A student opened fire at a private Christian school in the US state of Wisconsin, injuring six people and killing a teacher and teenaged student.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes identified the attacker on Monday night as a 15-year-old female student at the school.

Authorities say the attacker was in attendance at Abundant Life Christian School before opening fire and was found dead at the scene. Six students were injured, including two who suffered life-threatening injuries.

A second grade student was the first to call in the active shooter report, according to Chief Barnes.

“Today is a sad day not only for Madison, for our entire country,” Chief Barnes said. “We have to do a better job in our community.”

He added the police had not identified a motive in the shooting, and the suspect’s family was co-operating with the investigation.

He said it is not yet clear how the attacker got hold of a firearm.

He named the alleged attacker as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha. She is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The official cause of death will be released by the Dane County Medical Examiner pending autopsy results.

Chief Barnes said that, to his current knowledge, police had not had any prior interactions with the alleged shooter.

Officers responded to a 911 call of a shooter at the Christian school around 11:00 local time (17:00GMT) on Monday. The attacker attended school before the shooting, Chief Barnes said.

The shooting was confined to a study hall with students in mixed grades.

Barbara Wiers, director of relations at the school, said the school had conducted active shooter training earlier this year and the information was “very fresh” for educators to put into practice on Monday.

She said while the school does not have a dedicated police officer, known as a school resource officer, the doors of all classrooms automatically lock and anyone wanting to gain entry to the campus must be buzzed in through the primary entrance.

Ms Wiers, who said she was teaching at the time of the attack, said students handled themselves “brilliantly”.

“They were clearly scared,” she said. “When they heard ‘lockdown, lockdown’ and nothing else, they knew it was real.”

Police say they found the shooter dead when they arrived at the school, along with a handgun. No officers fired weapons.

Police have not named any of the victims.

Chief Barnes said two students were in critical but stable condition in the hospital facing life-threatening injuries. Four others were taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries, two of whom have since been released.

Authorities have appealed for witnesses who saw or heard the attack to come speak to police, and that they hope these accounts will shed light on the attacker’s motive.

“But that’s not something we want to rush. We’re not gonna interrogate students,” Chief Barnes said. “We’re gonna give them an opportunity to come in and tell us what they saw when they’re ready.”

He added that “ever child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever”.

The chief said officers responded to the school as they were undergoing training at a training centre for law enforcement located three miles away.

“What began as a training day became an actual day,” he said.

The shooting also resulted in a large response from emergency officials. Madison Fire Chief Chris Carbon said 15 ambulances respond.

Officials from the FBI also responded, as well as other federal and local law enforcement officials.

The Abundant Life Christian School has around 400 students ranging from kindergarten through high school.

“Please pray for our Challenger Family,” the school wrote in a post on Facebook. The post quickly received hundreds of comments of support from people across the US.

The school remains closed while police continue their investigation.

“This has been a rough day for our city,” said Chief Barnes.

“This is going to be a day that will be etched in the collective minds and memories of all those from Madison.”

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said that he was closely monitoring the situation and praying for everyone involved. He also ordered that flags fly at half mast on state buildings.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the shooting was “shocking and unconscionable”.

“Students across our country should be learning how to read and write – not having to learn how to duck and cover,” said Biden, who also called on Congress to act immediately on legislation that could prevent more gun violence.

Shootings are common in the US, and schools are no exception.

The K-12 Violence Project, a non-profit working on reducing violence through accessible and actionable research, has counted more than 300 shootings in 2024. These include events where a gun is brandished or fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims.

According to the news organisation EducationWeek, 38 school shootings have resulted in deaths or injuries across the US this year. There were a total of 69 victims – including 16 deaths – before today’s shooting.

Mass shootings by females are far less common, however. School shootings committed by female attackers are even less common.

In a blog post last year, K-12 School Shooting Database founder David Riedman wrote that the vast majority of school shooters are males in their teens or early 20’s. However, at least four planned school shootings were by female attackers dating back to 1979.

Over the last three decades, at least 565 children in the Indian state of West Bengal have been injured or killed by home-made bombs, a BBC Eye investigation has found.

So what are these deadly devices and how are they linked to political violence in West Bengal? And why are so many Bengali children paying the price?

On a bright summer morning in May 1996, six boys from a slum in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, stepped out to play cricket in a narrow alley.

Their shantytown, nestled in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jodhpur Park, thrummed with life. It was a holiday – voting day in a general election.

Nine-year-old Puchu Sardar, one of the boys, grabbed a cricket bat and quietly slipped past his sleeping father. Soon, the cracking noise of bat meeting ball echoed through the alley.

A ball batted out of the boundaries of their makeshift pitch sent the boys searching for it in a small garden nearby. There, in a black plastic bag, they found six round objects.

They looked like cricket balls someone had left behind, and the boys returned to the game with their spoils.

One of the “balls” from the bag was bowled at Puchu who struck it with his bat.

A deafening explosion tore through the alley. It was a bomb.

As the smoke lifted and neighbours rushed outside, they found Puchu and five of his friends sprawled on the street, their skin blackened, clothes scorched, bodies torn.

Screams pierced the chaos.

Seven-year-old Raju Das, an orphan raised by his aunt, and seven-year-old Gopal Biswas died of their injuries. Four other boys were wounded.

Puchu narrowly survived, having suffered serious burns and shrapnel wounds to his chest, face and abdomen.

He spent over a month in hospital. When he came home he had to use kitchen tongs to remove shrapnel still lodged in his body because his family had run out of money to pay for any more medical care.

Puchu and his friends are part of a long, tragic list of children killed or maimed by crude bombs, which have been used in West Bengal for decades in a bloody battle for dominance in the state’s violent politics.

There are no publicly-available figures on the number of casualties in West Bengal.

So the BBC World Service went through every edition of two prominent state newspapers – Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman Patrika – from 1996 to 2024, looking for reports of children injured or killed by these devices.

We found at least 565 child casualties – 94 deaths and 471 injuries – as of 10 November. This means a child has fallen victim to bomb violence, on average, every 18 days.

However, the BBC has found incidents in which children were wounded by these bombs that were not reported by the two newspapers, so the real number of casualties is likely to be higher.

More than 60% of these incidents involved children playing outdoors – gardens, streets, farms, even near schools – where bombs, typically used during elections to terrorise opponents, were hidden.

Most victims the BBC spoke to were poor, the children of house-help, odd-jobbers, or farm workers.

West Bengal, India’s fourth-largest state with a population of more than 100 million, has long struggled with political violence.

Over the years, since India’s independence in 1947, the state has cycled through different rulers – the Congress party for two decades, the Communist-led Left Front for three, and the current Trinamool Congress since 2011.

In the late 1960s, the state was wracked by armed conflict between Maoist rebels – also called Naxalites – and government forces.

A common thread across all governments and rebel conflicts since then has been the use of bombs as tools of intimidation by political parties to silence opponents, especially during elections.

“Bombs have been [used to settle scores]. This has been happening in Bengal for a long time, more than 100 years,” Pankaj Dutta, a former Inspector General of West Bengal police, told us.

Bomb-making in Bengal has its roots in the rebellion against British rule in the early 1900s.

Early efforts were crude and accidents were common: One rebel lost a hand and another died testing a bomb.

Then a rebel returned from France armed with bomb-making skills.

His book bomb – a legal tome loaded with explosives hidden in a Cadbury cocoa tin – would have killed its target, a British magistrate, if he had opened it.

The first explosion rocked Midnapore district in 1907, when revolutionaries derailed a train carrying a senior British official by planting a bomb on the tracks.

A few months later, a botched attempt to kill a magistrate in Muzaffarpur with a bomb hurled into a horse-drawn carriage claimed the lives of two Englishwomen.

The act, described by a newspaper as a “tremendous explosion that startled the town,” had turned a teenage rebel called Khudiram Bose into a martyr and the first “freedom fighter” in the pantheon of Indian revolutionaries.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a nationalist leader, wrote in 1908 that bombs were not just weapons but a new kind of “magical lore,” a “witchcraft” spreading from Bengal to the rest of India.

Today, Bengal’s crude bombs are known locally as peto. They are bound with jute strings and stuffed with shrapnel-like nails, nuts and glass.

Variations include explosives packed into steel containers or glass bottles. They are used primarily in violent clashes between rival political parties.

Political activists, particularly in rural areas, use these bombs to intimidate opponents, disrupt voting stations, or retaliate against perceived enemies.

They are often deployed during elections to sabotage polling booths or to assert control over areas.

Children like Poulami Halder bear the brunt of such violence.

On an April morning in 2018, the-then seven-year-old was picking flowers for morning prayers in Gopalpur, a village in the North 24 Parganas district dotted with ponds, paddy fields, and coconut trees. Village council elections were barely a month away.

Poulami saw a ball lying near a neighbour’s water pump.

“I picked it up and brought it home,” she recalls.

As she stepped inside, her grandfather, sipping tea, froze at the sight of the object in her hand.

“He said, ‘It’s not a ball – it’s a bomb! Throw it away!’ Before I could react, it exploded in my hand.”

The blast shattered the quiet of the village. Poulami was struck in the “eyes, face, and hands” and fainted, as chaos erupted around her.

“I remember people running towards me, but I could see very little. I was hit everywhere.”

Villagers rushed her to the hospital.

Her injuries were devastating – her left hand was amputated, and she spent nearly a month in hospital.

An ordinary morning routine had turned into a nightmare, forever altering Poulami’s life in a single, shattering moment.

Poulami is not alone.

Sabina Khatun was 10 years old when a crude bomb exploded in her hand in April 2020 in Jitpur, a village flanked by rice and jute fields in Murshidabad district.

She had been taking her goat out to graze when she stumbled upon the bomb lying in the grass. Curious, she picked it up and began playing with it.

Moments later, it detonated in her hands.

“The moment I heard the explosion, I thought, who’s going to be disabled this time? Has Sabina been maimed?,” her mother, Ameena Bibi, says, her voice heavy with anguish.

“When I stepped outside, I saw people carrying Sabina in their arms. The flesh was visible from her hand.”

Doctors were forced to amputate Sabina’s hand.

Since returning home, she has struggled to rebuild her life, her parents consumed by despair over an uncertain future. Their fears are not unwarranted: In India, women with disabilities often face social stigma that complicate their prospects for marriage and jobs.

“My daughter kept crying, saying she would never get her hand back,” says Ameena.

“I kept consoling her, telling her, ‘your hand will grow back, your fingers will grow back.'”

Now, Sabina grapples with the loss of her hand and the struggle with simple daily tasks. “I struggle with drinking water, eating, showering, getting dressed, going to the toilet.”

The children of the bombs

In the Indian state of West Bengal, children are routinely maimed, blinded, or killed by home-made bombs. BBC Eye investigates the political violence that underlies this tragedy and asks why the carnage is allowed to continue.

Watch on iPlayer or, if you are outside the UK, watch on YouTube

Maimed by bombs yet lucky to survive, these children have had their lives changed forever.

Poulami, now 13, received an artificial hand but couldn’t use it – too heavy and quickly outgrown. Sabina, 14, struggles with failing eyesight.

Her family says she needs another operation to remove bomb debris from her eyes, but they cannot afford it.

Puchu, now 37, was pulled out of school by his fearful parents and spent years refusing to step outside, often hiding under his bed at the slightest noise.

He never picked up a cricket bat again. His childhood stolen, he’s now scraping by with odd construction jobs and bears the scars of his past.

But all hope is not lost.

Poulami and Sabina have both learned to ride a bicycle with one hand and continue to go to school. Both dream of becoming teachers. Puchu hopes for a brighter future for his son, Rudra, five, – a future in uniform as a policeman.

Despite the terrible toll it inflicts, there is no sign of crude bomb violence in West Bengal ending.

None of the political parties admit to using bombs for political gain.

When the BBC asked the four main political parties in West Bengal whether they were involved, directly or through intermediaries, in manufacturing or using crude bombs, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not respond.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) strongly denied being involved, saying it was “committed to upholding the rule of law…and that when it comes to protecting rights and lives, children are of the utmost concern”.

The Indian National Congress (INC) also strongly denied using crude bombs for electoral advantage, and said it had “never engaged in any violence for political or personal gain”.

Although no political party will admit responsibility, none of the experts who spoke to the BBC is in any doubt this carnage is rooted in Bengal’s culture of political violence.

“During any major election here you will see the rampant use of bombs,” Pankaj Dutta told us. “Extreme abuse of childhood is going on. It is a lack of care on the part of the society.” Mr Dutta passed away in November.

Poulami adds: “Those who planted the bombs are still free. No one should leave bombs lying around. No child should ever be harmed like this again.”

But the tragedy continues.

In May this year in the Hooghly district, three boys playing near a pond unknowingly stumbled upon a cache of bombs. The explosion killed Raj Biswas, nine, and left his friend maimed, missing an arm. The other boy escaped with leg fractures.

“Look what they have done to my son,” Raj’s grieving father sobbed as he caressed the forehead of his dead child.

As Raj’s body was lowered into a grave, political slogans crackled through the air from a nearby election rally: “Hail Bengal!” the crowd chanted, “Hail Bengal!”

It was election time. And once again, children were paying the price.

A New York judge has ruled Donald Trump’s hush money conviction is valid, rejecting the president-elect’s argument that it should be dismissed in the wake of a landmark immunity ruling from the US Supreme Court.

In July, the country’s top court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official actions” they take while in office.

But on Monday, Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan – who presided over Trump’s trial this past spring – sided with prosecutors, saying the convictions on 34 felony counts centred on “unofficial conduct”.

The decision preserves Trump’s historic conviction which, if upheld, would make Trump the first felon to serve in the White House.

In his 41-page ruling, Justice Merchan pushed back on Trump’s argument that the government’s case relied on evidence related to his official work as president, which would be covered by immunity.

The evidence shown at trial pertained “entirely to unofficial conduct”, he wrote. And the judge noted that in its own ruling the Supreme Court had found that “not everything the president does is official”, even if done from the Oval Office.

In a statement to US media, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung criticised the ruling, calling it “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity”.

“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Mr Cheung said.

In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records.

The conviction stemmed from Trump’s attempt to cover up reimbursements to his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who in 2016 paid off an adult film star to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Justice Merchan had been scheduled to rule on the conviction on 12 November, but he postponed the decision, saying he wanted to hear from prosecutors on how to move forward with the case following Trump’s re-election.

In the days since, Trump filed another motion to dismiss the case, arguing that his forthcoming return to the White House required the case to be tossed.

Now, following Justice Merchan’s ruling, Trump’s team is almost certain to seek further delays and appeals.

And the judge is still yet to decide whether to issue a sentence before Trump assumes office in January, after his term ends in 2029 or not at all.

• Judge delays Trump sentencing for a third time
• Trump gets $15m in ABC News defamation case
• A guide to Donald Trump’s four criminal cases

Residents of Mayotte have spoken of “apocalyptic scenes” caused by the worst storm in 90 years to hit the French Indian Ocean territory.

Cyclone Chido brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph), flattening areas where the poorest lived in sheet-metal roof shacks.

“We’ve had no water for three days now,” said one resident of the capital city Mamoudzou. “Some of my neighbours are hungry and thirsty,” another one said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he will be travelling to Mayotte “in the coming days”, as he pledged to support fellow citizens, civil servants and emergency services involved in rescue efforts.

• Are you in Mayotte? Please share your experiences
• What are cyclones?

Rescue workers, including reinforcements from France, are combing through the debris searching for survivors. Twenty people have been confirmed dead, but the local prefect said it could be thousands.

Macron said he will declare a national day of mourning, in light of “this tragedy, which has shaken each and every one of us”.

Authorities said they were having difficulty establishing the number of deaths due to the large number of undocumented migrants – over 100,000 – in a population of 320,000.

Widespread damage to infrastructure – with downed power lines and impassable roads – is severely hindering emergency operations.

Supplies have begun to arrive, but there are severe shortages of food, water and shelter in certain areas. Some 85% of the territory remains without power, and about 20% of phones appear to be working. Some areas are beginning to get tap water.

But for Amalia Mazon, a 27-year-old midwife from Brussels who has been working at the island’s central hospital, access to drinking water and food continues to be a concern.

“The water here is completely yellow. It’s unusable for us,” Ms Mazon told the BBC.

“We feel completely abandoned, and we don’t even know if help is coming. We have no news, we have no idea,” the midwife added.

Acting French health minister Geneviève Darrieussecq said the healthcare system in the archipelago had been “degraded” by the cyclone.

France colonised Mayotte in 1841 – and by the turn of the 20th Century added the three main islands that constitute the Comoros archipelago to its overseas territories.

The Comoros voted to become independent in 1974 but Mayotte decided to remain part of France.

The island’s population is heavily dependent on French financial aid and has struggled with poverty, unemployment and political instability.

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

“The images are apocalyptic. It’s a disaster, there’s nothing left,” a nurse working at the main hospital in Mamoudzou told BFM TV.

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

“Everything is damaged, nearly everything, the water treatment plant, electric pylons, there’s a lot to do.”

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

“It’s the hunger that worries me most,” Mayotte Senator Salama Ramia told French media. “There are people who have had nothing to eat or drink” since Saturday, she said.

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

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.

The Muslim tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours also meant documenting the number of those who have perished was more difficult, the prefect said.

In addition to aid, 110 French soldiers have arrived to help with the rescue, with another 160 on the way. Some 800 others from the ranks of volunteers helping during emergencies were also being sent to join local police units.

After arriving in Mayotte, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said “days and days” would be needed to ascertain human losses.

The relief operation is being co-ordinated from Reunion – another French overseas territory.

French Red Cross spokesman Eric Sam Vah told the BBC the situation was “chaotic”.

He said the organisation had been able to reach only 20 out of 200 Red Cross volunteers in Mayotte and echoed fears about the overall number of deaths.

“The totality of the slums have been totally destroyed, we haven’t received any reports of displaced people, so the reality could be terrible in the coming days,” the spokesman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Cyclone Chido also made landfall in Mozambique, where it brought flash flooding, uprooted trees and damaged buildings about 25 miles (40km) south of the northern city of Pemba. Three deaths have been reported.

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

Chido is the latest deadly storm to form of such high intensity.

It strengthened as a result of its long track over the ocean, says Sarah Keith-Lucas from the BBC Weather Centre. The cyclone would have weakened had it made landfall on Madagascar’s rugged terrain.

But it is also the case that climate change has an impact – not necessarily in the frequency of storms but in the strength, Keith-Lucas says.

The storm has been now downgraded to a “depression” and is due to cross southern Malawi, then Mozambique’s Tete province, before heading towards Zimbabwe overnight into Tuesday.

It may still bring 150-300mm of rain by the end of Tuesday.

Yang Tengbo has been identified as the 50-year-old Chinese businessman and alleged spy banned from the UK.

UK authorities have alleged he formed an “unusual degree of trust” with Prince Andrew and developed relationships with politicians to be “leveraged” by China.

Details of the allegations against Mr Yang came to light last week when a Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal upheld a Home Office order banning him from the UK on national security grounds following a long-running legal battle.

A court order which meant he could previously only be identified as H6 was lifted on Monday.

Mr Yang has said the allegation he is a spy is “entirely untrue” and denied doing anything unlawful.

Yang Tengbo, also known as Chris Yang, was born in China in 1974. He first came to the UK in 2002 and studied in London for a year, before taking a masters degree in public administration and public policy at the University of York.

In 2005 he founded consultancy firm Hampton Group International – one of five companies he has been publicly listed as a director of in the UK.

On 21 May 2013 he was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. He told the tribunal that he spent up to two weeks in the UK each month on average prior to the pandemic.

After his anonymity was removed on Monday, he described the UK as his “second home” and said he “would never do anything to harm” it.

On 6 November 2021, Mr Yang was stopped at the UK border for reasons which have not been made public. He surrendered his phone and other digital devices.

In February 2022, he filed a legal claim to stop the UK government from retaining his data – a bid he first won and then lost on appeal.

He was then told UK authorities believed he was associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) – the secretive arm of the Chinese government that organises Beijing’s cultural influence operations.

The UFWD has been linked to several cases of alleged Chinese state interference in Western countries and researchers say it often works to try and co-opt legitimate Chinese business and community groups in foreign countries.

A year later in February 2023, Mr Yang was “off-boarded” from a flight to London as he was returning from Beijing. He was told the UK was in the process of making a decision to bar him from the country.

Mr Yang’s lawyers asked for the government to disclose the allegations against him and for an opportunity to make his case.

On 15 March 2023, then Home Secretary Suella Braverman ordered the cancellation of Mr Yang’s residency rights. She banned him from the UK because it would be “conducive to the public good”.

Mr Yang was informed of this on 23 March 2023 and he launched a legal challenge shortly after.

Some of the evidence which informed the Home Office’s decision to ban Mr Yang was included in a court ruling upholding the decision published last week.

Authorities relied on data found on Mr Yang’s devices when he was stopped in 2021, including documents which UK authorities said indicated a link with the UFWD and other Beijing-linked groups.

UK authorities argued these showed he was “frequently connected to officials connected with the Chinese state”. They also said he had “sometimes deliberately obscured” his links to the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party and the UFWD, and alleged there was a “deceptive element” to his account.

The Home Office also argued that even though Mr Yang said he hadn’t received direct orders to interfere with UK interests, “those in his position could be expected to understand UFWD and CCP objectives” and “proactively engage in them without being tasked”.

They also pointed to Mr Yang’s membership of the London-based 48 Group Club, which promotes trade between the UK and China. Security officials argued Mr Yang’s honorary membership could be leveraged for political interference purposes by Beijing.

In a response to the US-funded Radio Free Asia, the 48 Group Club said Mr Yang was never actively involved the running of the group.

While the tribunal ruled there was not an “abundance” of evidence against Mr Yang in some instances, and said there may be an “innocent explanation” in others, it ultimately decided there was “sufficient” material to justify MI5’s conclusion that he posed a security risk.

Mr Yang said he will appeal the ruling.

Watch: ‘China’s Magic Weapon’, a 2021 documentary on China’s efforts to expand its influence in the West.

UK authorities discovered a letter from Dominic Hampshire, a senior adviser to Prince Andrew, who said Mr Yang could act on behalf of the prince in engagements with potential investors in China.

Mr Hampshire also told Mr Yang in a letter: “Outside of [the prince’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.”

It is unclear if this was a true assertion put forward by Mr Hampshire, who has not spoken publicly since being named in the ruling.

But the Home Office assessed this as evidence that Mr Yang was in a position to “generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials” which “could be leveraged for political interference purposes” by Beijing.

A document listing “main talking points” for a call with Prince Andrew was also found, saying the prince was “in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”

Prince Andrew said he “ceased all contact” with Mr Yang after receiving advice from the government, but did not specify when communication stopped. His office said they met “through official channels” and there was “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”.

Mr Yang has strongly denied the allegations against him. In his first submission to the tribunal, he said he had no connections to anyone in politics in China, had never been a member of the Chinese Communist Party and had never carried out activities on its behalf for for the UFWD.

In further submissions, he also said he only had limited links to the Chinese State and that “contact with the UFWD is unavoidable”.

Mr Yang said he had become a victim of a new political climate in which the UK has hardened its views towards China.

“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded,” Mr Yang said.

A Beijing foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday “it is not worth refuting this kind of unjust hype”, adding to a statement last week which said “some individuals in the UK are always eager to fabricate baseless ‘spy’ stories targeting China”.

Noor stands trembling in the chill afternoon light of the courtyard, not from the cold, but from fear.

Dressed in her thick winter coat, she has come to make a complaint to the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria’s new de-facto rulers, and the new law in town.

She begins to cry as she explains that three days earlier, just before nine in the evening, armed men had arrived in a black van at her apartment in an upscale neighbourhood of the city of Latakia. Along with her children and her husband, an army officer, she was forced out onto the street in her pyjamas. The leader of the armed men then moved his own family into her home.

Noor – not her real name – is Alawite, the minority sect from which the Assad family originates, and to which many of the former regime’s political and military elite belonged. Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni. Latakia, on Syria’s north-west Mediterranean coast is their heartland.

As with other cities, an array of different rebel groups have rushed into the power vacuum left after Assad’s soldiers abandoned their posts. The regime had exploited sectarian divisions to maintain its grip on power, now the Sunni Islamist HTS has pledged to respect all religions in Syria. But Latakia’s Alawite population is fearful.

Some people haven’t even left their homes since the regime change because they worry that there will be a reckoning, and that they will have to pay a heavy price for the support of the old regime.

Noor shows CCTV footage from her apartment, to 34-year-old Abu Ayoub, HTS general security commander. In the film, a group of bearded fighters, some wearing baseball caps and others in military fatigues, is pictured on her doorstep.

They are not from HTS, she says, but another group, rebels from the northern city of Aleppo.

“They broke down the door. There were 10 militants at our door and 16 others waiting down the street with three cars,” Noor tells Abu Ayoub. His men are mostly from Idlib and Aleppo, where the HTS and allied rebel factions were based before launching the offensive that overthew Assad three weeks ago. They stand around in combat fatigues, holding their rifles and listening intently as she describes how the family’s belongings were thrown into the street.

HTS was once aligned with al-Qaeda and is still proscribed as a terror organisation by most Western countries, although the UK and US say they have been in contact with the group. In a matter of weeks, it has gone from enemy of the state to the law of the land. Abu Ayoub and his men are adjusting to the change in roles from revolutionaries to policemen.

Noor is only one of a long line of complainants who have come to their general security station with grievances. The base, the city’s former military intelligence headquarters, was perhaps the most feared place in Latakia. Now it is a shambles, with broken radios and equipment scattered across the courtyard. Torn portraits of Bashar al-Assad lie in the dirt.

A man joins the queue of those making complaints. He has a black eye, broken ribs, and his shirt is torn and bloodied. He says men from Idlib had broken into his apartment.

“Some of them were civilians, some wore military clothes and were masked,” he says. “They hit my daughter and aimed weapons at my son’s head. They stole money, they stole gold.”

Every call-out here is a show of force, especially with so many armed groups in the city. With the man’s son directing them, the HTS security force drives to one of the poorer neighbourhoods, weaving through a warren of back streets, past scrapyards and middens.

The armed police take up positions along the street and at the doorway of the apartment. They bring two suspects back to the station for questioning.

But they barely have time to clear their weapons when there is another complaint, a dispute over gas bottles that left another man beaten.

He says three men had pulled guns on him.

Another race in the cars to a crowded commercial and residential neighbourhood. When the police pull a suspect out into the street – his face still bloody from the earlier fight – local women come to their balconies and shout “Shabiha! Shabiha!”. They are accusing the suspect of being a member of the shadowy militia force, mostly made of Alawite men, who did the Assad regime’s dirty work.

Since its lightning-fast sweep to victory across Syria, Islamist HTS has pledged to keep the peace and protect all of the country’s minorities. And every day Abu Ayoub has to make good on that pledge.

“Some infiltrators into the revolution, some saboteurs, and some weak-minded people are taking advantage of the situation in the areas that were recently liberated,” he says.

Abu Ayoub admits the situation in the city was “a bit chaotic” but turns his attention to Noor. “We are here now, we weren’t here when the army left. We were initially in Damascus and then we came. They are thugs, and we will evict them from your house. We will return your belongings. You have my word,” he said. And with that he orders his men into their pickup trucks and with sirens blaring they head for the apartment.

Latakia is a city liberated. Last Friday, tens of thousands of people from all sects, gathered on the streets to celebrate the downfall of the Assad dynasty. In a city square, they sat atop the plinth where the statue of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father – who ruled for 29 years before his death in 2000 – once stood, and joyfully waved the flag of a free Syria.

The message that day was unity, of one Syria, without sectarian division. But after half a century of tyrannical rule from a regime which fanned sectarian hatred and warned that Alawites would be massacred if they ever lost power, it is an adjustment to say the least.

On Saturday, three HTS fighters were killed, and 14 injured outside the city, in what it said was gun battle with a criminal gang. HTS, which is trying to maintain calm, claims there was no sectarian element to the attack.

On the way to Noor’s apartment, the HTS convoy speed through the streets and passersby cheer them and flash the peace sign.

The new Syrian flag, with its green instead of red stripe, and three red stars instead of two green, is commonplace on shop shutters and hanging from balconies. But in Alawite areas, people mostly watch in silence as the convoy moves along. There are fewer new flags in evidence.

Azam al-Ali, 28, an HTS security officer from Deir al-Sour in eastern Syria sits in the front seat. After so much oppression, he says, it will take time for people to trust authority again.

“Most of the oppressed that come with complaints are from two sects, the Sunni and the Alawite. We do not differentiate. But the extreme poverty that this regime left behind caused this vast chaos,” he tells me as the traffic parts for the convoy.

And he notes that Alawites, some of whom were among the poorest in Syria, suffered too under the Assad regime.

We arrive at Noor’s apartment and half a dozen armed HTS men hurry up the stairs.

The woman behind the door refuses to open up, but after some negotiation the door opens, and she and her family are ordered to leave. Noor goes in to retrieve some clothes and books for her daughter who is studying for exams. Weapons and ammunition belonging to the rebel squatters are confiscated.

“When I went to HTS today I was terrified,” says Noor. “Their appearance was so intimidating and frightening. Honestly, though, they were very nice.”

But she won’t be returning to the apartment. One nightmare has ended in Syria, and for Alawites, another has begun, she says.

As she clutches her belongings, Noor says she no longer feels safe in her home.

“It’s impossible for me to live here again. I do have hope, but not in the near future. At the moment I don’t dare.”

Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad says he never intended to flee to Russia – in what is purported to be his first statement since the fall of Damascus eight days ago.

Assad’s reported statement was put on the Telegram channel belonging to the Syrian presidency on Monday, although it is not clear who currently controls it – or whether he wrote it.

In it he says that, as the Syrian capital fell to rebels, he went to a Russian military base in Latakia province “to oversee combat operations” only to see that Syrian troops had abandoned positions.

Hmeimim airbase had also come under “intensified attack by drone strikes” and the Russians had decided to airlift him to Moscow, he says.

In the statement – published both in Arabic and English – the former Syrian leader reportedly describes what happened on 8 December – and how he was apparently besieged at the Russian base.

“With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December,” the statement reads.

“This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all remaining state institutions.”

• ‘I felt like a breathing corpse’: Stories from people freed from Syria torture prison
• Bowen: Syrians search for dead loved ones – and closure

The statement adds that “at no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party”.

“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” it says.

Assad was nowhere to be seen as Syrian cities and provinces fell to rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) within a period of 12 days.

However, speculation mounted that he had fled the country as even his prime minister was not able to contact him during the rebel sweep into Damascus.

On 9 December, Russian media announced that he had been given asylum there – even though there has not been any official confirmation.

The Syrian rebel groups are continuing to form a transitional government.

HTS, Syria’s most powerful rebel group, was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda the following year.

Al-Nusra broke ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and later took the name HTS when it merged with other factions. However, the UN, US, UK and a number of other countries continue to designate it as a terrorist group.

Its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has pledged tolerance for different religious groups and communities. But his group’s jihadist past has left some doubting whether it will live up to such promises.

UN envoy Geir Pedersen, who met al-Sharaa on Sunday, said Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.

Qatar has also sent a delegation to Syria to meet transitional government officials ahead of the re-opening of its embassy on Tuesday, 13 years after it was closed.

Western countries have not gone as far as re-opening their embassies, but in the past two days the US and the UK said they had been in touch with HTS. The British government made clear the Islamist-led rebel group remains a proscribed terrorist organisation, despite it beginning “diplomatic contact” with the group.

Speaking on Monday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Moscow and Tehran “should not have a place in Syria’s future”.

One of Bollywood’s biggest stars says women are taking more of a leading role in global film and TV productions.

Tabu appears in the latest episode of Dune: Prophecy – the series inspired by Frank Herbert’s classic novels and recent films.

Originally titled Dune: Sisterhood, Tabu says women, including director Anna Foerster, played a prominent role in the show both in front of and behind the camera.

“Being surrounded, feeling empowered and a feeling that you’re the ones running the show… it’s really, really nice to see that happening,” she tells BBC Asian Network News.

It’s a trend Tabu, a household name in Hindi cinema, feels is not just limited to international projects, but something she has noticed in her native industry.

“There’s been a big change all over the world where women are taking centre stage in many places.”

Tabu points to her role in the commercially successful Hindi film Crew, with a female lead cast of herself, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Kriti Sanon.

“It’s part of the big change and it was also because the woman that I was working with have accomplished so much in their fields,” Tabu, 53, says.

“They have a grip, they have control over their craft.

“They have a sense of how to deal with people because I feel everything is about people management.

“That comes with experience, maturity and putting in a lot of work in so many years of their respective careers. So that felt comforting, safe, and you felt like you were being understood.”

Dune: Prophecy is described by critics as “a bracingly different sci-fi dominated by women at every level”, with fans in India delighted by Tabu’s appearance in the show.

While she says schedules aligned to enable her to play the role of Sister Francesca, the chance to work in a different environment with an international cast was appealing.

“I always love these experiences. Because I don’t live in that world.”

She says there were people from Serbia, Spain, the UK, Ukraine and Germany involved, which helped her understand different people and cultures.

“It was very exciting, adding much more fun and drama on screen, of course, but off screen,” she says.

“I got to interact with people from so many different parts of the world.”

Tabu’s career in the industry spans several decades, with acting credits including other Western productions such as Life of Pi and A Suitable Boy.

But despite everything she’s achieved, the actor says she’s keen to not look backwards.

“Because I feel like I’ve stuttered [if I do].

“[Sometimes I feel like] I’m still new and I’m still learning so much.

“The one thing that I feel extremely grateful and overwhelmed by is I got a tremendous amount of love and respect from people or from my audiences.”

And she says she remains motivated by the types of roles she plays, like Francesca.

“That I should be able to experience this character in a completely new way.

“That I should be able to present this character in a completely new way [for the audience].

“Cinema is over 100 years old, they’ve been seeing stuff happening, actors and characters.”

Tabu also says she saw the role as an opportunity to discover more about herself.

“Because acting is such a live experience, you’re lucky to not have the luxury of your work being stuck in one place.

“You still have to put yourself out there in front of the camera, and explore yourself and express yourself every day when you’re on a film.

“That’s the only tool you have. I look at it in a personal way.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been thrown into disarray with the abrupt departure of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.

By the end of a frenetic day on Monday, a new finance minister was in place – but Canadians had yet to hear directly from Trudeau as questions about his political future reached a fever pitch.

The dramatic departure of the long-time Trudeau ally, coming with the public release of her scathing resignation letter, brought fresh uncertainty to the nation’s capital, which was already dealing with major concerns over Donald Trump’s tariff threat.

The president-elect has said he would impose a levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods after his inauguration in January unless the shared border was made more secure.

If implemented, the tariffs could have a devastating effect on the country’s economy.

• Trump tariff threat puts a strain on Canada-Mexico ties
• Trump takes jab at ‘governor’ Trudeau

Freeland’s sudden exit “just makes Canada look quite confused and uncertain”, Chris Sands, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute, told the BBC.

“Trudeau finds himself a little bit alone, not super close to any of his ministers, with the big, talented ones mostly now having left,” he added.

In her letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of choosing “costly political gimmicks” over addressing the threat posed by Trump’s “aggressive economic nationalism”.

She said her decision came after Trudeau told her last week that he no longer wanted her to be the government’s top economic adviser.

Her departure blindsided the government, leaving the fate of a scheduled economic update in the air for hours and bringing Trudeau and his shaky minority Liberals to the brink.

Mr Sands said Trump’s win in November’s US presidential election has caused a split among US allies, including Canada.

“Do you respond to Trump by pushing back and standing firm, or do you respond by trying to find a way to avoid conflict?” he said.

Trudeau has made overtures to Trump, including flying to Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s Florida estate, last month to dine with the president-elect.

But Freeland’s perspective, said Mr Sands, was closer to that of Mexico – also facing a tariff threat – and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Mexico has positioned itself under the idea that “now is the time to say no, to push back, to take a fighting stance”, he said.

Many politicians remember the challenges they faced during Trump’s first term in office, he added.

“He hasn’t been inaugurated yet, but people are already reacting as though he was the president and taking serious measures.”

Freeland, who also served as deputy prime minister, had been Ottawa’s lead during the first Trump administration in the successful re-negotiation of the US-Canada-Mexico free trade pact.

It was “a really stressful and overwhelming process for Canada”, Mr Sands said.

On Monday, Canada’s three opposition party leaders said Trudeau must go.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, called for a federal election as soon as possible.

“Everything is spiralling out of control. We simply cannot go on like this,” he said.

Canada’s next federal election must be held in October, at the latest.

Laura Stephenson, chair of the political science department at Western University, told the BBC it’s not clear that a change in leadership will affect the current US-Canada dynamic.

“I have no confidence that Trump will react any differently to Poilievre than he does to Trudeau,” she said, referencing the leader of the Conservative party.

After nine years in power, Trudeau has faced growing calls to resign over concerns he is a drag on his party’s fortunes.

The Liberal leader’s approval rate has plummeted from 63% when he was first elected to 28% in June of this year, according to one poll tracker.

Opinion polls also suggest the Liberals could face a devastating loss to the Conservatives if an election were held today.

Some Liberal members of parliament have been pressuring Trudeau for months to step down, amid both the grim poll numbers and a series of special election losses in once-safe Liberal seats.

“There’s still a number of our members who think we need a change in leadership and I’m one of them,” Chad Collins, a Liberal MP, said on Monday evening following an emergency party caucus meeting.

Many other members brushed passed reporters, while some said they remained focused on working for Canadians.

Trudeau did not take questions on his way to a party fundraiser, but he told the crowd he was “damn proud” of his government’s accomplishments.

In brief remarks, he said working for Canadian values was “at the core of what makes us Liberals”.

“That’s why we show up here, even on the toughest days as a party.”

Trudeau has defied previous calls to step aside and has said repeatedly that he plans to run in the next federal election.

Also on Monday, the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories met in Toronto to address Trump’s tariff threat.

“It’s chaos right now up in Ottawa”, said Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Ford said the premiers will “make sure that we tell the world there is stability here, there is certainty here in Canada”.

US President-elect Donald Trump is meeting the CEO of TikTok as the social media giant fights plans to have it banned in the US.

Trump was due to meet Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reports, citing sources familiar with the meeting.

A law passed earlier this year means TikTok will be banned unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, before 19 January.

The company has made an emergency application to the US Supreme Court to have the ban delayed.

The US wants TikTok sold or banned because of alleged links between ByteDance and the Chinese state, links that both TikTok and ByteDance have always denied.

The bill introducing the law said it was intended to “protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications”.

Trump opposes the ban – despite supporting one during his first term – partly on the grounds that it could help Facebook, which he has accused of aiding his 2020 election loss.

Trump’s second term, however, won’t begin until he is inaugurated on 20 January, the day after the deadline set out in the law.

In its filing to the Supreme Court, submitted on Monday, TikTok asked for a “modest delay” to the enforcement of the ban to “create breathing room” for a review by the Court and to allow the incoming administration to “evaluate this matter”.

It described TikTok as “one of the most significant speech platforms” in the US and said the ban would do “immediate irreparable harm” to the company and its users.

Earlier this month, the company’s bid to have the ban overturned was rejected by the federal appeals court, which found that the law was the “culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.

At a press conference on Monday, Trump said his administration would “take a look at TikTok”.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he said.

“There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that. TikTok had an impact.”

A majority of 18 to 29-year-olds backed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, in November, but the vote did see a significant swing towards Trump among young voters since the 2020 election.

Trump only joined TikTok in June, but gained millions of followers on the platform over the course of the campaign.

The founder of Ozy Media, Carlos Watson, has been sentenced to nearly a decade in prison for lying about his once-trendy start-up in order to attract investors.

Prosecutors said the ex-Goldman Sachs banker and former MSNBC host had orchestrated a years-long scheme that resulted in “tens of millions of dollars” of losses for investors.

The court was told Watson and others at Ozy Media falsified information about the firm’s finances, relationships with celebrities and acquisition prospects to lure investors.

Watson continues to deny the allegations and says he plans to appeal the verdict.

United States District Judge Eric R Komitee sentenced Watson to 116 months in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

“Carlos Watson orchestrated a years-long, audacious scheme to defraud investors and lenders to his company”, said Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

“His incessant and deliberate lies demonstrated not only a brazen disregard for the rule of law, but also a contempt for the values of honesty and fairness”.

Watson will remain free for now on a $3m (£2.3m) bond.

He had pleaded not guilty but was convicted in July following an eight-week trial.

In court, Watson said he was a businessman who believed in what his company was doing and had put every effort into trying to make it a success.

His lawyer had argued that he was betrayed by his deputies who had acted on their own volition and hid their wrongdoing from him.

Ozy Media’s downfall began in 2021 when a New York Times investigation found that one of its executives impersonated a YouTube representative during a call with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.

Watson blamed the deception on what he described as his deputy’s mental health issues. He added that no harm was caused because Goldman Sachs did not ultimately decide to invest.

In court filings, prosecutors alleged Watson was present during the call and gave his deputy directions on what to say, despite previously denying to the media that he was there.

Ozy Media aimed to emulate the early success of digital news media pioneers like Vice Media and Buzzfeed.

It produced left-leaning podcasts, television series and events, and profiles of rising stars and emerging trends. In 2020, it was valued at $159m (£132m).

The scandal-hit company announced in October 2021 that it would close down.

Angolan tycoon Isabel dos Santos, once dubbed “Africa’s richest woman”, has hit out at the UK for imposing sanctions on her, telling the BBC the move came as a surprise as she had not been found guilty of “any corruption in any court in any country”.

Last month, the daughter of Angola’s former president was described by the UK government as a “notorious kleptocrat” and slapped with an asset freeze and travel ban for allegedly siphoning wealth out of oil-rich Angola.

She said Angola’s government was behind a campaign to tarnish her image.

“It’s political at the end of the day,” Dos Santos, 51, told the BBC Africa Daily podcast from her base in Dubai.

“There was not an inquiry, where somebody came and investigated and looked at evidence or asked me to clarify. There was no due process,” she said.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the sanctions on Dos Santos as part of his campaign to crack down on “dirty money”.

A government statement alleged she had “systematically abused her positions at state-run companies to embezzle at least £350m [$442m], depriving Angola of resources and funding for much-needed development”.

A spokesperson for Angola’s attorney-general said it was not a political institution and only investigated evidence of alleged criminality. They said she had been accused of several crimes and so needed to defend herself.

A spokesperson for the British foreign office said that under Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regulations, the UK could “designate an individual where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the individual is or has been involved in serious corruption”. They also pointed out that anyone sanctioned could ask for a review at any time.

The allegations against Dos Santos, which she denies, were first made in 2020 when BBC Panorama reported on leaked documents that had been shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The exposé , known as “Luanda Leaks”, alleged that one of the most suspicious deals had been made via a London-based company.

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• Africa’s richest woman ‘ripped off Angola’
• Angola’s Isabel dos Santos eyes the presidency

Dos Santos, the eldest daughter of former President José Eduardo dos Santos – in power from 1979 to 2017 – was educated at private schools in the UK during Angola’s long civil war.

After graduating from King’s College London as an electrical engineer, she took up an office job at a consultancy firm in Europe.

But in her early twenties, Dos Santos decided she wanted to pursue a more entrepreneurial career back home, telling the BBC she started out by delivering crates of beer – Uber style – to restaurants and shops.

She went on to build a huge business empire, setting up a mobile phone company, a satellite TV operator, a commercial bank, a brewery and a cement factory – with stakes in other companies in Angola and Portugal.

A month before her 40th birthday, she made it to Forbes magazine’s rich list and was not only said to be Africa’s richest woman but also the continent’s youngest billionaire.

Dos Santos told BBC Africa Daily she never thought of herself in that way but did see herself as a “pioneer”.

“I’m also my country’s largest private employer. I’ve created over 200,000 jobs. I’ve been one of my country’s largest taxpayers and contributed the most to build Angola’s economy.”

In 2016, she was controversially put in charge of the struggling state-owned oil firm, Sonangol. Her appointment was challenged by critics at the time but the Supreme Court stood by it, she said.

“I did have a track record in the private sector. I have a particular knowledge of turning around companies… that are not doing well, to drive them to efficiency.”

Some of the most serious allegations of corruption against her date from her time in charge of Sonangol.

Within months of her father stepping down in 2017, she was sacked by his chosen successor, President Joao Lourenço, and two years later her assets were frozen.

The former first daughter of Angola believes Lourenço, who targeted the Dos Santos family as part of an anti-corruption drive, has betrayed her father: “He started blaming the past, saying that everything that happened before him was bad.

“But he himself is from the [ruling] MPLA, he was the vice-president of the party. He was minister of defence.

“If anything, I think he had a lot more to do with the Angolan economy and the Angolan decision-making and the political decision-making than most Angolans.”

Dos Santos is also angry that despite her assets being frozen in Angola five years ago, the case has not yet been heard in court – something she says would usually happen within, at most, 18 months as it is a civil case that tends to involve allegations of unpaid debts. She says she faces no criminal proceedings.

She also alleges that the original freezing order was based on faked documents, including a passport in her name bearing the signature of late martial arts expert Bruce Lee.

The spokesperson for Angola’s attorney-general said they would not discuss the details of any ongoing legal disputes in public but said that any evidence that documents had been falsified should be presented in court.

By 2021 Forbes had dropped her from its list of top billionaires – Dos Santos explains that the asset freeze means she can no longer get dividend payments and is barred from receiving any financial contributions from her companies.

The mother of three has also had to contend with personal losses over the last few years – her husband died in a diving accident and when her father died in 2022, she did not go back to Angola to attend his funeral.

If she were to return to Angola, she may well face arrest – at the government’s behest, Interpol has issued a Red Notice, which is a request to “locate and provisionally arrest” someone, however it is not an international arrest warrant.

Dos Santos says after these difficult years and further asset freezes, she now wants people to hear her side of a “complex” story to “hopefully start clarifying the misconceptions that exist”.

When asked if she would ever stand for the presidency, she said it was “a possibility” – echoing comments she made to the BBC four years ago.

“Look, I will always serve my country,” she said. “To lead is to serve, and I wish to serve Angola, whether it’s in politics, or whether it’s in business, whether it’s in philanthropy, or culture.”

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The social media platform Telegram uses an algorithm that promotes extremist content, a new study shared exclusively with the BBC has revealed.

The report, from the US civil rights organisation the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), found that the “similar channels” feature introduced last year recommends extremist channels even to users browsing subjects such as celebrities or technology.

A professor also showed BBC Panorama how he found someone within moments on Telegram who offered to ship an Uzi submachine gun to the UK for £850.

Telegram says users are “only presented with content they have chosen to engage with” and it removes millions of pieces of harmful content daily.

The company’s founder, Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, is under formal investigation in France accused of failing to stop criminality on his platform. He has denied the allegations.

Best known as a messaging app marketed with secretive features, Telegram also allows its almost one billion users to set up groups where they can broadcast messages and videos to up to 200,000 people at a time.

SPLC researchers looked at 28,000 of these Telegram channels for their report Telegram’s Toxic Recommendations.

It found that users browsing mundane topics would be recommended extreme content – while users looking at one form of extreme content, such as anti-government conspiracies, would be pushed towards other extremist ideologies such as antisemitism or white nationalism.

Lead researcher Megan Squire demonstrated how the algorithm works by searching for “Donald Trump” in a newly set up Telegram account.

Immediately in the “similar channels” recommendations were multiple examples of channels promoting the Q-Anon conspiracy, which maintains with zero evidence that Mr Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.

Another search for “UK riots” showed a meme about Adolf Hitler as the first result, followed by suggestions for a series of channels run by violent far-right groups.

“Some of these groups are pretty active. You’re not just on Telegram getting memes, you’re getting shuffled into to actual events. They’re having events on the ground with people showing up,” Ms Squire said.

In the hours after the Southport knife attack in August, which prompted riots, Telegram users posted some of the first calls for protest, along with false claims the suspected attacker was an asylum seeker.

Ms Squire told BBC Panorama that the research showed Telegram had become a “digital threat”.

“On a scale of one to 10, Telegram I would say is an 11. It’s dishing out enormous amounts of criminal content, extremist content. It is extremely dangerous in my opinion,” she said.

A former insider who was part of Telegram’s inner circle for six years, Elies Campo, told Panorama that he had challenged Pavel Durov about extreme material in 2021.

“His stance was it’s not up to a platform like us to decide who should be speaking out. It was clear that he didn’t want to dedicate more resources to it,” Mr Campo said.

“I think if he could choose, he would choose more a stand where he doesn’t have to moderate anything.”

Prof David Maimon from Georgia State University, who has spent six years studying illegal content on Telegram, said there were tens of thousands of channels offering everything from tools for scammers to guns.

“Telegram is definitely one of the most important platforms criminals are using now for criminality,” he said.

He showed Panorama how within moments of posting a message saying he needed “an Uzi and a shotgun”, a seller posted a picture of an Uzi and said he could “get it fast-tracked” to the programme’s address in Belfast within two or three days.

The French authorities have accused Pavel Durov of complicity in drug dealing, organised crime and sharing child abuse images on Telegram. He is currently on bail and is not allowed to leave France.

Telegram says it takes extremist and illegal content very seriously and its moderation teams and AI tool remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day.

It says its users only receive the content to which they have subscribed – as Telegram does not “inject or promote content”.

“The ‘channel suggestions’ feature shows only channels with the same topic as those a user already follows. This approach ensures that users are only presented with content they have chosen to engage with. This is completely different from how other platforms make suggestions,” the company said.

Telegram said ”it does not amplify content, but instead shows topic-based suggestions tied to user choices”.

Saydnaya prison sits on a forbidding hill about half an hour’s drive from the centre of Damascus.

In the last few days the entrance has been repainted in the green, white and black of Syria’s revolutionary flag. The new colours did not dispel the sinister atmosphere of the place.

As I walked through the gates, I thought of the despair that must have gripped the thousands of Syrians who made the same journey.

One estimate is that more than 30,000 detainees were killed in Saydnaya in the years since the start of the Syrian war in 2011. That is a large proportion of the more than 100,000 people, almost all men but including thousands of women – as well as children – who disappeared without trace into Bashar al-Assad’s gulag.

Other parts of Assad’s prison system were less cruel. Phone calls home were allowed, and families were allowed to visit.

But Saydnaya was the dark and rotten heart of the regime. Fear of being consigned there and killed without anyone knowing what had happened was a central part of the Assad regime’s system of coercion and repression.

The authorities did not have to tell families who had been incarcerated there. Allowing them to fear the worst was another way of applying pressure. The regime kept its boot on the throat of Syrians because of the power, reach and savagery of its myriad and overlapping intelligence agencies, and because of the routine use of torture and execution.

I was in other infamous prisons in the days after they were liberated, including Abu Salim, the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s notorious jail in Tripoli and Pul-e-Charki outside Kabul in Afghanistan.

Neither were as foul and pestilent as Saydnaya. In its overcrowded cells men had to urinate into plastic bags as their access to latrines was limited.

When the locks were smashed open, they left behind their filthy rags and scraps of blankets which were all they had to cover themselves as they slept on the floor. Torture and execution have already been documented in Saydnaya.

In the months to come it is certain that more information about the horrors perpetrated inside its walls will emerge from former inmates.

In Saydnaya’s corridors you can see how hard it will be to mend the country Assad broke to try to save his regime. Now that the prison has been broken open, like the country, it has become a microcosm of all the challenges Syria faces since the Assad regime crumpled and was swept away.

One challenge is making a record of exactly what the regime did to its victims. In a sign of how far Syria has come in just a week, volunteers went to the prison to try to preserve Saydnaya’s records.

Paperwork is scattered around offices and even on the concrete floor of the prison yard. Families pick up files and sheets of tattered documentation, trying to find a name, a date or a place that they recognise.

The disarray of the records looks as if someone tried to destroy what was done here in the name of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. When dictators and their henchmen fall, making sure they don’t take the truth with them is a big part of a better future.

A musician called Safana Bakleh gave her group of volunteers face masks and blue nitrile gloves along with instructions about photographing and collecting documents.

Safana admitted they were amateurs and said they were taking matters into their own hands because the international human rights groups were not there, and evidence and documents were disappearing.

“Even if one family gets one answer that their loved on is not here anymore is deceased or he died in the hospital it is enough for me” Safana told me. “It is very chaotic… Where are the international originations supposed to be documenting all this chaos?”

It is not just about families getting some release through at least knowing what happened to the disappeared. One day there might be trials of the perpetrators. Documents are evidence.

The truth the volunteers uncovered with their own eyes shocked them. All Syrians knew that the prisons were bad, but Saydnaya was much worse than they expected. Widad Halabi, one of the volunteers, took off her face mask and broke down in tears after an hour or so looking for evidence in the cell blocks.

“What I’ve seen here is a life not fit for humans. I imagined how they lived, their clothes. How did they breathe? How did they eat? How did they feel?

“It’s terrible… terrible. There are bags of urine on the floor. They couldn’t go to the toilet, so they had to put urine in bags. The smell. There’s no sun or light. I can’t believe people were living here when we were living and breathing our normal lives.”

It will be hard for Syrians and their new rulers to track down the people they want to punish. Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia with his family. His brother Maher, with a reputation for violence and corruption as bad as anyone in his extended family, is thought to be in Iraq.

A couple of Assad’s cousins ran into rebel fighters as they tried to escape to Lebanon. One of them, according to Reuters news agency, was killed in the resulting shootout.

When I entered Syria a week ago hundreds of cars full of despondent and scared families with some link to the regime, who believed they would be in danger in the new Syria, were leaving, queuing to get over the border into Lebanon. At the same time hundreds were driving in the opposite direction, desperate to get home.

Eventually there might be a legal process to prosecute Bashar al-Assad, members of his family and some of those who carried guns for the regime. Gathering evidence would be part of that. But the exodus in the last hours of the regime and in the confused days and nights that followed means that it will be hard to get to the people responsible.

At Saydnaya prison, families wander through the building, desperate for information, searching for those they’ve lost, horrified by everything they are seeing. Just being in Saydnaya’s cells and corridors, freezing cold in December, reinforces a widespread desire to see the punishment of everyone implicated in the Assad regime’s crimes.

A group of men gathered in the prison yard, smoking silently, some leafing through files that they had picked up off the ground. All those I spoke to said that the future must be built on justice for the past. The men in the group, all looking for missing, sons, brothers and cousins, called Saydnaya a mass grave. They want the head of Bashar al-Assad, literally. They murmured agreement when one of them said he had to be decapitated.

One of them, a young man called Ahmed, said he knew the brother he was searching for was alive because he could see him in his dreams. Ahmed himself had spent three years in Saydnaya.

“It was so bad, the torture, the food, everything. We were suffering.”

Mohammed Khalaf, an older man, had been searching for his son Jabr since he was dragged from the family breakfast table by thugs from one of the state’s intelligence agencies in 2014.

“We are many. People came from Qamishli, Hasaka, Deir al-Zour, Al Raqqa looking for our loved ones. Thousands are still in the streets looking for their children. It’s not just me.”

Inside one of the cell blocks, young men from Aleppo were warming themselves on a fire that they had lit in a metal tin, burning old prison uniforms that are scattered around every cell. They were looking for brothers who had been detained and then disappeared.

Like many others looking for information or a body at Saydnaya, the men had no money for a hotel. So they camped in the prison where they believe their brothers were consigned and most likely killed.

One of the men from Aleppo, Ezzedine Khalil, wants news of a brother taken by the regime on 1 September 2015. They all know the precise dates.

“We don’t know if he is alive or dead. If he is dead, they should give us his body. They should tell us if he’s dead. We just want to know. We want to know what to do next.”

His friend Mohammed Radwan was looking for a brother and a cousin who were detained in 2012. Rumours were flying around that the night before the fall of the regime, 22 freezer lorries were brought to the prison to remove bodies. The rumours have not been confirmed but Mohammed and Ezzedine were convinced that they were true.

Mohammed looked exhausted and his anger flared up. He addressed himself to Assad.

“Where did you, pig, take the 22 fridge trucks? Everyone who took part in this crime, and everyone who served her in Saydnaya prison should be brought to justice. Everyone! Even if they were working in cleaning. They should all be brought to account.”

“Because if they knew what was happening, at least they should have told the families of the prisoners that their dear ones were killed, slaughtered, hanged or tortured.”

Both men ended with an Islamic prayer: “Allah is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs.”

Their hunger to see Assad and his men punished could become one of the drivers of events in the next few months. Syrians want to see their tormentors punished.

The extended Assad clan used Syria as their bank account. They helped themselves to stakes in businesses that might make profits. They controlled the lucrative market for telecoms and mobiles. As they raked in cash, Syrians struggled to eke out a living in an economy smashed by war and drained dry by rapacious and corrupt regime favourites. The new rulers of Syria have inherited big debts and an almost worthless currency. A couple of hundred dollars equals a plastic trash bag of bundles of Syrian pounds.

Corruption extended to the prison system. Victims and families desperate to avoid years in a hell-hole were prepared to pay big money to stay out.

Hassan Abu Shwarb served 11 years under sentence of death for terrorism, which was the word the Assad regime used for rebellion. Hassan, a quietly spoken man who is now 31, denies he ever joined an armed group. Instead, he says he was detained at a government office when he was getting documents necessary to apply for a passport so he could accept an offer to study in Canada.

His brother said the family paid a total of $50,000 (£39,509) in bribes on five separate occasions to try to get him out. In all cases the corrupt officials who had offered help for cash pocketed the money without releasing Hassan. A couple of weeks before the regime collapsed yet another corrupt judge offered to free Hassan for another $50,000.

After his arrest Hassan Abu Shwarb was tortured when he was detained for 80 days at a military intelligence interrogation centre. Among other injuries, the torturers broke one of his legs. Hassan says he was with one of his cellmates, a 49-year-old man, when he died after three days of torture. The jailors recorded death from a stroke.

Hassan was overjoyed to get home.

“When my mother held me after 11 years, I can’t describe the feeling. There is nothing like going back to your home and neighbourhood.”

But like many Syrians, Hassan’s optimism about the future starts with determination that the fallen regime’s leaders and acolytes should suffer for their deeds.

“They should be punished. We are human souls, not stones after all. And those who killed should be publicly executed. Otherwise, we won’t get through this.

“We need to forget and move on. This is a happiness for all Syrians. We need to return to our work and responsibility to continue. We need to forget. We turned the page. All the sadness is behind us.”

The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has started using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, instead of his war time pseudonym, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. The name change contains a message about looking ahead. The evidence is that Ahmed al-Sharaa will need to prioritise justice for the deposed regime if he does not want the chaos of people taking matters into their own hands.

The future is hard, and the past is full of pain. Here in Damascus, it feels as if a collective weight has been lifted from the shoulders of a nation.

Syrians know how deep their problems go. To preserve the optimism created by Assad’s fall, Syrians want to see progress.

Zakir Hussain, the legendary tabla virtuoso and global ambassador of Indian classical music who has died aged 73, leaves behind a timeless rhythmic legacy that will inspire generations.

A child prodigy, he collaborated with Indian classical icons like Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, and Shivkumar Sharma and global musicians like John McLaughlin and George Harrison.

Born on 9 March, 1951, in Mahim, Mumbai, he was the eldest son of Ustad Allarakha, one of history’s most iconic players of the tabla – a pair of traditional Indian hand played drums.

Hussain’s journey, from a child prodigy to an internationally celebrated percussionist, was a masterclass in balancing tradition and innovation.

Hussain’s life revolved around rhythm from the very beginning.

The sound of the tabla was his first language, his earliest “words”. By the age of 12, he was already performing globally, accompanying stalwarts like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan during his teenage years.

While rooted in the Hindustani classical tradition, Hussain possessed an insatiable curiosity that propelled him to explore other genres, leading to ground-breaking collaborations across the world.

In 1973, he co-founded Shakti with guitarist John McLaughlin, a group that fused Indian classical music with jazz and Western traditions, creating a new global sound.

Over five decades, Shakti evolved, featuring luminaries like violinist L Shankar, percussionist Vikku Vinayakram, and mandolin maestro U Srinivas.

Their first studio album in 46 years, This Moment, won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album in 2024, marking a fitting finale to their 50th-anniversary tour. Hussain’s virtuosity on the tabla was pivotal to Shakti’s success and to the global appreciation of Indian rhythms.

Zakir Hussain’s contributions extended far beyond Shakti.

He was a key collaborator in Planet Drum and Global Drum Project, both with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, earning him Grammy Awards in 1991 and 2008.

He worked with banjo maestro Béla Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer on the Grammy-winning As We Speak (2024), further cementing his status as a pioneer of cross-genre collaborations. He also collaborated with musicians as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, George Harrison, Van Morrison and Billy Cobham, bringing Indian classical music to global audiences.

His ventures like Tabla Beat Science, a fusion of Indian classical music with electronic and world music, and orchestral works such as Peshkar for the Symphony Orchestra of India showcased his unrelenting drive to innovate while respecting his roots.

“The moment you think you’re a maestro, you are distancing yourself from the others,” Hussain told Rolling Stone India magazine earlier this year. “You have to be part of a group, and not dominate it.”

This philosophy made him not only a consummate artist but also a lifelong learner and mentor.

Hussain’s flamboyance and speed and precision of his performances earned him widespread admiration.

The New York Times, in its review of a 2009 jazz performance at Carnegie Hall, described his artistry as embodying “an impish strain of virtuosity”.

“He’s a fearsome technician but also a whimsical inventor, devoted to exuberant play. So he rarely seems overbearing, even when the blur of his fingers rivals the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.”

His accolades are as numerous as the beats he crafted.

A recipient of the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, Hussain was also a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in the United States. He delighted audiences at prestigious venues like Carnegie Hall and collaborated with jazz legends, Western classical orchestras, and Carnatic music maestros.

Despite his global acclaim, Hussain remained deeply connected to his Indian roots. His early years in a modest chawl – large tenement complexes – in Mahim shaped his values.

“For the first three-and-a-half years of my life, we all lived in one room that had no toilet. We had to use the common toilets,” Hussain told Nasreen Munni Kabir.

Offstage, Hussain was an avid reader and a fan of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. He loved poetry, cricket, and tennis, counting Roger Federer among his heroes. His curiosity extended to biographies of musical greats like Ravi Shankar and Miles Davis, reflecting his hunger for stories that transcended boundaries. Hussain would also later say that his TV advert for a popular tea brand – Taj Mahal – “made me famous in India”.

Hussain’s death marks the end of an era but leaves an indelible mark on global music. Kabir, who chronicled his life, aptly captured his essence: “Zakir’s extraordinary playing and the extreme sense of rigour he brought to his art made him a phenomenon.”

Music for Hussain was not just a career but a spiritual journey – a way to connect with people, traditions, and cultures across the globe.

In his final years, Hussain remained as active as ever, performing, mentoring, and composing.

“Being a student and having a drive to learn keeps me going. The opportunity to get inspired by all the young musicians out there helps me revamp myself. Age doesn’t affect my energy and drive,” he said last year.

When Naoki Hamaguchi found out he’d landed his dream job directing remakes of his favourite game, Final Fantasy VII, he almost didn’t accept.

“I realised this was going to be 10 years of my life as a games developer and I was a little torn,” he tells BBC Newsbeat.

As video games have become more advanced the time – and budgets – needed to create them have grown.

For the people in charge of those projects it can mean committing a big chunk of your life, career and identity to them.

And there are few projects on the scale of the new Final Fantasy VII series.

A trilogy of games remaking the beloved 1997 classic with updated visuals, full voice-acting and a wealth of side content, it is a massive undertaking.

So far, it has gone well. The first two games, subtitled Remake and Rebirth, released to excellent reviews and both were nominated for a string of awards.

Mr Hamaguchi most recently accepted a Game Award for best score and music at the industry’s biggest ceremony in Los Angeles.

Newsbeat speaks to him at the Golden Joysticks in London, where Rebirth scoops prizes for Best Soundtrack, Best Storytelling and performance.

The initial announcement of developer Square Enix’s intention to split the project into three was met with some scepticism – the original game could be completed in about 40 hours.

So does Mr Hamaguchi think he’s proved the doubters wrong?

“I hope we’ve convinced them,” he says.

“With the original being so famous, so many people have their own visions of what Final Fantasy VII is. It’s very difficult to please absolutely every single fan out there.”

Despite his own concerns about the remakes taking up so much of his professional life, he says he’s happy he took the plunge.

“Final Fantasy was one of the big inspirations for me to want to become a game creator in the first place,” he says.

“This was my way of giving back to the series.”

But he admits he’s looking forward to doing something different after this trilogy of games.

“I want to move away from it and take on a completely new kind of challenge”, he says.

“I’ve given everything I have to this.”

Mr Hamaguchi says the game development climate when the first game was released means the approach to making the new games is fundamentally different.

Because it takes years to make a blockbuster game for modern machines, he says teams need to think about how the landscape will look in five to ten years’ time.

For example, emerging markets such as the Middle East and South East Asia “are undergoing very rapid economic growth” and creating a new generation of gamers.

“It’s really interesting to see so many young people getting into gaming in these regions,” he says.

In contrast to making a game 20 years ago, developers need to make sure cultural references work across regions where video games are more popular than they once were.

The games market is tougher, too.

Square Enix has said Rebirth – which released exclusively on PlayStation 5 – did not perform as well as it had hoped, and it recently confirmed a PC version would be coming soon.

People play on more platforms and there’s evidence that many gamers are sticking with a “home game” such as Fortnite, Roblox or Call of Duty for longer periods.

Drawing them away is hard, but Mr Hamaguchi says the buzz from an awards nomination can give a game a boost.

“Previously we’d release a game on a console and it would sell very well for the first couple of weeks,” he says.

An award mention can help a title stand out from the crowd and push it to the front page of online storefronts.

Final Fantasy VII’s history stretches back more than 20 years, but does Mr Hamaguchi have any thoughts on where gaming might be in the same amount of time in the future?

“Something along the lines of virtual reality, or perhaps more like augmented reality, where you can create a digital environment which merges with the real world and people can interact with things in that world,” he says.

“I think that’s a very different feeling to what we have when we play games with a standard controller today”.

He also predicts headsets could become cheap and lightweight enough so we can enter and interact with games in much more immersive ways.

For now, though, he’ll be focusing on the final part of the new trilogy, hoping to be up on the awards stage again.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

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.

WATCH: Why do some in India want couples to have more children?

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.

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.”

Robbie Williams is thoroughly enjoying his wander into the world of film, even if he is still learning the correct lingo.

“I was at this thing called the Governors’ Ball the other night. That was amazing,” the singer says.

He is talking about the Governors’ Awards, held in Los Angeles, where he joined other guests including Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig.

“I’m super excited because it’s all brand new to me. I feel like an artist that’s just been signed. I’m full of hope, full of excitement, bewildered by it all.”

The project that currently has him walking red carpets with the biggest names in Hollywood is his biopic Better Man.

“Kevin Costner sought me out,” he giggles, adding with growing incredulity: “He wanted to come and tell me about the movie.”

Better Man deals with Williams’ life from childhood, through the Take That years, to about 2003, the year he broke records by playing three huge gigs at Knebworth (with the aim of annoying Oasis, who had only managed two).

The twist in the tale, or tail, is that throughout the film, and with no explanation, he is portrayed on screen as a monkey.

At least that is how everyone involved in the film refers to the animal. If Sir David Attenborough veered into film reviewing, he would be quick to point out, in hushed tones, that the creature singing Angels and Rock DJ is a chimpanzee, not a monkey – because it has no tail.

To paraphrase the debut album of Williams’ old boyband, Ape That and Party.

Williams is speaking to me at London’s Soho Hotel, a venue so popular with the movie industry that at the exact same time, Rupert Everett is presenting an award on one floor, while in the basement there is a screening of a documentary produced by Jennifer Lawrence.

Williams is sitting next to Michael Gracey, the director of 2017 hit The Greatest Showman.

Now, after a gap of seven years, Better Man is Gracey’s next film, and it was his idea to turn the main man into a monkey.

For a year and half, Williams and Gracey had been sending messages back and forth, discussing a possible film musical based on his life.

“There have been a lot of musical biopics,” says Gracey. “I wanted to come at this with a different lens.

“Quite often Rob will say, ‘I’m just like a performing monkey’ or ‘I’m up the back like a performing monkey’.

“It just sparked this idea of, we’ve got this chance to tell this story, not from the perspective of how we see Rob, but how he sees himself.

“And so I pitched the idea to Rob. I said, ‘You know, if you were to be an animal, how would you see yourself?'”

Williams takes up the story: “I was looking for some self-worth at the time and I was like, ‘I am a lion’. And he just cocked his head and went, ‘Mmmm.’

“I went, ‘Monkey?’

“And he went, ‘Yeah, so here’s the idea.’ And before the end of the sentence was out of his mouth, I’m like, ‘Yes, that, that, that, please’.”

The monkey was created by Weta, the special effects company responsible for Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Caesar in Planet of the Apes. They used a combination of motion capture and CGI, with the role and the speaking voice taken on by English actor Jonno Davies, best known as Tobias in the Al Pacino TV series Hunters.

But it turns out that the original plan was for Williams himself to play the monkey.

“I was going to, but it involved me leaving my family for loads and loads of months,” he says. “And the thought of that was just too much for me to bear.

“There are loads of things that I want to do that are just best being an idea. It was great at dinner parties, ‘I’m playing me in a story about me.’

“And by the time it came round to it, I was bored of the idea. ‘I’ve said it at dinner parties now. I’ve done it.'”

Williams did perform the whole of My Way while wired up to help with the motion capture, at a specially arranged pair of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 2022.

“We also scanned his eyes,” explains Gracey, “So when you look at the monkey’s eyes, it’s actually one for one Rob’s eyes.”

“I kind of don’t want to know which bit’s me and which bit’s not me,” interrupts Williams.

“I want the magic of the film just to be the magic of the film.

“Also, Jonno, who plays me, has got a wonderful bottom and I want to believe that bit is me, that my bum will be memorialised as that epic.”

Robbie Williams sums up Better Man as “the greatest hits of my trauma for the TikTok generation”.

And the film doesn’t shy away from dealing with his drug addictions and mental health problems, or when Nicole Appleton from All Saints was pregnant with their child and was pressured by people in the music industry, she said, into having an abortion.

“My part in her life I still have shame about. It’s the most difficult part of the film for me to watch,” Williams admits.

“She did me no harm and is a kind, lovely person. I was an idiot younger boyfriend.”

Appleton is supportive of the film and was consulted throughout production – unlike Williams’ father Peter Conway, a singer with whom he has performed many times over the years.

In Better Man, he is played by Inside No 9’s Steve Pemberton and portrayed as someone who let down his family.

“He hasn’t seen it yet. And I don’t know if I want him to,” says Williams.

“I haven’t spoken to him about it. I’m embarrassed. I love my dad. Best mate, charming, wonderful man.

“But as it is with everybody’s childhood, like the Philip Larkin poem, ‘They mess you up your mum and dad.’ And I’m messing my kids up.”

The film also paints a pretty poisonous portrait of Williams’ time in Take That.

“There’s a pattern – boys join a boyband, boyband becomes huge, boys get sick. And I don’t think anybody gets to escape that,” is his summary.

“I don’t know what it is completely about fame that warps. I just know that it does. I know that young fame, in particular, is corrosive and toxic. It should come with a health warning.”

The death earlier this year of One Direction’s Liam Payne, who he mentored on The X Factor in 2010, has made him want to change the way boybands are looked after.

“It’s going to take a bunch of creatives to sit around, and I want to head that. I want to do that,” he says.

“It has to be creative people, not members of Parliament or record company bosses. I think this needs to be oversensitive people with complicated inner lives, who understand what it’s like to have a complicated inner life and what help that would need.”

But these plans will have to wait.

At the moment, Williams’ full attention is on the film and the Oscars.

Success in the US is quite a change for a singer who famously never broke America. (Angels reached 53 in the Billboard chart, Millennium 72 and that was it.)

In 2002, he even made fun of the situation with the self-deprecating I Will Talk And Hollywood Will Listen, in which the title rhymed with the lyric “Mr Spielberg look just what you’re missing”.

How things change. Better Man has already earned a Golden Globe nomination for best song. And on Tuesday, he will find out whether Forbidden Road, which plays over the end credits, is among the 15 songs on the shortlist for the Academy Awards.

And there are other categories in which the film could get a nomination.

“Best visual effects,” starts Gracey, before Williams interjects once more.

“Best musical monkey!” he beams.

Gracey laughs. “If that was a category, we would definitely win.”

Hollywood is indeed starting to listen.

Faced with what he describes as a “relentless” onslaught of shoplifting incidents, shopkeeper Martin Gaunt says he has carried out more than 50 citizen’s arrests in the last two years.

“These people will threaten you, they will raise their fists… There comes a point where you do need to think about your own safety,” he says.

Anyone can arrest a person if they have reasonable grounds for believing a serious offence is being committed – but the National Police Chiefs Council says people should call 999 if a crime is taking place.

With shoplifting at a record high in England according to the Home Office, some retailers say they have no choice but to tackle thieves themselves.

Standing in his gift shop Happy Piranha in Truro, Cornwall, CCTV cameras above his head, Mr Gaunt says he feels left with little choice other than to front up to criminals to protect his family’s livelihood.

He initially approaches a thief to ask them to return goods, he says, but will “block their exit route” if they refuse – telling them he has the right to detain them until police arrive.

But sometimes it becomes violent.

After one younger man took an “aggressive stance”, pinning his son to the ground, he intervened and was left with bruised ribs which he “felt for weeks”.

“At Christmas we find shoplifting increases dramatically,” he says.

Mr Gaunt says the police “rarely if ever” attend when called – and the first thing they ask is if the criminal is “still on site”.

“If you perform a civil arrest you should get police attendance,” he adds.

According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 469,788 incidents of shoplifting in the year to June in England and Wales – an increase of 28% on 2023.

In Devon and Cornwall it was worse – an increase of 37% to 8,775 shoplifting offences.

Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provides power of arrest without warrant for a person other than a constable, which can be used against anyone who is in the act of committing an indictable offence; or anyone whom they have reasonable grounds for suspecting to be committing an indictable offence.

Indictable offences are those which are more serious and dealt with in Crown Court.

The person making the arrest must also have reasonable grounds for believing it necessary and must inform the person about the offence they suspect they have committed, before calling the police as soon as possible.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for acquisitive crime, says they are “committed” to reducing theft and pursuing offenders.

She says the Retail Crime Action Plan sets out guidance, including following all “reasonable lines of enquiry and prioritising attendance in incidents where violence is involved or an offender has been detained”.

She says people should “prioritise their own safety” and call 999 if a crime is taking place.

Meanwhile, police are dealing with well-documented limitations – in May 2024, officers were instructed to consider making fewer arrests because of the lack of space in prisons.

Mr Gaunt adds: “I understand they’re under-financed and under-resourced but we need more positive, collaborative action.”

Home Office figures show fewer than 20% of recorded shoplifting offences resulted in a charge or summons in the year to March 2024.

Louis Phelps and his partner, who own technical sales and repair store Gadgetverse in Exeter, sayy that after a year in which close to £20,000 of stock was stolen, they resorted to tracking down and restraining one criminal themselves.

Mr Phelps says among four attempted and three successful burglaries this year, an incident in February cost £12,000 in stolen equipment.

The police arrived promptly and carried out forensic work, he says.

But Mr Phelps says it was his own detective work, going store to store in Exeter, that helped them find their stolen goods.

“It was still in the same city – in fact it was in multiple stores in the city – literally less than a mile away,” he says.

Having found some stock at another local shop, Mr Phelps worked with its manager to lie in wait there for the thief’s return.

“We detained him and got the police to come and arrest him,” he adds.

Justine Hyde, who runs Hyde and Seek lifestyle store in Exeter, describes shoplifting as “pretty gruesome” – with six incidents so far in 2024.

She says she follows people outside and challenges them but it is often fruitless.

“Last time we caught a lady the police said it was going to cost too much money to chase this up, even though we knew who she was,” she says.

“We are doing our own policing really because the police are absent.”

The British Retail Consortium says shopkeepers should not engage with criminals.

Tom Holder says shoplifting costs £2bn “and rising”, adding: “With this huge cost also comes the potential for violence and abuse, retail staff potentially trying to stop criminals.”

A survey of retailers it published in February shows a 50% increase in levels of retail violence and abuse.

Mr Holder adds: “Ultimately the job of catching and arresting criminals is one for the police.”

Devon and Cornwall Police says it is committed to working with retailers on protecting their premises – making sure perpetrators face justice when offences occur.

It says resources are deployed where they can be most effective based on threat, risk and harm.

“We must prioritise attendance where violence is involved or a shoplifter is detained,” it adds.

A Home Office spokesperson says the government is taking “strong action”, removing a £200 threshold for low-value shop theft and making it a specific crime to assault a retail worker.

“The NPCC recommends only trained security guards detain offenders and forces will prioritise attendance at these incidents.”

Andrew Sharman, co-ordinator for Exeter Business Against Crime, says shoplifting can often be driven through drugs operations and organised crime.

He adds: “We can’t arrest our way out of it… It’s a deeper issue within society that needs to be addressed.

“The police here are the best force I’ve worked with, they are so proactive.”

Back in Truro, Mr Gaunt agrees shoplifting is a sign of much wider problems: “I feel desperate, I feel like giving up. It’s about so much more than a £20 teddy, it’s a broken society.”

X

Sri Lankan Tamil migrants were unlawfully detained for years on the remote British territory of Diego Garcia, a judge has ruled.

In 2021, dozens of Tamils became the first people ever to claim asylum on the Indian Ocean island, which is the site of a secretive UK-US military base.

They were held for years in a small fenced-off camp, before being brought to the UK earlier this month in what the government described as a “one-off” move in the interests of their welfare.

A lawyer representing some of the migrants said questions needed to be asked about how this was able to happen. A spokesperson for the UK government said it was “carefully considering this judgement”.

Diego Garcia was never a “suitable long-term location for migrants” and the government “inherited a deeply troubling situation that remained unresolved under the last administration for years”, the spokesperson added.

Reacting to the ruling, lawyer Simon Robinson with UK firm Duncan Lewis which represents some of the migrants, said “questions need to be answered about how, in the 21st Century, this was able to happen”.

The ruling follows a landmark hearing held in a converted chapel on the island in September. The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island and the migrant camp there to cover the proceedings.

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot), an area described as being “constitutionally distinct” from the UK. It is administered from London by a commissioner based out of the Foreign Office.

In their time on the island, the Tamils, including 16 children, were housed in military tents in the fenced camp, which was guarded at all times by private security company G4S.

Tamils have described their time on the island as like living in “hell”.

“It’s like an open prison – we were not allowed to go outside, we were just living in a fence and in a tent,” one woman told the BBC after being brought to the UK with her husband and two children this month.

During a site visit to the camp in September, the court saw rips in some of the tents and rats nesting above military cots that the migrants were given as beds.

There were multiple hunger strikes and numerous incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts in response to the conditions in the camp, after which some people were transferred to Rwanda for medical treatment.

There were also cases and allegations of sexual assault and harassment within the camp by other migrants, including against children.

Margaret Obi, acting judge of the Biot supreme court, said in her ruling on Monday that the camp was a prison “in all but name” and “had been a prison from the outset”.

She found that one former deputy commissioner “appeared to have only a limited appreciation of the fundamental importance of liberty”.

Tom Short, a lawyer with firm Leigh Day, said the judgement was “not only a vindication of our clients’ rights but a triumph for the rule of law in the British Overseas Territories.”

“Such an affront to fundamental rights should never have happened and in due course this travesty of administration must be looked at in full,” he added.

The camp has now closed but two men with criminal convictions and another under investigation remain on Diego Garcia, the BBC understands.

Britain took control of the Chagos Islands from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965 and went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the base.

The judgement comes after the UK agreed earlier this year to hand over the islands to Mauritius in a historic move.

Under the deal, which has still to be signed, Diego Garcia would continue to operate as a UK-US military base but Mauritius would take responsibility for any future migrant arrivals.

Twelve people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning at a ski resort in Georgia, police have said.

The bodies of 11 foreigners and one Georgian national were found in a sleeping area above a restaurant in Gudauri, the largest and highest ski resort in the former Soviet state, according to officials.

Police said “preliminary tests do not indicate any trace of violence on the bodies” and it appeared to be an accident, the AFP news agency reported.

An oil-powered generator had been turned on after the building lost electricity on Friday, officers added.

The bodies were discovered on Saturday on the second floor of a building housing an Indian restaurant.

Authorities have opened an investigation into the incident and the identities of the victims have not yet been released.

Gudauri is a popular tourist destination for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts, with a range of winter sports activities for visitors of all levels.

Its history dates back to the 19th Century when it was known as a trading post on the ancient Georgian Military Road connecting Russia with Georgia.

Gudauri is located in the Caucasus mountains in the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region at around 2,200m (7,200ft) above sea level and is about 120km (75 miles) north of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.

Amazon pushes its US warehouse workers to fulfill orders at speeds that could cause high rates of injury despite being aware of the risks, an investigation led by Senator Bernie Sanders has found.

The findings, following an 18-month probe of the firm, support claims that workers and labour campaigners have made about the company for years.

The report accused the firm of rejecting changes that would have reduced workers’ pace, but improved safety because of concerns about its bottom line.

But Amazon said the report was “wrong on the facts”, and featured “selective, outdated information that lacks context and isn’t grounded in reality”.

“This investigation wasn’t a fact-finding mission, but rather an attempt to collect information and twist it to support a false narrative,” the company said.

Amazon, which employs roughly 800,000 people in the US, has faced accusations about unsafe conditions at its warehouses for years.

Those concerns ramped up during the Covid pandemic, when e-commerce exploded, leading to protests by its workers around the world.

Amid the controversy, founder Jeff Bezos said the company needed to do better by its employees.

Senator Sanders, who is known for his pro-worker stance, launched an investigation into Amazon’s practices in June 2023. Senate staffers conducted 135 interviews and reviewed more than 1,000 documents.

Their analysis of public records found that warehouses operated by Amazon recorded over 30% more injuries than the warehousing industry average in 2023.

Amazon workers were also nearly twice as likely to be injured than people working in warehouses operated by other companies in each of the last seven years, according to the report, which was signed off by Democratic members of the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Amazon had internally examined connections between workplace speed and injury rates, including in a review called Project Soteria, according to the investigation.

But the report said the company opted not to adopt the recommended changes, which included providing more time off to workers, and halting disciplinary action against people who did not meet working speed requirements.

Investigators also accused Amazon of trying to “manipulate” data to mislead the public about its safety record.

Amazon said it was fair for the firm to focus safety comparisons on larger warehouses.

It accused the Senate investigation of ignoring inconvenient facts, such as a decline in its injury rates and a recent court victory, which dismissed safety complaints.

It said another team asked to review the recommendations of Amazon’s internal safety study had found that the methodology was “unsound”.

“Nothing” is more important to the firm than employee safety, Amazon said.

“Sen. Sanders and his staff chose to rely on the debunked Soteria analysis because it fits the false narrative he wanted to build,” the company added.

The sale of Royal Mail’s parent company to a Czech billionaire has been cleared by the government.

The £3.6bn takeover by Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group has been given the go-ahead after agreeing “legally binding” undertakings.

The government will retain a so-called “golden share” that will require it to approve any major changes to Royal Mail’s ownership, HQ location and tax residency.

EP Group will also have to maintain the one-price-goes-anywhere Universal Service Obligation (USO), which currently means it has to deliver letters six days per week, Monday to Saturday, and parcels Monday to Friday.

The company has committed to maintaining the USO for as long as it owns Royal Mail. Earlier this year, Mr Kretinsky told the BBC he would honour the service – in whatever form it takes – “for as long as I am alive”.

The USO is currently under review, with Royal Mail suggesting to regulator Ofcom that reducing second class deliveries to every other weekday would save up to £300m a year and give the business “a fighting chance”.

The regulator said in September that it was looking at these changes, with a decision due next year.

Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC there were “real questions about what the service needs to be going into the future”.

Given letter numbers are falling “we have to think about what is economical”, adding Ofcom would be publishing plans next year “to make sure it is sustainable”.

The takeover of Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS), is expected to be completed early next year. When debts are included, the deal values the company at £5.3bn.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said while it was up to shareholders to approve the deal, the agreement the government had reached meant the takeover “will be a good deal for the UK, be a good deal for the people who work for Royal Mail and a good deal for customers”.

Mr Kretinsky said the talks with the government had “resulted in unprecedented commitments and undertakings.

He added, that EP Group had a “mission to make Royal Mail a successful modern postal operator with high quality service and products for its customers”.

The conditions agreed by EP Group include keeping the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.

It has also reached an agreement in principle with unions that include workers getting a 10% share of any dividends paid out to Mr Kretinsky, as well as the formation of a workers group that will meet monthly with the directors of Royal Mail to give employees a bigger voice on how it is run.

Dave Ward, the general secretary of the CWU union, told the BBC it was an “extensive agreement” and the deal was the “best opportunity” to save the future of Royal Mail.

However, he added that the union had “not agreed anything” on USO reform and there was “a long way to go” before that happened.

IDS also owns a highly profitable European parcels business called GLS which made over £300m last year. This offset losses at Royal Mail, allowing IDS to report a small profit.

By bringing GLS parcel know-how to the UK market, coupled with investment in out-of-home delivery lockers, Mr Kretinsky hopes to build a pan-European logistics business.

The hope is that this will enable Royal Mail to claw back market share it has lost in recent years in the profitable and growing parcels business.

Mr Kretinsky has a net worth of £6bn, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

In addition to owning 27% of West Ham United football club and 10% of Sainsbury’s, Mr Kretinsky’s companies also own a gas transmission service which still pipes much reduced levels of Russian gas to Europe, paid for and with the consent of the EU.

Earlier this year the takeover was called in for review under national security laws as Royal Mail is considered vital national infrastructure.

But speaking in front of MPs in November, Reynolds had referred to Mr Kretinsky as a “legitimate business figure” whose alleged links to Russia had already been reviewed and dismissed when he became the biggest shareholder in the company nearly two years ago.

Royal Mail, which was split from the Post Office and privatised a decade ago, has seen its performance deteriorate in recent years, leading to heavy financial losses.

The volume of letters being posted in the UK has plummeted, with half the number being sent compared to 2011 levels.

Last week, Royal Mail was fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofcom for failing to meet delivery targets for first and second class mail.

Ofcom’s Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC it was up to the new ownership to deliver on improvements and the regulator would “absolutely” hold Royal Mail to account.

Jenny Hall, director of corporate affairs at Royal Mail, told the BBC the company was investing to improve performance, but it was “really important” the USO was reformed to reflect consumer trends.

She added that Royal Mail would always try to keep postage costs as low as possible, but prices do “need to reflect the realities of delivering the service”.

The price of a second-class stamp, which is currently 85p, is regulated by Ofcom, with the amount Royal Mail can increase it by each year tied to inflation.

However, there are no such limits on first-class stamps, and in October Royal Mail pushed the price for first-class mail up by 30p to £1.65, citing “very real and urgent” financial challenges for the move.

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More than 50 people were killed in Israeli air and ground attacks across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, according to local medics and rescuers.

They said children, a cameraman who worked for the Al Jazeera TV network and personnel from the Civil Defence agency were among the dead.

The Israeli military said it targeted sites used by Hamas and the allied armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Hamas-run health ministry said the deaths meant the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas had surpassed 45,000.

The ministry does not make a distinction between combatants and civilians, but it reported in October that 29,980 children, women and elderly were among the identified fatalities.

The figures are often disputed by the Israeli government, which says almost 20,000 “terrorists” have been killed, but they are broadly accepted by UN agencies.

The war began when Hamas-led gunmen carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Many of those killed on Sunday were in a UN-run school being used as a shelter for displaced families in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Harrowing footage showed a bloody scene on the third floor of Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz School, with children’s bodies apparently among those being removed.

“People were safe, staying in their homes after they prayed the dinner prayer. They were sitting, sleeping, and staying put in their places,” Manal Tafesh, whose brother and his children were among those killed, told Reuters news agency outside a local mortuary.

Medics said at least 13 people were killed, while a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said she had heard reports of around 20 casualties, many of them women and children.

“It’s just doesn’t stop. It’s so relentless the pain and the suffering that we continue to have,” Louise Wateridge told the BBC from central Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command-and-control centre” embedded within the school.

It also accused Hamas and other armed groups of exploiting civilians and using civilian infrastructure as human shields.

Medics said several more people were killed at another school-turned-shelter in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which the UN said has been under siege by Israeli forces for more than two months.

The UN said it was monitoring reports that more than 1,500 people were newly displaced after Israeli forces besieged Khalil Aweida school and shelled it.

The IDF said on Sunday that its forces “conducted a targeted raid on a terrorist meeting point in the Beit Hanoun area”.

“In co-operation with the [Israeli Air Force], the troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and ground, and additional terrorists were apprehended,” it added.

Another strike hit a Civil Defence building in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said the strike killed the directors of its Nuseirat and Sheikh Radwan centres along with two volunteers, one of whom he named as Ahmad Baker al-Louh. Another five people were injured, three of them critically, he added.

“The Israeli occupation has once again shown the world that there is no protection for humanitarian workers in Gaza and no adherence to international humanitarian laws,” he said, adding that 94 Civil Defence workers had been killed since the start of the war.

Ahmad al-Louh was a cameraman for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, which strongly condemned what it called Israel’s “targeted killing” of its journalist.

It said Louh had been covering a rescue operation by the Civil Defence following an earlier strike on Sunday and that it came “just days after the targeting of his house”.

“The network calls on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists in cold blood, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice,” a statement said.

The IDF said the Civil Defence building was used by “terrorists to plan and carry out an imminent terror attack against IDF troops”.

“Among the terrorists eliminated in the strike was the Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmad Bakr al-Louh, who previously served as a platoon commander in the Islamic Jihad’s Central Camps Brigade,” it alleged, without providing any evidence.

Al Jazeera did not comment on the Israeli allegation, but Louh’s cousin Mahmoud told the Associated Press: “We were stunned by the Israeli occupation statement.”

“These claims are lies and misleading to cover up this crime,” he added.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 137 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the war began.

Cricket commentator Isa Guha has apologised for calling Indian bowler Jasprit Bumrah the “most valuable primate” during the third Test against Australia.

She made the remark while commentating for Fox Sports in Brisbane on Sunday after Bumrah got India off to a stunning start with two quick wickets.

Her comment sparked a social media backlash which noted the word’s history as a racial slur.

On Monday, Guha apologised on air: “Yesterday in commentary I used a word that can be interpreted in a number of different ways… I’d like to apologise for any offence caused.”

Guha, who is also a BBC commentator and former England cricketer, had been speaking live on air with colleagues Brett Lee and Allan Border when the controversy happened.

“Bumrah, today: five overs, 2-4. So, that’s the tone, and that’s what you want from the ex-skipper,” Lee said.

Guha responded: “Well, he’s the MVP, isn’t he? [The] most valuable primate, Jasprit Bumrah. He is the one that’s going to do all the talking for India, and why so much focus was on him in the build-up to this Test match, and whether he would be fit.”

In her apology on Monday, she said: “I set myself really high standards when it comes to empathy and respect for others and if you listen to the full transcript, I only meant the highest praise for one of India’s greatest players and someone that I admire greatly as well,” she said.

She said she had been “trying to frame the enormity of his achievements and I have chosen the wrong word and for that I am deeply sorry”.

“As someone who is also of South Asian heritage, I hope people would recognise there was no other intention or malice there,” she said.

Former India coach Ravi Shastri, a fellow Fox Sports commentator, commended her for the apology and urged India to “move on”.

“People are entitled to make mistakes. We are all human. To own up and say, ‘I’m sorry’ … it takes courage. She’s done it.

“As far as the Indian team, there is a Test on and they want to focus on the game,” he said.

Bumrah continued his achievements on Monday, taking his sixth wicket of the innings.

Allegations of racism are not unheard of in international cricket, while an independent report into cricket published last year found that racism, sexism, classism and elitism were “widespread” in the English and Welsh game.

A student opened fire at a private Christian school in the US state of Wisconsin, injuring six people and killing a teacher and teenaged student.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes identified the attacker on Monday night as a 15-year-old female student at the school.

Authorities say the attacker was in attendance at Abundant Life Christian School before opening fire and was found dead at the scene. Six students were injured, including two who suffered life-threatening injuries.

A second grade student was the first to call in the active shooter report, according to Chief Barnes.

“Today is a sad day not only for Madison, for our entire country,” Chief Barnes said. “We have to do a better job in our community.”

He added the police had not identified a motive in the shooting, and the suspect’s family was co-operating with the investigation.

He said it is not yet clear how the attacker got hold of a firearm.

He named the alleged attacker as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha. She is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The official cause of death will be released by the Dane County Medical Examiner pending autopsy results.

Chief Barnes said that, to his current knowledge, police had not had any prior interactions with the alleged shooter.

Officers responded to a 911 call of a shooter at the Christian school around 11:00 local time (17:00GMT) on Monday. The attacker attended school before the shooting, Chief Barnes said.

The shooting was confined to a study hall with students in mixed grades.

Barbara Wiers, director of relations at the school, said the school had conducted active shooter training earlier this year and the information was “very fresh” for educators to put into practice on Monday.

She said while the school does not have a dedicated police officer, known as a school resource officer, the doors of all classrooms automatically lock and anyone wanting to gain entry to the campus must be buzzed in through the primary entrance.

Ms Wiers, who said she was teaching at the time of the attack, said students handled themselves “brilliantly”.

“They were clearly scared,” she said. “When they heard ‘lockdown, lockdown’ and nothing else, they knew it was real.”

Police say they found the shooter dead when they arrived at the school, along with a handgun. No officers fired weapons.

Police have not named any of the victims.

Chief Barnes said two students were in critical but stable condition in the hospital facing life-threatening injuries. Four others were taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries, two of whom have since been released.

Authorities have appealed for witnesses who saw or heard the attack to come speak to police, and that they hope these accounts will shed light on the attacker’s motive.

“But that’s not something we want to rush. We’re not gonna interrogate students,” Chief Barnes said. “We’re gonna give them an opportunity to come in and tell us what they saw when they’re ready.”

He added that “ever child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever”.

The chief said officers responded to the school as they were undergoing training at a training centre for law enforcement located three miles away.

“What began as a training day became an actual day,” he said.

The shooting also resulted in a large response from emergency officials. Madison Fire Chief Chris Carbon said 15 ambulances respond.

Officials from the FBI also responded, as well as other federal and local law enforcement officials.

The Abundant Life Christian School has around 400 students ranging from kindergarten through high school.

“Please pray for our Challenger Family,” the school wrote in a post on Facebook. The post quickly received hundreds of comments of support from people across the US.

The school remains closed while police continue their investigation.

“This has been a rough day for our city,” said Chief Barnes.

“This is going to be a day that will be etched in the collective minds and memories of all those from Madison.”

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said that he was closely monitoring the situation and praying for everyone involved. He also ordered that flags fly at half mast on state buildings.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the shooting was “shocking and unconscionable”.

“Students across our country should be learning how to read and write – not having to learn how to duck and cover,” said Biden, who also called on Congress to act immediately on legislation that could prevent more gun violence.

Shootings are common in the US, and schools are no exception.

The K-12 Violence Project, a non-profit working on reducing violence through accessible and actionable research, has counted more than 300 shootings in 2024. These include events where a gun is brandished or fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims.

According to the news organisation EducationWeek, 38 school shootings have resulted in deaths or injuries across the US this year. There were a total of 69 victims – including 16 deaths – before today’s shooting.

Mass shootings by females are far less common, however. School shootings committed by female attackers are even less common.

In a blog post last year, K-12 School Shooting Database founder David Riedman wrote that the vast majority of school shooters are males in their teens or early 20’s. However, at least four planned school shootings were by female attackers dating back to 1979.

Saydnaya prison sits on a forbidding hill about half an hour’s drive from the centre of Damascus.

In the last few days the entrance has been repainted in the green, white and black of Syria’s revolutionary flag. The new colours did not dispel the sinister atmosphere of the place.

As I walked through the gates, I thought of the despair that must have gripped the thousands of Syrians who made the same journey.

One estimate is that more than 30,000 detainees were killed in Saydnaya in the years since the start of the Syrian war in 2011. That is a large proportion of the more than 100,000 people, almost all men but including thousands of women – as well as children – who disappeared without trace into Bashar al-Assad’s gulag.

Other parts of Assad’s prison system were less cruel. Phone calls home were allowed, and families were allowed to visit.

But Saydnaya was the dark and rotten heart of the regime. Fear of being consigned there and killed without anyone knowing what had happened was a central part of the Assad regime’s system of coercion and repression.

The authorities did not have to tell families who had been incarcerated there. Allowing them to fear the worst was another way of applying pressure. The regime kept its boot on the throat of Syrians because of the power, reach and savagery of its myriad and overlapping intelligence agencies, and because of the routine use of torture and execution.

I was in other infamous prisons in the days after they were liberated, including Abu Salim, the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s notorious jail in Tripoli and Pul-e-Charki outside Kabul in Afghanistan.

Neither were as foul and pestilent as Saydnaya. In its overcrowded cells men had to urinate into plastic bags as their access to latrines was limited.

When the locks were smashed open, they left behind their filthy rags and scraps of blankets which were all they had to cover themselves as they slept on the floor. Torture and execution have already been documented in Saydnaya.

In the months to come it is certain that more information about the horrors perpetrated inside its walls will emerge from former inmates.

In Saydnaya’s corridors you can see how hard it will be to mend the country Assad broke to try to save his regime. Now that the prison has been broken open, like the country, it has become a microcosm of all the challenges Syria faces since the Assad regime crumpled and was swept away.

One challenge is making a record of exactly what the regime did to its victims. In a sign of how far Syria has come in just a week, volunteers went to the prison to try to preserve Saydnaya’s records.

Paperwork is scattered around offices and even on the concrete floor of the prison yard. Families pick up files and sheets of tattered documentation, trying to find a name, a date or a place that they recognise.

The disarray of the records looks as if someone tried to destroy what was done here in the name of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. When dictators and their henchmen fall, making sure they don’t take the truth with them is a big part of a better future.

A musician called Safana Bakleh gave her group of volunteers face masks and blue nitrile gloves along with instructions about photographing and collecting documents.

Safana admitted they were amateurs and said they were taking matters into their own hands because the international human rights groups were not there, and evidence and documents were disappearing.

“Even if one family gets one answer that their loved on is not here anymore is deceased or he died in the hospital it is enough for me” Safana told me. “It is very chaotic… Where are the international originations supposed to be documenting all this chaos?”

It is not just about families getting some release through at least knowing what happened to the disappeared. One day there might be trials of the perpetrators. Documents are evidence.

The truth the volunteers uncovered with their own eyes shocked them. All Syrians knew that the prisons were bad, but Saydnaya was much worse than they expected. Widad Halabi, one of the volunteers, took off her face mask and broke down in tears after an hour or so looking for evidence in the cell blocks.

“What I’ve seen here is a life not fit for humans. I imagined how they lived, their clothes. How did they breathe? How did they eat? How did they feel?

“It’s terrible… terrible. There are bags of urine on the floor. They couldn’t go to the toilet, so they had to put urine in bags. The smell. There’s no sun or light. I can’t believe people were living here when we were living and breathing our normal lives.”

It will be hard for Syrians and their new rulers to track down the people they want to punish. Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia with his family. His brother Maher, with a reputation for violence and corruption as bad as anyone in his extended family, is thought to be in Iraq.

A couple of Assad’s cousins ran into rebel fighters as they tried to escape to Lebanon. One of them, according to Reuters news agency, was killed in the resulting shootout.

When I entered Syria a week ago hundreds of cars full of despondent and scared families with some link to the regime, who believed they would be in danger in the new Syria, were leaving, queuing to get over the border into Lebanon. At the same time hundreds were driving in the opposite direction, desperate to get home.

Eventually there might be a legal process to prosecute Bashar al-Assad, members of his family and some of those who carried guns for the regime. Gathering evidence would be part of that. But the exodus in the last hours of the regime and in the confused days and nights that followed means that it will be hard to get to the people responsible.

At Saydnaya prison, families wander through the building, desperate for information, searching for those they’ve lost, horrified by everything they are seeing. Just being in Saydnaya’s cells and corridors, freezing cold in December, reinforces a widespread desire to see the punishment of everyone implicated in the Assad regime’s crimes.

A group of men gathered in the prison yard, smoking silently, some leafing through files that they had picked up off the ground. All those I spoke to said that the future must be built on justice for the past. The men in the group, all looking for missing, sons, brothers and cousins, called Saydnaya a mass grave. They want the head of Bashar al-Assad, literally. They murmured agreement when one of them said he had to be decapitated.

One of them, a young man called Ahmed, said he knew the brother he was searching for was alive because he could see him in his dreams. Ahmed himself had spent three years in Saydnaya.

“It was so bad, the torture, the food, everything. We were suffering.”

Mohammed Khalaf, an older man, had been searching for his son Jabr since he was dragged from the family breakfast table by thugs from one of the state’s intelligence agencies in 2014.

“We are many. People came from Qamishli, Hasaka, Deir al-Zour, Al Raqqa looking for our loved ones. Thousands are still in the streets looking for their children. It’s not just me.”

Inside one of the cell blocks, young men from Aleppo were warming themselves on a fire that they had lit in a metal tin, burning old prison uniforms that are scattered around every cell. They were looking for brothers who had been detained and then disappeared.

Like many others looking for information or a body at Saydnaya, the men had no money for a hotel. So they camped in the prison where they believe their brothers were consigned and most likely killed.

One of the men from Aleppo, Ezzedine Khalil, wants news of a brother taken by the regime on 1 September 2015. They all know the precise dates.

“We don’t know if he is alive or dead. If he is dead, they should give us his body. They should tell us if he’s dead. We just want to know. We want to know what to do next.”

His friend Mohammed Radwan was looking for a brother and a cousin who were detained in 2012. Rumours were flying around that the night before the fall of the regime, 22 freezer lorries were brought to the prison to remove bodies. The rumours have not been confirmed but Mohammed and Ezzedine were convinced that they were true.

Mohammed looked exhausted and his anger flared up. He addressed himself to Assad.

“Where did you, pig, take the 22 fridge trucks? Everyone who took part in this crime, and everyone who served her in Saydnaya prison should be brought to justice. Everyone! Even if they were working in cleaning. They should all be brought to account.”

“Because if they knew what was happening, at least they should have told the families of the prisoners that their dear ones were killed, slaughtered, hanged or tortured.”

Both men ended with an Islamic prayer: “Allah is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs.”

Their hunger to see Assad and his men punished could become one of the drivers of events in the next few months. Syrians want to see their tormentors punished.

The extended Assad clan used Syria as their bank account. They helped themselves to stakes in businesses that might make profits. They controlled the lucrative market for telecoms and mobiles. As they raked in cash, Syrians struggled to eke out a living in an economy smashed by war and drained dry by rapacious and corrupt regime favourites. The new rulers of Syria have inherited big debts and an almost worthless currency. A couple of hundred dollars equals a plastic trash bag of bundles of Syrian pounds.

Corruption extended to the prison system. Victims and families desperate to avoid years in a hell-hole were prepared to pay big money to stay out.

Hassan Abu Shwarb served 11 years under sentence of death for terrorism, which was the word the Assad regime used for rebellion. Hassan, a quietly spoken man who is now 31, denies he ever joined an armed group. Instead, he says he was detained at a government office when he was getting documents necessary to apply for a passport so he could accept an offer to study in Canada.

His brother said the family paid a total of $50,000 (£39,509) in bribes on five separate occasions to try to get him out. In all cases the corrupt officials who had offered help for cash pocketed the money without releasing Hassan. A couple of weeks before the regime collapsed yet another corrupt judge offered to free Hassan for another $50,000.

After his arrest Hassan Abu Shwarb was tortured when he was detained for 80 days at a military intelligence interrogation centre. Among other injuries, the torturers broke one of his legs. Hassan says he was with one of his cellmates, a 49-year-old man, when he died after three days of torture. The jailors recorded death from a stroke.

Hassan was overjoyed to get home.

“When my mother held me after 11 years, I can’t describe the feeling. There is nothing like going back to your home and neighbourhood.”

But like many Syrians, Hassan’s optimism about the future starts with determination that the fallen regime’s leaders and acolytes should suffer for their deeds.

“They should be punished. We are human souls, not stones after all. And those who killed should be publicly executed. Otherwise, we won’t get through this.

“We need to forget and move on. This is a happiness for all Syrians. We need to return to our work and responsibility to continue. We need to forget. We turned the page. All the sadness is behind us.”

The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has started using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, instead of his war time pseudonym, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. The name change contains a message about looking ahead. The evidence is that Ahmed al-Sharaa will need to prioritise justice for the deposed regime if he does not want the chaos of people taking matters into their own hands.

The future is hard, and the past is full of pain. Here in Damascus, it feels as if a collective weight has been lifted from the shoulders of a nation.

Syrians know how deep their problems go. To preserve the optimism created by Assad’s fall, Syrians want to see progress.

Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad says he never intended to flee to Russia – in what is purported to be his first statement since the fall of Damascus eight days ago.

Assad’s reported statement was put on the Telegram channel belonging to the Syrian presidency on Monday, although it is not clear who currently controls it – or whether he wrote it.

In it he says that, as the Syrian capital fell to rebels, he went to a Russian military base in Latakia province “to oversee combat operations” only to see that Syrian troops had abandoned positions.

Hmeimim airbase had also come under “intensified attack by drone strikes” and the Russians had decided to airlift him to Moscow, he says.

In the statement – published both in Arabic and English – the former Syrian leader reportedly describes what happened on 8 December – and how he was apparently besieged at the Russian base.

“With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December,” the statement reads.

“This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all remaining state institutions.”

• ‘I felt like a breathing corpse’: Stories from people freed from Syria torture prison
• Bowen: Syrians search for dead loved ones – and closure

The statement adds that “at no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party”.

“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” it says.

Assad was nowhere to be seen as Syrian cities and provinces fell to rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) within a period of 12 days.

However, speculation mounted that he had fled the country as even his prime minister was not able to contact him during the rebel sweep into Damascus.

On 9 December, Russian media announced that he had been given asylum there – even though there has not been any official confirmation.

The Syrian rebel groups are continuing to form a transitional government.

HTS, Syria’s most powerful rebel group, was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda the following year.

Al-Nusra broke ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and later took the name HTS when it merged with other factions. However, the UN, US, UK and a number of other countries continue to designate it as a terrorist group.

Its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has pledged tolerance for different religious groups and communities. But his group’s jihadist past has left some doubting whether it will live up to such promises.

UN envoy Geir Pedersen, who met al-Sharaa on Sunday, said Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.

Qatar has also sent a delegation to Syria to meet transitional government officials ahead of the re-opening of its embassy on Tuesday, 13 years after it was closed.

Western countries have not gone as far as re-opening their embassies, but in the past two days the US and the UK said they had been in touch with HTS. The British government made clear the Islamist-led rebel group remains a proscribed terrorist organisation, despite it beginning “diplomatic contact” with the group.

Speaking on Monday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Moscow and Tehran “should not have a place in Syria’s future”.

Iran’s National Security Council has paused the implementation of the controversial “hijab and chastity law”, which had been due to come into force on Friday.

President Massoud Pezeshkian called the legislation “ambiguous and in need of reform”, signalling his intention to reassess its measures.

The proposed new law – which would introduce harsher punishments for women and girls for exposing their hair, forearms or lower legs – had been heavily criticised by rights activists.

The strict dress codes imposed on women and girls, which have been treated as a national security priority by the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran for decades, have previously triggered protests.

Under the new law, repeat offenders and anyone who mocked the rules would face heavier fines and longer prison sentences of up to 15 years in jail. It would also mandate that businesses report anyone who violates the rules.

Human rights groups had expressed alarm. Amnesty International said Iranian authorities were “seeking to entrench the already suffocating system of repression”.

During the presidential election in July, then candidate Pezeshkian openly criticised the treatment of Iranian women over the hijab issue.

He promised not to interfere in their personal lives, a stance that resonated with many Iranians, especially from a younger generation frustrated by the government’s rigid control.

Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former vice-president for women and family affairs, also criticised the law, saying: “The new legislation is an indictment of half the Iranian population.”

The hijab debate gained further momentum last week when Parastoo Ahmadi, a popular Iranian singer, was arrested after streaming a virtual concert with no audience present on YouTube while not wearing the hijab.

The concert quickly went viral and the arrest of Ahmadi and her bandmates sparked widespread backlash. Facing public outcry, authorities released them the following day.

Tensions surrounding the hijab have remained high since nationwide protests in 2022 triggered by the death of Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died in police custody after being detained for allegedly violating the dress code.

Over the past two years, many young Iranian women have defiantly removed their hijabs in public, challenging the government’s authority.

Last week, more than 300 Iranian rights activists, writers and journalists publicly condemned the new hijab law, calling it “illegitimate and unenforceable” and urged Pezeshkian to honour his campaign promises.

Despite pressure from hardline factions close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, many younger people in Iran appear to be unafraid to confront the regime’s restrictions.

Pezeshkian’s supporters believe the new hijab law will fail to discourage young women from defying it and could even worsen the situation.

However, supporters of the legislation have pressured the president to move forward, criticising the National Security Council’s hesitation and demanding that he sign the law to clear the path for its enforcement.

The decision to pause its implementation suggests the government fears it could trigger another wave of mass protests, like those seen two years ago.

Over the last three decades, at least 565 children in the Indian state of West Bengal have been injured or killed by home-made bombs, a BBC Eye investigation has found.

So what are these deadly devices and how are they linked to political violence in West Bengal? And why are so many Bengali children paying the price?

On a bright summer morning in May 1996, six boys from a slum in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, stepped out to play cricket in a narrow alley.

Their shantytown, nestled in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jodhpur Park, thrummed with life. It was a holiday – voting day in a general election.

Nine-year-old Puchu Sardar, one of the boys, grabbed a cricket bat and quietly slipped past his sleeping father. Soon, the cracking noise of bat meeting ball echoed through the alley.

A ball batted out of the boundaries of their makeshift pitch sent the boys searching for it in a small garden nearby. There, in a black plastic bag, they found six round objects.

They looked like cricket balls someone had left behind, and the boys returned to the game with their spoils.

One of the “balls” from the bag was bowled at Puchu who struck it with his bat.

A deafening explosion tore through the alley. It was a bomb.

As the smoke lifted and neighbours rushed outside, they found Puchu and five of his friends sprawled on the street, their skin blackened, clothes scorched, bodies torn.

Screams pierced the chaos.

Seven-year-old Raju Das, an orphan raised by his aunt, and seven-year-old Gopal Biswas died of their injuries. Four other boys were wounded.

Puchu narrowly survived, having suffered serious burns and shrapnel wounds to his chest, face and abdomen.

He spent over a month in hospital. When he came home he had to use kitchen tongs to remove shrapnel still lodged in his body because his family had run out of money to pay for any more medical care.

Puchu and his friends are part of a long, tragic list of children killed or maimed by crude bombs, which have been used in West Bengal for decades in a bloody battle for dominance in the state’s violent politics.

There are no publicly-available figures on the number of casualties in West Bengal.

So the BBC World Service went through every edition of two prominent state newspapers – Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman Patrika – from 1996 to 2024, looking for reports of children injured or killed by these devices.

We found at least 565 child casualties – 94 deaths and 471 injuries – as of 10 November. This means a child has fallen victim to bomb violence, on average, every 18 days.

However, the BBC has found incidents in which children were wounded by these bombs that were not reported by the two newspapers, so the real number of casualties is likely to be higher.

More than 60% of these incidents involved children playing outdoors – gardens, streets, farms, even near schools – where bombs, typically used during elections to terrorise opponents, were hidden.

Most victims the BBC spoke to were poor, the children of house-help, odd-jobbers, or farm workers.

West Bengal, India’s fourth-largest state with a population of more than 100 million, has long struggled with political violence.

Over the years, since India’s independence in 1947, the state has cycled through different rulers – the Congress party for two decades, the Communist-led Left Front for three, and the current Trinamool Congress since 2011.

In the late 1960s, the state was wracked by armed conflict between Maoist rebels – also called Naxalites – and government forces.

A common thread across all governments and rebel conflicts since then has been the use of bombs as tools of intimidation by political parties to silence opponents, especially during elections.

“Bombs have been [used to settle scores]. This has been happening in Bengal for a long time, more than 100 years,” Pankaj Dutta, a former Inspector General of West Bengal police, told us.

Bomb-making in Bengal has its roots in the rebellion against British rule in the early 1900s.

Early efforts were crude and accidents were common: One rebel lost a hand and another died testing a bomb.

Then a rebel returned from France armed with bomb-making skills.

His book bomb – a legal tome loaded with explosives hidden in a Cadbury cocoa tin – would have killed its target, a British magistrate, if he had opened it.

The first explosion rocked Midnapore district in 1907, when revolutionaries derailed a train carrying a senior British official by planting a bomb on the tracks.

A few months later, a botched attempt to kill a magistrate in Muzaffarpur with a bomb hurled into a horse-drawn carriage claimed the lives of two Englishwomen.

The act, described by a newspaper as a “tremendous explosion that startled the town,” had turned a teenage rebel called Khudiram Bose into a martyr and the first “freedom fighter” in the pantheon of Indian revolutionaries.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a nationalist leader, wrote in 1908 that bombs were not just weapons but a new kind of “magical lore,” a “witchcraft” spreading from Bengal to the rest of India.

Today, Bengal’s crude bombs are known locally as peto. They are bound with jute strings and stuffed with shrapnel-like nails, nuts and glass.

Variations include explosives packed into steel containers or glass bottles. They are used primarily in violent clashes between rival political parties.

Political activists, particularly in rural areas, use these bombs to intimidate opponents, disrupt voting stations, or retaliate against perceived enemies.

They are often deployed during elections to sabotage polling booths or to assert control over areas.

Children like Poulami Halder bear the brunt of such violence.

On an April morning in 2018, the-then seven-year-old was picking flowers for morning prayers in Gopalpur, a village in the North 24 Parganas district dotted with ponds, paddy fields, and coconut trees. Village council elections were barely a month away.

Poulami saw a ball lying near a neighbour’s water pump.

“I picked it up and brought it home,” she recalls.

As she stepped inside, her grandfather, sipping tea, froze at the sight of the object in her hand.

“He said, ‘It’s not a ball – it’s a bomb! Throw it away!’ Before I could react, it exploded in my hand.”

The blast shattered the quiet of the village. Poulami was struck in the “eyes, face, and hands” and fainted, as chaos erupted around her.

“I remember people running towards me, but I could see very little. I was hit everywhere.”

Villagers rushed her to the hospital.

Her injuries were devastating – her left hand was amputated, and she spent nearly a month in hospital.

An ordinary morning routine had turned into a nightmare, forever altering Poulami’s life in a single, shattering moment.

Poulami is not alone.

Sabina Khatun was 10 years old when a crude bomb exploded in her hand in April 2020 in Jitpur, a village flanked by rice and jute fields in Murshidabad district.

She had been taking her goat out to graze when she stumbled upon the bomb lying in the grass. Curious, she picked it up and began playing with it.

Moments later, it detonated in her hands.

“The moment I heard the explosion, I thought, who’s going to be disabled this time? Has Sabina been maimed?,” her mother, Ameena Bibi, says, her voice heavy with anguish.

“When I stepped outside, I saw people carrying Sabina in their arms. The flesh was visible from her hand.”

Doctors were forced to amputate Sabina’s hand.

Since returning home, she has struggled to rebuild her life, her parents consumed by despair over an uncertain future. Their fears are not unwarranted: In India, women with disabilities often face social stigma that complicate their prospects for marriage and jobs.

“My daughter kept crying, saying she would never get her hand back,” says Ameena.

“I kept consoling her, telling her, ‘your hand will grow back, your fingers will grow back.'”

Now, Sabina grapples with the loss of her hand and the struggle with simple daily tasks. “I struggle with drinking water, eating, showering, getting dressed, going to the toilet.”

The children of the bombs

In the Indian state of West Bengal, children are routinely maimed, blinded, or killed by home-made bombs. BBC Eye investigates the political violence that underlies this tragedy and asks why the carnage is allowed to continue.

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Maimed by bombs yet lucky to survive, these children have had their lives changed forever.

Poulami, now 13, received an artificial hand but couldn’t use it – too heavy and quickly outgrown. Sabina, 14, struggles with failing eyesight.

Her family says she needs another operation to remove bomb debris from her eyes, but they cannot afford it.

Puchu, now 37, was pulled out of school by his fearful parents and spent years refusing to step outside, often hiding under his bed at the slightest noise.

He never picked up a cricket bat again. His childhood stolen, he’s now scraping by with odd construction jobs and bears the scars of his past.

But all hope is not lost.

Poulami and Sabina have both learned to ride a bicycle with one hand and continue to go to school. Both dream of becoming teachers. Puchu hopes for a brighter future for his son, Rudra, five, – a future in uniform as a policeman.

Despite the terrible toll it inflicts, there is no sign of crude bomb violence in West Bengal ending.

None of the political parties admit to using bombs for political gain.

When the BBC asked the four main political parties in West Bengal whether they were involved, directly or through intermediaries, in manufacturing or using crude bombs, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not respond.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) strongly denied being involved, saying it was “committed to upholding the rule of law…and that when it comes to protecting rights and lives, children are of the utmost concern”.

The Indian National Congress (INC) also strongly denied using crude bombs for electoral advantage, and said it had “never engaged in any violence for political or personal gain”.

Although no political party will admit responsibility, none of the experts who spoke to the BBC is in any doubt this carnage is rooted in Bengal’s culture of political violence.

“During any major election here you will see the rampant use of bombs,” Pankaj Dutta told us. “Extreme abuse of childhood is going on. It is a lack of care on the part of the society.” Mr Dutta passed away in November.

Poulami adds: “Those who planted the bombs are still free. No one should leave bombs lying around. No child should ever be harmed like this again.”

But the tragedy continues.

In May this year in the Hooghly district, three boys playing near a pond unknowingly stumbled upon a cache of bombs. The explosion killed Raj Biswas, nine, and left his friend maimed, missing an arm. The other boy escaped with leg fractures.

“Look what they have done to my son,” Raj’s grieving father sobbed as he caressed the forehead of his dead child.

As Raj’s body was lowered into a grave, political slogans crackled through the air from a nearby election rally: “Hail Bengal!” the crowd chanted, “Hail Bengal!”

It was election time. And once again, children were paying the price.

Yang Tengbo has been identified as the 50-year-old Chinese businessman and alleged spy banned from the UK.

UK authorities have alleged he formed an “unusual degree of trust” with Prince Andrew and developed relationships with politicians to be “leveraged” by China.

Details of the allegations against Mr Yang came to light last week when a Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal upheld a Home Office order banning him from the UK on national security grounds following a long-running legal battle.

A court order which meant he could previously only be identified as H6 was lifted on Monday.

Mr Yang has said the allegation he is a spy is “entirely untrue” and denied doing anything unlawful.

Yang Tengbo, also known as Chris Yang, was born in China in 1974. He first came to the UK in 2002 and studied in London for a year, before taking a masters degree in public administration and public policy at the University of York.

In 2005 he founded consultancy firm Hampton Group International – one of five companies he has been publicly listed as a director of in the UK.

On 21 May 2013 he was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. He told the tribunal that he spent up to two weeks in the UK each month on average prior to the pandemic.

After his anonymity was removed on Monday, he described the UK as his “second home” and said he “would never do anything to harm” it.

On 6 November 2021, Mr Yang was stopped at the UK border for reasons which have not been made public. He surrendered his phone and other digital devices.

In February 2022, he filed a legal claim to stop the UK government from retaining his data – a bid he first won and then lost on appeal.

He was then told UK authorities believed he was associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) – the secretive arm of the Chinese government that organises Beijing’s cultural influence operations.

The UFWD has been linked to several cases of alleged Chinese state interference in Western countries and researchers say it often works to try and co-opt legitimate Chinese business and community groups in foreign countries.

A year later in February 2023, Mr Yang was “off-boarded” from a flight to London as he was returning from Beijing. He was told the UK was in the process of making a decision to bar him from the country.

Mr Yang’s lawyers asked for the government to disclose the allegations against him and for an opportunity to make his case.

On 15 March 2023, then Home Secretary Suella Braverman ordered the cancellation of Mr Yang’s residency rights. She banned him from the UK because it would be “conducive to the public good”.

Mr Yang was informed of this on 23 March 2023 and he launched a legal challenge shortly after.

Some of the evidence which informed the Home Office’s decision to ban Mr Yang was included in a court ruling upholding the decision published last week.

Authorities relied on data found on Mr Yang’s devices when he was stopped in 2021, including documents which UK authorities said indicated a link with the UFWD and other Beijing-linked groups.

UK authorities argued these showed he was “frequently connected to officials connected with the Chinese state”. They also said he had “sometimes deliberately obscured” his links to the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party and the UFWD, and alleged there was a “deceptive element” to his account.

The Home Office also argued that even though Mr Yang said he hadn’t received direct orders to interfere with UK interests, “those in his position could be expected to understand UFWD and CCP objectives” and “proactively engage in them without being tasked”.

They also pointed to Mr Yang’s membership of the London-based 48 Group Club, which promotes trade between the UK and China. Security officials argued Mr Yang’s honorary membership could be leveraged for political interference purposes by Beijing.

In a response to the US-funded Radio Free Asia, the 48 Group Club said Mr Yang was never actively involved the running of the group.

While the tribunal ruled there was not an “abundance” of evidence against Mr Yang in some instances, and said there may be an “innocent explanation” in others, it ultimately decided there was “sufficient” material to justify MI5’s conclusion that he posed a security risk.

Mr Yang said he will appeal the ruling.

Watch: ‘China’s Magic Weapon’, a 2021 documentary on China’s efforts to expand its influence in the West.

UK authorities discovered a letter from Dominic Hampshire, a senior adviser to Prince Andrew, who said Mr Yang could act on behalf of the prince in engagements with potential investors in China.

Mr Hampshire also told Mr Yang in a letter: “Outside of [the prince’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.”

It is unclear if this was a true assertion put forward by Mr Hampshire, who has not spoken publicly since being named in the ruling.

But the Home Office assessed this as evidence that Mr Yang was in a position to “generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials” which “could be leveraged for political interference purposes” by Beijing.

A document listing “main talking points” for a call with Prince Andrew was also found, saying the prince was “in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”

Prince Andrew said he “ceased all contact” with Mr Yang after receiving advice from the government, but did not specify when communication stopped. His office said they met “through official channels” and there was “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”.

Mr Yang has strongly denied the allegations against him. In his first submission to the tribunal, he said he had no connections to anyone in politics in China, had never been a member of the Chinese Communist Party and had never carried out activities on its behalf for for the UFWD.

In further submissions, he also said he only had limited links to the Chinese State and that “contact with the UFWD is unavoidable”.

Mr Yang said he had become a victim of a new political climate in which the UK has hardened its views towards China.

“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded,” Mr Yang said.

A Beijing foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday “it is not worth refuting this kind of unjust hype”, adding to a statement last week which said “some individuals in the UK are always eager to fabricate baseless ‘spy’ stories targeting China”.

Noor stands trembling in the chill afternoon light of the courtyard, not from the cold, but from fear.

Dressed in her thick winter coat, she has come to make a complaint to the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria’s new de-facto rulers, and the new law in town.

She begins to cry as she explains that three days earlier, just before nine in the evening, armed men had arrived in a black van at her apartment in an upscale neighbourhood of the city of Latakia. Along with her children and her husband, an army officer, she was forced out onto the street in her pyjamas. The leader of the armed men then moved his own family into her home.

Noor – not her real name – is Alawite, the minority sect from which the Assad family originates, and to which many of the former regime’s political and military elite belonged. Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni. Latakia, on Syria’s north-west Mediterranean coast is their heartland.

As with other cities, an array of different rebel groups have rushed into the power vacuum left after Assad’s soldiers abandoned their posts. The regime had exploited sectarian divisions to maintain its grip on power, now the Sunni Islamist HTS has pledged to respect all religions in Syria. But Latakia’s Alawite population is fearful.

Some people haven’t even left their homes since the regime change because they worry that there will be a reckoning, and that they will have to pay a heavy price for the support of the old regime.

Noor shows CCTV footage from her apartment, to 34-year-old Abu Ayoub, HTS general security commander. In the film, a group of bearded fighters, some wearing baseball caps and others in military fatigues, is pictured on her doorstep.

They are not from HTS, she says, but another group, rebels from the northern city of Aleppo.

“They broke down the door. There were 10 militants at our door and 16 others waiting down the street with three cars,” Noor tells Abu Ayoub. His men are mostly from Idlib and Aleppo, where the HTS and allied rebel factions were based before launching the offensive that overthew Assad three weeks ago. They stand around in combat fatigues, holding their rifles and listening intently as she describes how the family’s belongings were thrown into the street.

HTS was once aligned with al-Qaeda and is still proscribed as a terror organisation by most Western countries, although the UK and US say they have been in contact with the group. In a matter of weeks, it has gone from enemy of the state to the law of the land. Abu Ayoub and his men are adjusting to the change in roles from revolutionaries to policemen.

Noor is only one of a long line of complainants who have come to their general security station with grievances. The base, the city’s former military intelligence headquarters, was perhaps the most feared place in Latakia. Now it is a shambles, with broken radios and equipment scattered across the courtyard. Torn portraits of Bashar al-Assad lie in the dirt.

A man joins the queue of those making complaints. He has a black eye, broken ribs, and his shirt is torn and bloodied. He says men from Idlib had broken into his apartment.

“Some of them were civilians, some wore military clothes and were masked,” he says. “They hit my daughter and aimed weapons at my son’s head. They stole money, they stole gold.”

Every call-out here is a show of force, especially with so many armed groups in the city. With the man’s son directing them, the HTS security force drives to one of the poorer neighbourhoods, weaving through a warren of back streets, past scrapyards and middens.

The armed police take up positions along the street and at the doorway of the apartment. They bring two suspects back to the station for questioning.

But they barely have time to clear their weapons when there is another complaint, a dispute over gas bottles that left another man beaten.

He says three men had pulled guns on him.

Another race in the cars to a crowded commercial and residential neighbourhood. When the police pull a suspect out into the street – his face still bloody from the earlier fight – local women come to their balconies and shout “Shabiha! Shabiha!”. They are accusing the suspect of being a member of the shadowy militia force, mostly made of Alawite men, who did the Assad regime’s dirty work.

Since its lightning-fast sweep to victory across Syria, Islamist HTS has pledged to keep the peace and protect all of the country’s minorities. And every day Abu Ayoub has to make good on that pledge.

“Some infiltrators into the revolution, some saboteurs, and some weak-minded people are taking advantage of the situation in the areas that were recently liberated,” he says.

Abu Ayoub admits the situation in the city was “a bit chaotic” but turns his attention to Noor. “We are here now, we weren’t here when the army left. We were initially in Damascus and then we came. They are thugs, and we will evict them from your house. We will return your belongings. You have my word,” he said. And with that he orders his men into their pickup trucks and with sirens blaring they head for the apartment.

Latakia is a city liberated. Last Friday, tens of thousands of people from all sects, gathered on the streets to celebrate the downfall of the Assad dynasty. In a city square, they sat atop the plinth where the statue of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father – who ruled for 29 years before his death in 2000 – once stood, and joyfully waved the flag of a free Syria.

The message that day was unity, of one Syria, without sectarian division. But after half a century of tyrannical rule from a regime which fanned sectarian hatred and warned that Alawites would be massacred if they ever lost power, it is an adjustment to say the least.

On Saturday, three HTS fighters were killed, and 14 injured outside the city, in what it said was gun battle with a criminal gang. HTS, which is trying to maintain calm, claims there was no sectarian element to the attack.

On the way to Noor’s apartment, the HTS convoy speed through the streets and passersby cheer them and flash the peace sign.

The new Syrian flag, with its green instead of red stripe, and three red stars instead of two green, is commonplace on shop shutters and hanging from balconies. But in Alawite areas, people mostly watch in silence as the convoy moves along. There are fewer new flags in evidence.

Azam al-Ali, 28, an HTS security officer from Deir al-Sour in eastern Syria sits in the front seat. After so much oppression, he says, it will take time for people to trust authority again.

“Most of the oppressed that come with complaints are from two sects, the Sunni and the Alawite. We do not differentiate. But the extreme poverty that this regime left behind caused this vast chaos,” he tells me as the traffic parts for the convoy.

And he notes that Alawites, some of whom were among the poorest in Syria, suffered too under the Assad regime.

We arrive at Noor’s apartment and half a dozen armed HTS men hurry up the stairs.

The woman behind the door refuses to open up, but after some negotiation the door opens, and she and her family are ordered to leave. Noor goes in to retrieve some clothes and books for her daughter who is studying for exams. Weapons and ammunition belonging to the rebel squatters are confiscated.

“When I went to HTS today I was terrified,” says Noor. “Their appearance was so intimidating and frightening. Honestly, though, they were very nice.”

But she won’t be returning to the apartment. One nightmare has ended in Syria, and for Alawites, another has begun, she says.

As she clutches her belongings, Noor says she no longer feels safe in her home.

“It’s impossible for me to live here again. I do have hope, but not in the near future. At the moment I don’t dare.”

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.

On Monday morning, at a public event announcing a new $100bn US investment pledge by a Japanese conglomerate, Donald Trump appeared to revel in the breadth of his support.

“The first term everybody was fighting me,” he said. “This term everybody wants to be my friend.”

It may have been a typically Trumpian overstatement, but the contrast between the way his first presidential term began – and ended – and the current transition to his second term eight years later is dramatic.

In just the past few weeks, many of the president-elect’s former critics and adversaries have made overtures and outreach.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Sam Altman of OpenAI have pledged million-dollar donations to Trump’s inauguration festivities.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate on Monday.

During his first term, Trump sought to ban the Chinese-owned social media company, which conservatives at the time blasted as a national security risk.

The president-elect now opposes a current effort to ban the platform, this time from the Biden administration, partially because it could help Facebook, which he has accused of aiding his 2020 election loss. The ban is scheduled to go into effect before Trump is sworn into office.

Others have also made the trek to Florida or plan to.

The day before Thanksgiving, Zuckerberg, whose Facebook had once banned Trump, travelled to the president-elect’s private club in Florida for dinner.

Google head Sundar Pichai also said he plans a sit-down meeting with the president-elect.

And when Trump appeared on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell and mark his announcement as Time Magazine’s “person of the year” last week, senior executives from major US corporations gathered to watch.

“This marks a time of great promise for our nation,” Marc Benioff, head of Salesforce and owner of Time, posted on X. “We look forward to working together to advance American success and prosperity for everyone.”

The increasingly accommodating attitude isn’t confined solely to the corporate boardrooms. In the media, too, there has been something of a shift.

MSNBC personalities Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who host Morning Joe, visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump last month. “It’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him,” Brzezinski said.

And on Saturday, ABC News – which is owned by the Disney Corporation – announced that it was paying Trump $15m and legal fees to settle a defamation lawsuit related to remarks made in March by morning news presenter George Stephanopoulos.

Defamation cases against media outlets require proving malice or a reckless disregard for the truth – and other news organisations have successfully fought off previous Trump lawsuits. With Trump soon returning to power, however – and the president-elect threatening new lawsuits on Monday against CBS, the Des Moines Register and the Pulitzer Prize foundation – the calculus for ABC and Disney may have changed.

A protracted legal battle with the president-elect was seemingly deemed unpalatable.

In Washington’s corridors of power, a similar dynamic appears to be at play.

Senate Republicans who had seemed wary of confirming some of Trump’s more controversial political appointees, such as Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defence, are falling in line as they face increasing pressure not just from Trump but from his supporters, who warn of dire consequences for the uncooperative.

Even some Democrats are reaching out to the incoming Trump administration. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman said he would consider backing Hegseth and has expressed support for some Trump picks.

Other Trump critics in Congress are taking a pragmatic approach. On Sunday, independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders suggested he would be open to supporting vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as Trump’s health secretary, saying he shared concerns about the health impacts of processed food.

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• Trump gets $15m in ABC News defamation case

Eight years ago, it was a different story. Democrats were pledging across-the-board resistance to the newly elected president. The day after his inauguration, millions took to the streets in protest.

Trump’s political opponents dug in and fought for every inch of political terrain, successfully blocking conservative attempts to repeal Democratic-backed healthcare reforms and spend tens of billions of dollars on a US-Mexico border wall, and fighting immigration law changes in the courts.

After Trump’s presidential term ended in controversy and chaos four years later, with his supporters attacking the US Capitol, dozens of powerful American corporations – including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens – cut ties to Trump as well as Republicans who challenged the results of the 2020 election. Many in Trump’s own party denounced the former president.

This time around, such evidence of resistance – at least for the moment – is difficult to discern. Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who as Senate majority leader sharply criticised Trump in 2021 but opposed his impeachment conviction, has been offering stern warnings about the dangers of an “America First” foreign policy.

The 82-year-old McConnell, however, stepped down from his leadership position in the Senate earlier this year and is unlikely to seek re-election in 2026. There is little Trump or his supporters can do to threaten him at this point.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen congressional Democrats have said they will skip Trump’s 20 January inauguration ceremony.

“I don’t think that this is a time for celebration,” Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett said. “I think that if we had a traditional Republican, where there were disagreements, then I would most likely be there.”

But while some Democrats may stay home, the party for Trump and his supporters is in full swing – and, given his remarks on Monday, the president-elect seems to know it.

Once Trump takes offices and begins attempting to implement his agenda of mass deportations and trade tariffs, however, opposition could build – both from Democrats looking for political opportunity and from adversely affected business interests.

Then the fighting Trump remembers from his first term could quickly re-emerge.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

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.

WATCH: Why do some in India want couples to have more children?

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.