said £120,000 of UK funding will be given to support the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) “to rid Syria of chemical weapons” and support the interim Syrian government.

The UK closed its embassy in Damascus in 2013, two years after the Arab Spring protests began to be brutally suppressed there by the Assad regime.

Between 2011 and 2021, more than 30,000 Syrians were granted asylum in the UK, but on Monday the Home Office said it was no longer possible to assess outstanding cases given the change in circumstances.

Last week, the HTS rebel group toppled Assad’s rule alongside allied rebel factions.

The Home Office later paused its decisions on Syrian asylum claims to the UK as the government has not determined whether Syria, under the new rebel-led authorities, is a safe country which people could be sent to.

The Assad family ruled Syria for more than 50 years. In 2011, Bashar al-Assad crushed a peaceful, pro-democracy uprising, sparking a civil war in which more than half a million people were killed and 12 million others forced to flee their homes.

More reports are now emerging of the cruelty of Assad’s regime and the suffering it inflicted on the lives of so many Syrians.

However, given the Islamist militant group’s previous affiliations with al-Qaeda, religious minorities in Syria and neighbouring countries worry about their future under HTS’s rule.

Two Russian oil tankers have been badly damaged in the Black Sea, causing an oil spill, authorities in Russia have said.

Footage released by Russia’s Southern Transport Prosecutor’s Office showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off, with streaks of oil visible in the water.

Both tankers are believed to have drifted before running aground offshore. At least one crew member was reportedly killed.

The incident took place in the Kerch Strait, which separates Russia from Crimea – the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

A rescue operation involving tugboats, helicopters and more than 50 personnel saw 13 crew members rescued from one tanker, before being suspended due to bad weather.

The 14 remaining crew members aboard the second tanker are said to have “everything necessary for immediate life support” on board with them, but look set to be stranded until conditions improve.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered a working group to be set up to deal with the incident, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev – and authorities are investigating for criminal negligence.

Michelle Bockmann, an analyst at shipping industry journal Lloyd’s List, told the BBC the two vessels are owned by the company Volgatanker and were relatively small.

They had been carrying around 4,300 dead weight tonnes of oil each, according to Russian officials quoted by Tass news agency.

A tanker used for trading Russian crude oil internationally generally has a much larger carrying capacity of around 120,000 dead weight tonnes, Bockmann said, meaning it is likely these tankers were used for transporting oil through Russia’s rivers or in coastal waters.

The Kerch Strait is a key route for exports of Russian grain and it is also used for exports of crude oil, fuel oil and liquefied natural gas.

In 2007, another oil tanker – Volgoneft-139 – split in half during a storm while anchored off the Kerch Strait, spilling more than 1,000 tonnes of oil.

Russian oil imports have been heavily sanctioned by allies of Ukraine since the Kremlin ordered the full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

In recent years, Russia has been accused of using a so-called ghost fleet of tankers, which are often poorly maintained and lack proper insurance, to move oil and circumvent sanctions – though Bockmann said it did not appear the tankers involved in Sunday’s incident were part of that fleet.

Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan is known for some of India’s most popular films, including Lagaan and 3 Idiots.

So great is his appeal, he can barely walk down the street without getting mobbed by fans.

What’s less well known is that he secretly quit films during the Covid pandemic in order to spend more time with his loved ones.

“I told my family I’m done with acting and films,” he tells BBC News.

“I [didn’t] want to produce or direct or act. I just wanted to be with the family.”

You’d imagine a major star like Khan deciding to quit the industry would have sent shockwaves through India, a nation that is fully obsessed with films.

But, he explains, his decision went unnoticed at the time because so few movies were being made due to the pandemic.

“No-one knew about it,” he says.

Fans can breathe a sigh of relief, though.

Khan didn’t quit for long. And now he’s back and is promoting Laapataa Ladies – or Lost Ladies – a film he’s produced. It is India’s official pick for the Oscars in the best international feature film category.

Khan says it was his children who convinced him to go back to work.

“They were like, ‘But we can’t spend 24 hours with you. So get real and get a life.’ So they gently nudged me back into the films,” he says.

• Can zombies and witches save Bollywood from its troubles?
• Nostalgic Indians flock to cinemas to watch old hits
• Alia Bhatt: The young Bollywood star taking on Hollywood

At 59, Khan has worked as an actor, director and producer for three decades.

He’s known as one of the three “Khans of Bollywood” – the others being fellow megastars Shah Rukh and Salman.

Known for tackling social issues, Aamir’s films are widely acclaimed as well as breaking box office records.

He is also no stranger to the Oscars. Lagaan, a film about cricket set in the 19th Century during the British Empire, was nominated for best foreign language film in 2002.

Khan is now trying to make history with Laapataa Ladies. If it succeeds, it would be the first Indian film to win the coveted international prize. He will find out whether it has made the shortlist on Tuesday.

Khan said he’s “not quite sure how seriously” to take awards. “Cinema is so subjective,” he says.

But he admits a win would mean a lot to India.

“I think Indians are so film crazy and we’ve been dying to win the Academy Award for an Indian film, which hasn’t happened till now. So the country will go ballistic. They’ll just go mad if we win,” he says.

“So just for the people of our country and for our country, I would be really happy if we win the award.”

Set in rural India, Laapataa Ladies tells the story of a young man bringing the wrong bride home. Meanwhile, his wife ends up lost, having to fend for herself.

It’s a satire looking at the treatment of women, including touching on the sensitive topic of domestic violence.

Khan describes the plot as “a bit Shakespearean”, with its focus on humour and mistaken identities.

But, he adds, it’s saying “a lot of important things about women’s issues, their independence, their right to decide for themselves what they want to do”.

It was these issues that drew him to the film in the first place, he explains.

“Every now and then you get an opportunity as a creative person to actually also sensitise people about certain issues that we face in society,” he says.

“Women all over the world have been subjected to a lot of challenges in their lives. Women have a raw deal in life. So I felt that here is a story which really brings that out well in such a nice way, which is why I wanted to produce it.”

Khan was also “very keen” that his ex-wife, Kiran Rao, should direct the film.

The pair, who married in 2005, announced their separation in 2021. But they have remained close, both professionally and personally.

“I think the reason I chose Kiran was because I knew that she would be very honest with it and that’s what I wanted,” he says.

“We get along really well. We really love each other, we respect each other.

“Our relationship may have changed slightly – but that doesn’t mean what we feel for each other has gone down or something.”

That’s not to say it’s all been plain sailing, however.

Khan admits there were arguments on set.

“We can’t make a film without an argument. So we argue every point and we have strong opinions,” he says.

“But our sensibilities are very similar. We are not talking about fundamental things. We are just trying to sometimes convince the other person a better way of conveying something.”

Bollywood produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

The sway the films and stars have on their fans’ imagination cannot be overstated.

It has had recent success at the Academy Awards, with Naatu Naatu from RRR winning best original song and The Elephant Whisperers awarded best documentary short film.

But victory in the international film category has so far eluded it, something Khan attributes to the competition.

“India has made really great films over the years. Occasionally it’s a matter of the right film not getting sent or the best film not getting sent,” he says.

“But otherwise we have to understand that the films you’re competing against – you’re not competing against five or six films, you’re competing against almost 80 or 90 films, which are the best in the world.”

As to whether a Bollywood film could one day scoop the best overall film award, Khan says it is “possible”.

But Indian film-makers would first need to start making movies for a global market, he adds.

“I’ve never really looked at an international audience,” he says. “We have such a large audience of our own that it doesn’t come in to our mind.

“That will only happen when Indians start making films for a world audience. I don’t think we have the bandwidth for it right now.”

For now, Khan is focusing on a range of projects alongside Laapataa Ladies, which also include his next film Sitaare Zameen Par, due for release in 2025.

Looking further out, he’s hoping to make one film a year, while his “dream project” is to take on Mahabharat – the ancient Indian epic.

But since unretiring from film, he is determined to do things differently. Again, this was influenced by his children.

“My son said, ‘You’re an extreme person’,” he says.

“He said, ‘You’re like a pendulum. You only did films, films, films. And now you want to swing to the other side and do no films and be with family, family, family. There is a middle place also you can think about’.”

Khan says his son told him to “try and bring some balance” into his life.

“And I thought he was right. So since then, that’s what I’ve been trying to do – living a balanced life where I’m working really hard, in fact I’m doing much more work that I ever did, but I don’t work after 6 o’clock any more.”

Khan says he has also started therapy in recent years, inspired by his daughter Ira, who works in mental health.

“I think that’s something that’s really helped me. That’s really helped me understand myself better.

“I’m actually finding that balance between work and a personal life. So I feel that I’ve reached that space now.”

It was November 2011, and Gisèle Pelicot was sleeping too much.

She spent most of her weekends in a slumber. She was annoyed, because during the week she worked hard as a supply chain manager, and her time off was precious.

Yet she could not seem to stay awake, often drifting off without even realising it and waking hours later with no memory of having gone to bed.

Despite this, Gisèle, 58, was happy. She counted herself lucky to have her husband of 38 years, Dominique, by her side. Now their three children Caroline, David and Florian were grown, the couple were planning to soon retire and move to Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in France’s idyllic southern region of Provence, where Mr Pelicot could go on bike rides and she could take Lancôme, their French bulldog, on long walks.

She had loved Dominique since they met in the early 1970s. “When I saw that young man in a blue jumper it was love at first sight,” Gisèle would reflect, much later. They both had complicated family histories marked by loss and trauma, and had found peace with one another. Their four decades together had hit rough patches – frequent financial troubles and her affair with a colleague in the mid-1980s – but they had made it through.

Years later, when asked by a lawyer to sum up their relationship, she said: “Our friends used to say we were the perfect couple. And I thought we would see our days through together.”

By that point, Gisèle and Dominique were sitting on opposite sides of a courtroom in Avignon, not far from Mazan: she surrounded by their children and her lawyers, and he, dressed in grey, prison-issue clothes, in the defendants’ glass box.

He was facing the maximum jail term for aggravated rape and was rapidly becoming known in France and beyond as – in his own daughter’s words – “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years”.

But in 2011, when Gisèle felt she was sleeping too much, she couldn’t have guessed that was how things would play out.

She had no idea that, in his late 50s and nearing retirement, her husband Dominique Pelicot had been spending a lot of time on the internet, often talking to users on open forums and chatrooms where sexual material – often extreme or illegal – was freely available.

In court, he would later pinpoint that phase as the trigger for his “perversion” after a childhood trauma of rape and abuse: “We become perverted when we find something that gives us the means: the internet.”

Sometime between 2010 and 2011, a man claiming to be a nurse sent Mr Pelicot photos of his wife, drugged with sleeping pills to the point of unconsciousness. He also shared precise instructions with Mr Pelicot so that he could do the same to Gisèle.

At first he hesitated – but not for long.

Through trial and error he realised that with the right dosage of pills he could plunge his wife into a sleep so deep nothing would wake her. They had been lawfully prescribed by his doctor, who thought Mr Pelicot suffered from anxiety due to financial troubles.

He would then be able to dress her in lingerie she refused to wear, or put her through sexual practices she would have never accepted while conscious. He could film the scenes, which she would not have allowed while awake.

Initially, he was the only one raping her. But by the time the couple had settled in Mazan in 2014, he had perfected and expanded his operation.

He kept tranquilisers in a shoebox in the garage, and switched brands because the first tasted “too salty” to be surreptitiously added to his wife’s food and drink, he said later.

On a chatroom called “without her knowledge” he recruited men of all ages to come and abuse his wife.

He would film them too.

He told the court his wife’s unconscious state was clear to the 71 men who came to their house over the course of a decade. “You’re just like me, you like rape mode,” he told one of them in the chat.

As the years went by, the effects of the abuse Ms Pelicot was subjected to at night increasingly began to seep into her waking life. She lost weight, clumps of hair fell out and her blackouts became more frequent. She was riddled with anxiety, certain that she was nearing death.

Her family became worried. She had seemed healthy and active when she had visited them.

“We’d ring her but most of the time it was Dominique who picked up. He would tell us Gisèle was asleep, even in the middle of the day,” said her son-in-law Pierre. “But it seemed likely because she was doing so much [when she was with us], especially running after the grandchildren.”

Sometimes, Gisèle came close to having suspicions. Once, she had noticed the green colour of a beer her husband had handed her, and hastily poured it down the sink. Another time, she noticed a bleach stain she couldn’t recall making on a new pair of trousers. “You’re not drugging me by any chance, are you?” she remembered asking him. He broke down in tears: “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”

Mostly, though, she felt lucky to have him with her as she navigated her health issues. She developed gynaecological problems, and underwent several neurological tests to determine if she was suffering from Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, as she feared, but the results didn’t explain the increasing tiredness and the blackouts.

Several years later, during the trial, Dominique’s brother Joel, a doctor, was asked how it was possible that medical professionals had never put the clues together and understood Gisèle was a victim of the little-known phenomenon of chemical submission – drug-facilitated rape. “In the field of medicine we only find what we’re looking for, and we look for what we know,” he replied.

Gisèle only felt better when she was away from Mazan – an oddity she barely noticed.

It was on her return from one of these trips, in September 2020, that Dominique told her, in floods of tears: “I did something stupid. I was caught filming under women’s clothes in a supermarket,” she recalled during the trial.

She was very surprised, she said, because “in 50 years he had never behaved inappropriately or used obscene words towards women”.

She said she forgave him but asked him to promise her he would seek help.

He acquiesced, “and we left it at that”, she said.

But Dominique must have known the end was near.

Soon after he was arrested in the supermarket, police confiscated his two phones and his laptop, where they would inevitably find more than 20,000 videos and photos of his wife being raped by him and others.

“I watched those videos for hours. It was troubling. Of course it had an impact on me,” Jérémie Bosse Platière, the director of the investigation, told the court.

“In 33 years in the police, I’d never really seen that sort of thing,” his colleague Stéphane Gal said. “It was sordid, it was shocking.”

His team was tasked with tracking down the men in the videos. They cross-checked the faces and names of the men carefully logged by Dominique alongside facial recognition technology.

They were eventually able to identify 54 of them, while another 21 remained nameless.

Some of the men who were unidentified said in conversations with Dominique that they were also drugging their partners. “That, for me, is the most painful part of the case,” Mr Bosse Platière said. “To know that there are some women out there who could still be victims of their husbands.”

On 2 November 2020, Dominique and Gisèle had breakfast together before heading to a police station, where Mr Pelicot had been summoned in relation to the upskirting incident. She was asked by a policeman to follow him into another room. She confirmed Dominque was her husband – “a great guy, a good man” – but denied ever taking part in swinging with him, or engaging in threesomes.

“I will show you something you won’t like,” the police chief warned her, before showing her a picture of a sexual act.

At first, she didn’t recognise any of the two people.

When she did, “I told him to stop… Everything caved in, everything I built for 50 years”.

She was sent home in a state of shock, accompanied by a friend. She had to tell her children what had happened.

Recalling that moment, Gisèle said that her “daughter’s screams are forever etched in my mind”. Caroline, David and Florian came down to Mazan and cleared out the house. Later, photos of a seemingly drugged Caroline were also found on Dominique’s laptop, although he has denied abusing her.

David, the eldest child, said they no longer had any family photos because they “got rid of everything linked to my father there and then”. Within days, Gisèle’s life was reduced to a suitcase and her dog.

Meanwhile, Dominique admitted to his crimes and was formally arrested. He thanked police for “relieving him of a burden”.

He and Gisèle wouldn’t meet again until they sat facing one another in the Avignon courtroom in September 2024.

By then, the story of the husband who drugged his wife for a decade and invited strangers to rape her had started to ripple across the world, aided by Gisèle’s unusual and remarkable decision to waive her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media.

“I want any woman who wakes up one morning with no memories of the night before to remember what I said,” she stated. “So that no more women can fall prey to chemical submission. I was sacrificed on the altar of vice, and we need to talk about it.”

Her legal team also successfully pushed for the videos taken to be shown in court, arguing they would “undo the thesis of accidental rape” – pushing back against the line of defence that the men had not meant to rape Gisèle as they didn’t realise she was unconscious.

“She wanted shame to change sides and it has,” a woman who came to watch the trial in Avignon said in November. “Gisèle turned everything on its head. We weren’t expecting a woman like this.”

Medical examiner Anne Martinat Sainte-Beuve said that in the wake of her husband’s arrest, Gisèle was clearly traumatised but calm and distant – a coping mechanism often employed by survivors of terrorist attacks.

Gisèle herself has said that she is “a field of ruins” and that she fears the rest of her life may not be enough to rebuild herself.

Ms Sainte-Beuve said she had found Gisèle “exceptionally resilient”: “She turned what could have destroyed her into strength.”

Days before the trial started, the Pelicots’ divorce was finalised.

Gisèle has gone back to her maiden name. She went by the name Pelicot for the trial so that her grandchildren could be “proud” of being related to her and not ashamed of being associated to Dominique.

She has since moved to a village far from Mazan. She sees a psychiatrist but doesn’t take any medication, because she no longer wants to ingest any substance. She continues to go on long walks, but is no longer tired.

In the early days of the trial, Caroline’s husband Pierre took the stand.

A defence lawyer asked him about the Mazan years, when Gisèle was suffering from memory loss and her husband was dutifully accompanying her to unfruitful medical appointments. How could the family not have realised what was happening?

Pierre shook his head.

“You are forgetting one thing,” he said. “You cannot imagine the unimaginable.”

If you’ve been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

On the afternoon of 6 December 2006, two men in a blue Mazda pulled up outside a garage in Lambhill, in the north of Glasgow.

Raymond Anderson and James McDonald put on old man face masks before stepping out of the car.

What happened next was later likened by defence lawyer Donald Findlay KC to “a scene from The Godfather”.

Dressed in trench coats, the pair walked into Applerow Motors, off the busy Balmore Road, and opened fire.

The owner, David Lyons, took cover but his 21-year-old nephew Michael was shot dead.

Steven Lyons, David’s nephew, was injured along with his associate Robert Pickett, who lost a kidney.

The hitmen were enforcers for the Daniel crime clan, believed by police to be led by Jamie Daniel.

The Daniels were locked in a bitter battle with the Lyons family, who were based in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire.

A bloody gangland feud which had largely been conducted in the shadows was now headline news.

The deadly rivalry, which dates back more than 20 years, is now the focus of a new BBC Radio 5 Live true crime podcast.

Gangster: The Daniels and the Lyons chronicles the savage battle for control of Glasgow’s drugs trade.

The six-part series also details the fall-out from multiple shootings and countless tit-for-tat attacks.

Ten days after the murder, David Lyons received a “ransom note” through the post.

It read: “The boys owe me £25,000 and I want what’s owed to me. It’s for drugs.

“They all know what it’s about as they have got to pay the piper.”

The High Court in Glasgow later heard that Mr Lyons did not pay the money and instead handed the letter to police.

Anderson and McDonald were placed under surveillance which eventually led officers to a house in the Garthamlock area where a machine gun, grenades and ammunition were discovered.

Both men were heard calling themselves “The Untouchables” and talking about the mysterious “piper”, who was mentioned in the letter sent to Mr Lyons.

They were also linked to military weapons which had been stolen from army barracks.

In May 2008 Anderson, 49, and McDonald, 27, were convicted and each sentenced to 35 years in jail, which was later reduced on appeal.

The judge, Lord Hardie, described the killing as a “cold-blooded, premeditated assassination”.

The murder was rooted in a feud said to date back to 2001 when a £20,000 stash of cocaine disappeared from a Daniel safe house in Milton, in the north of Glasgow, during a party.

Graeme Pearson, former director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, told the podcast: “It was alleged that members of the Lyons family group stole a delivery of drugs that were due for the Daniel family and there had been a real upset about the theft of those drugs.

“Equally, it was alleged that the Lyons family had decided that they were also retailing in the north side [of Glasgow], where the Daniel family traditionally had the upper hand.

“This was their territory. This was where they made profit and they wouldn’t stand for it. That couldn’t go without some response.”

The fall-out from the missing drugs rapidly progressed from car chases to shootings.

Among the early victims were Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll – a major figure in the Daniel clan – and Johnny Lyons, brother of David and Eddie Snr.

Both were shot and injured in separate attacks just 11 days apart in January 2003.

Then, in November 2006, Carroll allegedly used a 4×4 and a tow rope to topple the headstone of Eddie Snr’s son Garry, who was only eight when he died of leukaemia in 1991.

The desecration of his grave marked a new low.

Days later Carroll ambushed and shot Eddie Lyons Jnr and a friend in Bellshill, Lanarkshire.

But a week later he was injured in a retaliatory shooting in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire.

Police were deploying significant resources in a bid to manage the dispute but the violence was escalating.

It was no secret that Carroll was the most unpredictable player in the whole feud.

His rivalry with the Lyons clan stretched back to his schooldays when he was reportedly bullied by members of the family.

Carroll, who earned his nickname from a character in the TV puppet series Roland Rat, later forged close friendships with the Daniel clan.

Aged 19 he was jailed for three months for car theft and by his mid-20s he was a major criminal player on the north side of Glasgow.

In 2004 he was charged with trying to kill a friend of Eddie Lyons Snr with an AK-47 but the trial later collapsed.

Carroll – who shared a £217,000 house with Jamie Daniel’s daughter in Lennoxtown – could have been forgiven for thinking he was above the law.

By 2009 he was out of control and struck fear into rivals by masterminding a series of “alien abductions” across central Scotland.

The kidnappings were described in such a way as the victims, who were tortured and robbed, told police they couldn’t remember anything about their ordeal.

Carroll’s brutality and pattern of offending ensured he had many enemies and he went to great lengths to cover his tracks.

If his rivals wanted to target him then they would have to stage an audacious ambush unlike anything that had gone before.

On 13 January 2010 Carroll attended a lunchtime business meeting at Asda in Robroyston, Glasgow.

Days earlier he had shot and injured Eddie Lyons Jnr on the arm.

Now Carroll had arranged to poach drug pusher Stephen Glen, who was linked to the Lyons family.

A trial later heard Carroll, 29, told him: “You’re working for me now. Anybody that doesn’t fall into line is going to get banged.”

But at 13:23, minutes after delivering the ultimatum, he was sitting in the back of a black Audi A3 when a speeding Volkswagen Golf screeched to a halt in front of the vehicle.

Carroll’s two associates fled leaving him trapped in the back of the three-door car.

Two masked men emerged from the Golf and opened fire, shattering the rear passenger windows.

Carroll was shot in the head and chest – 13 times in total – in an attack that lasted 25 seconds.

William “Buff” Paterson, fled to Spain 10 days after the murder and later featured in a 10 most wanted appeal by the then UK Serious Organised Crime Agency.

But after more than four years on the run he eventually handed himself in at a police station in Madrid.

During his trial, at the High Court in Glasgow, Carroll’s notoriety was highlighted when a list of 99 potential suspects was read out.

Paterson was later convicted and jailed for 22 years.

The judge, Lord Armstrong, told him: “It was not a spontaneous event which happened on the spur of the moment, it was in effect an execution.”

The murder, which was committed in front of horrified lunchtime shoppers, was arguably the most public gangland hit ever carried out in Scotland.

It also paved the way for further brazen attacks.

In September 2015 Ross Sherlock was shot as he walked down a lane from St Helen’s Primary School in Bishopbriggs.

At the time the kitchen fitter was chatting to another parent as their daughters walked hand-in-hand in front.

Two men were later cleared of the attempted murder.

And in January 2017, Ross Monaghan was shot outside St George’s Primary School in Penilee, shortly after dropping his daughter off at school.

Five years earlier, he had been acquitted of murdering Carroll after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence.

Two men later went on trial for the Monaghan murder bid but were cleared only to be later convicted of other organised crime offences.

In between the school shootings there was another major development.

Jamie Daniel, who became a millionaire after starting out as a scrap metal dealer in Possil, died of cancer in July 2016.

The convicted heroin smuggler made his fortune through drugs and, latterly, counterfeit cigarettes.

But his death, at the age of 58, left a power vacuum and the future of his crime group was cast into doubt.

There was no obvious successor, especially as his son Zander Sutherland was serving a 13-and-a-half-year jail term for heroin dealing.

Sutherland later fled the UK while on day release from prison and is now in Norway fighting extradition.

Meanwhile, the Lyons group responded to Daniel’s death with a brutal campaign of intimidation against his associates, which included five attempted murders in five months.

Robert Daniel was the first target.

On 8 December 2016 his car was rammed by another vehicle before he was chased into a house in Robroyston.

Once inside he was struck twice on the back of the head with what he later told police was a hatchet or a machete.

Asked in court if he was aware of any ill-feeling between the Daniel and Lyons families, Robert, 29, replied: “Not that I know of.”

A month later Thomas Bilsland, 31, suffered a fractured skull after he was set upon in Glasgow’s Cranhill.

The next victim, Gary Petty, was targeted after he visited an Italian restaurant on 7 March 2017.

A court heard the 22-year-old was getting out his Volkswagen Golf when he was ambushed in Maryhill.

Ryan Fitzsimmons, 34, was attacked by a masked gang on 28 April 2017 outside his home in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire.

The former soldier, who was left brain damaged, told the trial: “It felt like death was coming.”

His mother Geraldine, 61, was so affected by what happened that she suffered a heart attack in the street.

Mr Fitzsimmons told jurors he had “no enemies” but jurors heard his older brother was once charged with shooting Ross Monaghan, the man cleared of murdering Carroll in 2010.

The most savage crime on the 13-page indictment was the assault on Stephen “Bonzo” Daniel on 18 May 2017.

As he headed home after dropping off friends his Skoda Octavia was deliberately hit by a Volkswagen Golf in Milton.

An Audi S3 soon joined the chase through north Glasgow during which the vehicles involved reach speeds of up to 100mph.

Daniel’s car eventually crashed on an off ramp of the M8 in the Port Dundas area.

The impact left him unconscious and the 39-year-old later told a court he had no memory of what happened next.

As he lay slumped at the wheel Daniel was subjected to a horrific attack with bladed weapons which left him with facial wounds so severe that first responders initially thought he had been shot.

The court also heard the ex-taxi firm director’s car was found to have had a tracking device on it but he insisted he had no enemies before the incident.

Gangland investigations pose a massive challenge for law enforcement as detectives are typically met with a wall of silence.

But the sophisticated technology deployed by the Lyons group to plot the attacks also enabled officers to build a case against them.

And in May 2019 six associates of the family were jailed for a total of 104 years after being found guilty of five murder plots.

The judge, Lord Mulholland, told the gang: “You sought to turn Glasgow into a war zone for your feud.

“This is a civilised city, which is based on the rule of law.

“There is no place for this type of conduct, retribution or the law of the jungle.”

Five years on, the feud – which has also been linked to a number of prison attacks – is back in the spotlight.

And presenter Livvy Haydock described the new podcast as the “most bloody and brutal” Gangster series to date.

She added: “This investigation has been eye-opening and uncovers the story of two of Glasgow’s most notorious crime families.

“It’s a vicious war which has raged on for 20 years and is still going on to this day.”

At least three people have been killed and dozens more wounded after an explosive was thrown into a crowd at a festival in Thailand.

The attack took place shortly before midnight local time on Friday at the Red Cross Doi Loyfa fair, held annually in the Umphang district in the northern Tak province.

Two suspects are being held in custody, but no charges have been pressed, the Associated Press and local media report, citing Thai police.

At least 48 people have been wounded, six of whom are critically injured, police said.

Police were alerted to the incident at 23:30 local time (16:30 GMT) on Friday.

In a statement, the Umphang rescue team said the explosive was thrown and landed at the foot of an outdoor stage where people had been dancing.

Some of the wounded were taken to a nearby hospital, it added.

Several reports suggest the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED).

Footage said to be from the scene, posted on social media, shows scenes of panic as emergency workers and festivalgoers tend to the wounded.

One video appears to show at least two people lying in close proximity being given CPR, as crowds rush around them in a state of confusion.

The camera then pans to a person cutting the trousers off a man to reveal a wound on his leg pouring out blood.

Images taken in the aftermath, shared by the rescue team, show a cordon in place around an area strewn with rubbish and strung with lights.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra shared her condolences to the families of those killed and injured in the bombing in a post on X.

She said she had ordered the police and security agencies to investigate the cause of the explosion and help those affected. She also directed an increase in police officers to oversee all festival events.

According to the Bangkok Post, between 8,000 and 9,000 people attended the week-long festival this year, and the attack took place on the penultimate night of the event.

Umphang is the southernmost district in Thailand’s northern Tak province, which shares a border with Myanmar to the west.

A vicar has been forced to apologise after telling a group of schoolchildren aged 10 and 11 that Father Christmas was not real.

Pupils reportedly began to sob as Rev Dr Paul Chamberlain made comments during a Religious Education lesson at Lee-on-the-Solent Junior School in Hampshire.

One parent described his talk as “absolutely disgusting”, while another said her daughter reckoned the vicar was mistaken and had “lost the plot”, The Times reported.

The Anglican Diocese of Portsmouth said Rev Chamberlain accepted it was an “error of judgement”.

A 10-year old pupil, quoted in The Times, said some children “gasped” during the vicar’s lesson, in which they were also told that parents ate the cookies left out for Santa.

One parent told the newspaper: “I don’t know how it can be undone, but I think it’s absolutely disgusting.

“I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter. I hope he never comes into the school again.”

In a statement, a diocese spokesperson said: “We understand that the vicar of St Faith’s, Lee-on-the-Solent, the Rev Paul Chamberlain, was leading an RE lesson for 10 and 11-year-olds at Lee-on-Solent Junior School.

“After talking about the Nativity story from the Bible, he made some comments about the existence of Father Christmas.

“Paul has accepted that this was an error of judgement, and he should not have done so.

“He apologised unreservedly to the school, to the parents and to the children, and the headteacher immediately wrote to all parents to explain this.”

Isak Andic, the billionaire founder of high street fashion chain Mango, died in an accident on Saturday while exploring caves near Barcelona.

Spanish media reported the 71-year-old fell down a ravine to his death while hiking in caves that are part of a mountain range.

Andic was with his son and other family members when he fell, according to the El Pais newspaper, triggering a large emergency response.

The Turkish-born businessman founded Mango with the help of his brother, Nahman, in Barcelona in 1984 and the chain now operates almost 3,000 outlets in 120 countries. Forbes estimated Andic’s net worth to be $4.5bn (£3.6bn).

Andic reportedly fell down a 150-metre ravine while hiking in an area of the Montserrat mountains known for its deep caves.

Police were called at around 13:00 local time (12:00 GMT), and a helicopter and specialised mountain unit was sent to the scene, El Pais reported.

Mango CEO Toni Ruiz said in a statement: “His departure leaves a huge void but all of us are, in some way, his legacy and the testimony of his achievements.

“It is up to us, and this is the best tribute we can make to Isak and which we will fulfil, to ensure that Mango continues to be the project that Isak aspired to and of which he would feel proud.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed Andic died in an accident at the Salnitre de Collbató caves.

“All my love and recognition for your great work and business vision, which has turned this Spanish firm into a world leader in fashion,” Sanchez said.

The president of Catalonia’s government, Salvador Illa Roca, said he was “dismayed by the loss” and described Andic as a “committed businessman” who “contributed to making Catalonia great and projecting it to the world”.

Andic moved to north-eastern Spain’s Catalonia region in the 1960s with his family and was a non-executive chairman of the company when he died. Mango had a turnover of €3.1bn (£2.6bn) in 2023.

He was seen as having a rivalry with Zara founder Amancio Ortega, another Spanish fashion billionaire.

The brand’s popularity in the UK was boosted in 2011 when British model Kate Moss was announced as the face of Mango.

Former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had hip replacement surgery after injuring herself while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office says.

“Earlier this morning, Speaker Emerita Pelosi underwent a successful hip replacement and is well on the mend,” her spokesman Ian Kreger said in a statement.

Pelosi, 84, was airlifted by the US military to a hospital in Germany after she reportedly tripped and fell on stairs while attending an official event on Friday.

The California Democratic congresswoman was travelling with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

Pelosi thanked both US military staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and medical staff at Hospital Kirchberg in Luxembourg.

“Speaker Pelosi is enjoying the overwhelming outpouring of prayers and well wishes and is ever determined to ensure access to quality health care for all Americans,” the statement added.

She has withdrawn from the rest of the events she had scheduled for the trip.

In an earlier statement on Friday, Mr Kreger said Pelosi was looking forward to returning home to the US soon and was continuing to work from hospital.

The delegation she was travelling with in Luxembourg is scheduled to take part in anniversary events along with veterans, their families and military officials.

One of the congressmen on the trip, Michael McCaul, said he was disappointed Pelosi would not be able to join the delegation’s weekend events.

“But she is strong, and I am confident she will be back on her feet in no time,” the Texas Republican said.

Pelosi has been a prominent figure in US politics over a career stretching seven presidential administrations.

She first served as House speaker from 2007-11, a 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 as Speaker in 2023, but continues to serve in the House and remains a highly influential voice within the Democratic Party.

Last month, she was elected to another two-year term.

She is not the only member of Congress to be injured in a fall this week.

Outgoing Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, 82, suffered a sprained wrist and cuts to his face at the US Capitol.

Scientists have uncovered the aftermath of an “exceptionally violent” attack about 4,000 years ago in Somerset when at least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten.

It is the largest case of violence between humans identified in early Bronze Age England, which had been considered a peaceful time.

The victims’ bones were found by cavers in the 1970s. Experts believe they were thrown into a 15m shaft by the prehistoric attackers.

The massacre was probably driven by a furious “desire for revenge” and its effects likely “echoed through generations”, says Professor Rick Schulting at Oxford university.

He says the victims may have been eaten as a ritual to “dehumanise” them and to send a message by “insulting the remains”.

Around 3,000 fragments of bones found at a cave system called Charterhouse Warren in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, were analysed by a team of archaeologists.

They believe that at least 37 people died, including men, woman and children. Teenagers and older children made up about half of the victims.

Villages in early Bronze Age Britain were made up of around 50 to 100 people, so the experts think this could have equated to wiping-out almost one entire community.

The Bronze Age in Britain lasted from about 2500–2000 BC until 800BC, and was a time when bronze replaced stone for making tools and weapons. People developed new agricultural methods, creating large and permanent farms.

In the newly-identified attack there was no evidence of a fight back, suggesting the victims were taken by surprise.

Scrape and cut marks on the bones indicate that the attackers systematically dismembered their victims using stone tools and likely consumed them.

“If we saw these marks on animal bones, we’d have no question that they were butchered,” says Prof Schulting.

The scientists do not believe the attackers ate the remains out of hunger because the fragments were found alongside animal bones, indicating there was sufficient food.

The extensive dismembering of the bodies is the first documented case for this era.

There is limited evidence that tension in this era was caused by a fight over resources.

That led the experts to suspect this violence was caused by a huge breakdown in relationships.

“This was something exceptional. This level of almost erasing the person, literally chopping them into pieces, seems like something you would only do if fuelled by anger, fear and resentment,” Prof Schulting suggests.

One theory was that someone did “something horrible that justified this in the eyes of those doing it”, he says.

“This is not a homicidal maniac. This is a community of people that came together to do this to another community,” Prof Schulting adds.

He says perhaps a culture of honour led to the attack.

“If you felt wronged, it was ultimately your responsibility to do something about it. It’s not like you could go to the magistrate and ask for something to be done,” Prof Schulting says.

He suggests that this looks like a case where “things cycled out of control and normal checks and balances failed.”

That could be because of one particularly antagonistic person who didn’t “let things rest” or “had their own agenda”.

“If you have those kinds of people on two sides of a conflict, it starts to spiral out of control,” he suggests.

Experts have usually believed that early Bronze Age England was not particularly violent because very limited signs of conflict have been found.

There is no evidence of weapons like swords or of fortifications that would suggest communities needed to protect themselves.

Before this discovery, only about 10 victims of violent attacks had been found from the period, Prof Schulting says.

The scientists said they do not believe this would have been a one-off attack because “there would have been repercussions”.

“But at some point calmer heads probably prevailed and people got on with their lives and some sense of normality returned,” Prof Schulting suggests.

He cautions that the attack should not be seen as a sign that the past was “particularly savage and bloody” or that “we’re beyond all of that now.”

“I hope it gives us insights into human nature that extend beyond just the Bronze Age,” he adds.

The research is published in the academic journal Antiquity.

ABC News has agreed to pay $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found “liable for rape”.

George Stephanopoulos made the statements repeatedly during an interview on 10 March this year while challenging a congresswoman about her support for Trump.

A jury in a civil case last year determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse”, which has a specific definition under New York law.

As part of Saturday’s settlement, first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC also published an editor’s note expressing its “regret” for the statements by Stephanopoulos.

According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15m as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past”.

The $15m will go towards Trump’s future presidential library, US media reported.

The network also agreed to pay $1m towards Trump’s legal fees.

Under the settlement, the network will post an editor’s note to the bottom of its 10 March 2024 online news article about the story.

It will say: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement the company was “pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing”.

In 2023, a New York civil court found Trump sexually abused E Jean Carroll in a dressing room at a department store in 1996. He was also found guilty of defaming the magazine columnist.

Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury’s conclusion was that Ms Carroll had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law”.

Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries and in criminal statutes elsewhere.

In a separate case, also presided over by the same judge, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3m to Ms Carroll for additional defamatory statements.

Trump is appealing against both verdicts.

During the 10 March broadcast, Stephanopoulos asked South Carolina Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace how she could endorse Trump.

The anchor falsely said “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape”.

Stephanopoulos repeated the claim 10 times throughout the broadcast.

Ahead of the ruling, a federal magistrate judge had ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to give sworn evidence at depositions next week.

Trump has also sued CBS, the BBC’s US broadcast partner, for “deceptive conduct” over an interview with Kamala Harris.

In 2023, a judge threw out his defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which he alleged the network had likened him to Adolf Hitler.

He has also had lawsuits filed against the New York Times and the Washington Post dismissed.

South Korean lawmakers have voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law, which sparked massive protests across the country.

He was suspended after some members of Yoon’s own People Power Party (PPP) voted with the opposition – though the decision still needs be ratified by the constitutional court.

Thousands of anti-Yoon protesters celebrated outside the National Assembly on Saturday evening after the impeachment motion passed, with the crowd singing as fireworks broke out overhead.

Yoon has vowed to fight on and said he “will never give up”, describing the vote as a temporary pause to his presidency.

“I will take your criticism, praise, and support to the heart and do my best for the country until the end,” Yoon added.

His defiant words are a marked change from his apologetic tone earlier this month over his short-lived martial law declaration.

Yoon attempted to impose military rule after months of political deadlock, saying it was necessary to block supposed North Korean efforts to undermine his government – but the declaration was overturned after a matter of hours by MPs.

There has been strong public support for Yoon’s impeachment, with recent polls finding three-quarters of South Koreans wanted to see him go.

Following days of public pressure the PPP had decided to let its lawmakers vote on the motion, after an effort to impeach Yoon last week failed when its lawmakers boycotted the hearing.

On Saturday, the impeachment motion reached the two thirds threshold needed to pass after 12 members of Yoon’s party voted in favour.

“To the people, we hope your end of year will be a little happier now, and all your cancelled year-end celebrations to be restored,” said National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, as he announced the result.

“The future of the Republic of Korea and our hope is in the hands of the people, our hope is strong,” Woo, a member of the main opposition Democratic Party, added.

The constitutional court now has 180 days to rule on whether Yoon’s impeachment should be upheld or whether he can return to office. If it rules in favour of impeachment, an election for the next president must be called within 60 days.

Yoon has been suspended while Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has taken over as acting president.

Han said his focus is to “stabilise the situation” and “bring back normalcy for the people”.

However, both Han and finance minister Choi Sang-mok, who is next in line for the presidency, are both involved in an ongoing police probe over last week’s events.

Outside the National Assembly, where tens of thousands of protesters gathered throughout the day despite the bitter cold, people hailed the vote as a victory for democracy and spoke of their determination to see Yoon permanently leave office.

“I’m so happy that the bill passed… At the same time, the fight is not over,” physical therapist Sim Hee-seon told the BBC as she wiped her tears.

“We’ll have to wait for the court’s judgment for his impeachment to be finalised. We will keep watching.”

Two women decked out in Rudolf costumes held signs that read: “[It will be] a merry Christmas only if Yoon Seok Yul disappears”.

Across town at a pro-Yoon rally in Gwanghwamun Square, it was a different story. His supporters fell silent after hearing the news of the vote. Some people uttered angry insults before leaving the scene.

The success of the vote had depended on the support from the PPP, as the opposition lawmakers who tabled the motion needed just eight more to join them. Last Saturday, when the opposition first tried to impeach Yoon, they fell short by just a few votes as the PPP staged a walkout.

On Saturday, the party held a marathon meeting that began at 10am and lasted till just minutes before the voting session began, as PPP lawmakers struggled to reach a consensus on the party’s stance.

In the end, the party agreed to take part and allowed their lawmakers to vote according to their conscience. It appeared that at least 12 of them crossed the floor. Another 85 voted against impeachment.

South Korea has faced nearly two weeks of chaos and uncertainty since Yoon’s short-lived martial law attempt late last Tuesday.

Yoon had cited threats from “anti-state forces” and North Korea but it soon became clear that his move had been spurred by his own domestic political troubles, not by external threats.

Hours later he reversed the order after 190 MPs voted it down, with many of them climbing fences and breaking barricades to get into the voting chamber.

Yoon later apologised but on Thursday he defended his actions, saying he had sought to protect the country’s democracy and vowed to “fight on until the end”.

That speech galvanised people, and the president’s approval rating tumbled to a record low of 11%, according to a poll by Gallup Korea.

The impeachment of a president is not unchartered territory for South Korea, which last removed former president Park Geun-hye through this process in 2016.

Yoon – then a prosecutor – had led the investigation against Park, which ultimately resulted in her impeachment.

Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people are feared dead in Mayotte after the French Indian Ocean territory was devastated by a powerful cyclone.

Rescue workers are still attempting to reach some communities as they search for survivors.

Entire settlements were flattened when Cyclone Chido brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph), with the poorest living in makeshift shelters particularly hard hit.

Some of Mayotte’s population of 320,000 have said they are struggling with severe shortages of food, water and shelter.

One resident of the capital city, Mamoudzou, waiting in line for supplies said: “We’ve had no water for three days now, so it’s starting to be a lot.

“We’re trying to get the bare minimum to live on, because we don’t know when the water will come back.”

Another Mamoudzou resident, John Balloz, said he was surprised he did not die when the cyclone struck.

“It was the wind, the wind blowing, and I was panicked, I screamed, ‘We need help, we need help.’ I was screaming because I could see the end coming for me,” he said.

Mohamed Ishmael, who also lives in the capital, told Reuters news agency the situation there was “a tragedy” and said: “You feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war… I saw an entire neighbourhood disappear.”

Another said they had used a nearby school for shelter, adding: “We can still take refuge with our neighbours, and we’re still sticking together and being cautious. We need everyone to hold hands.”

Mayotte’s impoverished communities, including undocumented migrants who have travelled to the French territory in an effort to claim asylum, are thought to have been particularly hard hit due to the vulnerable nature of their housing

Its population is heavily dependent on French financial aid and has long struggled with poverty, unemployment and political instability.

About 75% of the population lives below the national poverty line and unemployment hovers at around one in three.

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts are with “our compatriots in Mayotte, who have gone through the most horrific few hours and who have, for some, lost everything, lost their lives”.

While some French aid and rescue workers have reached Mayotte, efforts to get to some communities are still under way.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the island’s prefect, told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage is fully assessed. He warned it will “definitely be several hundred” and could reach the thousands.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who is scheduled to visit the island, acknowledged the “exceptional severity” of the cyclone and assured that efforts to assist the population are being ramped up.

Cyclone Chido also brought strong winds and heavy rainfall to Mozambique, making landfall early Sunday about 25 miles (40.2km) south of the northern city of Pemba, according to weather services.

The cyclone caused structural damage and power outages in the northern coastal provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado on Saturday morning, authorities reported.

Guy Taylor, a spokesperson for aid agency Unicef in Mozambique, said “we were hit very hard in the early hours of this morning”.

“Many houses were destroyed or seriously damaged, and healthcare facilities and schools are out of action,” he added.

Mr Taylor said Unicef is concerned about “loss of access to critical services”, including medical treatment, clean water and sanitation, and also “the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria”.

Last year, India nudged past China to become the world’s most populous country, according to UN estimates.

With nearly 1.45 billion people now, you’d think the country would be quiet about having more children. But guess what? The chatter has suddenly picked up.

Leaders of two southern states – Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – have recently advocated more children.

Andhra Pradesh is mulling providing incentives, citing low fertility rates and ageing population. The state also scrapped its “two-child policy” for local body elections, and reports say neighbouring Telangana may soon do the same. Next-door Tamil Nadu is also making similar, more exaggerated, noises.

India’s fertility rate has fallen substantially – from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to the current rate of two.

Fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level of two births per woman in 17 of the 29 states and territories. (A replacement level is one at which new births are sufficient to maintain a stable population.)

The five southern Indian states lead India’s demographic transition, achieving replacement-level fertility well ahead of others. Kerala reached the milestone in 1988, Tamil Nadu in 1993, and the rest by the mid-2000s.

Today, the five southern states have total fertility rates below 1.6, with Karnataka at 1.6 and Tamil Nadu at 1.4. In other words, fertility rates in these states match or are less than many European countries.

But these states fear that India’s shifting demographics with varying population shares between states, will significantly impact electoral representation and state wise-allocation of parliamentary seats and federal revenues.

“They fear being penalised for their effective population control policies, despite being better economic performers and contributing significantly to federal revenues,” Srinivas Goli, a professor of demography at the International Institute for Population Sciences, told the BBC.

Southern states are also grappling with another major concern as India prepares for its first delimitation of electoral seats in 2026 – the first since 1976.

This exercise will redraw electoral boundaries to reflect population shifts, likely reducing parliamentary seats for the economically prosperous southern states. As federal revenues are allocated based on state populations, many fear this could deepen their financial struggles and limit policy-making freedom.

Demographers KS James and Shubhra Kriti project that populous northern states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar stand to gain more seats from delimitation, while southern states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh could face losses, further shifting political representation.

Many, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have hinted that changes to fiscal shares and parliamentary seat allocations will not be rushed through.

“As a demographer, I don’t think states should be overly concerned about these issues. They can be resolved through constructive negotiations between federal and state governments,” says Mr Goli. “My concern lies elsewhere.”

The key challenge, according to demographers, is India’s rapid ageing driven by declining fertility rates. While countries like France and Sweden took 120 and 80 years respectively to double their aging population from 7% to 14%, India is expected to reach this milestone in just 28 years, says Mr Goli.

This accelerated ageing is tied to India’s unique success in fertility decline. In most countries, improved living standards, education, and urbanisation naturally lower fertility as child survival improves.

But in India, fertility rates fell rapidly despite modest socio-economic progress, thanks to aggressive family welfare programmes that promoted small families through targets, incentives, and disincentives.

The unintended consequence? Take Andhra Pradesh, for instance. Its fertility rate is 1.5, on par with Sweden, but its per capita income is 28 times lower, says Mr Goli. With mounting debt and limited resources, can states like these support higher pensions or social security for a rapidly aging population?

Consider this. More than 40% of elderly Indians (60+ years) belong to the poorest wealth quintile – the bottom 20% of a population in terms of wealth distribution, according to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s latest India Ageing Report.

In other words, Mr Goli says, “India is getting old before getting rich”.

Fewer children also mean a rising old-age dependency ratio, leaving fewer caregivers for an expanding elderly demographic. Demographers warn that India’s healthcare, community centres and old-age homes are unprepared for this shift.

Urbanisation, migration, and changing labour markets are further eroding traditional family support – India’s strong point – leaving more elderly people behind.

While migration from populous to less populous states can ease the working-age gap, it also sparks anti-migration anxieties. “Robust investments in prevention, palliative care, and social infrastructure are urgently needed to look after the ageing,” says Mr Goli.

As if the southern states’ concerns weren’t enough, earlier this month, the chief of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers’ Organisation), the ideological backbone of Mr Modi’s BJP – urged couples to have at least three children to secure India’s future. “According to population science, when growth falls below 2.1, a society perishes on its own. Nobody destroys it,” Mohan Bhagwat reportedly said at a recent meeting.

While Mr Bhagwat’s concerns may have some basis, they are not entirely accurate, say demographers. Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics, told the BBC that after a decade or two, continuing “very low levels of fertility will lead to rapid population decline”.

A fertility rate of 1.8 births per woman leads to a slow, manageable population decline. But a rate of 1.6 or lower could trigger “rapid, unmanageable population decline”.

“Smaller numbers of people will enter the reproductive – and main working – ages, and this will be socially, politically and economically disastrous. This is a demographic process and it is extremely difficult to reverse,” says Mr Dyson.

This is already happening in some countries.

In May, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared the country’s record-low birth rate a “national emergency” and announced plans for a dedicated government ministry. Greece’s fertility rate has plummeted to 1.3, half of what it was in 1950, sparking warnings from Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis about an “existential” population threat.

But demographers say that urging people to have more children is futile. “Considering the societal shifts, including the significant reduction in gender disparities as women’s lives have become increasingly similar to those of men, this trend is unlikely to reverse,” says Mr Dyson.

For Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, grappling with a declining workforce, the key question is: who will step in to fill the gap? Developed countries, unable to reverse declining fertility, are focusing on healthy and active ageing – prolonging working life by five to seven years and enhancing productivity in older populations.

Demographers say India will need to extend retirement ages meaningfully, and policies must prioritise increasing healthy years through better health screenings, and stronger social security to ensure an active and productive older population – a potential “silver dividend”.

India must also leverage its demographic dividend better – economic growth that occurs when a country has a large, working-age population. Mr Goli believes there’s a window of opportunity until 2047 to boost the economy, create jobs for the working-age population, and allocate resources for the ageing. “We’re only reaping 15-20% of the dividend – we can do much better,” he says.

Israel’s government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.

Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.

Israeli forces moved into a buffer zone separating the Golan Heights from Syria in the days following Assad’s departure, saying the change of control in Damascus meant ceasefire arrangements had “collapsed”.

• ‘We just need peace’: BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion

Despite the move, Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday evening that Israel has “no interest in a conflict with Syria”.

“We will determine Israeli policy regarding Syria according to the reality on the ground,” he said.

There are more than 30 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, which are home to an estimated 20,000 people. They are considered illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.

The settlers live alongside some 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze Arabs who did not flee when the area came under Israeli control.

Netanyahu said Israel would “continue to hold on to [the territory], make it flourish and settle it”.

However, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said he did not “see any reason” for the country to expand into Golan Heights.

“The prime minster [Netanyahu] said we are not interested in expanding the confrontation with Syria and we hope we will not need to fight against the new rebels that are presently taking over Syria. So why do we do precisely the opposite?” he told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

He added: “We have enough problems to deals with.”

Netanyahu’s announcement comes a day after Syria’s new de-facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa criticised Israel for its ongoing strikes on military targets in the country, which have reportedly targeted military facilities.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented more than 450 Israeli air strikes in Syria since 8 December, including 75 since Saturday evening.

Al-Sharaa – also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – said the strikes “crossed red lines” and risked escalating tensions in the region, though he said Syria was not seeking a conflict with any neighbouring state.

Speaking to Syria TV, which was seen as pro-opposition during the civil war, al-Sharaa said the country’s “war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations”, Reuters reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented on his remarks, but previously said the strikes were necessary to stop weapons falling “into the hands of extremists”.

President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia and took up asylum when al-Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led other rebel factions in a lightning offensive on Damascus.

The groups are continuing to form a transitional government in Syria, of which al-Sharaa is the theoretical head.

On Saturday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had made direct contact with HTS, which the US and other Western governments still designates as a terrorist organisation.

• From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself

United Nations’ Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to sanctions on the country to help facilitate an economic recovery.

“We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria,” Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria’s caretaker government and other officials.

Elsewhere, Turkey’s Defence Minister Yasar Guler said Ankara was ready to provide military support to Syria’s new government.

“It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance,” Guler said of HTS, according to state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.

The five remaining members of the infamous “Bali Nine” drug ring say they are “relieved and happy” to be home in Australia, after serving nearly 20 years in Indonesian prisons.

Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens, Si Yi Chen, and Michael Czugaj arrived in Darwin on Sunday following years of lobbying by Australia on their behalf.

“They look forward, in time, to reintegrating back into and contributing to society,” said a statement issued on behalf of the men and their families.

The high-profile case began in 2005 when Indonesia caught nine young Australians trying to smuggle 8.3kg (18lb) of heroin out of Bali strapped to their bodies.

The eight men and one woman were arrested at an airport and hotel in Bali after a tip-off from Australian police.

The case made global headlines when two of the gang’s ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed by firing squad in 2015 – sparking a diplomatic row between neighbours Indonesia and Australia.

Other members of the Bali Nine – most of whom were aged under 21 – were handed sentences of either 20 years or life in prison.

The case put a spotlight on Indonesia’s strict drug laws, some of the most stringent in the world.

One of the nine, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died of cancer in prison in 2018. Shortly afterwards, Renae Lawrence, then 41, the only woman among the group, had her sentence commuted after spending almost 13 years in prison and returned to Australia the same year.

Indonesia did not commute the sentences of the remaining five, now aged 38 to 48, and they were transported back to Australia as prisoners. However the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has reported that the men are effectively free to live unhindered in Australian society.

The five are banned for life from entering Indonesia, a spokesman for the government there said in a statement.

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had spoke to several of the men’s “grateful” parents.

“They did a serious crime and they have rightly paid a serious price for it. But it was time for them to come home,” he told reporters.

He said the deal did not come with conditions or favours Australia would have to repay: “This is an act of compassion by President Prabowo [Subianto] and we thank him for it.”

The men and their families also said they were “immensely grateful” to Prabowo.

They also thanked the lawyers, diplomats and government figures who had helped advocate for them over the past two decades, before asking for privacy.

“The welfare of the men is a priority, they will need time and support, and we hope and trust our media and community will make allowance for this.”

The five men were being put through medical checks at Darwin’s Howard Springs facility – which was used for quarantine during the pandemic – and then will begin a voluntary “rehabilitation process”, Education Minister Jason Clare said. It is not clear what that entails, or how long the men will stay there.

“When you’ve been in prison for the best part of two decades, it’s going to take some time for these men to rehabilitate and to reintegrate into Australian society,” Mr Clare told the ABC.

He added that normal visa processes would apply to any Indonesian family members of the men, who did not follow them to Australia.

Seven foreigners in Fiji have been sent to hospital with suspected alcohol poisoning after reportedly drinking cocktails at a five-star resort’s bar.

Four are Australian tourists, aged between 18 and 56. One is American and two are foreigners living in Fiji, according to local media reports citing the health ministry.

Some were previously reported to be seriously ill, but local officials say their symptoms have since improved and all are now in stable condition.

The incident comes weeks after the deaths of six tourists in the South East Asian nation of Laos because of suspected methanol poisoning.

Fiji tourism chief Brent Hill told RNZ they were keenly aware of the Laos incident, but added that the case in Fiji was “a long way from that”.

It is believed the seven people drank cocktails at the Warwick Fiji resort bar on the Coral Coast on Saturday night local time. Shortly afterwards, they displayed nausea, vomiting and neurological symptoms.

They were initially taken to Sigatoka Hospital, and later transferred to Lautoka Hospital, according to the Fiji Times.

A 56-year-old Australian woman was under constant surveillance in hospital and a 19-year-old woman, also from Australia, had suffered “serious medical episodes”, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Two other Australian women, aged 49 and 18, were in a critical but less serious condition, the ABC reported.

At least one local is also believed to have been hospitalised over the same incident, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.

The Warwick Fiji hotel said in a statement to the BBC that they are taking the matter “very seriously” and are “conducting a thorough investigation” while awaiting a “test result report” from the health authorities to “gather all necessary information”.

Fiji police are said to be investigating the circumstances of the incident.

Two Australian families in Fiji are receiving consular assistance, an Australian foreign ministry spokesperson told the BBC.

A New Zealand foreign affairs ministry spokesperson told the BBC it had “not received any requests for assistance” after the apparent alcohol poisoning incident.

The BBC also understands that no British persons were affected in the incident.

“There’s a real terrifying sense of deja vu,” Australian minister Jason Clare told the ABC. Two 19-year-old Australian girls had died from suspected methanol poisoning in the Laos incident.

Tourists have been advised to “be alert to the potential risks around drink spiking and methanol poisoning through consuming alcoholic drinks in Fiji” by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The guidance said tourists should “get urgent medical help if you suspect drink spiking”.

An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road into the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet Israel’s army.

Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear man an impromptu checkpoint – a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved us through.

It was evidence of Israel’s incursion into Syrian territory – the temporary seizure, it said, of a UN-monitored buffer zone, set up in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.

“Maybe they’ll leave, maybe they’ll stay, maybe they’ll make the area safe then go away,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

The village chief, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the Golan Heights territory Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from Hadar’s terraces.

Many residents here have relatives still living there.

Now, they see Israeli forces routinely moving around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the hillside.

A week after President Assad’s regime fell, the sense of freedom here comes tinged with fatalism.

Jawdat al-Tawil told me proudly how the village had defended itself against militia groups during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of the dozens of men who had died doing so.

“We don’t allow anyone to transgress on our land,” he said. “[But] Israel is a state – we can’t stand against it. We used to stand up to individuals, but Israel is a super-power.”

Since the fall of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel has also carried out hundreds of airstrikes on military targets across Syria.

And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced new plans to double the population of Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, saying the move was needed because of “the new front” that had opened up in Syria.

Speaking before that plan was unveiled, Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa warned Israel’s military manoeuvres risked unwarranted escalation in the region and said his administration did not want conflict with Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said its actions were necessary because of threats posed by jihadist groups operating along the ceasefire line with Syria, describing its military incursions there as “limited and temporary”.

The residents of Hadar belong mainly to the Druze community – a tight-knit, introverted group which splintered from mainstream Shia Islam centuries ago.

When Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, and later unilaterally annexed it, some of the Druze there opted to remain and take Israeli citizenship.

Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that forced President Assad from power this month, has his family roots in the occupied Golan Heights.

Some here on the Syrian-controlled side fear Israel’s plan is to grab more territory for itself.

For years, Israel has been battling the Iran-backed militia there that supported Assad. This border region is a key weapons-supply route between Tehran and the proxy forces it maintains, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

Assad’s fall has left those groups – and Iran – weaker. But Israel has since stepped up its military campaign, taking advantage of the political vacuum to extend its reach.

It has also been targeting military equipment left by Assad’s forces at bases across the country, worried about who might end up using it in the future.

Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that the “immediate risks” to Israel remained, and the recent developments in Syria had increased the threat, “despite the moderate appearance that rebel leaders claim to present”.

Marginalised by the Assad regime, and targeted as infidels by Sunni jihadist groups like HTS, Syria’s Druze are more tolerant of Israel than many other communities here.

The village used to fight against the Iran-backed groups Israel sees as a threat here, but Jawdat al-Tawil told me that alliances in the area were shifting, and that he was now talking to these groups about reaching a deal.

Syria is not a place where people have relied on only one ally, or fight only one enemy.

“We just need peace,” resident Riyad Zaidan told me. “We’ve had enough war, enough blood, enough hard life – we need to stop.”

Religious minorities like the Druze suffered under Assad. The country’s new leaders from HTS have promised tolerance and respect for Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups.

But eight years ago the group was still aligned with global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda.

It was around the time HTS split from al-Qaeda in 2016 that Jawdat al-Tawil’s son, Abdo, was killed by their militiamen on the outskirts of Hadar, while fighting for the Syrian Army.

He showed me the path where 30-year-old Abdo died and I asked how he felt about HTS taking control of Syria now.

“At first, they were gangs. Now they have got rid of the tyrant [Assad], and have come to power,” he said. “They’re supposed to rule with justice, provide safety and ensure people’s rights.”

“It’s not clear yet if they’ve changed,” he said. “I hope so.”

An OpenAI researcher-turned-whistleblower has been found dead in an apartment in San Francisco, authorities said.

The body of Suchir Balaji, 26, was discovered on 26 November after police said they received a call asking officers to check on his wellbeing.

The San Francisco medical examiner’s office determined his death to be suicide and police found no evidence of foul play.

In recent months Mr Balaji had publicly spoken out against artificial intelligence company OpenAI’s practices, which has been fighting a number of lawsuits relating to its data-gathering practices.

In October, the New York Times published an interview with Mr Balaji in which he alleged that OpenAI had violated US copyright law while developing its popular ChatGPT online chatbot.

The article said that after working at the company for four years as a researcher, Mr Balaji had come to the conclusion that “OpenAI’s use of copyrighted data to build ChatGPT violated the law and that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet”.

OpenAI says its models are “trained on publicly available data”.

Mr Balaji left the company in August, telling the New York Times he had since been working on personal projects.

He grew up in Cupertino, California, before going to study computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

A spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement cited by CNBC News that it was “devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time”.

US and Canadian news publishers, including the New York Times, and a group of best-selling writers, including John Grisham, have filed lawsuits claiming the company was illegally using news articles to train its software.

OpenAI told the BBC in November its software is “grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation”.

BBC Action Line, , or contact Samaritans.

If you’re in the US, call 988, or contact Lifeline.

Two Russian oil tankers have been badly damaged in the Black Sea, causing an oil spill, authorities in Russia have said.

Footage released by Russia’s Southern Transport Prosecutor’s Office showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off, with streaks of oil visible in the water.

Both tankers are believed to have drifted before running aground offshore. At least one crew member was reportedly killed.

The incident took place in the Kerch Strait, which separates Russia from Crimea – the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

A rescue operation involving tugboats, helicopters and more than 50 personnel saw 13 crew members rescued from one tanker, before being suspended due to bad weather.

The 14 remaining crew members aboard the second tanker are said to have “everything necessary for immediate life support” on board with them, but look set to be stranded until conditions improve.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered a working group to be set up to deal with the incident, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev – and authorities are investigating for criminal negligence.

Michelle Bockmann, an analyst at shipping industry journal Lloyd’s List, told the BBC the two vessels are owned by the company Volgatanker and were relatively small.

They had been carrying around 4,300 dead weight tonnes of oil each, according to Russian officials quoted by Tass news agency.

A tanker used for trading Russian crude oil internationally generally has a much larger carrying capacity of around 120,000 dead weight tonnes, Bockmann said, meaning it is likely these tankers were used for transporting oil through Russia’s rivers or in coastal waters.

The Kerch Strait is a key route for exports of Russian grain and it is also used for exports of crude oil, fuel oil and liquefied natural gas.

In 2007, another oil tanker – Volgoneft-139 – split in half during a storm while anchored off the Kerch Strait, spilling more than 1,000 tonnes of oil.

Russian oil imports have been heavily sanctioned by allies of Ukraine since the Kremlin ordered the full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

In recent years, Russia has been accused of using a so-called ghost fleet of tankers, which are often poorly maintained and lack proper insurance, to move oil and circumvent sanctions – though Bockmann said it did not appear the tankers involved in Sunday’s incident were part of that fleet.

Zakir Hussain, one of the world’s greatest tabla players, has died at the age of 73.

The Indian classical music icon died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease, at a hospital in San Francisco, his family said in a statement.

Hussain was a four-time Grammy award winner and has received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award.

The son of tabla maestro Ustad Alla Rakha Khan, Hussain was a child prodigy who performed his first concert at the age of seven.

Tributes have started pouring in from across the world.

Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan is known for some of India’s most popular films, including Lagaan and 3 Idiots.

So great is his appeal, he can barely walk down the street without getting mobbed by fans.

What’s less well known is that he secretly quit films during the Covid pandemic in order to spend more time with his loved ones.

“I told my family I’m done with acting and films,” he tells BBC News.

“I [didn’t] want to produce or direct or act. I just wanted to be with the family.”

You’d imagine a major star like Khan deciding to quit the industry would have sent shockwaves through India, a nation that is fully obsessed with films.

But, he explains, his decision went unnoticed at the time because so few movies were being made due to the pandemic.

“No-one knew about it,” he says.

Fans can breathe a sigh of relief, though.

Khan didn’t quit for long. And now he’s back and is promoting Laapataa Ladies – or Lost Ladies – a film he’s produced. It is India’s official pick for the Oscars in the best international feature film category.

Khan says it was his children who convinced him to go back to work.

“They were like, ‘But we can’t spend 24 hours with you. So get real and get a life.’ So they gently nudged me back into the films,” he says.

• Can zombies and witches save Bollywood from its troubles?
• Nostalgic Indians flock to cinemas to watch old hits
• Alia Bhatt: The young Bollywood star taking on Hollywood

At 59, Khan has worked as an actor, director and producer for three decades.

He’s known as one of the three “Khans of Bollywood” – the others being fellow megastars Shah Rukh and Salman.

Known for tackling social issues, Aamir’s films are widely acclaimed as well as breaking box office records.

He is also no stranger to the Oscars. Lagaan, a film about cricket set in the 19th Century during the British Empire, was nominated for best foreign language film in 2002.

Khan is now trying to make history with Laapataa Ladies. If it succeeds, it would be the first Indian film to win the coveted international prize. He will find out whether it has made the shortlist on Tuesday.

Khan said he’s “not quite sure how seriously” to take awards. “Cinema is so subjective,” he says.

But he admits a win would mean a lot to India.

“I think Indians are so film crazy and we’ve been dying to win the Academy Award for an Indian film, which hasn’t happened till now. So the country will go ballistic. They’ll just go mad if we win,” he says.

“So just for the people of our country and for our country, I would be really happy if we win the award.”

Set in rural India, Laapataa Ladies tells the story of a young man bringing the wrong bride home. Meanwhile, his wife ends up lost, having to fend for herself.

It’s a satire looking at the treatment of women, including touching on the sensitive topic of domestic violence.

Khan describes the plot as “a bit Shakespearean”, with its focus on humour and mistaken identities.

But, he adds, it’s saying “a lot of important things about women’s issues, their independence, their right to decide for themselves what they want to do”.

It was these issues that drew him to the film in the first place, he explains.

“Every now and then you get an opportunity as a creative person to actually also sensitise people about certain issues that we face in society,” he says.

“Women all over the world have been subjected to a lot of challenges in their lives. Women have a raw deal in life. So I felt that here is a story which really brings that out well in such a nice way, which is why I wanted to produce it.”

Khan was also “very keen” that his ex-wife, Kiran Rao, should direct the film.

The pair, who married in 2005, announced their separation in 2021. But they have remained close, both professionally and personally.

“I think the reason I chose Kiran was because I knew that she would be very honest with it and that’s what I wanted,” he says.

“We get along really well. We really love each other, we respect each other.

“Our relationship may have changed slightly – but that doesn’t mean what we feel for each other has gone down or something.”

That’s not to say it’s all been plain sailing, however.

Khan admits there were arguments on set.

“We can’t make a film without an argument. So we argue every point and we have strong opinions,” he says.

“But our sensibilities are very similar. We are not talking about fundamental things. We are just trying to sometimes convince the other person a better way of conveying something.”

Bollywood produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

The sway the films and stars have on their fans’ imagination cannot be overstated.

It has had recent success at the Academy Awards, with Naatu Naatu from RRR winning best original song and The Elephant Whisperers awarded best documentary short film.

But victory in the international film category has so far eluded it, something Khan attributes to the competition.

“India has made really great films over the years. Occasionally it’s a matter of the right film not getting sent or the best film not getting sent,” he says.

“But otherwise we have to understand that the films you’re competing against – you’re not competing against five or six films, you’re competing against almost 80 or 90 films, which are the best in the world.”

As to whether a Bollywood film could one day scoop the best overall film award, Khan says it is “possible”.

But Indian film-makers would first need to start making movies for a global market, he adds.

“I’ve never really looked at an international audience,” he says. “We have such a large audience of our own that it doesn’t come in to our mind.

“That will only happen when Indians start making films for a world audience. I don’t think we have the bandwidth for it right now.”

For now, Khan is focusing on a range of projects alongside Laapataa Ladies, which also include his next film Sitaare Zameen Par, due for release in 2025.

Looking further out, he’s hoping to make one film a year, while his “dream project” is to take on Mahabharat – the ancient Indian epic.

But since unretiring from film, he is determined to do things differently. Again, this was influenced by his children.

“My son said, ‘You’re an extreme person’,” he says.

“He said, ‘You’re like a pendulum. You only did films, films, films. And now you want to swing to the other side and do no films and be with family, family, family. There is a middle place also you can think about’.”

Khan says his son told him to “try and bring some balance” into his life.

“And I thought he was right. So since then, that’s what I’ve been trying to do – living a balanced life where I’m working really hard, in fact I’m doing much more work that I ever did, but I don’t work after 6 o’clock any more.”

Khan says he has also started therapy in recent years, inspired by his daughter Ira, who works in mental health.

“I think that’s something that’s really helped me. That’s really helped me understand myself better.

“I’m actually finding that balance between work and a personal life. So I feel that I’ve reached that space now.”