A high-ranking general in the Russian armed forces and his assistant have been killed in Moscow by Ukraine’s security service, a Ukrainian source has told the BBC.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defence Forces (NBC), was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when a device hidden in a scooter was detonated remotely, Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) said.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service claimed Kirillov was “a legitimate target” and alleging he had carried out war crimes.

On Monday, the SBU charged Kirillov, 54, in absentia, saying on Telegram that he was “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons”.

The Ukrainian government has not yet commented on the general’s death.

Pictures from the scene in south-eastern Moscow showed the badly damaged entrance to a building with scorch marks on the walls and a number of windows blown out. Two body bags could also be seen on the street.

The block was cordoned off on Tuesday morning as Russian investigators continued combing the area.

In October, the UK placed sanctions on Kirillov, saying he had overseen the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and acted as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Ukraine’s SBU has claimed Russia used chemical weapons more than 4,800 times under the general’s leadership.

Moscow denies the allegations.

The SK said it had “opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen”.

“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” it said.

“Investigative actions and operational search activities are being carried out aimed at establishing all the circumstances of the crime.”

Russian state news agencies reported that the explosive device – which killed Kirillov and his aide in Ryazansky Avenue – had an explosive force equivalent to 300g (0.7lb) of TNT.

They added that bomb experts and specialist search dogs had inspected the surrounding area and no other explosives had been found.

Experts have told BBC Verify that judging from images of the scene, it appears the explosion was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), a type of homemade bomb which usually contains easily obtainable components, such as nails or glass.

Assassinations of senior officials have been carried out in Russia before, but attacks in Moscow are rare.

Liza, who lives one building away from the site of the blast, told the BBC that while she was not entirely surprised, the killing of Igor Kirillov was a “shocking” development.

“It’s one thing reading about it in the news, it feels far, but when it happens next door, that’s completely different and frightening,” she tells me.

“Until now, [the war] felt as if it was happening a long way off – now someone is dead, here, you can feel the consequences,” Liza said, adding that “unfortunately, I don’t think things will calm down any time soon”.

Several other local residents said they initially thought the loud noise they heard had come from a construction site.

Student Mikhail Mashkov, who lives in the building next door, told the AFP news agency he was woken up by a “very loud explosion noise”, thinking “something fell at the construction site”, before looking outside.

Olga Bogomolova said she thought a container had fallen at the construction site but then realised “it was a very strong explosion”, saw “broken windows” and that it was something else.

People living in the area told the BBC of their deep sense of shock.

Even after nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many Muscovites, the war is something that is happening a long way away – something they only see on TV or on their phones.

The killing of a Russian general in Moscow is a sign that this war is very real and very close to home.

Under UK sanctions, Kirillov was subject to an assets freeze and travel ban.

In May, the US accused Russia of deploying chemical weapons as a “method of warfare” in Ukraine, in violation of international laws banning their use.

State department officials said Russia used the choking agent chloropicrin to win “battlefield gains” over Ukraine.

According to the SBU, Russian forces have used drones to drop chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukrainian Col Artem Vlasiuk had previously said that more than 2,000 Ukrainian service members had been treated in hospital for chemical poisoning over the course of the war and three people had died.

The Kremlin rejected the accusations at the time, calling them “baseless”.

Kirillov served in different roles in Russia’s military associated with hazardous materials, including the Directorate of the Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops.

He was appointed head of the NBC in 2017.

Reacting to Kirillov’s death, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said: “Clearly we are not going to mourn the death of an individual who has propagated an illegal invasion and imposed suffering and death on the Ukrainian people.”

Ukraine’s Security Services appear to be stepping up their targeting of senior Russian individuals, almost three years into the conflict.

Kirillov’s death comes less than a week after a prominent Russian weapons expert was shot dead near his home in Moscow.

Ukrainian media reported that the assassination of Mikhail Shatsky was carried out by Ukraine’s military intelligence service.

Senior Russian naval officer Valery Trankovsky and Russian prison boss Sergei Yevsyukov also died after car bombs exploded in Russian-occupied Ukraine in recent weeks.

BBC Verify has been analysing social media videos and images from Moscow to try to build up a clearer picture of the blast that killed Russian Lt Gen Igor Kirillov and his assistant.

Ukrainian sources say they carried out the attack on the senior commander, who has overseen Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection troops since 2017. He was sanctioned by the UK in October and accused of being a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Lt Gen Kirillov was leaving a modern apartment building in south-east Moscow early on Tuesday when the device hidden in a parked scooter was detonated, Russia’s Investigations Committee – the country’s equivalent of the FBI – said.

Footage authenticated by BBC Verify shows two people leaving the building before an explosion next to the entrance. Their clothes are the same colour as those on the bodies pictured in the aftermath.

A scooter appears to be propped up near the door. Nothing after the blast is visible, the rest of the footage is obscured by debris from the explosion.

In other footage analysed by BBC Verify, the remains of an electric scooter can be seen lying among debris between two bodies and a demolished doorway.

A close-up image of the scooter, verified by matching it to the debris, shows it is largely intact – apart from its missing handlebars.

Experts at Janes – a private open-source investigations organisation – told BBC Verify that the images suggested that the explosion was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), rather than a conventional munition.

“From the available pictures of the scooter it actually looks pretty intact, so the effect appears to be more fragmentation than blast,” a spokesperson with the organisation told BBC Verify.

An IED is a type of “homemade” bomb which can come in a variety of forms and usually contains easily obtainable components – such as nails, glass or metal fragments – according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

• Live: Ukraine says it killed senior Russian general
• What we know about Igor Kirillov
• UK sanctions Russian troops over chemical weapons use in Ukraine

David Heathcote, an intelligence manager with security analysts McKenzie Intelligence, also suggested that the device appeared to be an IED.

“IEDs can be deliberately constructed so as to appear as an everyday item that would not look out of place,” he told BBC Verify. “In this instance it appears that the device was concealed within a scooter, most likely using a military grade explosive such as (but not necessarily) Semtex, rather than a home-made explosive.”

He added that the attack demonstrated “a decent level of sophistication and may have taken months of preparation” which would have required a “significant amount of surveillance of the intended target prior to the attack”.

Russian media has speculated that a device had been taped to the scooter’s handlebars.

It has also reported, citing law enforcement sources, that the explosion was likely detonated remotely. Mr Heathcote agreed with the assessment, suggesting that a radio signal from a phone or car fob may have been the trigger.

“The attacker will need to have eyes on the device and will press a switch to initiate the explosion as the target comes into range,” he told BBC Verify. “The proximity to the device of the attacker depends on the transmitter [or] receiver being used.”

Russian state media has said that the bomb used up to 300g of explosive material. According to a UN tool to estimate damage from blasts, 300g of TNT equivalent explosive can break small windows from a distance of about 17m (55ft) away, or cause damage to brick houses from 1.3m away.

An eyewitness has been showing Russian media images of what he said was debris from the explosion that landed in the flat he owns across the street from the site. BBC Verify is showing these to weapons experts to help establish whether they could have come from the device.

According to the developers, the apartment block where Lt Gen Kirillov was killed is relatively new and was completed in 2019. The flats are relatively high end, with some available for around 20m Roubles (£153,540) online.

In the videos verified by the BBC, a small crowd is seen gathered around the bodies, which are lying in the snow-covered street. Emergency services vehicles are also visible in the footage.

Both videos were filmed on a street looking north toward Ryazansky Prospekt, Moscow, and emerged on social media on Tuesday morning. They show damage to the front of the building, including bricks strewn around and doors hanging open, only a few feet from the bodies.

Another video has captured a bright flash slightly off camera. The force of the explosion knocks snow off nearby parked cars.

At least 10 other apartments on the street have been affected by the explosion, the popular Russian Telegram channel Mash reported.

BBC Verify will continue to examine footage from the scene as it comes in and bring updates.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

After months of deadlock, there are new signs that Israel and Hamas could be moving closer to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

A senior Palestinian official involved in the indirect negotiations told the BBC that talks were in a “decisive and final phase”.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has also said an agreement is closer than ever.

In recent weeks, the US, Qatar and Egypt have resumed their mediation efforts – reporting greater willingness by both sides in this 14-month war to conclude a deal.

An Israeli delegation described as “working level” is currently in the Qatari capital Doha amid a flurry of diplomatic comings and goings in the region.

The Palestinian official outlined a three-phase plan which would see civilians and women soldiers held hostage in Gaza released in the first 45 days, with Israeli forces pulling out of city centres, the coastal road and the strategic strip of land along the border with Egypt.

There would be a mechanism for displaced Gazans to be able to return to the north of the territory, the official said.

A second stage would see remaining hostages freed and troops withdrawn before the third stage ending the war.

Of 96 hostages still held in Gaza, 62 are assumed by Israel to still be alive.

The plan appears to be based on the deal US President Joe Biden outlined on 31 May and reports from all sides stress there are key details to work out.

A round of talks in mid-October failed to produce a deal, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal.

According to his spokesman, Katz told members of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Monday: “We have not been this close to an agreement on the hostages since the previous deal,” referring to an exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners in Israel in November 2023.

He has since written on X: “My position on Gaza is clear. After we defeat Hamas’s military and governmental power in Gaza, Israel will have security control over Gaza with full freedom of action,” comparing this to the situation in the occupied West Bank.

“We will not allow any terrorist activity against Israeli communities and Israeli citizens from Gaza. We will not allow a return to the reality of before 7 October.”

Such comments are likely to be seen as problematic by negotiators trying to bridge gaps with Hamas. However, in Israel, they are seen as vital to guarantee the support of far-right Israeli cabinet ministers who have previously warned they would not agree to what they have described as a “reckless” deal in Gaza.

The Palestinian Islamist armed group Hamas, which governed Gaza, carried out an unprecedented cross-border attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 253 others abducted.

More than 100 hostages have been freed through negotiations or Israeli military rescue operations.

On 7 December, it is understood from Palestinian sources that Israel stopped aircraft movement and drone surveillance over the territory for six hours at the request of mediators, allowing Hamas to collect information about the hostages.

Pro-Qatari newspaper al-Araby al-Jadeed then reported that Hamas had handed a list of sick and elderly Israeli hostages as well as those with US citizenship to Egyptian intelligence officials. The paper said there were also the names of Palestinian prisoners that the group was demanding as part of the deal.

At the outset of the war in Gaza, Israel pledged to destroy Hamas’s governing and military capabilities. More than 45,000 Palestinians have since been killed according to figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which are seen as reliable by the UN and others.

Most of the 2.3 million population of Gaza has been displaced, there has been widespread destruction and amid an ongoing struggle to get aid to those in need, there is now mass hunger.

Donald Trump’s victory in November’s US presidential election has given a new push to diplomatic efforts.

At a news conference on Monday, he again warned that a ceasefire deal should be reached before he takes office, saying otherwise, “it’s not going to be pleasant.”

India, the world’s largest democracy, is almost always in election mode.

With 28 states, eight union territories and nearly a billion eligible voters, polls are a constant feature of the nation’s political landscape.

For years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has championed the idea of “One Nation, One Election” – a proposal to hold state and federal elections simultaneously every five years.

On Tuesday, the Indian law minister introduced a bill to implement this system in the parliament sparking a debate over power dynamics.

Supporters argue this approach would slash campaign costs, ease the strain on administrative resources and streamline governance.

Former President Ram Nath Kovind, who led a nine-member committee that recommended holding elections at the same time last year, called it a “game changer”, citing economists who say it could boost India’s GDP by up to 1.5%.

Critics, however, warn it could erode India’s federal structure, concentrating power in the center and weakening states’ autonomy.

India’s democracy operates on multiple levels, each with its own election cycle.

There are general elections to choose parliament members, state elections to pick legislators, while rural and urban councils hold separate votes for local governance. By-elections fill vacancies caused by resignation, death or disqualification of representatives.

These elections happen every five years, but at different times. The government now wants to sync them.

In March, a panel led by Kovind proposed holding state and general elections together in its extensive 18,626-page report. It also recommended local body elections within 100 days.

The committee suggested that if a government loses an election, fresh polls would be held, but its tenure would last only until the next synchronised election.

While this may sound intense, simultaneous polls aren’t new to India. They were the norm from the first election in 1951 until 1967, when political upheavals and early dissolutions of state assemblies led to staggered polls.

Efforts to revive the system have been debated for decades, with proposals from the Election Commission in 1983, the Law Commission in 1999 and Niti Aayog, a government think-tank, in 2017.

The biggest argument for holding simultaneous elections is cutting election costs.

According to the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Media Studies, India spent more than 600bn rupees ($7.07bn; £5.54bn) on 2019 general elections, making it the world’s most expensive at the time.

However, critics argue that the same goal – reducing costs – could backfire.

With 900 million eligible voters, ensuring enough electronic voting machines, security forces and election officials would require extensive planning and resources.

According to a 2015 parliamentary committee report by the law and justice Department, India already spends 45bn rupees on general and state elections.

The report mentioned if simultaneous elections were held then a total 92.84bn rupees would be needed to procure new voting and voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines, which dispenses a slip of paper with the symbol of the party the voter selected. These machines would also need to be replaced every 15 years.

Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi has raised concerns about the high costs. He said they should have been addressed in the Kovind committee report, especially since reducing election expenses was a key reason behind the proposal.

Implementing simultaneous elections requires making formal changes or revisions to specific provisions (or articles) of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the country. Some of these changes would need ratification by at least half of India’s 28 state assemblies.

While the BJP-led alliance has a simple majority in parliament, it lacks the two-thirds majority needed for such amendments.

The Kovind committee studied models from countries like South Africa, Sweden and Indonesia, suggesting their best practices for India.

In September, the cabinet approved the proposal to hold simultaneous elections and backed two bills pushing for the system on Thursday.

Federal Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal has introduced the bills in the parliament.

One bill proposes a constitutional amendment to enable joint federal and state elections, while another aims to align assembly polls in Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu & Kashmir with the general election schedule.

The government has said it is open to referring the bills to a parliamentary committee and consult political parties to build consensus.

The Kovind committee contacted all Indian parties for feedback, with 47 responding – 32 supported simultaneous elections, while 15 opposed them.

Most supporters were BJP allies or friendly parties, citing time, cost and resource savings.

The BJP argued that the model code of conduct cost India “800 days of governance” in the past five years by delaying welfare schemes.

Prime Minister Modi has supported simultaneous elections.

“Frequent elections are obstructing the nation’s advancement,” he said in August. “With elections occurring every three to six months, every scheme is linked to polls.”

Opposition parties, led by the Congress, have called simultaneous polls “undemocratic” and argued that they undermine the country’s parliamentary system of government. They say such a setup will give an unfair advantage to national parties over regional ones.

The parties also recommended enhancing transparency in the funding process as a better solution to addressing concerns about election costs.

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake has struck near Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila, triggering landslides, crushing cars and flattening multiple buildings, including a complex that is home to a number of Western embassies.

There are unconfirmed reports of deaths but the full extent of the damage remains unclear, as power and mobile networks across the country remain cut off.

Dan McGarry, a journalist living in Port Vila, said hospital authorities had told him at least one person had died. He had seen “several people who were visibly, seriously injured” outside the emergency unit.

Vanuatu is prone to earthquakes, but Mr McGarry told the BBC the quake had felt like “the biggest one… in more than 20 years”.

The quake struck at 12:47 local time (01:47 GMT) on Tuesday.

“Emergency services are going to be busy for a while. We have limited equipment and capabilities here,” Mr McGarry said, adding that police at the Vila Central Hospital had told him one person had died, and the number of deaths was expected to rise.

One of the clips from state broadcaster VBTC’s Facebook page showed dozens of people outside the Vila Central Hospital, many lying on hospital gurneys awaiting treatment.

Michael Thompson, director of the Vanuatu Jungle Zipline adventure company, told AFP news agency that he had seen bodies lying in the streets.

“There’s multiple buildings that have come down around town. There’s a big rescue operation on the way to clear out people who are possibly alive in the building,” Mr Thompson said, in a separate video posted to Facebook.

“I thought the ceiling [of our house] was going to come right down,” Mr Thompson’s wife Amanda told the BBC.

“We often have earthquakes here but not like this. The house has giant cracks all through it, sliding glass doors are smashed.

“We are feeling a lot of after shakes now, each one make us nervous as we run out the door to open air,” she said.

However Mr McGarry added that the latest disaster was something the people of Vanuatu would “get through”.

“People in Vanuatu deal with natural disasters on a yearly basis. It’s in our blood. We’ll get through this as well, although not without some suffering,” he said.

Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of some 80 islands in the South Pacific, is located west of Fiji and thousands of kilometres east of northern Australia.

The nation sits in a seismically active area, and is susceptible to frequent large earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The United States Embassy, the British High Commission, the French Embassy and the New Zealand High Commission were among damaged buildings housed in the same complex.

US officials said the building sustained “considerable damage” and would be closed until further notice. All staff in the building had safely evacuated, they added.

Separately, several Australian airlines have also cancelled flights into Port Vila, citing damage at the airport.

Australian carrier Jetstar, a subsidiary of Qantas, cancelled a flight scheduled for Wednesday morning from Sydney to Port Vila, citing “earthquake activity in Vanuatu and reports of possible damage to Port Vila airport infrastructure”.

The United States Geological Survey reported at least four aftershocks around Port Vila – with magnitudes ranging from 4.7 to 5.5 – in the two hours after the first earthquake. The first quake hit at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles).

Authorities in neighbouring New Zealand and Australia said there was no tsunami threat for their countries.

Australia also said it “stands ready to support Vanuatu as the extent of the damage is assessed”.

“Vanuatu is family and we will always be there in times of need,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong wrote on X.

New Zealand said it is “deeply concerned” and was monitoring the situation. “Our thoughts are with the people and authorities of Vanuatu,” said Foreign Minister Winston Peters.

Are you in Vanuatu? If it is safe to do so, please get in touch.

A man who should have been celebrating his birthday and a married couple were among 11 Indians to die in a Georgian ski resort at the weekend.

Sameer Kumar, who only arrived in Georgia a few months ago, died alongside the couple, Ravinder Singh and Gurvinder Kaur, above an Indian restaurant in Gudauri, relatives say.

Georgia’s ministry of internal affairs said it believed the 12 victims – including one Georgian national – died after being poisoned by carbon monoxide.

The Indian government has said it is in touch with the victims’ families and is working to bring back the bodies of those who died in the incident.

The initial investigation show no signs of violence or injuries on the bodies, which were discovered on Saturday, the Georgian ministry said in a statement.

It is thought the incident occurred after a power generator, placed near the bedrooms, was turned on after the building’s electricity was switched off.

Authorities are working to determine whether the deaths could lead to charges of “negligent manslaughter”.

Carbon monoxide is an odourless gas, and is known as the “silent killer”. It is produced after the incomplete burning of fossil fuels. The gas, if inhaled, prevents oxygen from being carried by the blood in the body. This can lead to poisoning and can be fatal.

A team from BBC Punjabi spoke to some of the families of the victims in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

Gurdeep Kumar says his 26-year-old brother, Sameer, had recently moved to Georgia in search of employment opportunities.

“We last spoke to him on Friday, a day before his birthday,” he said. “The family tried contacting him on his birthday but never heard back.”

A day later they tracked down the number of the restaurant owner and were informed of the incident, he said.

The family is now urging both the federal and state governments to ensure his body is repatriated to India so that they can perform his final rites.

In Sunam village, relatives are mourning the death of Ravinder Singh and his wife.

“They had gone to Georgia in March after spending 1.3m rupees ($15,310; £12,060) seeking a better future,” Singh’s uncle Kuldeep Singh Bawa Kainchi told BBC Punjabi.

Gudauri is a popular tourist destination for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts. It offers 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.

Climate change, nature loss and food insecurity are all inextricably linked and dealing with them as separate issues won’t work, a major report has warned.

The review of scientific evidence by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found governments are underestimating or ignoring the links between five key areas – biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

This “siloed” approach has unintended consequences, such as damaging biodiversity through tree-planting schemes, or polluting rivers while ramping up food production, the report said.

The latest assessment was approved by almost 150 countries meeting in Windhoek, Namibia.

Understanding the interdependencies between the different areas is “critical” in addressing the crises affecting the natural world, said the report’s co-chair, Paula Harrison, professor of land and water modelling at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

“Our current governance systems are often different departments, they’re working in silos, they’re very fragmented,” she said.

“Often these links are not even acknowledged or ignored and what that means is you can get unintended consequences or trade-offs that emerge because people just weren’t thinking in an holistic way.”

She said the report has identified more than 70 solutions to tackling the problems holistically, many of which are low cost.

Examples given in the report include the disease bilharzia, which causes long-term health issues for more than 200m people worldwide, especially in Africa.

Tackling the problem as a health issue through medication sees people get reinfected.

A different approach in rural Senegal tackled water pollution and the invasive plants that are habitat for the snails which host the parasitic worms which carry the disease, resulting in health and biodiversity gains.

Current decision making has prioritised short-term financial returns while ignoring the costs to nature, said the report’s co-chair, Prof Pamela McElwee, of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

“It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25tn per year,” she said.

Nature’s true value overlooked in decision making – IPBES

COP16: What is biodiversity and how are we protecting it?

Unsustainable logging, fishing and hunting ‘driving extinction’

The report also found:

• More than half of the world’s population – especially among developing countries – live in areas hit by the biggest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water and food
• Biodiversity – the richness and variety of all life on Earth – is declining everywhere, largely as a result of human actions, with “direct and dire impacts” on food security and nutrition, water, health and wellbeing, and resilience to climate change
• Delaying the action needed to meet policy goals will also increase the costs of delivering them. For example, delayed action on biodiversity goals could as much as double the eventual costs – while increasing the probability of species extinctions.

The report also looked at future challenges and scenarios, focussing on the periods up to 2050 and 2100.

It found that under current “business as usual” trends, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health.

Dealing with only one area in isolation will probably lead to negative outcomes in other areas. Focusing only on climate change, for example, can lead to negative outcomes for areas such as biodiversity and food, reflecting competition for land.

“Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co-benefits across the nexus elements,” said Prof Harrison.

“The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change,” she said.

The IPBES is often referred to as conservation scientists’ equivalent of the IPCC – the key UN group of climate scientists.

It provides policy makers with scientific assessments relating to the planet’s diversity of fauna and flora, and the contributions they make to people.

Previous reports have looked at how policy makers undervalue the true worth of nature and, in a hard-hitting 2019 report, how human activity was risking the extinction of a million species.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week.

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The couple behind PinkNews have called allegations of sexual misconduct at the company “false, inconsistent and malicious” in their first statement since a BBC investigation into claims about their behaviour.

Benjamin Cohen and Anthony James have released an open letter on the PinkNews website accusing the BBC of misleading the public about their response to the investigation.

A BBC documentary spoke to 30 former and current workers at PinkNews who alleged a culture of heavy drinking led to instances of inappropriate behaviour from both Mr Cohen and Dr James.

Mr Cohen and Dr James have said they were initially unable to respond because of an ongoing criminal investigation. The BBC said its report was “in the public interest”.

PinkNews says it has an audience of millions for its content about the LGBT community.

Five former staff spoke to the BBC and alleged they saw Dr James kissing and touching a younger colleague, who was described as “too drunk to consent”.

Others said there was a toxic work culture and that they were too scared to speak out because the two most senior bosses at the company were married to each other.

When contacted about the original investigation, representatives for Mr Cohen and Dr James told the BBC they were not able to provide a statement at this time. However the BBC understood the couple’s position was that the allegations were false, which was included in the report.

Today, a statement from the couple said the reporting had caused “extremely serious harm” to them, to PinkNews and to their colleagues.

It read: “In August, we made a criminal complaint to the police in relation to alleged offences committed against us that are connected with these recent reports.

“As we told the BBC prior to its initial broadcast, a police investigation was ongoing and we were advised not to make a comment.

“We are now aware that devices had been seized with forensic investigations continuing.”

The statement added: “Despite the BBC being aware of the police investigation, it chose to broadcast and misled the public about our response. We have consulted lawyers in respect of these false, inconsistent and malicious allegations.

“We had explained to the BBC, that the stage of the police investigation meant that it was not possible for us to comment on the specific allegations even though they were strenuously denied.”

More than 10 more former staff have since come forward to the BBC to share their experiences at PinkNews since the report was published last week.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “The BBC reported the allegations made by several members of staff at PinkNews.

“We approached Mr Cohen and Dr James for comment and we made it clear in our reporting that they said they were unable to provide a comment at this time, but they denied the allegations.

“We believe it was in the public interest to report this story.”

Following the BBC’s report, Dr James was suspended from his position as an associate non-executive director in the NHS, pending further information.

There is no suggestion that the suspension is related to his conduct within the NHS.

The BBC has contacted representatives of Dr James for comment regarding his suspension.

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson has been released from prison in Greenland where he spent five months in custody, after Denmark rejected a Japanese request to extradite him.

Mr Watson, 74, was detained by police when his ship docked in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, last July.

Police had acted on a 2012 Japanese warrant that accused him of causing damage to a Japanese whaling ship, obstructing business and injuring a crew member during an encounter in Antarctic waters in February 2010.

Mr Watson, who is a Canadian-American citizen and featured in the reality TV show Whale Wars, had denied any wrongdoing. He told the BBC of his “relief” at being freed and able to return home to see his children.

Speaking over video call from Nuuk, where he had just been released from prison, Mr Watson said his time in prison had brought attention to “illegal” Japanese whaling.

“All the evidence shows that I wasn’t even there when this offence supposedly took place,” he added. “We document everything. Everything is on film.”

Whaling and eating whale meat have been heavily criticised by conservation groups, but officials in Japan argue that it is part of the country’s culture and way of life.

The Danish justice ministry confirmed that it would not be complying with the Japanese extradition request, basing its decision on “the nature of circumstances” as well as the fact that the incident dated back 14 years.

His lawyer Julie Stage told the BBC that Mr Watson was “obviously relieved” and “looking forward to reuniting with his wife and children”.

As Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, the decision on his extradition was made in Copenhagen. Although Japan and Denmark have no extradition treaty, the government in Tokyo had asked Denmark to hand him over.

Denmark’s justice minister, Peter Hummelgaard, said it had been of “central importance” to ensure that the length of time Mr Watson had been detained in Greenland would be deducted from any possible prison sentence he may have later faced in Japan.

He added that the ministry concluded “it cannot be assumed with the necessary certainty that this will be the case” after correspondence with Japanese authorities.

Mr Watson’s vessel, called the M/Y John Paul DeJoria, had been heading to the North Pacific with a crew of 26 volunteers on board, in a bid to intercept a new Japanese whaling ship when it docked to refuel in Nuuk on 21 July.

At a previous custodial hearing, Mr Watson told the court that the case was “about revenge for a television show that extremely embarrassed Japan in the eyes of the world”.

Mr Watson said he also planned to go to Interpol in the new year to discuss an outstanding red notice for his arrest.

He also added that his organisation was prepared to continue its anti-whaling activities.

For years, Mr Watson has been a controversial figure known for confrontations with whaling vessels at sea.

The campaigner is the former head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which he left in 2022 to set up the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial whaling in 2019, after a 30-year hiatus – although during that time it continued whaling for what it said were research purposes.

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

By the end of a frenetic Monday, a new finance minister was in place, but Trudeau was facing calls from members of his own Liberal Party to quit.

Without directly referring to the news, the prime minister told party donors at an event in Ottawa: “It’s obviously been an eventful day. It has not been an easy day.”

In her scathing resignation letter – published on the day she was due to deliver an economic statement – Freeland cited disagreements with her long-time ally on how to respond to the threat of tariffs from Donald Trump.

The US president-elect, who will return to the White House in January, has vowed to impose a levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods unless the shared border is made more secure.

Economists say the tariffs could have a devastating effect on Canada’s economy.

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

Trump himself later responded to Freeland, posting that her “behaviour was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada”.

Freeland 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 the scheduled economic update in the air for hours and bringing Trudeau and his shaky minority Liberals to the brink.

In a further blow, the Liberals lost control of the Cloverdale-Langley City seat in British Columbia, after a by-election win for rival Conservatives. It was the Liberals’ third by-election defeat of the year.

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

Freeland’s sudden exit as finance minister earlier in the day “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.

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.

In addition to the members of the prime minister’s own party who called on him to quit, Canada’s three opposition party leaders said on Monday that 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 that it was not clear that a change in leadership would 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.

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 was held today.

Some Liberal members of parliament have been pressuring Trudeau for months to step down – eight MPs publicly expressed this sentiment on Monday, Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported.

In a meeting with his caucus following Freeland’s resignation on Monday, Trudeau reportedly heard some of those calls for him to quit directly. Others also expressed their concerns and reservations about his leadership.

Trudeau addressed them by saying he is not immediately stepping down, but that he will reflect on the day’s events, according to sources who spoke to Canadian media about the meeting.

Trudeau did not take questions on his way to the fundraiser in Ottawa, 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”.

North Korean troops have been killed fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region, the US has said.

These would be the first reported casualties since it emerged in October that North Korea had sent around 10,000 troops to reinforce Russia’s war effort.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, has also said at least 30 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in fighting over the weekend.

The BBC has not independently verified the claims.

The North Korean troops, none of whom will have any previous combat experience, are believed to have spent their first weeks in Russia in training and then in support roles.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian had begun to use a “significant number” in its assaults in Kursk, part of which Ukraine has occupied since launching a surprise incursion in August.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the US believed North Korean soldiers had “engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces” and “suffered casualties, both killed and wounded”.

He did not give specific numbers, but said the troops had been in combat since “a little over a week ago”.

He added it appeared the North Koreans were being used in infantry roles and that their involvement was thought so far to be limited to Kursk, implying that they have not been deployed in Ukraine itself.

Russian forces, who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have been advancing in eastern parts of the country in recent months.

The GUR said the North Korean casualties had occurred on Saturday and Sunday in the Kursk villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha, and Martynovka.

On Monday, President Zelensky posted drone footage on Telegram that showed a number of men taking cover behind trees, saying they were North Korean troops who had just taken part in an assault on a Ukrainian position.

He also posted footage which he said showed Russian troops trying to conceal the presence of North Koreans on the battlefield by using a campfire to burn the faces of those who had been killed.

“Ukraine’s Defense Forces and intelligence are working to determine the full extent of the actual losses suffered by Russian units that include North Koreans,” he said.

He added that there was “not a single reason for North Koreans to die in this war”.

The Kremlin referred questions about North Korean deaths to the Russian Ministry of Defence, which has made no comment.

Following reports of the deaths, the EU and countries including the UK, US, Australia and South Korea called Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict a “dangerous expansion… with serious consequences for European and Indo-Pacific security.”

Earlier this week, the US Treasury department announced sanctions on nine people and seven entities over their financial and military support to North Korea.

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.

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.

Alex Spencer’s son Declan – who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy – died last year at the age of 24, and she admits she has still not gone a day without crying.

“I think society has a misconception that a carer gets their life back [when a loved one dies],” she said.

Declan had drawn up a bucket list but died before he could finish it.

Now Alex, who wants to raise awareness of the difficulties disabled people face in getting the right care, is taking up the challenge – including visiting Paris, getting a tattoo Declan designed and taking his adapted van around a famous German race track.

In the year before Declan died, the family say they faced almost daily battles to receive the NHS home care he was entitled to.

On one occasion, Alex says she stayed awake for 60 hours, supporting Declan day and night due to a shortage of carers.

“I want Dec to be proud of me,” says Alex, as she exhibits her son’s wheelchair-adapted van at a supercar show in Birmingham in August as part of his bucket list.

They had been due to attend the exhibition the year before, but Declan died that weekend, in August 2023, having had the life-limiting muscle wastage condition. People with the condition will usually only live into their 20s or 30s, the NHS says.

In his final years, he was unable to move unassisted, required a ventilator to breathe, and lived with chronic heart and respiratory failure.

Now, the love and energy Alex once directed towards caring for his needs has been transferred to completing his biggest wishes – and top of the list is to have the “most well-known adapted van in the UK”.

The BBC first met Declan, from Syston in Leicestershire, in 2018 and we followed his story over a number of years.

When we met him for the final time in May 2023, he told us: “I’m kind of a big petrolhead.

“There’s so many things I want to do to my van.”

Since then, it has been adorned with bronze alloys, ceiling lights and a midnight purple colour-wrap.

As passers-by view the van, Alex engages them about Declan’s life.

“It is very overwhelming,” she says, her hands shaking.

She hopes to use the van to take other disabled people on days out, to make their own wishes come true.

Declan had been entitled to 24/7 care through the NHS Continuing Healthcare scheme, which is designed to enable people with the most complex needs to live outside of hospital.

But the family say a shortage of trained care workers within their allocated budget meant support repeatedly fell through, which Alex believes placed his health at risk.

In the final weeks before Declan died, with an increased care budget signed off, Alex says a shortage of available nurses meant rotas continued to go unfilled, leaving her to care for her son at a time she wanted to cherish as a mother.

“I’m not medically trained, [but] I was doing stuff nurses should be doing,” she says.

Declan had been given months to live in May 2023, but she says they “only got to see the palliative care team the day before he died”.

Declan’s local care team – the NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board (ICB) – told the BBC “all the organisations involved in Declan’s care were working with the family to provide the best possible care”.

“In highly complex cases, it may not always be possible to provide safe and effective care at home which meets all assessed needs, but an alternative of residential care was always on offer [to the family],” a spokesperson said.

More than a year on from Declan’s passing, Alex says she is “still trying to find out who I am”.

“I think society has a misconception that a carer gets their life back [when a loved one dies]. There’s not been a day since I’ve lost Dec that I’ve not cried,” she says.

Completing the bucket list, she says, has provided her with a purpose.

There were many achievements too while Declan was alive. She arranged for him to meet Syndicate, his favourite YouTuber, and got tickets to The Weeknd and Harry Styles gigs.

For now, there are several items on the bucket list remaining, from meeting Declan’s favourite podcasters Chris and Rosie Ramsey, to having his van reviewed by former Top Gear presenter Chris Harris.

Alex knows it will take time to complete.

Just as important to her is that, through the bucket list, she continues Declan’s legacy.

“That’s to be kind to others,” she says. “And to not let disability keep you from what your goals are.”

As head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection troops, Igor Kirillov – who has died in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of overseeing the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

In Russia, he was viewed as a tireless patriot, fighting for the truth and exposing Western “crimes”.

Sources from Ukraine’s SBU security service said it it was behind the blast and referred to a special operation against a “war criminal” and a legitimate target.

Kirillov and an aide were killed by explosives planted in an electric scooter, according to Russian officials, which was blown up as he left the building he lived in on Ryazansky Prospekt in south-eastern Moscow.

He had become notorious for outlandish briefings at the Russian defence ministry which prompted the UK Foreign Office to label him as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Kirillov was far more than just a mouthpiece, heading Russia’s Timoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Academy, before going on to lead the Russian army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops in 2017.

The force’s main tasks involve identifying hazards and protecting units from contamination but also “causing loss to the enemy by using flame-incendiary means”, the Russian defence ministry says. That is thought to refer to Russia’s flame-thrower system that can destroy targets with the use of thermobaric warheads.

The UK Foreign Office said that the force Kirillov commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what it said was the widespread use of riot control agents and “multiple reports of the use of the toxic choking agent chloropicrin”.

On the eve of his killing, Ukraine’s SBU declared that he had been named in absentia in a criminal case for the “mass use” of prohibited chemical weapons on the eastern and southern fronts in Ukraine.

It cited “more than 4,800 cases of the enemy using chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

It said toxic substances had been used in drone attacks as well as in combat grenades.

Kirillov earned his notoriety from the start of the war with a series of claims directed towards both Ukraine and the West, none of which was based on fact.

Among his most outrageous claims was one that the US had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used in an attempt to justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.

He produced documents in March 2022 which he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on 24 February – which were amplified by pro-Kremlin media but rubbished by independent experts.

Kirillov’s notorious allegations against Ukraine continued into this year.

Last month he claimed that “one of the priority aims” of Ukraine’s counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk border region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant.

He presented a slideshow, purportedly based on a Ukrainian report, alleging that in the event of an accident only Russia territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination.

One of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine was seeking to develop a “dirty bomb”.

Two years ago he alleged that “two organisations in Ukraine have specific instructions to create a so-called ‘dirty bomb’. This work is in its final stage”.

His claims were rejected by Western countries as “transparently false”.

But Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia suggested Kyiv was preparing that kind of weapon, it meant only one thing – that Russia was already preparing it.

Kirillov returned to his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time alleging the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory close to Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.

Kyiv, he claimed, was violating the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) with a variety of substances with the assistance of Western countries, including the psychochemical warfare agent BZ as well as hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.

Russia is a signatory to the CWC and was adjudged to have destroyed all its Cold War-era chemical weapons in 2017. The following year Russian agents carried out a deadly attack on the British city of Salisbury using the nerve agent Novichok.

The US has since accused Russia of using the choking agent chloropicrin on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Kirillov’s violent death has come as a shock to Russia’s military and political establishment. A minute’s silence was observed in Russia’s parliament, the Duma.

The deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, said his death was an “irreparable loss”, while retired general and MP Andrei Gurulyov said Kirillov’s killing would not go unanswered.

Gurulyov said he was responsible for procuring weapons that should only be seen on the battlefield and clearly understood the “criminal activities of the US and its satellites”.

His death is also seen by pro-Kremlin loyalists as not just a blow, but also evidence that Ukraine has the ability to target high-profile officials in Moscow.

Some commentators even pointed a finger at the British or the Americans. According to Russian war correspondent Sasha Kots, it proves enemy agents are operating and spying on people “in our rear”.

“Even now, I look back and wonder how we survived this nightmare,” Baraa quietly reflects.

Now 20 years old, the university student joined the joyous celebrations engulfing the streets of Syria last Sunday at the end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Her two sisters, Ala and Jana, nod in agreement as we sit, squeezed together on this cold winter’s day, on an old lumpy sofa in their humble home in Homs.

Their white-bearded father, Farhan Abdul Ghani, sitting cross legged on the floor, chimes in. “We did not want war. We did not want a forever president who builds monuments to himself.”

Nearly a decade ago, we first met in the worst days of that war, waged in their president’s name.

Baraa, a deeply traumatised little girl whose eyes darted wildly back and forth, struggled to speak then.

“Sometimes people killed cats to eat,” she blurted out as she sat in a disused banquet hall milling with aid officials, Syrian security forces, and distraught families.

For months, many had little to eat except grass pulled from the ground, leaves from the trees, boiled in water with salt and sometimes cinnamon.

“Instead of learning to read and write, I learned about weapons,” Baraa told us then so matter-of-factly.

Homs was once called the “capital of the revolution” by peaceful protesters who first took to the streets in the spring of 2011 to call for change, before it turned into all-out war.

Baraa and her family were among a thousand civilians rescued from the Old City during a rare UN-supervised humanitarian pause in February 2014.

They somehow survived the agonising two-year-long siege of the old quarter where Syrian troops enforced their first “surrender or starve” cordon in this merciless war.

This medieval torture tactic turned into one of their cruellest weapons, unleashed against one rebel-held stronghold after another.

Months later, more civilians were also given safe passage out of the Old City, as well as the fighters who moved on to continue their fight in other parts of Syria.

The years until this week have been hard on this family and so many others.

“I felt as if I was asleep and I lost hope,” Baraa recalls as she adjusts the white headscarf worn by her and her sisters. “We were always afraid of saying the wrong thing, even at the university.”

Now, like so many Syrians, she is brimming with palpable joy and optimism in these early heady days of a new start.

“I am dreaming of so many things now, to finish university, to do a master’s degree, to improve my English.” Her voice trails off as her big goals fill this modest little room.

A frightened little girl whose name means “innocence” had matured into an impressively confident young woman in fashionable blue jeans and a powder blue fleece.

Her doting father, whose name means happy, beams with pride. He managed to raise his daughters on his own after their mother was slain by a rocket which slammed into their kitchen. It was the children who found her there, slumped over the stove.

His meagre earnings from his fruit and vegetable cart, as well as the kindness of friends, kept them striving for a better life.

“Everything is cheaper now, including food and electricity,” he enthuses, in a nod to prices falling in the markets because roads are now open and soldiers at checkpoints are no longer stopping goods or asking for bribes.

It is a blessing for a country where the UN says 90% of Syrians are living beneath the poverty line. “Today I could even afford to buy meat,” he gushes.

Old wounds are still open and painful. Like tens of thousands of other Syrians, he lost a loved one, a brother, in the secret torture cells of Saydnaya prison. When the doors of this notorious prison in Damascus were flung open last week, he did not emerge.

This aching hurt and exhilarating happiness is palpable, especially for Syrians now able to make a bittersweet return to Homs. Entire sections are still jagged cityscapes of grey rubble and gaping ruins.

“I needed to see this again but it brings painful flashbacks,” Dr Hayan al-Abrash remarks as his eyes scan the haunting landscape of loss in the neighbourhood of Khalidiyah, pulverised by Syrian firepower.

He points to the skeletal remains of a soaring building whose facade was shaved off by a scud missile. It brought two other buildings crashing to the ground.

He was also forced to leave the besieged Old City in 2014, leaving behind his makeshift underground hospital there and in nearby Khalidiyah.

He struggles to locate it until a shopkeeper shows up to unlock and unfurl a metal shutter. It reveals a gutted warehouse with rickety metal stairs leading into a dark dank basement.

“Yes, yes, this is it,” he declares excitedly as our flashlights illuminate the cavernous space, including another set of stairs. “This is where the patients entered,” he explains.

“Sometimes I brought friends, neighbours, my own cousin, down these stairs on my back.”

It is next to a wall daubed with arrows pointing to the “emergency room” as well as “the road to death” – humour even darker than this room.

The green and black flag of the opposition, now ubiquitous, stands out.

Empty medicine vials and dirty cardboard packets litter a far corner of the room where the wall is charred.

“The regime lit that fire in revenge,” he says with rising emotion. “They feared doctors, lawyers, political figures even more than they feared the fighters.”

“It makes me very angry to see this,” he emphasises.

I ask if it makes him want to take revenge.

“It’s not a time for revenge,” he says. “It’s a time to build Syria for everyone, but not for those who killed us and have blood on his hands who must be put on trial.

“We don’t forgive. It’s impossible for us.”

Everyone we spoke to in Homs said its residents, Muslims and Christians, would rebuild together – and the stories we heard seemed to confirm that.

Dr Hayan also takes us to see the site of another underground hospital in the Old City – it was in a spacious church basement where the walls are now lined with stacked chairs and tables for family gatherings.

Farhan and his daughters insisted on taking us to see where they took cover during most of their time during the siege – a shelter in the Jesuit monastery run then by the charismatic Father Frans der Lugt.

The Dutch priest, murdered in the Old City when he refused to leave its trapped and starving residents, is now buried on the grounds.

The current pastor Father Tony Homsy is taken by surprise when we suddenly appear with Farhan, flanked by his daughters, emotionally scrolling through his phone to find photographs from that time.

The Syrian Jesuit priest leads us down the stairs into the narrow room now used for daily mass, recently transformed into a Christmas grotto with a sparkling Nativity Scene.

“This is a very beautiful story,” he marvels as our little delegation almost fills the space. “In this grotto which symbolises how Jesus and the Holy Family found refuge, there is also the story of this Muslim family.”

Father Tony, who heads the Catholic Church in Homs, has also been able to see his own family in the northern city of Aleppo for the first time in years.

He too dares to dream big. “It’s time to go forward,” he asserts, quoting Father Frans, who he says inspired him to join the Jesuits.

But he cautions “it will take time to heal our wounds, to heal our memories”.

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.”

Bluey, the puppy and star of the Bafta-winning children’s TV show, is hitting the big screen in her first feature film.

It will arrive in cinemas in 2027 and will then stream on Disney+, ABC iView and ABC Kids in Australia.

BBC Studios, the BBC’s commercial arm, is teaming up with Disney for the project.

Bluey is a blue heeler dog, who lives with her mum, dad and little sister, Bingo. She turns everyday events in her life into adventures.

The show’s creator, Joe Brumm, said: “I’ve always thought Bluey deserved a theatrical movie. I want this to be an experiential event for the whole family to enjoy together.”

The TV series was co-commissioned by ABC and BBC Studios in 2017 and is made by Australian production company Ludo (a blue heeler is an Australian dog breed).

It’s available in more than 140 countries, and is the top show on CBeebies and Disney+ in the UK. It’s also this year’s most-watched series globally on Disney+, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The series has also won numerous awards including Television Critics Association Awards in 2023 and 2024 and this year’s Peabody Award.

The series has been streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US over the last year, putting it in the country’s top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.

The film will feature the vocal actors from the TV show, including Melanie Zanetti and David McCormack as Bluey’s parents, Chilli and Bandit Heeler, and music created by its composer Joff Bush.

Senior judges have upheld a decision by MI5 to warn that an alleged Chinese agent had infiltrated Parliament and funded a Labour MP and others.

In a highly significant judgment, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) said that the security service had acted within the law when it named Christine Lee as a threat to national security, in an “interference alert” distributed to Parliamentarians and consequently made public.

The IPT said that naming Ms Lee had been “necessary in a democratic society” and “a proportionate response to the threat she posed”.

The January 2022 alert warned that Christine Ching Kui Lee had established links for the Chinese Communist Party with current and aspiring MPs.

The alert also said she had organised donations to politicians.

The ruling from the IPT is the second in days, underlining the scale of suspected Chinese state infiltration in the British state.

It comes hours after the naming of Yang Tengbo as the businessman who was said, in a separate court ruling last week, to have won an unusual degree of trust from Prince Andrew.

Neither Ms Lee nor Mr Yang are facing prosecution over the separate allegations made against them and both have denied wrongdoing.

Ms Lee, a solicitor, had said that her involvement with Parliament had been to “represent the UK Chinese and increase diversity”.

But the MI5 alert to parliamentarians said that she was “knowingly engaged in political interference and activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)”.

The UFWD is an arm of the CCP’s intelligence network that seeks to wider influence and poverty interfere in British society by targeting leading figures in British society, from politicians through to business and academia.

Ms Lee’s alleged work for the UFWD included facilitating financial donations to political parties, parliamentarians and aspiring MPs – donations that had come from sources in China and Hong Kong.

One of the MPs funded by Ms Lee was Labour’s Barry Gardiner, who received more than £420,000 from her in five years.

He employed Ms Lee’s son, Daniel Wilkes, until the alert emerged.

Mr Gardiner has said that he had always made the security services aware of the donations.

After the alert was issued, Mr Gardiner sacked Mr Wilkes from his office staff. The pair later reached an out-of-court settlement.

Speaking to the BBC’s Politics Live, Mr Gardiner said that while he had been Ms Lee’s friend for many years before the alert, he had ceased contact with her afterwards.

He stressed that he had received no illegal money into his office.

“MI5 were quite clear about that,” the MP said. “[Ms Lee] paid directly for people who I appointed, and who had no dealings with her, to work for the public good in my office.

“But none of that money came from an illegal source. She has never been charged with any offence.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey also received a £5,000 donation when he was energy secretary – but he said the money had been accepted by his local association and the alert had been “the first time” had had been made aware of concerns.

In Tuesday’s judgment, the IPT rejected claims from Ms Lee and Mr Wilkes that their rights had been breached by MI5.

Lord Justice Singh and two other IPT panel members said that the interference in Ms Lee’s private life, by publicising her name, did not breach her human rights.

“There is no … positive obligations on the state to take action to prevent treatment by others, here in particular the media and private individuals who sent abusive messages to the First Claimant [Ms Lee],” said the IPT.

“The Respondent [MI5] had no particular control over the actions of the media or other third parties.

“The Respondent was entitled to issue the Interference Alert, and indeed had an obligation to do in order to fulfil its statutory function of protecting Parliamentary democracy.

“There is no evidence that the abusive messages and social media commentary directed to or received by [Ms Lee] represented a genuine and ongoing threat to her safety and, even if they did, there is no evidence that the police or other state authorities are unable or unwilling to provide [her] with reasonable protection.

“The decision to issue the Interference Alert did not interfere with [her] right to respect for her private life.”

A man who should have been celebrating his birthday and a married couple were among 11 Indians to die in a Georgian ski resort at the weekend.

Sameer Kumar, who only arrived in Georgia a few months ago, died alongside the couple, Ravinder Singh and Gurvinder Kaur, above an Indian restaurant in Gudauri, relatives say.

Georgia’s ministry of internal affairs said it believed the 12 victims – including one Georgian national – died after being poisoned by carbon monoxide.

The Indian government has said it is in touch with the victims’ families and is working to bring back the bodies of those who died in the incident.

The initial investigation show no signs of violence or injuries on the bodies, which were discovered on Saturday, the Georgian ministry said in a statement.

It is thought the incident occurred after a power generator, placed near the bedrooms, was turned on after the building’s electricity was switched off.

Authorities are working to determine whether the deaths could lead to charges of “negligent manslaughter”.

Carbon monoxide is an odourless gas, and is known as the “silent killer”. It is produced after the incomplete burning of fossil fuels. The gas, if inhaled, prevents oxygen from being carried by the blood in the body. This can lead to poisoning and can be fatal.

A team from BBC Punjabi spoke to some of the families of the victims in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

Gurdeep Kumar says his 26-year-old brother, Sameer, had recently moved to Georgia in search of employment opportunities.

“We last spoke to him on Friday, a day before his birthday,” he said. “The family tried contacting him on his birthday but never heard back.”

A day later they tracked down the number of the restaurant owner and were informed of the incident, he said.

The family is now urging both the federal and state governments to ensure his body is repatriated to India so that they can perform his final rites.

In Sunam village, relatives are mourning the death of Ravinder Singh and his wife.

“They had gone to Georgia in March after spending 1.3m rupees ($15,310; £12,060) seeking a better future,” Singh’s uncle Kuldeep Singh Bawa Kainchi told BBC Punjabi.

Gudauri is a popular tourist destination for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts. It offers 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.

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 spokesperson for the UK government said it was “carefully considering” Monday’s 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.

Lawyer Simon Robinson with UK firm Duncan Lewis, which is representing 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.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have shared a rare photo of their two children on their official Christmas card.

It is among a series of six photos on the card, which features the message: “We wish you a very happy holiday season”.

Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, can be seen in one of the photos facing away from the camera as they walk towards their parents, who greet them with smiles and outstretched arms.

The two young children have been kept away from the public eye by the couple – and their faces remain out of sight in the photo.

The card also shows Meghan hugging a young girl and Prince Harry clasping the hand of a man lying in bed.

The Christmas cards read in full: “On behalf of the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very happy holiday season and a joyful New Year.”

It is for professional use, with the couple sending a different card to close friends and family which will not be shared publicly.

The Sussexes stepped down as senior royals in January 2020. While they have kept their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles, they are no longer addressed as his or her royal highness (HRH).

They moved to California in June 2020, before the birth of Lilibet in 2021, and no longer have an official UK residence.

The couple have created the Archewell Foundation, which is a non-profit organisation with a mission to “show up, do good”.

Their media company, Archewell Productions, makes programmes for Netflix, under a deal thought to be worth millions of dollars.

The founder of the feared Los Zetas drugs cartel has been deported to Mexico after serving a lengthy jail sentence in the United States.

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, 57, led Los Zetas until 2003, when he was cornered by Mexican soldiers near his hometown of Matamoros.

Under his leadership, the group became one of the most powerful and brutal hit squads in the Mexican drug wars.

US immigration officials handed Cárdenas over to Mexican police at the Otay border crossing, where he was quickly re-arrested and taken to El Altiplano maximum security jail in Mexico state.

Mexican prosecutors said he had been arrested on charges of murder and organised crime dating back to his time as one of the most powerful drug lords in Mexico.

Cárdenas Guillén made his criminal career in the Gulf drugs cartel in the 1990s, reportedly not shying away from having his allies killed to rise to the top, a practice which earned him the nickname of “Mata Amigos” (Spanish for “killer of friends”).

But what he became infamous for was recruiting members of Mexico’s elite special forces and using them as hitmen and enforcers for the Gulf cartel.

The law enforcers-turned-contract killers became known as Los Zetas.

The brutal methods they used, such as decapitating and dismembering their victims, quickly spread terror through the north-eastern part of Mexico which was their stronghold.

By the early 2000s, Cárdenas Guillén was one of the most wanted men in Mexico.

Mexican security forces managed to apprehend him in his home state of Tamaulipas in 2003 after a bloody gun battle.

Aware of the power the gang leader wielded in the area, the security forces quickly flew him to the capital, Mexico City, were he was put into pre-trial detention.

In 2007, he was extradited to the US.

There, he was charged not just with trafficking tonnes of cocaine into the US but also with threatening to assault and murder federal agents.

He pleaded guilty in 2010 and was sentenced to 25 years in jail.

Having served a large part of his sentence, he was released in August of 2024 from federal prison in Terre Haute, Idaho, and handed over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This paved the way for his deportation to Mexico on Monday.

Mexican prosecutors said there were seven federal cases still open against Cárdenas Guillén and that he could be sentenced to a total of more than 700 years in prison if found guilty on all charges.

The European Union’s executive has opened a formal investigation into TikTok because of “serious indications” of foreign interference in the recent Romanian presidential election using the video-sharing platform.

The second-round vote was cancelled earlier this month after declassified intelligence documents revealed 25,000 TikTok accounts were suddenly activated weeks before polls opened in the first round.

The accounts backed the independent candidate Calin Georgescu, a largely unknown far-right campaigner who described Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “patriot and a leader”, although he denied being a fan.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said democracies had to be protected from foreign meddling.

EU regulators will assess if TikTok’s advertising policies and the systems it uses to recommend content to users are in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is aimed at preventing the spread of disinformation and halting illegal activities online.

“Whenever we suspect such interference, especially during elections, we must act swiftly and firmly,” von der Leyen said in a statement.

“It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms including TikTok must be held accountable.”

Georgescu’s election campaign had been focused primarily on TikTok and, although Moscow has denied interference, Romanian intelligence said Russia had identified the Nato member state as an enemy state and a priority target.

TikToks promoting the candidate were not marked as election content, which is illegal in Romania.

One account paid $381,000 (£300,000) on posts for Georgescu, who denied spending any money himself on the platform.

TikTok has vehemently denied the allegations, insisting “it is categorically false to claim [Georgescu’s] account was treated differently to any other candidate”.

Although the platform allows election content to be posted and shared organically, paid political advertising is banned.

After the run-off vote was cancelled, TikTok said that “when Romanian authorities contacted us to flag a number of videos that lacked identifiers… we took action on those videos within 24 hours”.

Part of the EU investigation will look at the risks associated with “automated exploitation” of TikTok’s algorithm, which provides tailored content on a user’s “For You” page according to their interests and how they interact with the app.

It will also assess TikTok’s policies on political advertisements.

On 5 December, the EU ordered TikTok to preserve internal documents about how it recommended content to users and any methods it had to mitigate “intentional manipulation” of its platform.

This encompasses content relating to any national elections in the EU between 24 November 2024 and 31 March 2025, including Romania, Ireland and Croatia.

The EU said it would carry out the investigation “as a matter of priority”.

It runs alongside a separate investigation into TikTok’s possible breach of the DSA regarding harmful content and protecting minors.

After the first round of the Romanian presidential vote, Romanian intelligence said that Georgescu’s sudden jump in popularity was due to a “highly organised” and “guerrilla” social media campaign, from accounts sending identical messages.

Before the run-off round was cancelled, he was running neck and neck with reformist candidate Elena Lasconi.

Georgescu had campaigned to end political and military aid to Ukraine.

He is a conspiracy theorist who does not believe in the moon landings or the Covid-19 pandemic.

India, the world’s largest democracy, is almost always in election mode.

With 28 states, eight union territories and nearly a billion eligible voters, polls are a constant feature of the nation’s political landscape.

For years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has championed the idea of “One Nation, One Election” – a proposal to hold state and federal elections simultaneously every five years.

On Tuesday, the Indian law minister introduced a bill to implement this system in the parliament sparking a debate over power dynamics.

Supporters argue this approach would slash campaign costs, ease the strain on administrative resources and streamline governance.

Former President Ram Nath Kovind, who led a nine-member committee that recommended holding elections at the same time last year, called it a “game changer”, citing economists who say it could boost India’s GDP by up to 1.5%.

Critics, however, warn it could erode India’s federal structure, concentrating power in the center and weakening states’ autonomy.

India’s democracy operates on multiple levels, each with its own election cycle.

There are general elections to choose parliament members, state elections to pick legislators, while rural and urban councils hold separate votes for local governance. By-elections fill vacancies caused by resignation, death or disqualification of representatives.

These elections happen every five years, but at different times. The government now wants to sync them.

In March, a panel led by Kovind proposed holding state and general elections together in its extensive 18,626-page report. It also recommended local body elections within 100 days.

The committee suggested that if a government loses an election, fresh polls would be held, but its tenure would last only until the next synchronised election.

While this may sound intense, simultaneous polls aren’t new to India. They were the norm from the first election in 1951 until 1967, when political upheavals and early dissolutions of state assemblies led to staggered polls.

Efforts to revive the system have been debated for decades, with proposals from the Election Commission in 1983, the Law Commission in 1999 and Niti Aayog, a government think-tank, in 2017.

The biggest argument for holding simultaneous elections is cutting election costs.

According to the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Media Studies, India spent more than 600bn rupees ($7.07bn; £5.54bn) on 2019 general elections, making it the world’s most expensive at the time.

However, critics argue that the same goal – reducing costs – could backfire.

With 900 million eligible voters, ensuring enough electronic voting machines, security forces and election officials would require extensive planning and resources.

According to a 2015 parliamentary committee report by the law and justice Department, India already spends 45bn rupees on general and state elections.

The report mentioned if simultaneous elections were held then a total 92.84bn rupees would be needed to procure new voting and voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines, which dispenses a slip of paper with the symbol of the party the voter selected. These machines would also need to be replaced every 15 years.

Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi has raised concerns about the high costs. He said they should have been addressed in the Kovind committee report, especially since reducing election expenses was a key reason behind the proposal.

Implementing simultaneous elections requires making formal changes or revisions to specific provisions (or articles) of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the country. Some of these changes would need ratification by at least half of India’s 28 state assemblies.

While the BJP-led alliance has a simple majority in parliament, it lacks the two-thirds majority needed for such amendments.

The Kovind committee studied models from countries like South Africa, Sweden and Indonesia, suggesting their best practices for India.

In September, the cabinet approved the proposal to hold simultaneous elections and backed two bills pushing for the system on Thursday.

Federal Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal has introduced the bills in the parliament.

One bill proposes a constitutional amendment to enable joint federal and state elections, while another aims to align assembly polls in Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu & Kashmir with the general election schedule.

The government has said it is open to referring the bills to a parliamentary committee and consult political parties to build consensus.

The Kovind committee contacted all Indian parties for feedback, with 47 responding – 32 supported simultaneous elections, while 15 opposed them.

Most supporters were BJP allies or friendly parties, citing time, cost and resource savings.

The BJP argued that the model code of conduct cost India “800 days of governance” in the past five years by delaying welfare schemes.

Prime Minister Modi has supported simultaneous elections.

“Frequent elections are obstructing the nation’s advancement,” he said in August. “With elections occurring every three to six months, every scheme is linked to polls.”

Opposition parties, led by the Congress, have called simultaneous polls “undemocratic” and argued that they undermine the country’s parliamentary system of government. They say such a setup will give an unfair advantage to national parties over regional ones.

The parties also recommended enhancing transparency in the funding process as a better solution to addressing concerns about election costs.

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.

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

By the end of a frenetic Monday, a new finance minister was in place, but Trudeau was facing calls from members of his own Liberal Party to quit.

Without directly referring to the news, the prime minister told party donors at an event in Ottawa: “It’s obviously been an eventful day. It has not been an easy day.”

In her scathing resignation letter – published on the day she was due to deliver an economic statement – Freeland cited disagreements with her long-time ally on how to respond to the threat of tariffs from Donald Trump.

The US president-elect, who will return to the White House in January, has vowed to impose a levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods unless the shared border is made more secure.

Economists say the tariffs could have a devastating effect on Canada’s economy.

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

Trump himself later responded to Freeland, posting that her “behaviour was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada”.

Freeland 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 the scheduled economic update in the air for hours and bringing Trudeau and his shaky minority Liberals to the brink.

In a further blow, the Liberals lost control of the Cloverdale-Langley City seat in British Columbia, after a by-election win for rival Conservatives. It was the Liberals’ third by-election defeat of the year.

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Freeland’s sudden exit as finance minister earlier in the day “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.

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.

In addition to the members of the prime minister’s own party who called on him to quit, Canada’s three opposition party leaders said on Monday that 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 that it was not clear that a change in leadership would 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.

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 was held today.

Some Liberal members of parliament have been pressuring Trudeau for months to step down – eight MPs publicly expressed this sentiment on Monday, Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported.

In a meeting with his caucus following Freeland’s resignation on Monday, Trudeau reportedly heard some of those calls for him to quit directly. Others also expressed their concerns and reservations about his leadership.

Trudeau addressed them by saying he is not immediately stepping down, but that he will reflect on the day’s events, according to sources who spoke to Canadian media about the meeting.

Trudeau did not take questions on his way to the fundraiser in Ottawa, 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”.

A man who should have been celebrating his birthday and a married couple were among 11 Indians to die in a Georgian ski resort at the weekend.

Sameer Kumar, who only arrived in Georgia a few months ago, died alongside the couple, Ravinder Singh and Gurvinder Kaur, above an Indian restaurant in Gudauri, relatives say.

Georgia’s ministry of internal affairs said it believed the 12 victims – including one Georgian national – died after being poisoned by carbon monoxide.

The Indian government has said it is in touch with the victims’ families and is working to bring back the bodies of those who died in the incident.

The initial investigation show no signs of violence or injuries on the bodies, which were discovered on Saturday, the Georgian ministry said in a statement.

It is thought the incident occurred after a power generator, placed near the bedrooms, was turned on after the building’s electricity was switched off.

Authorities are working to determine whether the deaths could lead to charges of “negligent manslaughter”.

Carbon monoxide is an odourless gas, and is known as the “silent killer”. It is produced after the incomplete burning of fossil fuels. The gas, if inhaled, prevents oxygen from being carried by the blood in the body. This can lead to poisoning and can be fatal.

A team from BBC Punjabi spoke to some of the families of the victims in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

Gurdeep Kumar says his 26-year-old brother, Sameer, had recently moved to Georgia in search of employment opportunities.

“We last spoke to him on Friday, a day before his birthday,” he said. “The family tried contacting him on his birthday but never heard back.”

A day later they tracked down the number of the restaurant owner and were informed of the incident, he said.

The family is now urging both the federal and state governments to ensure his body is repatriated to India so that they can perform his final rites.

In Sunam village, relatives are mourning the death of Ravinder Singh and his wife.

“They had gone to Georgia in March after spending 1.3m rupees ($15,310; £12,060) seeking a better future,” Singh’s uncle Kuldeep Singh Bawa Kainchi told BBC Punjabi.

Gudauri is a popular tourist destination for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts. It offers 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.

Police in the US state of Wisconsin say the emergency call they received over Monday’s school shooting came from a child no older than seven or eight years old.

A teenage pupil and a teacher were shot dead and six others injured at a Christian private school by a 15-year-old girl, named by authorities as Natalie Rupnow. The attacker, who attended the school, was also found dead with a handgun.

The police chief in the city of Madison said the child who rang 911 just before 11:00 local time (17:00 GMT) was in the second grade. “Let that soak in for a minute,” Shon Barnes told reporters.

The attacker’s motive is not yet clear. The next police press conference is expected on Tuesday afternoon.

The victims have not yet been named, and nor has the child who raised the alarm.

Chief Barnes said two students were facing life-threatening injuries. Four others were taken to hospital and two of them later released.

The attacker, who also used the first name Samantha, is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No officers fired shots.

She attended the school before launching Monday’s attack, Chief Barnes said. The shooting was confined to a study hall with students in mixed grades.

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Asked about some text posted online that is purported to have been authored by Rupnow, Chief Barnes said: “We haven’t been able to verify that it’s authentic. We’re certainly aware that it’s been posted and the person who posted it alleged to have a connection.” Information has been shared with the FBI, he added.

Rupnow’s family has been co-operating with the investigation. Local media reported that a property north of Madison was raided on Monday.

Authorities have also asked to hear from witnesses, and a number of those present during the assault at Abundant Life Christian School have spoken to local media.

Nora Gottschalk, aged eight, told CNN affiliate WISC that she was getting ready for lunch when the shots rang out. She saw a teacher who was injured screaming for help. “I was really scared and I was really sad,” she said.

Adler Jean-Charles, who is in sixth grade, said he heard two gunshots when he was in English class. “Some people started crying and then we just waited until the police came,” he told WISC.

Bethany Highman, who attended the school and now has a daughter who is a pupil, told another CNN affiliate, WMTV: “I pray with my kids every morning that this won’t happen, and it’s the world we live in.”

The school’s director of relations said pupils’ training for a mass shooting would have been “very fresh” after sessions were held earlier this year.

President Joe Biden said the shooting was “shocking and unconscionable”, and called on lawmakers to act immediately on legislation that could prevent more gun violence.

Mass shootings are common in the US, including at schools. According to news organisation EducationWeek, 38 of them have caused deaths or injuries this year. There were a total of 69 victims – including 16 deaths – before Monday’s attack.

But school shootings by female attackers are rare.

The school, which has around 400 students from kindergarten to high-school age, remains closed during the investigation.

A high-ranking general in the Russian armed forces and his assistant have been killed in Moscow by Ukraine’s security service, a Ukrainian source has told the BBC.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defence Forces (NBC), was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when a device hidden in a scooter was detonated remotely, Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) said.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service claimed Kirillov was “a legitimate target” and alleging he had carried out war crimes.

On Monday, the SBU charged Kirillov, 54, in absentia, saying on Telegram that he was “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons”.

The Ukrainian government has not yet commented on the general’s death.

Pictures from the scene in south-eastern Moscow showed the badly damaged entrance to a building with scorch marks on the walls and a number of windows blown out. Two body bags could also be seen on the street.

The block was cordoned off on Tuesday morning as Russian investigators continued combing the area.

In October, the UK placed sanctions on Kirillov, saying he had overseen the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and acted as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Ukraine’s SBU has claimed Russia used chemical weapons more than 4,800 times under the general’s leadership.

Moscow denies the allegations.

The SK said it had “opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen”.

“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” it said.

“Investigative actions and operational search activities are being carried out aimed at establishing all the circumstances of the crime.”

Russian state news agencies reported that the explosive device – which killed Kirillov and his aide in Ryazansky Avenue – had an explosive force equivalent to 300g (0.7lb) of TNT.

They added that bomb experts and specialist search dogs had inspected the surrounding area and no other explosives had been found.

Experts have told BBC Verify that judging from images of the scene, it appears the explosion was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), a type of homemade bomb which usually contains easily obtainable components, such as nails or glass.

Assassinations of senior officials have been carried out in Russia before, but attacks in Moscow are rare.

Liza, who lives one building away from the site of the blast, told the BBC that while she was not entirely surprised, the killing of Igor Kirillov was a “shocking” development.

“It’s one thing reading about it in the news, it feels far, but when it happens next door, that’s completely different and frightening,” she tells me.

“Until now, [the war] felt as if it was happening a long way off – now someone is dead, here, you can feel the consequences,” Liza said, adding that “unfortunately, I don’t think things will calm down any time soon”.

Several other local residents said they initially thought the loud noise they heard had come from a construction site.

Student Mikhail Mashkov, who lives in the building next door, told the AFP news agency he was woken up by a “very loud explosion noise”, thinking “something fell at the construction site”, before looking outside.

Olga Bogomolova said she thought a container had fallen at the construction site but then realised “it was a very strong explosion”, saw “broken windows” and that it was something else.

People living in the area told the BBC of their deep sense of shock.

Even after nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many Muscovites, the war is something that is happening a long way away – something they only see on TV or on their phones.

The killing of a Russian general in Moscow is a sign that this war is very real and very close to home.

Under UK sanctions, Kirillov was subject to an assets freeze and travel ban.

In May, the US accused Russia of deploying chemical weapons as a “method of warfare” in Ukraine, in violation of international laws banning their use.

State department officials said Russia used the choking agent chloropicrin to win “battlefield gains” over Ukraine.

According to the SBU, Russian forces have used drones to drop chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukrainian Col Artem Vlasiuk had previously said that more than 2,000 Ukrainian service members had been treated in hospital for chemical poisoning over the course of the war and three people had died.

The Kremlin rejected the accusations at the time, calling them “baseless”.

Kirillov served in different roles in Russia’s military associated with hazardous materials, including the Directorate of the Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops.

He was appointed head of the NBC in 2017.

Reacting to Kirillov’s death, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said: “Clearly we are not going to mourn the death of an individual who has propagated an illegal invasion and imposed suffering and death on the Ukrainian people.”

Ukraine’s Security Services appear to be stepping up their targeting of senior Russian individuals, almost three years into the conflict.

Kirillov’s death comes less than a week after a prominent Russian weapons expert was shot dead near his home in Moscow.

Ukrainian media reported that the assassination of Mikhail Shatsky was carried out by Ukraine’s military intelligence service.

Senior Russian naval officer Valery Trankovsky and Russian prison boss Sergei Yevsyukov also died after car bombs exploded in Russian-occupied Ukraine in recent weeks.

BBC Verify has been analysing social media videos and images from Moscow to try to build up a clearer picture of the blast that killed Russian Lt Gen Igor Kirillov and his assistant.

Ukrainian sources say they carried out the attack on the senior commander, who has overseen Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection troops since 2017. He was sanctioned by the UK in October and accused of being a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Lt Gen Kirillov was leaving a modern apartment building in south-east Moscow early on Tuesday when the device hidden in a parked scooter was detonated, Russia’s Investigations Committee – the country’s equivalent of the FBI – said.

Footage authenticated by BBC Verify shows two people leaving the building before an explosion next to the entrance. Their clothes are the same colour as those on the bodies pictured in the aftermath.

A scooter appears to be propped up near the door. Nothing after the blast is visible, the rest of the footage is obscured by debris from the explosion.

In other footage analysed by BBC Verify, the remains of an electric scooter can be seen lying among debris between two bodies and a demolished doorway.

A close-up image of the scooter, verified by matching it to the debris, shows it is largely intact – apart from its missing handlebars.

Experts at Janes – a private open-source investigations organisation – told BBC Verify that the images suggested that the explosion was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), rather than a conventional munition.

“From the available pictures of the scooter it actually looks pretty intact, so the effect appears to be more fragmentation than blast,” a spokesperson with the organisation told BBC Verify.

An IED is a type of “homemade” bomb which can come in a variety of forms and usually contains easily obtainable components – such as nails, glass or metal fragments – according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

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David Heathcote, an intelligence manager with security analysts McKenzie Intelligence, also suggested that the device appeared to be an IED.

“IEDs can be deliberately constructed so as to appear as an everyday item that would not look out of place,” he told BBC Verify. “In this instance it appears that the device was concealed within a scooter, most likely using a military grade explosive such as (but not necessarily) Semtex, rather than a home-made explosive.”

He added that the attack demonstrated “a decent level of sophistication and may have taken months of preparation” which would have required a “significant amount of surveillance of the intended target prior to the attack”.

Russian media has speculated that a device had been taped to the scooter’s handlebars.

It has also reported, citing law enforcement sources, that the explosion was likely detonated remotely. Mr Heathcote agreed with the assessment, suggesting that a radio signal from a phone or car fob may have been the trigger.

“The attacker will need to have eyes on the device and will press a switch to initiate the explosion as the target comes into range,” he told BBC Verify. “The proximity to the device of the attacker depends on the transmitter [or] receiver being used.”

Russian state media initially said that the bomb used up to 300g of explosive material, before later revising that figure up to 1kg, citing law enforcement data.

An eyewitness has been showing Russian media images of what he said was debris from the explosion that landed in the flat he owns across the street from the site. BBC Verify is showing these to weapons experts to help establish whether they could have come from the device.

According to the developers, the apartment block where Lt Gen Kirillov was killed is relatively new and was completed in 2019. The flats are relatively high end, with some available for around 20m Roubles (£153,540) online.

In the videos verified by the BBC, a small crowd is seen gathered around the bodies, which are lying in the snow-covered street. Emergency services vehicles are also visible in the footage.

Both videos were filmed on a street looking north toward Ryazansky Prospekt, Moscow, and emerged on social media on Tuesday morning. They show damage to the front of the building, including bricks strewn around and doors hanging open, only a few feet from the bodies.

Another video has captured a bright flash slightly off camera. The force of the explosion knocks snow off nearby parked cars.

At least 10 other apartments on the street have been affected by the explosion, the popular Russian Telegram channel Mash reported.

BBC Verify will continue to examine footage from the scene as it comes in and bring updates.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake has struck near Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila, triggering landslides, crushing cars and flattening multiple buildings, including a complex that is home to a number of Western embassies.

There are unconfirmed reports of deaths but the full extent of the damage remains unclear, as power and mobile networks across the country remain cut off.

Dan McGarry, a journalist living in Port Vila, said hospital authorities had told him at least one person had died. He had seen “several people who were visibly, seriously injured” outside the emergency unit.

Vanuatu is prone to earthquakes, but Mr McGarry told the BBC the quake had felt like “the biggest one… in more than 20 years”.

The quake struck at 12:47 local time (01:47 GMT) on Tuesday.

“Emergency services are going to be busy for a while. We have limited equipment and capabilities here,” Mr McGarry said, adding that police at the Vila Central Hospital had told him one person had died, and the number of deaths was expected to rise.

One of the clips from state broadcaster VBTC’s Facebook page showed dozens of people outside the Vila Central Hospital, many lying on hospital gurneys awaiting treatment.

Michael Thompson, director of the Vanuatu Jungle Zipline adventure company, told AFP news agency that he had seen bodies lying in the streets.

“There’s multiple buildings that have come down around town. There’s a big rescue operation on the way to clear out people who are possibly alive in the building,” Mr Thompson said, in a separate video posted to Facebook.

“I thought the ceiling [of our house] was going to come right down,” Mr Thompson’s wife Amanda told the BBC.

“We often have earthquakes here but not like this. The house has giant cracks all through it, sliding glass doors are smashed.

“We are feeling a lot of after shakes now, each one make us nervous as we run out the door to open air,” she said.

However Mr McGarry added that the latest disaster was something the people of Vanuatu would “get through”.

“People in Vanuatu deal with natural disasters on a yearly basis. It’s in our blood. We’ll get through this as well, although not without some suffering,” he said.

Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of some 80 islands in the South Pacific, is located west of Fiji and thousands of kilometres east of northern Australia.

The nation sits in a seismically active area, and is susceptible to frequent large earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The United States Embassy, the British High Commission, the French Embassy and the New Zealand High Commission were among damaged buildings housed in the same complex.

US officials said the building sustained “considerable damage” and would be closed until further notice. All staff in the building had safely evacuated, they added.

Separately, several Australian airlines have also cancelled flights into Port Vila, citing damage at the airport.

Australian carrier Jetstar, a subsidiary of Qantas, cancelled a flight scheduled for Wednesday morning from Sydney to Port Vila, citing “earthquake activity in Vanuatu and reports of possible damage to Port Vila airport infrastructure”.

The United States Geological Survey reported at least four aftershocks around Port Vila – with magnitudes ranging from 4.7 to 5.5 – in the two hours after the first earthquake. The first quake hit at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles).

Authorities in neighbouring New Zealand and Australia said there was no tsunami threat for their countries.

Australia also said it “stands ready to support Vanuatu as the extent of the damage is assessed”.

“Vanuatu is family and we will always be there in times of need,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong wrote on X.

New Zealand said it is “deeply concerned” and was monitoring the situation. “Our thoughts are with the people and authorities of Vanuatu,” said Foreign Minister Winston Peters.

Are you in Vanuatu? If it is safe to do so, please get in touch.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have shared a rare photo of their two children on their official Christmas card.

It is among a series of six photos on the card, which features the message: “We wish you a very happy holiday season”.

Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, can be seen in one of the photos facing away from the camera as they walk towards their parents, who greet them with smiles and outstretched arms.

The two young children have been kept away from the public eye by the couple – and their faces remain out of sight in the photo.

The card also shows Meghan hugging a young girl and Prince Harry clasping the hand of a man lying in bed.

The Christmas cards read in full: “On behalf of the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very happy holiday season and a joyful New Year.”

It is for professional use, with the couple sending a different card to close friends and family which will not be shared publicly.

The Sussexes stepped down as senior royals in January 2020. While they have kept their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles, they are no longer addressed as his or her royal highness (HRH).

They moved to California in June 2020, before the birth of Lilibet in 2021, and no longer have an official UK residence.

The couple have created the Archewell Foundation, which is a non-profit organisation with a mission to “show up, do good”.

Their media company, Archewell Productions, makes programmes for Netflix, under a deal thought to be worth millions of dollars.

As head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection troops, Igor Kirillov – who has died in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of overseeing the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

In Russia, he was viewed as a tireless patriot, fighting for the truth and exposing Western “crimes”.

Sources from Ukraine’s SBU security service said it it was behind the blast and referred to a special operation against a “war criminal” and a legitimate target.

Kirillov and an aide were killed by explosives planted in an electric scooter, according to Russian officials, which was blown up as he left the building he lived in on Ryazansky Prospekt in south-eastern Moscow.

He had become notorious for outlandish briefings at the Russian defence ministry which prompted the UK Foreign Office to label him as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Kirillov was far more than just a mouthpiece, heading Russia’s Timoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Academy, before going on to lead the Russian army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops in 2017.

The force’s main tasks involve identifying hazards and protecting units from contamination but also “causing loss to the enemy by using flame-incendiary means”, the Russian defence ministry says. That is thought to refer to Russia’s flame-thrower system that can destroy targets with the use of thermobaric warheads.

The UK Foreign Office said that the force Kirillov commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what it said was the widespread use of riot control agents and “multiple reports of the use of the toxic choking agent chloropicrin”.

On the eve of his killing, Ukraine’s SBU declared that he had been named in absentia in a criminal case for the “mass use” of prohibited chemical weapons on the eastern and southern fronts in Ukraine.

It cited “more than 4,800 cases of the enemy using chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

It said toxic substances had been used in drone attacks as well as in combat grenades.

Kirillov earned his notoriety from the start of the war with a series of claims directed towards both Ukraine and the West, none of which was based on fact.

Among his most outrageous claims was one that the US had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used in an attempt to justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.

He produced documents in March 2022 which he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on 24 February – which were amplified by pro-Kremlin media but rubbished by independent experts.

Kirillov’s notorious allegations against Ukraine continued into this year.

Last month he claimed that “one of the priority aims” of Ukraine’s counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk border region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant.

He presented a slideshow, purportedly based on a Ukrainian report, alleging that in the event of an accident only Russia territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination.

One of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine was seeking to develop a “dirty bomb”.

Two years ago he alleged that “two organisations in Ukraine have specific instructions to create a so-called ‘dirty bomb’. This work is in its final stage”.

His claims were rejected by Western countries as “transparently false”.

But Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia suggested Kyiv was preparing that kind of weapon, it meant only one thing – that Russia was already preparing it.

Kirillov returned to his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time alleging the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory close to Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.

Kyiv, he claimed, was violating the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) with a variety of substances with the assistance of Western countries, including the psychochemical warfare agent BZ as well as hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.

Russia is a signatory to the CWC and was adjudged to have destroyed all its Cold War-era chemical weapons in 2017. The following year Russian agents carried out a deadly attack on the British city of Salisbury using the nerve agent Novichok.

The US has since accused Russia of using the choking agent chloropicrin on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Kirillov’s violent death has come as a shock to Russia’s military and political establishment. A minute’s silence was observed in Russia’s parliament, the Duma.

The deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, said his death was an “irreparable loss”, while retired general and MP Andrei Gurulyov said Kirillov’s killing would not go unanswered.

Gurulyov said he was responsible for procuring weapons that should only be seen on the battlefield and clearly understood the “criminal activities of the US and its satellites”.

His death is also seen by pro-Kremlin loyalists as not just a blow, but also evidence that Ukraine has the ability to target high-profile officials in Moscow.

Some commentators even pointed a finger at the British or the Americans. According to Russian war correspondent Sasha Kots, it proves enemy agents are operating and spying on people “in our rear”.