Russia’s authorities say a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan has been detained over the killing of senior general Igor Kirillov and his assistant in Moscow.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when an explosive device hidden in an electric scooter was detonated remotely, the authorities say.

Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) says the suspect – who has not been publicly named – has admitted he was recruited by Ukrainian special services. The SK provided no evidence to back its claim.

Ukraine’s security service SBU had already claimed it was behind the killing, a source told the BBC on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian source said Kirillov, 54, was “a legitimate target” and alleged he had carried out war crimes.

On Monday, the day before the killing, Ukraine charged the Russian general in absentia, saying he was “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons”. Moscow denies the allegations.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin “expresses deep condolences” over Kirillov’s death, Russian state-run news agency Tass reported.

In a statement on Wednesday, the SK said the detained man – born in 1995 – was a citizen of Uzbekistan.

It said he was “suspected of committing a terrorist act” and that during interrogation, “he explained that he was recruited by the Ukrainian special services”.

The explosive device had been placed on the scooter parked near the entrance to the residential building where Kirillov lived, the SK said.

To monitor the location, the suspect had rented a car, where he installed a video camera that was livestreaming to the attack organisers in Ukraine’s city of Dnipro, the investigative committee added.

When Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov left the building, the explosive device was remotely activated, the statement said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) published a video of the suspect’s interrogation.

In the footage, a dark-haired man wearing handcuffs with what appears to be a visible rip in his coat is seen speaking directly to the camera.

He is heard saying in Russian that he had been offered a reward of $100,000 and a European passport in exchange for killing Kirillov.

The FSB added that on Ukraine’s instructions, he arrived in Moscow and received a homemade explosive device.

It is unclear whether the suspect’s confession was made under duress.

Kirillov is thought to be the most senior military figure assassinated inside Russia since President Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024.

As well as being charged by Ukraine, Kirillov had previously been sanctioned by the UK over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

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

Moscow denies this and says it destroyed the last remainder of its vast chemical weapons stockpile in 2017.

Pictures from the scene outside Kirillov’s apartment block in south-eastern Moscow on Tuesday showed the badly damaged entrance, with scorch marks on the walls and a number of windows blown out. Two body bags could also be seen on the street.

Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia would raise Kirillov’s assassination at the meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday.

Russian officials have vowed to find and punish those involved in the killing.

The father of 19-year-old Holly Bowles, who died of suspected methanol poisoning in Laos last month, has said he was in “disbelief” when he realised his daughter would not pull through.

Speaking to the BBC, Shaun Bowles described Holly as “everything you’d want your daughter to be”.

The Australian teenager had been travelling across South East Asia with her best friend Bianca Jones when they fell ill after drinking alcohol thought to be contaminated with methanol, a toxic substance sometimes added to bootleg drinks.

They were among six foreign tourists to die over a few days in the small, riverside tourist town of Vang Vieng.

“They were having an unbelievable time, just having so much fun, doing what two 19-year-old girls should be doing,” Shaun Bowles told the BBC’s Today Programme.

The grieving process, he said, has been made more manageable by the fact that he is “best friends” with Bianca’s father, Mark.

Together, Mark and Shaun had travelled through Thailand on their own backpacking trip 25 years ago.

“It’s just bizarre to be going through the same thing with your best friend. Just being together and just talking helps us get through the days,” he said.

Holly and Bianca had planned their trip to celebrate their graduation from school.

Since they’d been away, Shaun had spoken to his daughter every few days, while Holly’s mother, Sam, had spoken to her “every second”.

“They were just having an absolute blast,” he said.

The two teenagers were taken to hospital after they failed to check out of the Nana Backpacker hostel, where they were staying, and were found unresponsive.

Shaun and his family received news they were unwell through a friend – and the two mothers flew out to Thailand that night.

“When you’re getting second hand information… it was really hard to process exactly what sort of condition that they were in,” said Shaun.

He and Bianca’s father, Mark, flew out the next day, by which point the girls were in a hospital in Udon Thani, over the border from Laos in Thailand.

Bianca died on 21 November, and Holly a day later.

“She was just full of life. She was confident, she was loving, she was just a true friend of people. She was everything you want your daughter to be,” said Shaun.

Now, Shaun says, his focus is on raising awareness of methanol poisoning to other young people backpacking through South East Asia.

“We absolutely want whoever is responsible for this brought to account and brought to justice, and we’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that is the case,” he says.

The other four victims have been named as Simone White, a 28-year-old lawyer from the UK; James Louis Hutson, a 57-year-old American; and Danish citizens Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, 21.

Eight people have been arrested in connection with the case.

It’s a frustratingly familiar experience for many a fair-goer: just as the coveted plushie makes its way towards the chute of a claw machine, the claw slackens, letting go of the prize.

But now one city has had enough. On Wednesday, Hong Kong’s consumer watchdog announced it was mulling regulations on claw machines after rising complaints.

One man had spent HK$500 ($64.4; £50.7) over 45 minutes to win a waffle maker but got “nothing more than a few trinkets”, the Consumer Council said.

It said these machines “capitalise on consumers’ enthusiasm for testing their luck” and warned people to “spend rationally and be mindful of addiction”. But it did not say how it would regulate them.

Forty-two complaints were filed in the first 11 months of this year, up from 16 in 2023 and seven in 2022, the Consumer Council said on Monday.

“The industry often modifies claw settings or introduces obstacles inside claw machines to make winning more challenging… Excessive difficulty or unfair settings could aggravate consumers,” the council said in a statement on Monday.

“We believe it’s about time to review whether we should regulate claw machine businesses,” said Gilly Wong Fung-han, the council’s chief executive, said reports.

But Jayden Chen, the founder of a claw machine rental company in Singapore, tells the BBC that programmed claw machines are “actually part of the fun”.

“The players then feel the excitement and adrenaline, and will keep going. If they are winning most of the time, who would try for a second or third time?

“Regulations will kill off the fun element,” Mr Chen said.

In Hong Kong, claw machine operators do not need a license to set up shop.

In the case of the man who bided for the waffle maker, he had used a claw machine that promised “instant prizes” – the waffle maker was among the array of prices displayed and he had believed that consumers should have the right to select their reward.

A woman, who played another claw machine, complained that each time she was about to move her desired toy towards the chute, the claw would slacken, letting go of the toy.

The machine featured a “guaranteed grab” mechanism for players who had spent at least HK$100 without winning – only in their next try would the claw maintain its grip until the toy is extracted. The woman lamented that this was a “dishonest trade practice”.

Reports have shown that claw machines can be programmed to have a strong grip for only part of the time, or for it to drop a prize only after a certain number of tries.

In yet another example given by the council, a third complainant had wanted to break his HK$100 bill into HK$5 coins inside a claw machine arcade. After inserting the bill, however, he received only one HK$5 coin. His request for a refund was denied, and he was instead “compensated” with an equivalent value in play rounds.

The man protested, calling this a case of “forced consumption”, but the operator upheld its decision not to issue a cash refund, saying the coin exchange “incurred operating costs such as bank fees”.

“Consumers should assess whether the total amount spent is worth the value of the desired prize,” it said.

It also advised consumers to video-record their gameplay so that they have some evidence on hand in case of any disputes.

It added that some claw machines are suspected to have been used for gambling activities and urged consumers to exercise caution.

An Indian woman who says she was trafficked to Pakistan more than two decades ago has finally returned home – 18 months after her grandson spotted her in a YouTube video.

Hamida Banu said she had spent the last 22 years “as a living corpse”, trapped in the neighbouring country and unable to contact her family.

Ms Banu was tricked into going to Pakistan after accepting what was supposed to be a job in Dubai back in 2002.

Both India and Pakistan – which share a frosty bilateral relationship – conducted extensive checks on her identity before her Indian nationality was confirmed in October.

“I was deceitfully taken to Pakistan by promising Dubai. I tolerated [the separation] for 23 years,” the 75-year-old told journalists after crossing into India at a land border.

• Hamida Banu: Missing India woman found in Pakistan ‘can’t wait to go home’

Back in 2002, Ms Banu financially supported her four children after her husband’s death by working as a cook in Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

She was approached by a recruitment agent who said she could help arrange a job in Dubai. The agent asked her to pay 20,000 rupees ($250; £200).

But, as Ms Banu recalled in her 2022 video interview, instead of Dubai, she was brought to Hyderabad city in Pakistan and was detained in a house for three months.

She later married a street vendor in Karachi, who died during the Covid-19 pandemic. She told BBC Punjabi that her husband never troubled her.

Her story made headlines in July 2022 after Indian journalist Khalfan Shaikh happened to watch the YouTube interview conducted by Pakistani social media activist Waliullah Maroof and shared it on his platform.

It reached Ms Banu’s family in India when her grandson – who she had never met – saw it.

Mr Shaikh and Mr Maroof then arranged a call between Ms Banu and her Indian family.

“How are you? Did you recognise me? Where were you all these years?” Ms Banu’s daughter Yasmin was seen asking in the video call.

“Don’t ask me where I was, and how I have been. I missed you all so much. I didn’t stay here willingly, I had no other choice,” Ms Banu replied.

After she reached India on Monday, Ms Banu recalled the 2022 video that helped her connect with her family after years.

“My video was shared two years ago. I was not sure if I would reach India,” she said. “But the Indian embassy called me one year ago, saying you can go back.”

Speaking to BBC Punjabi, Ms Banu said she was happy to be back with her children and siblings. “I have brothers, sisters, children there [in India], but I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

The road to Idlib, a remote corner in north-west Syria, still has the signs of the old front lines: trenches, abandoned military positions, rocket shells and ammunition.

Until a little more than a week ago, this was the only area in the country controlled by the opposition.

From Idlib, rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, launched an astonishing offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad and ended his family’s five-decade dictatorship in Syria.

As a result, they have become the country’s de facto authorities and appear to be trying to bring their way of governing to the rest of Syria.

In Idlib’s city centre, opposition flags, with a green stripe and three red stars, were flying high in public squares and being waved by men and women, old and young, in the wake of Assad’s removal. Graffiti on walls celebrated the resistance against the regime.

While destroyed buildings and piles of rubble were a reminder of the not-so-distant war, repaired houses, recently opened shops and well-maintained roads were testament that some things had, indeed, improved. But there were complaints of what was seen as heavy-handed rule by the authorities.

When we visited earlier this week, streets were relatively clean, traffic lights and lamp-posts worked, and officers were present in the busiest areas. Simple things absent in other parts of Syria, and a source of pride here.

HTS has its origins in al-Qaeda but, in recent years, has actively tried to rebrand itself as a nationalist force, distant from its jihadist past and intent on removing Assad.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians. It is, however, still described as a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK, the UN and others, including Turkey, which backs some Syrian rebels.

The group took control of most of this region, home to 4.5 million people, in 2017, bringing stability after years of civil war.

The administration, known as the Salvation Government, runs water and electricity distribution, garbage collection and road pavement.

Taxes collected from businesses, farmers and crossings with Turkey fund its public services – as well as its military operations.

“Under Assad, they used to say that Idlib was the forgotten city,” said Dr Hamza Almoraweh, a cardiologist, as he treated patients in a hospital set up in an old post office warehouse.

He moved from Aleppo with his wife in 2015 when the war there intensified, but was not planning to return, even with the city under rebel control.

“We’ve seen a lot of development here. Idlib has a lot of things that it didn’t have under the Assad regime.”

As it moderated its tone, seeking to obtain international recognition amid local opposition, HTS revoked some of the strict social rules it had imposed when it came to power, including dress codes for women and a ban on music in schools.

And some people cite recent protests, including against taxes imposed by the government, as proof that a certain level of criticism is tolerated, in contrast with the repression of the Assads.

“It’s not a full democracy, but there’s freedom,” said Fuad Sayedissa, an activist.

“There were some problems at the beginning but, in the last years, they’ve been acting in a better way and are trying to change.”

Originally from Idlib, Sayedissa now lives in Turkey, where he runs the non-governmental organisation Violet. Like thousands of Syrians, the fall of Assad meant he could visit his city again – in his case, for the first time in a decade.

But demonstrations have also been held against what some say is authoritarian rule. To consolidate power, experts say, the group targeted extremists, absorbed rivals and imprisoned opponents.

“How the government will act in the whole Syria is a different story,” Sayedissa said. Syria is a diverse country and after decades of oppression and violence perpetrated by the regime and its allies, many are thirsty for justice. “People are still celebrating, but they’re also worried about the future.”

We tried to interview a local official, but were told all of them had gone to Damascus to help in the new government.

An hour’s drive from Idlib, in the small Christian village of Quniyah, the church bells rang for the first time in a decade on 8 December to celebrate Assad’s removal.

The community, near the Turkish border, was bombed during the civil war, which started in 2011 when Assad crushed peaceful protests against him and many of its residents fled.

Only 250 people remained.

“Syria is better since Assad fell,” said Friar Fadi Azar.

The rise of Islamists, however, has raised fears that minorities, including Assad’s Alawites, could be at risk, despite the messages from HTS reassuring religious and ethnic groups that they would be protected.

“In the last two years, they [HTS] started changing… Before, it was very hard,” Friar Azar said.

Properties were confiscated and religious rituals restricted.

“They gave [our community] more freedom, they called on other Christians who were refugees to come back to take their land and homes back.”

But is the change genuine? Can they be trusted? “What can we do? We have no other option,” he said. “We trust them.”

I asked Sayedissa, the activist, why even opponents were reluctant to criticise the group.

“They’re now the heroes… [But] we have red lines. We’ll not allow dictators again, Jolani or any other,” he said, referring to Ahmed al-Shara, the HTS leader who dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani after coming to power.

“If they act as dictators, the people are ready to say no, because they now have their freedom.”

Rescuers in Vanuatu are racing to find survivors trapped in buildings, a day after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the capital of Port Vila, killing 14 people.

At least 200 people were injured in Tuesday’s earthquake, with many of the casualties centred around a handful of buildings in the city centre.

One witness, who was in the tallest building in Vanuatu when the earthquake struck, told the BBC he and his wife had “sprinted” outside, adding that “if it had gone on another 10 seconds, I wouldn’t be talking to you today”.

A seven-day state of emergency has been declared to limit the public’s movement while rescue operations are under way, say police.

Glen Craig, chair of the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council, told the BBC that he had been in “good spirits” and enjoying the Christmas festivities with his wife on Tuesday when the earthquake struck – catching them completely off guard.

“We [in Vanuatu] are used to disasters… you can usually hear the earthquakes coming; you hear like a rumble or a deep roar. But this one we had no warning at all – there was just a sudden boom. This was next level, it felt like something that comes once in a generation.”

At least 10 buildings in Port Vila sustained “major structural damage”, the government’s disaster management office said. Tremors from the earthquake also cut power and mobile services.

Mr Craig said one building that housed several embassies, including the US Embassy and the British High Commission, was particularly affected.

“That building just pancaked,” he said. “There were about seven or eight buildings [in that area] that suffered catastrophic failure, and I’d expect the number of casualties to rise.”

A barrage of aftershocks were also reported overnight.

“Loads and loads of aftershocks throughout the night,” Australian Caroline Bird, who manages a resort in Port Vila, told ABC News. “Probably [can’t] even count how many.”

Six victims died as a result of a landslide, while four others had been in a collapsed building at the time of the quake. The death toll is expected to rise further.

Two of the 14 victims were Chinese nationals, Chinese Ambassador to Vanuatu Li Minggang told state media.

Photos shared by Vanuatu Police on Facebook showed rescuers sifting through rubble by hand and crawling under the floors of collapsed buildings.

Michael Thompson was among those who worked through the night looking for survivors.

He said in a Facebook post that three people had been rescued from a building overnight, but later told news agencies that one of them had subsequently died.

Mr Thompson added that rescue teams were in urgent need of jackhammers, excavators and cold drinking water, adding that many rescuers had “worked through the night”.

An estimated 116,000 people could be affected by the worst impacts of the quake, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

According to Mr Craig, however, most of the damage was limited to one particular area. The outskirts of Vanuatu were largely unharmed, as were most people living outside the capital, he added.

“We are used to having hurricanes which cause issues like food scarcity, affect housing. This time there’s none of that,” he said.

“But we normally don’t have this many fatalities as a result of natural disasters – so fatalities at this level, that’s not normal for us.”

Neighbouring Australia will send teams to assist in the search and rescue effort, while the US and France have also pledged aid.

The earthquake struck at 12:47 local time (01:47 GMT) on Tuesday and triggered a brief tsunami warning.

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.

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

“We had Covid, then we had three cyclones last year. So this is really the last thing we needed,” said Mr Craig. “But I think there will be some semblance of normality by Thursday.

“Tomorrow the banks will open, we need some apparatus from Australia for the internet to return which we will get soon, and the power will return in a few days. So we are suffering now, but we will get past it.”

Delhi’s pollution has once again soared to hazardous levels, with a top expert warning that India’s toxic air will have a bigger impact on public health than the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the air quality was 35 times over the safe limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO), leaving residents complaining of breathing problems, as well as itching in their eyes and throat.

Authorities have urged people, especially children and the elderly, to stay indoors as much as possible, while doctors recommend wearing a mask.

But Frank Hammes, global chief executive of air technology company IQAir, warns this is just a short term measure – and much more needs to be done.

“Alarming air pollution levels are a public health pandemic,” he told the BBC, explaining how toxic air impacts everything from mortality to IQ levels.

“This is going to have a much bigger impact on public health than Covid-19.”

Every winter, Delhi and nearby states face high pollution due to low wind speeds, vehicle emissions and the burning of crop remains and firewood.

According to IQAir, a Swiss air quality index, pollution in parts of Delhi surpassed the 550 mark on Wednesday morning, far exceeding even the “hazardous” level of 300.

London, in comparison, had a level of 26 early on Wednesday.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) measures the level of tiny particles in the air, also known as PM 2.5 – which Mr Hammes explains is “the most dangerous pollutant” and the “only determinant” for calculating pollution levels.

“It causes breathing difficulties, asthma attacks, heart and lung issues that send people rushing to emergencies,” he said.

The Delhi government reintroduced strict pollution control measures on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the country’s top court allowed them to be eased.

As per the curbs, which fall under stage four of the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap), most schools have shifted to hybrid mode, all construction and demolition activities are banned, while the entry of lorries and heavy vehicles, except those carrying essential goods, has been prohibited.

Manish Adhikari, a resident, told news agency ANI that it has now become difficult to survive the winter in Delhi with constantly rising pollution.

Another resident, Bhagat Singh, also expressed his frustration.

“Pollution has become an incurable disease, especially for Delhi. There is no solution to it,” he said.

Could this egg-shaped structure be what the future home of Indian astronauts in space looks like?

The Hab-1 – short for Habitat-1 – is Indian space agency Isro’s first-ever “analog mission” which means simulation of space conditions to prepare astronauts for real space missions. It was recently tested for three weeks in the high Himalayan mountains of Ladakh.

Space architect Aastha Kacha-Jhala, from Gujarat-based firm Aaka, told the BBC that these simulations help identify and address issues astronauts and equipment might face before space missions.

Built with space-grade Teflon and insulated with industrial-use foam, Hab-1 has a bed, a stowaway tray which can be pulled out and used as a workstation, storage space to keep supplies and emergency kits, a kitchenette for heating meals and a toilet. An astronaut in simulation spent three weeks holed up in the facility.

“Hab-1 is designed keeping in mind that space is going to be very limited on the Moon or Mars,” Ms Kacha-Jhala says. “The astronaut will also have very limited water so we designed a dry toilet. We also put in place a system for a proper disposal of waste and ensured that the habitat remained odour-free.”

She is now in talks with Isro to build India’s first permanent simulation space facility in Ladakh.

The mission comes at a time when India is preparing to send its first astronauts into space.

Isro’s Gaganyaan mission plans to place three astronauts into low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 400km (248 miles) for three days. If all goes according to plan, the mission will launch sometime next year. India also plans to set up its first space station by 2035 and send a man to the Moon by 2040.

Nasa, European Space Agency, Russia, China and other countries and private firms with space programmes run dozens of simulation missions and two of the four Indian astronauts selected for the Gaganyaan mission are being trained at Nasa at the moment.

“Once we have our own simulation mission, we won’t have to depend on foreign space agencies to train our astronauts,” says Prof Subrat Sharma, Dean of Research Studies at Ladakh University which collaborated on the project.

• Gaganyaan: India names astronauts for maiden space flight

Ladakh, he told the BBC, was chosen for the experiment because “from a geographical perspective, its rocky, barren landscape and soil have similarities with the material and rocks found on Mars and some parts of the lunar terrain which make it ideal for space research”.

The soil samples collected during the mission are being tested by the university to see if astronauts will be able to use locally-sourced materials to build homes in space.

The Himalayan region on the India-China border is located at a height of 3,500 metres (11,483ft) and has extreme climatic conditions and thin air. In a day, the temperature here can shift from a maximum of 20C to a minimum of -18C.

It’s no match for Mars (where temperatures can go below -153C) or Moon (where -250C is the norm in some deep craters), but still, it’s a test of human endurance. And as Prof Sharma says, “since you can’t go to space to test every time, you need these facilities where space-like conditions can be created”.

Also, he adds, Ladakh is one region of India where barren land stretches for miles and miles, “giving you the feeling of being alone on the planet”.

And that’s exactly how the simulation astronaut, who spent three weeks confined in the capsule in the icy cold desert, felt.

• Chandrayaan-3: India makes historic landing near Moon’s south pole

“I was isolated from the human environment. Every move that I made was scheduled, when to wake up, what to do when and when to sleep? A 24×7 camera monitored every move and sent data about my activities and health to the back office,” the 24-year-old who did not want to be named told me.

“The initial few days,” he said, “were great, but then it began to feel repetitive and it started to get to me. It started impacting my daily performance. My sleep schedule was affected a little and my concentration deteriorated.”

The simulation astronaut wore biometric devices to monitor his sleep pattern, heart rate and stress levels. His blood and saliva were tested daily to see how he was coping.

Scientists say simulating psychological factors to see how they would impact humans in space is one of the most important parts of the mission.

With space agencies from across the world aiming to send astronauts to the Moon and set up permanent bases there in the coming years, simulation missions are expected to play a crucial role in research and training.

• Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars
• Why India’s latest Sun mission finding is crucial for the world

In April, a team of scientists and engineers began trials in Oregon to prepare Nasa’s robot dog – Lassie – to walk on the Moon’s surface. In July, four volunteers emerged after spending a year at an “analog” facility, specially built in Texas to simulate life on Mars.

And according to the Economist magazine, Nasa hopes to 3D-print a base using only materials found on the Moon’s surface, while China and Russia are collaborating on their own plans.⁠

India doesn’t want to be left behind. Prof Sharma says once the data gathered in Ladakh is analysed, it “will help us develop medical technology to deal with the needs of our astronauts when they face a problem in space”.

“We need to know how our bodies will function on the Moon where days and nights are a lot longer than on Earth. Or in space where there’s not enough oxygen” he says.

A woman from the Philippines who spent almost 15 years on death row in Indonesia and was nearly executed by firing squad is finally home.

Mary Jane Veloso was sentenced to death in 2010 after she was found carrying 2.6kg (5.7lb) of heroin through an Indonesian airport.

But the 39-year-old mother of two has always maintained she was tricked into carrying the drugs.

She was flown back to Manila on Wednesday, after the two governments reached a deal that allowed her to return home.

“This is a new life for me and I will have a new beginning in the Philippines,” she told a news conference, adding that she wanted to spend Christmas with her family.

“I have to go home because I have a family there, I have my children waiting for me.”

While the agreement states that Veloso will return as a prisoner, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos could grant her a reprieve. She is now detained at the country’s main prison for women in Metro Manila.

Veloso was arrested in April 2010 at Yogyakarta airport.

She said she was convinced by the daughter of one of her godparents to travel to Indonesia to start a new job as a maid.

She claimed that the woman’s male friends gave her new clothes and a new bag, which she was unaware had heroin sewn into it.

She was due to face the firing squad in 2015, but Benigno Aquino III, who was Philippine president at the time, won a last-minute reprieve for her after the woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested and put on trial for human trafficking. Veloso was named a prosecution witness in that case.

Her reprieve was so late that several newspapers in the Philippines went to print with front pages and headlines reporting it had happened.

Ms Veloso’s case drew widespread public sympathy in the Philippines, which does not have the death penalty.

Her circumstances were familiar to many in the Philippines, where it is common for women to escape poverty by seeking work abroad as domestic helpers.

“I bring a lot of things, such as guitar, books, knittings … even this T-shirt I’m wearing was given by my friends,” she said while leaving prison for the airport.

Her transfer comes just days after the five remaining members of the infamous “Bali Nine” drug ring returned home after serving nearly 20 years in Indonesian prisons.

• Listen to Andrew read this story

Each morning, the queues began forming before dawn. Groups of women – always women – stood in the autumn chill on a pavement beside a busy ring road, outside Avignon’s glass and concrete courthouse.

They came, day after day. Some brought flowers. All wanted to be in place to applaud Gisèle Pelicot as she walked, purposefully, up the steps and through the glass doors. Some dared to approach her.

A few shouted: “We’re with you, Gisèle,” and “Be brave.”

Most then stayed on, hoping to secure seats in the courthouse’s public overflow room from where they could watch proceedings on a television screen. They were there to bear witness to the courage of a grandmother, as she sat quietly in court, surrounded by dozens of her rapists.

“I see myself in her,” said Isabelle Munier, 54. “One of the men on trial was once a friend of mine. It’s disgusting.”

“She’s become a figurehead for feminism,” said Sadjia Djimli, 20.

But they came for other reasons too.

Above all, it seemed, they were looking for answers. As France digests the implications of its largest rape trial, which is due to end this week, it’s clear that many French women – and not just those at the courthouse in Avignon – are pondering two fundamental questions.

The first question is visceral. What might it say about French men – some would say all men – that 50 of them, in one small, rural neighbourhood, were apparently willing to accept a casual invitation to have sex with an unknown woman as she lay, unconscious, in a stranger’s bedroom?

The second question emerges from the first: how far will this trial go in helping to tackle an epidemic of sexual violence and of drug-facilitated rape, and in challenging deeply held prejudices and ignorance about shame and consent?

Put simply, will Gisèle Pelicot’s courageous stand and her determination – as she has put it, to make “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist – change anything?

A long trial creates its own microclimate and, over the past weeks, a strange sort of normality developed inside Avignon’s Palais de Justice. Amid the TV cameras and the huddles of lawyers, the sight of dozens of alleged rapists – faces not always hidden behind masks – no longer provoked the shock it had at the start.

The accused strolled around, chatting, joking, grabbing coffee from the machine or returning from a café across the road, and, in the process, somehow emphasised the core argument of their various defence strategies: that these were just regular guys, a cross-section of French society, who were looking for a “swinging” adventure online and got caught up in something unexpected.

“[That argument is] the most shocking thing about this case. It’s harrowing to think about it,” says Elsa Labouret, who works for a French activist group, Dare to be Feminist.

“I think most people in long-term relationships with men think of their partner as someone trustworthy. But now there’s this sense of identification [with Gisèle Pelicot] for a lot of women. Like, ‘okay, so that can happen to me’.

“These are not criminal masterminds,” she continues. “They just went on the internet… So, it is possible similar things are happening everywhere.” It’s a view widely held, but also widely contested in France.

France’s Institute of Public Policies released figures in 2024 showing that on average, 86% of complaints of sexual abuse and 94% of rapes were either not prosecuted or never came to a trial, in the period between 2012 and 2021.

Ms Labouret argues that sexual violence happens when certain men know that they “can get away with it. And I think that’s a big reason why it’s so rampant in France.”

Throughout the four-month trial, at the end of each courtroom break, the accused would gather by the metal detector before muscling past the mostly female press corps, also waiting to enter the chamber. Inside, one by one, the men took their turn to share their accounts.

A court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Layet testified that the accused were neither “monsters” nor “ordinary men”. Some wept. A few confessed. But most offered an array of excuses, with many saying they were simply “libertines” – as the French put it – indulging a couple’s fantasies, and that they had no way of knowing Ms Pelicot had not consented. Others claimed Dominique Pelicot had intimidated them.

There are very few clear patterns or shared characteristics among the 51 men on trial. They represent a wide spectrum in society: three-quarters have children. Half are married or in a relationship. Just over a quarter of them said they had been abused or raped as children.

There is no discernible grouping by age or job or social class. The two traits they all share are that they’re male, and that they made contact on an illicit online chat forum called Coco, known for catering to swingers, as well as attracting paedophiles and drug dealers. According to French prosecutors, the site, which was shut down earlier this year, has been cited in more than 23,000 reports of criminal activity.

• Listen to Andrew talk about how Gisèle Pelicot refused to carry the shame of the 51 men she faced in court

The BBC has found that 23 of those on trial – or 45% – had previous criminal convictions. Although the authorities do not collect precise data, according to some estimates that is approximately four times the national average in France.

“There’s no typical profile of men who commit sexual violence,” concluded Labouret.

One person who has followed the case more closely than most is Juliette Campion, a French journalist who has been in court throughout the trial to report for the public broadcaster France Info. “I think this case could have happened in other countries, of course. But I think it says a lot about how men see women in France… About the notion of consent,” she says.

“A lot of men don’t know what consent actually is, so [the case] says a lot about our country, sadly.”

The Pelicot case is certainly helping to shape the contours of attitudes to rape across France.

On 21 September, a group of prominent French men, including actors, singers, musicians and journalists, wrote a public letter that was published in Liberation newspaper, arguing that the Pelicot case proved that male violence “is not a matter of monsters”.

“It is a matter of men, of Mr Everyman,” the letter said. “All men, without exception, benefit from a system that dominates women.”

It also sketched out a “road map” for men seeking to challenge the patriarchy, with advice such as “let’s stop thinking there is a masculine nature that justifies our behaviour”.

Some experts believe the huge public interest in the Pelicot case could already be producing benefits.

“This whole case is so useful for everyone, for all generations, for young boys, for young girls, for adults,” says Karen Noblinski, a Paris-based lawyer specialising in sexual assault cases.

“It has raised awareness in young people. Rape doesn’t always happen in a bar, in a club. It can happen in our home.”

But there is clearly much more work to be done. I went to meet Louis Bonnet, who is the mayor of the Pelicots’ home village, Mazan, early on in the trial. Although he was unequivocal in condemning the alleged rapes, he stated clearly and twice that he felt Gisèle Pelicot’s experience had been overblown, and argued that as she’d been unconscious, she had suffered less than other rape victims.

“Yes, I am minimising it, because I think it could have been much worse,” he said at the time.

“When there are kids involved, or women killed, then that is very serious because you can’t go back. In this case, the family will have to rebuild itself. It will be hard, but no one died. So, they can still do it.”

Bonnet’s comments provoked outrage across France. The Mayor later issued a statement, expressing his “sincere apologies”.

Online, many of the debates around the case have focused on the controversial suggestion that “all men” are capable of rape. There’s no evidence to support such a claim. Some men have pushed back against the argument, using the hashtag #NotAllMen.

“We do not ask other women to bear the ‘shame’ of women who behave badly, why should the mere fact of being a man qualify us to bear the shame?” asked one man on social media.

But the pushback was swift. Women reacted to the #NotAllMen hashtag with anger and, sometimes, with details of their own abuse.

“The hashtag has been created by men and used by men. It’s a way to silence the suffering of women,” wrote journalist Manon Mariani. Later, a male musician and influencer, Waxx, added his own criticism, telling the hashtag users to “shut up once and for all. It’s not about you, it’s about us. Men kill. Men attack. Period.”

Elsa Labouret believes French attitudes still need challenging. “I think a lot of people still think that sexual violence is sexy or romantic or something that is part of the way that we do things here [in France],” she argues.

“And it’s so important that we question that and that we don’t accept this kind of argument at all.”

In her small office just behind the French parliament building on the River Seine, Sandrine Josso, an MP, has a four-letter swearword on a poster beside her desk. It captures the spirit of defiance and determination that is driving her campaign against what’s known in France as “chemical submission”, or drugging in order to rape.

A year ago, in November 2023, she was at a party in the Paris apartment of a senator named Joel Guerriau. She claims that he put a drug in her champagne with the intention of raping her. Guerriau has denied attempting to drug her, blaming a “handling error” and telling investigators that the glass had been contaminated a day earlier.

In a statement, his lawyer has said: “We are miles away from the obscene interpretation that one might infer from reading initial reports in the press.” A trial is anticipated next year.

Josso is now campaigning, as she puts it, to “make victims’ journeys easier” when it comes to the French legal system.

“Today, it’s a disaster. Because very few victims who file complaints are able to have a trial, because of the lack of evidence. [There’s not] enough medical, psychological or legal support. We find shortcomings everywhere when it concerns sexual violence.”

Josso has now joined forces with Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline, to put together a drug-testing kit that could be made available in pharmacies throughout France. It now has government backing for a trial rollout, helped by the publicity generated by the Pelicot case.

“I’m optimistic. The medical world and the French people want shame to change sides [from the victim to the accused],” says Josso, quoting the phrase made famous by Gisèle Pelicot.

But Dr Leila Chaouachi, a chemist and expert at the Paris Addiction Monitoring Centre, says that the trial in Avignon is just one step in a long struggle to make people more aware of drugs and rape.

“It needs to become a real major public health issue that everyone takes seriously, and which forces the authorities to urgently address these issues to improve care for victims.

“It’s important for all of us to think about the issue, to consider it a health issue, not just a justice issue. It concerns all of us.”

At present the word “consent” is not included in the definition of rape in French laws, so some have argued that it should be changed to make it more explicit. But Ms Noblinski believes the focus should be elsewhere.

“[It] should be on the police, on the investigations, on funding them properly, not on tinkering with the law,” she says. “They don’t have sufficient resources. They have too many cases, and that’s the real issue. When you have too many things to handle, it’s very hard to find evidence.”

On her daily commute to the courthouse, during the first weeks of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot walked with her shoulders hunched and her posture defensive. She seemed flustered by the sheer level of interest the case generated. By the closing arguments, however, her demeanour was entirely different and she sat perfectly poised.

That has coincided with a greater change: as the trial progressed, the prosecution, those watching – and Mrs Pelicot herself – came to understand the extraordinary impact of her decision to opt not just for an open trial, but for every detail to be shown in court.

“She’s showing us that… if you’re a victim… do your best not to carry shame. Keep your head high,” says Elsa Labouret.

“As a woman, you start by being doubted. You start off as a liar and you have to prove that it’s true. I don’t doubt that every woman has been through something. Something, you know. In that way she represents all the women in the world.

“[Gisèle Pelicot] decided to make this bigger than herself. To make this about the way that we, as a society, treat sexual violence.”

Emerging from yet another day in the courtroom, the French journalist Juliette Campion stopped to reflect on what impact the case might have. “It was difficult to see all those videos… As a woman, it’s complicated, and I feel tired,” she says.

“But at least we did our job, and we talked about it. It’s a very small step. It won’t be a big thing. The only thing I can hope for now is that it will be a game changer for some men. And some women too, maybe.”

Veteran Australian broadcaster Alan Jones has pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing 10 young men over almost two decades.

The 83-year-old faces 34 charges over alleged incidents between 2001 and 2019, including 11 counts of aggravated indecent assault.

Mr Jones is one of Australia’s most influential media figures and a former coach of its national rugby union team. He has previously denied allegations of abuse, first published by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2023.

After appearing in court, he spoke publicly for the first time since his arrest last month, saying: “I have never indecently assaulted these people.”

“I want you to understand this: these allegations are all either baseless or they distort the truth, and you should know that prior to my arrest I was given no opportunity by police to answer any of these allegations.”

Mr Jones was taken into custody at his Sydney apartment on 18 November, as detectives from the New South Wales (NSW) Police Child Abuse Squad searched the harbour-front property and seized electronic devices.

Originally charged in relation to eight people – including a 17-year-old boy – police have since filed additional charges, and say investigations are continuing.

All the charges, except two of common assault, are sex offences.

Police said some of the alleged victims knew the radio and TV host personally, and that at least one had been employed by him.

Others were allegedly assaulted the first time they met him, NSW Police’s Michael Fitzgerald told reporters last month.

“The law assumes that I am not guilty, and I am not guilty,” Mr Jones told the media scrum waiting for him after his first court appearance in Sydney on Wednesday.

“That’s all I can say at the moment, but I am emphatic that I’ll be defending every charge before a jury in due course.”

A former teacher, Mr Jones coached the Wallabies between 1984 and 1988, before pivoting to a radio career.

He also, at times, worked as a speechwriter and advisor for Liberal Party figures – including former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser – and launched several failed bids to represent the party in both state and federal politics.

A staple of Sydney airwaves on local station 2GB for decades, Mr Jones juggled those duties with TV commentary gigs before he retired from full time work in 2020 citing health issues.

The broadcaster is a polarising figure, for years boasting one of the nation’s biggest audiences but often courting controversy.

He made headlines in 2012 for suggesting that then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father had “died of shame”, and in 2019 faced a massive advertiser boycott after saying someone should “shove a sock” down the throat of New Zealand’s leader at the time, Jacinda Ardern.

It is vital that Syria’s new leadership keeps its promises to respect the rights of all the country’s diverse religious and ethnic groups, according to UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen.

Mr Pedersen, speaking to the BBC in Damascus, said Syrians were experiencing “a lot of hope and a lot of fear… at the same time”.

He called for all parties, inside and outside Syria, to do all they could to create stability in the country.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown less than two weeks ago by a rebel coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, a Sunni Islamist group that claims to have disavowed its jihadist extremist past since it split from al-Qaeda in 2016.

HTS is designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US, the EU, the UK and others.

Symbolically, its leader has dropped his wartime pseudonym of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and reverted to his real name of Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Sunni Muslims are a majority in Syria, which has a strong secular tradition. Sharaa insists HTS is a religious nationalist movement prepared to tolerate other groups.

Mr Pedersen said Sharaa has said “many positive things”. But some Syrians, he said, did not believe the HTS leader, who until 2016 had a long history as a jihadist extremist.

“I must be honest. I’m hearing from many Syrians that they’re asking questions whether this will actually be implemented. They’ve got their doubts.”

That, he said, was not surprising, given the speed of change in Syria.

“If the transition is to succeed, this needs to be a process that is co-operative.”

“[Sharaa] needs to work with the different armed factions that went in together with him. He needs to work with a broader group of former opposition. He needs to make sure that he’s working with a broad group of civil society women. And as we all agree with the broadest spectrum possible of Syrian society.”

Mr Pedersen, who has been the UN special envoy since 2018, said the international community was ready to help and support Syria’s new leadership.

He emphasised that hopes of lifting sanctions on Syria and taking HTS off the terrorist list depended on its behaviour.

He hoped to give it the benefit of the doubt for three months – the time HTS has said its interim government will rule before a more long-term arrangement.

“I think there is an understanding that for Syria really to be successful, we need to see a delisting, and we need to see sanctions lifted. But I think also it’s very important that it’s understood that this will not just happen because everyone wants positive things.”

“Member states are following very carefully what will be happening on the ground, but I do believe that if what has been said in public is actually being implemented in practice, yes, then I think we can see the delisting and the end of sanctions.”

As for Syria’s neighbours, Mr Pedersen said that Israel’s actions since the fall of Assad had been “highly irresponsible”.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied and later annexed the area of southern Syria known as the Golan Heights. Most other states, other than the US, consider the Golan to be occupied land.

Israel’s current bombing campaign against Syrian military facilities and its occupation of more Syrian land in the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone and neighbouring areas were, Mr Pedersen said, “a danger to the future of Syria, and these activities need to stop immediately”.

“There is no reason that Israel should occupy new Syrian territory. The Golan is already occupied. They don’t need new land to be occupied. So what we need to see is that also Israel acts in a manner that don’t destabilise this very, very fragile transitional process,” he added.

Mr Pedersen is also concerned about the complex web of power in northern Syria.

Turkey has a well-established relationship with HTS. It has troops in the north-west, as well as a militia known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), made up of rebel factions that it backs.

Since Assad was overthrown, the SNA has attacked the other force in Syria’s north, a Kurdish-led militia alliance called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which is supported by the US.

Mr Pedersen said it was Turkey’s interests to follow certain key principles, along with other foreign powers.

“What is it that we all need to see in Syria now? We need to see stability. We need to see that there are not new population groups that are displaced. We need to see that people are not running away from Syria as refugees. We need to see that refugees are returning, that… internally displaced can be returning to their homes.”

After 54 years under the rule of two authoritarian Assad presidents, Syria is fragmented, with towns and villages heavily damaged by almost 14 years of war and a population traumatised by war and the deadly cruelty of the regime.

Mr Pedersen said it was vital for HTS to start a process that will bring justice to all the families of more than 100,000 Syrians who disappeared after detention by the regime since 2011. Most are presumed dead.

“If this process is not moving in the right direction, there is a huge danger that this anger can erupt in a manner that is in no one’s interest.”

Syrians, Mr Pedersen said, wanted to own the process of rebuilding their country. That might be difficult given the turbulence across the Middle East and propensity of Syria’s neighbours and other big powers to interfere.

Time is short. If HTS keeps its promises, “within the next few weeks and months there is hope that Syria can have a bright future”, he said.

He warned that if that doesn’t happen, “there is also a danger of new strife and even civil war.”

“But we need to bet that the future for Syria can now be fixed. And that we can start the process of healing.”

Police can seize more than £2m from controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan after they failed to pay tax on £21m of revenue from their online businesses, a court has ruled.

Devon and Cornwall Police had sought to seize the funds – held in seven frozen bank accounts – from the brothers and a third person, referred to as J.

The chief magistrate at Westminster Magistrates’ Court said what appeared to be a “complex financial matrix” was actually a “straightforward cheat of the revenue”.

Andrew Tate said the ruling was “not justice” and called it a “co-ordinated attack”.

Some of the revenue was directly linked by detectives to allegations of human trafficking that the brothers face in Romania.

• Who is Andrew Tate? The self-proclaimed misogynist influencer

The court previously heard the brothers had paid just under $12m (£9.5m) into an account in J’s name.

They had also opened a second account in her name, even though she had no role in their online businesses, which include the War Room, Hustlers’ University, Cobra Tate and OnlyFans, the hearing was told.

Part of the money that police applied to seize was cryptocurrency held in an account in J’s name.

Devon and Cornwall Police’s lawyers told the court that Andrew Tate had publicly declared he had not paid tax in the UK, and that his approach had been to “ignore, ignore, ignore because in the end they go away”.

The force had argued that the brothers’ traceable earnings of £21m between 2014 and 2022 seemingly came about despite the men having “no significant qualifications, business experience, established companies, shares, intellectual property or similar assets”.

Ruling in the force’s favour, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said the brothers had given the court no evidence relating to tax payments, but had insisted through their lawyers that the movement of the cash had been legitimate business activity.

In his written ruling, the judge said he was “satisfied” that the brothers had “engaged in long-standing, deliberate conduct in order to evade their tax”.

The force can seize £2,683,345 in total, including cryptocurrency.

Following the ruling, Andrew Tate said he had been the victim of “the matrix” and “outright theft”.

“It’s a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system,” he said in a statement.

“Speak against the matrix, and they’ll come for your freedom, your reputation, and your livelihood.”

Andrew Tate has been banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook after the platforms accused him of posting hate speech and misogynistic comments, but he remains on X with more than 10 million followers.

In June last year, Romanian prosecutors charged him with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang.

Tristan Tate faces allegations of human trafficking and the Romanian authorities say their case relates to seven alleged victims who were recruited through false promises of love and marriage.

The Tate brothers deny the allegations against them.

Judge Goldspring said one of the accounts had been used to move money in relation to the allegations.

“I am satisfied that this account is used for payments connected to female complainants in the Romanian allegations and also significant payments to co-defendants in the Romanian criminal proceedings,” he said.

“Whether or not the respondent brothers’ webcam business activities amounts to modern slavery (and other) offences will ultimately be determined by the Romanian criminal courts.

“But for these purposes, I am satisfied that none of these funds were declared to the tax authorities in either the UK or Romania.”

He said this supported his conclusion that the brothers’ “entire financial arrangements are consistent with concerted tax evasion and money laundering”.

When the pair were initially accused of hiding the cash from tax authorities, they had told the court they would rely on evidence from an expert accountant.

That plan was later abandoned and Judge Goldspring said they ultimately provided no evidence to counter the police’s allegation.

Devon and Cornwall Police said it welcomed the judge’s decision.

A force spokesperson said: “From the outset we have aimed to demonstrate that Andrew and Tristan Tate evaded taxes and laundered money through bank accounts located in Devon.

“Both individuals are alleged to have concealed the origins of their income by channelling money through ‘front’ accounts, constituting criminal activity and rendering those earnings proceeds of crime.

“We will refrain from further comment until the 28-day appeal period has concluded.”

Separately, Bedfordshire Police is seeking the extradition of the Tate brothers to the UK in relation to allegations of rape and human trafficking, which they deny.

A judge in Bucharest has said that extradition request will be dealt with after the conclusion of the case in Romania.

The world’s disruptor-in-chief, Elon Musk, meets the UK’s political disruptor-in- chief, Nigel Farage.

And subsequently, Reform UK publishes news-making, cor blimey, take-a-look-at-this photos.

But they are more than that, for they are the most clear-cut proof yet of the richest man in the world’s desire to get involved in – meddle in, as some see it – British politics.

There is another way of describing the pictures of three men at Donald Trump’s pad, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida: two billionaires and Farage.

Farage had one mega rich man alongside him when meeting someone even richer.

Reform UK’s new Treasurer is Nick Candy, a billionaire property developer who used to donate to the Conservatives and who, incidentally, is married to the former pop star Holly Valance.

But Candy is a pauper compared with Musk, the serial entrepreneurial disruptor in business with his rockets, electric cars and social media platform, now doing the same in politics.

Farage is the master of political storytelling freighted with an intrigue that keeps people interested.

This time it was all about eye-catching imagery and a teasing but not exactly straight answer about a donation.

Money was discussed, we are not told how much, we don’t know for certain if it’ll ever happen and if it does what it will amount to, but the next chapter was trailed – Trump’s inauguration next month, which Farage will be attending.

The Reform UK leader, now back from Florida, told me the suggestion Musk might give his party $100m (£78m) was wildly over the top.

But a number much smaller than that could still be very big, and game-changing for Reform’s prospects.

The question is whether it would be legal – and whether it would be seen as legitimate.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Elections says it wouldn’t and wants the law changed.

Downing Street says the government has committed to strengthening the rules, which currently allow donations from UK registered companies.

The danger for the government is any change in the law might look like self-interest and changing the rules of the game half way through.

But never before have we seen a man as rich, with a megaphone as large, so enthused about strutting the political stage – abroad as well as at home.

That poses profound questions about how much influence and from where is judged to be too much influence from too far away.

And here is a thought experiment for you: is your own instinct in how you answer those questions driven primarily by what you think of Farage and Musk, or about the principle of foreign donations?

The former Conservative MP Miriam Cates wrote on X: “Now imagine…a picture of Bill Gates with Keir Starmer, pledging support for the Labour Party. You are either for or against foreign interference in British politics. It can’t just depend on whether you agree with or like the individual billionaire concerned.”

Farage will be back across the Atlantic in a few weeks to toast Trump’s return to the White House.

On this latest visit he also managed a photo with the US Vice President Elect, JD Vance.

The Reform UK leader has friends in high places and friends with deep pockets.

Little wonder he is causing Labour, the Conservatives and others to fret about the political threat they fear he increasingly poses to them.

“Can I give you some polar bear advice?” asks Tee, a confident 13-year-old we meet during a visit to a high school in Churchill, Canada.

“If there’s a bear this close to you,” she says as she measures a distance of about 30cm with her hands, “make a fist – and punch it in the nose.

“Polar bears have very sensitive noses – it’ll just run away.”

Tee has not had to put this advice to the test. But growing up here – alongside the planet’s largest land predator – means bear safety is part of everyday life.

Signs – in shops and cafes – remind anyone heading outside to be “bear aware”. My favourite reads: “If a polar bear attacks you must fight back.”

Running away from a charging polar bear is – perhaps counterintuitively – dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase prey and polar bears can run at 25mph (40kmph).

Key advice: Be vigilant and aware of your surroundings. Don’t walk alone at night.

Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, the Hudson Bay – on the western edge of which the town is perched – thaws, and forces the bears on shore. As the freeze sets in in Autumn, hundreds of bears gather here, waiting.

“We have freshwater rivers flowing into the area and cold water coming in from the Arctic,” explains Alysa McCall from Polar Bears International (PBI). “So freeze-up happens here first.

“For polar bears, sea ice is a big dinner plate – it’s access to their main prey, seals. They’re probably excited for a big meal of seal blubber – they haven’t been eating much all summer on land.”

There are 20 known sub-populations of polar bears across the Arctic. This is one of the most southerly and best studied.

“They’re our fat, white, hairy canaries in the coal mine,” Alysa explains. “We had about 1,200 polar bears here in the 1980s and we’ve lost almost half of them.”

The decline is tied to the amount of time the bay is now ice-free, a period that is getting longer as the climate warms. No sea ice means no frozen seal-hunting platform.

“Bears here are now on land about a month longer than their grandparents were,” explains Alysa. “That puts pressure on mothers. [With less food] it’s harder to stay pregnant and to sustain those babies.”

While their long-term survival is precarious, the bears draw conservation scientists and thousands of tourists to Churchill every year.

We tag along with a group from PBI to search for bears on the sub-Arctic tundra – just a few miles from town. The team travels in a tundra buggy, a type of off-road bus with huge tyres.

After a few distant sightings, we have a heart-stopping close encounter. A young bear approaches and investigates our slow two-buggy convoy. He sidles up, sniffs one of the vehicles, then jumps up and plants two giant paws up on the side of the buggy.

The bear casually slumps back down onto all fours, then looks up and gazes at me briefly. It is deeply confusing to look into the face of an animal that is simultaneously adorable and potentially deadly.

“You could see him sniffing and even licking the vehicle – using all his senses to investigate,” says PBI’s Geoff York, who has worked in the Arctic for more than three decades.

Being here in ‘bear season’ means Geoff and his colleagues can test new technologies to detect bears and protect people. The PBI team is currently fine-tuning a radar-based system dubbed ‘bear-dar’.

The experimental rig – a tall antenna with detectors scanning 360 degrees – is installed on the roof of a lodge in the middle of the tundra, near Churchill.

“It has artificial intelligence, so here we can basically teach it what a polar bear is,” Geoff explains. “This works 24/7, it can see at night and in poor visibility.”

Polar bear attacks are rare, but they are a risk for people who live and work in isolated Arctic environments. Earlier this year, a Canadian worker was killed by two polar bears near a remote defence station in Canada’s northern Nunavut territory.

Co-existing with these ice-dependent predators, when the Arctic climate is changing faster than at any time in history, creates a paradoxical challenge for Churchill: The polar bear population here faces long-term decline. But, in the short term, the bears are spending more of their year on shore, increasing the probability of bears and people coming into contact.

Protecting the community is the task of the polar bear alert team – trained rangers who patrol Churchill every day.

We ride along with ranger Ian Van Nest, who is looking for a stubborn bear that he and his colleagues tried to chase away earlier that day. “It turned around and came back [towards] Churchill. He doesn’t seem interested in going away.”

For bears that are intent on hanging around town, the team can use a live trap: A tube-shaped container, baited with seal meat, with a door that the bear triggers when it climbs inside.

“Then we put them in the holding facility,” Ian explains. Bears are held for 30 days, a period set to teach a bear that it is a negative thing to come to town looking for food, but that doesn’t put the animal’s health at risk.

They are then moved – either on the back of a trailer or occasionally air-lifted by helicopter – and released further along the bay, away from people.

Cyril Fredlund, who works at Churchill’s new scientific observatory, remembers the last time a person was killed by a polar bear in Churchill, in 1983.

“It was right in town,” he says. “The man was homeless and was in an abandoned building at night. There was a young bear in there too – it took him down with its paw, like he was a seal.”

People came to help, Cyril recalls, but they couldn’t get the bear away from the man. “It was like it was guarding its meal.”

The polar bear alert program was set up around that time. No-one has been killed by a polar bear here since.

Cyril is now a technician at the new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO). Part of its remit is to understand exactly how this environment will respond to climate change.

Under its retractable roof are two giant pools filled with water pumped in directly from the Hudson Bay.

“We can do all kinds of controlled experimental studies looking into changes in the Arctic,” says Prof Feiyue Wang.

One implication of a less icy Hudson Bay is a longer operating season for the port, which is currently closed for nine months of the year. A longer season during which the bay thaws and becomes open water could mean more ships coming in and out of Churchill.

Studies at the observatory are setting out to improve the accuracy of the sea ice forecast. Research will also examine the risks associated with expanding the port. One of the first investigations is an experimental oil spill. Scientists plan to release oil into one of the pools, test clean-up techniques and measure how quickly the oil degrades in the cold water.

For Churchill’s mayor, Mike Spence, understanding how to plan for the future, particularly when it comes to shipping goods in and out of Churchill, is vital for the town’s future in a warming world.

“We’re already looking into extending the season,” he says, gesturing towards the port, which has ceased operating for the winter. “In ten years’ time, this will be bustling.”

Climate change poses a challenge for the polar bear capital of the world, but the mayor is optimistic. “We have a great town,” he says, “a wonderful community. And the summer season – [when people come to see the Beluga whales in the bay] – is growing.”

“We’re all being challenged by climate change,” he adds. “Does that mean you stop existing? No – you adapt. You work out how to take advantage of it.”

While Mike Spence says “the future is bright” for Churchill, it might not be so bright for the polar bears.

Tee and her friends look out over the bay, from a window at the back of the school building. The polar bear alert team’s vehicles are gathering outside, trying to move a bear away from town.

“If climate change continues,” muses Tee’s classmate Charlie, “the polar bears might just stop coming here.”

The teacher approaches to make sure the children have someone coming to pick them up – that they’re not walking home alone. All part of the daily routine in the polar bear capital of the world.

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. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Shop owners in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, are caught between a rock and a hard place over a government directive that they install CCTV cameras outside their businesses to intensify surveillance of Islamist insurgents who have a strong presence in the city.

The businessmen say if they put up the cameras they risk being gunned down by the al-Shabab insurgents, and if they do not, they could be arrested by the police.

“The CCTV cameras are why you now see me at home,” says former shopkeeper Hamza Nuur, 48, as he sits on a sofa holding one of his children.

He tells the BBC that he took the painful decision to sell his business to avoid incurring the wrath of either side.

“You’re told not to remove the cameras by one side and then you’re told to remove the cameras by the other side. Depending on the choice you make, you’ll either have a bullet or prison cell waiting for you,” Mr Nuur adds.

The government issued a directive last year to shopkeepers to install CCTV cameras – at their own cost – to deter attacks by al-Shabab.

Mogadishu’s Deputy Mayor Mohamed Ahmed Diriye tells the BBC Africa Daily podcast that the decision has paid off.

“There used to be four or five bombings per month in Mogadishu but that’s no longer the case,” he says.

The government has now ordered residents to install the cameras outside homes and apartment blocks, raising fears among many people that al-Shabab could bring its war into their homes.

Since October, al-Shabab has killed four businessmen in 10 attacks related to the installation of CCTV cameras, according to a leading violence monitoring group, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled).

The government’s directive was aimed at ultimately disrupting al-Shabab’s sources of funding as it extorts money out of shop owners, but the retaliatory attacks by the insurgents “have forced many businesses in Mogadishu’s main markets to close their doors for days”, Acled adds in a report published on its website.

Mr Nuur says that at first he ignored the government’s directive but was forced to install the cameras after being confronted by members of the security forces.

“I tried to explain to them I was just a poor man and didn’t want to get involved with the government but they got angry and began threatening me, saying they’ll ruin my life,” he tells the BBC.

Mr Nuur says that once he installed a CCTV camera, he began receiving phone calls from unrecognisable numbers.

“My body started shivering from the inside. I knew who it was,” he says, referring to al-Shabab operatives who have a well-entrenched spy network, allowing them to get information about civilians like Mr Nuur.

Mr Nuur says he changed his number, only for a young man to walk up to him in his shop one morning.

“He lifted his shirt. He had a pistol in his waist. He ordered me to turn on my SIM card.”

Mr Nuur says he acquiesced, and the phone rang, with the anonymous caller wanting to know whether “the government’s demands are more important to you than ours”.

“I didn’t know what to do. The young man with the pistol was standing there the whole time. I was thinking, once I hang up this phone call is he going to shoot. So, I whispered a prayer under my breath,” Mr Nuur adds.

He says fortunately the man “walked out of the store without incident after I hung up the call”.

Mr Nuur says he decided to sell his business after two shopkeepers were gunned down in October.

“There is nothing more valuable than human life,” he says.

Critical of the government’s directive, Mr Nuur adds: “People trying to make ends meet are being pulled into a war against a powerful group that even the government has difficulties fighting. Just imagine how we feel as civilians.”

Diriye denies that businesses are shutting down or that owners are being forced to install CCTV cameras.

However, he acknowledges that some businessmen have fears, but says the government does its best to reassure them and to protect them.

“The city is calm and business is smooth,” Diriye adds.

But Asiyo Mohamed Warsame tells the BBC that masked gunmen killed her 40-year-old brother Dahir Mohamed Warsame in his shop in Mogadishu’s Yaqshid district in October after he installed CCTV cameras under pressure from the security forces.

“He left behind six children, with the youngest being only four months old,” she says.

Shopkeeper Ismael Hashi, 33, says he shut his business after anonymous calls from suspected al-Shabab operatives.

“They knew my name plus more. It was as if they already knew everything about me,” he tells the BBC.

Mr Hashi adds that he later received a call from the police telling him to open his shop – and when he ignored them he was detained for a few days before being released.

Mr Hashi says he has now reopened his business.

“I still have the CCTV cameras installed on the government’s orders but I know the government cannot protect me if someone were to decide to take my life,” he says.

“Every time I’m standing behind the counter and someone I don’t recognise walks in, I get nervous and wonder if this is the person sent to kill me,” Mr Hashi adds.

Sidow Abdullahi Mohamed, 39, tells the BBC that he was arrested for failing to install a CCTV camera at his home in Wajir district.

He adds that 14 other people on his street were also arrested.

“We were transferred to the Wadajir district police station where we were detained for hours. We were eventually released after someone with a government ID came and vouched for us and got us out,” Mr Mohamed says.

He adds that he and the other residents have now installed CCTV cameras – but they live in fear.

“As civilians we’re forced to buy the cameras, pay to install them in our homes and risk violence from al-Shabaab. Is this how the government expects to win hearts and minds?”

• Africa Daily podcast: Is CCTV making Mogadishu safer?
• ‘They threw her body into the ocean’
• ‘Why I spent my university fees on Somali TikTok battles’
• ‘I wanted my clitoris back’

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.

Appearance and reality: there is a constant battle in Moscow between the two.

Despite nearly three years of war, life here can seem so normal: from the crowds of commuters on the Metro to the bars and clubs packed with young Muscovites.

Then, suddenly, something happens to remind you: there is nothing normal about Russia today.

That “something” can be a Ukrainian drone penetrating Moscow’s air defences.

Or – even more dramatic – what happened on Tuesday morning: the targeted assassination of a senior Russian general as he walked out of an apartment block.

When Lt Gen Igor Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by a bomb concealed on an electric scooter, the reality of Russia’s war on Ukraine hit home.

At least to those Russians close to the crime scene.

“It’s one thing reading about it in the news, it feels far, but when it happens next door to you, that’s completely different and frightening,” Liza tells me. She lives one building from the site of the blast.

“Until now, [the war] felt as if it was happening a long way off – now someone is dead, here, you can feel the consequences.

“My anxiety has gone through the roof. Every sound you hear unnerves you – you wonder whether it’s a drone or something at a construction site,” Liza says.

This perception of Russia’s war in Ukraine as something distant – I’ve heard that so often here. I get the sense that, for a considerable portion of the population, this is a war they only experience on their TV screen or on their smart phone. In many ways, a virtual war.

Astonishing, really, considering the large number of dead and wounded.

But the killing of a Russian general in Moscow: that is a definite wake-up call; proof that this war is very real and very close to home.

Will it serve as a wake-up call for the Russian authorities?

Probably not. There is little sign of a Kremlin U-turn on Ukraine. Moscow is far more likely to intensify the war.

Just look at the signs.

Reacting to news of Kirillov’s killing, the host of a political talk show on Russian state TV blamed Ukraine and claimed that “with this attack President Zelensky has signed his own death sentence”.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said “investigators must find the killers in Russia.” He added: “We must do everything to destroy their patrons who are in Kyiv.”

Russia’s security service says a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan has now been detained over the killings.

From President Vladimir Putin there has been no public reaction so far to the killing of the general and his assistant.

But the Kremlin leader has said many times before that, faced with security threats, Russia “will always respond”.

Based on that pledge, retaliation is likely.

On Thursday, the Kremlin leader is due to hold his annual end-of-year press conference and phone-in. It’s normally a marathon affair broadcast live by all the main TV channels.

I wonder: will he use the event to comment on the dramatic early morning assassination of Kirillov?

Will he break his silence on Syria? The Russian president has so far said nothing publicly about the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s key ally in the Middle East.

And what will he tell Russians about where their country is heading, as the war in Ukraine – what Putin still calls his “special military operation” – approaches the three-year mark?

It’s a frustratingly familiar experience for many a fair-goer: just as the coveted plushie makes its way towards the chute of a claw machine, the claw slackens, letting go of the prize.

But now one city has had enough. On Wednesday, Hong Kong’s consumer watchdog announced it was mulling regulations on claw machines after rising complaints.

One man had spent HK$500 ($64.4; £50.7) over 45 minutes to win a waffle maker but got “nothing more than a few trinkets”, the Consumer Council said.

It said these machines “capitalise on consumers’ enthusiasm for testing their luck” and warned people to “spend rationally and be mindful of addiction”. But it did not say how it would regulate them.

Forty-two complaints were filed in the first 11 months of this year, up from 16 in 2023 and seven in 2022, the Consumer Council said on Monday.

“The industry often modifies claw settings or introduces obstacles inside claw machines to make winning more challenging… Excessive difficulty or unfair settings could aggravate consumers,” the council said in a statement on Monday.

“We believe it’s about time to review whether we should regulate claw machine businesses,” said Gilly Wong Fung-han, the council’s chief executive, said reports.

But Jayden Chen, the founder of a claw machine rental company in Singapore, tells the BBC that programmed claw machines are “actually part of the fun”.

“The players then feel the excitement and adrenaline, and will keep going. If they are winning most of the time, who would try for a second or third time?

“Regulations will kill off the fun element,” Mr Chen said.

In Hong Kong, claw machine operators do not need a license to set up shop.

In the case of the man who bided for the waffle maker, he had used a claw machine that promised “instant prizes” – the waffle maker was among the array of prices displayed and he had believed that consumers should have the right to select their reward.

A woman, who played another claw machine, complained that each time she was about to move her desired toy towards the chute, the claw would slacken, letting go of the toy.

The machine featured a “guaranteed grab” mechanism for players who had spent at least HK$100 without winning – only in their next try would the claw maintain its grip until the toy is extracted. The woman lamented that this was a “dishonest trade practice”.

Reports have shown that claw machines can be programmed to have a strong grip for only part of the time, or for it to drop a prize only after a certain number of tries.

In yet another example given by the council, a third complainant had wanted to break his HK$100 bill into HK$5 coins inside a claw machine arcade. After inserting the bill, however, he received only one HK$5 coin. His request for a refund was denied, and he was instead “compensated” with an equivalent value in play rounds.

The man protested, calling this a case of “forced consumption”, but the operator upheld its decision not to issue a cash refund, saying the coin exchange “incurred operating costs such as bank fees”.

“Consumers should assess whether the total amount spent is worth the value of the desired prize,” it said.

It also advised consumers to video-record their gameplay so that they have some evidence on hand in case of any disputes.

It added that some claw machines are suspected to have been used for gambling activities and urged consumers to exercise caution.

“When you are showing your identity, you shine all the time,” says Elyanna.

The 22-year-old Palestinian-Chilean singer already has millions of views on YouTube and a collaboration with Coldplay under her belt.

This year she’s also doing her first European tour and tells BBC Newsbeat she is keen to spread the message of her home “through music and art”.

Elyanna was born in Nazareth, an Arab city in northern Israel.

Israeli Arabs descend from Palestinians who became citizens of Israel when the state was established in 1948, many of whom continue to strongly self-identify as Palestinian.

“I feel as a young Palestinian artist, if I have a voice and I have a platform, I [can] talk about where I come from,” says Elyanna.

“And talk about the beautiful things about back home, which is so needed.”

Elyanna and her family moved from Nazareth to California in 2017, but she still feels a strong connection to Palestine.

In April 2023 she made history at Coachella, becoming the first person to sing an entire set in Arabic at the Californian music festival.

Months later, on 7 October, Palestinian group Hamas launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel.

Israel’s massive military offensive against it still continues.

Last year Elyanna told fans she was “praying for” Gaza and chose to postpone her tour last year in solidarity with people affected by Israel’s military offensive.

One of her songs, Olive Branch, written with her brother and mum, include nods to the people of Palestine, and she says the song is dedicated to them.

“They’ve been going through so much for so long,” she says.

Despite some celebrities facing criticism for not speaking out about events in the Middle East, Elyanna says it’s not like that for her.

“I don’t feel like there’s any pressure because I am very proud of where I come from, who I am and my identity,” she tells Newsbeat after a gig in Michigan last month.

“And I want other people my age, young people and artists in general, I want them to be proud of where they come from.

“I feel like that’s my mission as an artist. It gives me so much purpose.

“I always believe in speaking your mind, and I do believe that everybody should feel free to express how they feel.”

Elyanna sings in Arabic, with one review of her Woledto album stating she “plays with Arab pop, R&B, EDM, and jazz to express the nuances of love, loss, and longing”.

And this year she teamed up with Coldplay, alongside Burna Boy, Little Simz and Tini, during their Glastonbury headline set.

The Coldplay collab is a teenage dream come true for Elyanna, who is now closing in on 10 million monthly Spotify listeners.

“I watched their show [when] I was 15 years old in San Diego with my siblings, and I was so inspired for like a week.

“And I remember I told my sister: ‘One day I feel like I’m going to perform with them’.

“I cannot believe that it’s true,” she says.

Working with the group was for her, as a young artist, “perfect inspiration and a perfect environment to be around”.

“They’re legends, and they are so sweet and humble in person, which makes it even more perfect.

“They stand for beautiful things, and I feel like they really inspired me,” she says.

Now that her tour is back up and running, she says the delay has taught her “to be patient”.

“It’s a process, and it’s just like you have to learn how to trust the process.”

And being on stage, her aim is to now “inspire people” in the same way she was by artists such as Amy Winehouse, Freddie Mercury and legendary Middle East singer Fairuz.

“As a little girl, I always wanted to feel inspired by artists, especially when they’re performing live,” she says.

“So I feel like I need to give that to other people, inspire them, give them hope.

“I have so many people that really inspired me in their own way, and I want to do the same for other people.”

Elyanna says she loves performing in the UK and seeing fellow Arabs at her concerts.

“I feel like there are so many Arabs that want to introduce their friends [to] their culture,” she says.

“I’m always so surprised and inspired that they’re all here to listen to Arabic music,” she says.

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

A plot to assassinate Pope Francis during a trip to Iraq was stopped following a tip-off from British intelligence, according to his upcoming autobiography.

The Pope writes that, after landing in Baghdad in March 2021, he was told an event at which he was set to appear was being targeted by two suicide bombers.

Both attackers were subsequently intercepted and killed, he said in excerpts published by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The visit, which took place over three days during the coronavirus pandemic, was the first ever to Iraq by a pope and saw an intense security operation.

The years before had seen increased sectarian violence in Iraq, with fighting between Shia and Sunni Muslims as well as the persecution of religious minorities.

The country’s Christian community had shrunk dramatically, having been targeted in particular by the Islamic State group and other Sunni extremists.

In excerpts of his autobiography, the Pope says “almost everyone advised me against” the visit but he felt he “had to do it”.

He says the plot was uncovered by British intelligence, who warned Iraqi police, and they in turn told his security detail once he had touched down.

“A woman packed with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was heading towards Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit,” he says.

“And a van had also set off at great speed with the same intention.”

The Pope adds that he asked a security official the following day what had happened to the would-be attackers.

“The [official] replied laconically: ‘They are no more’. The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up,” he wrote.

The book, entitled Hope, is due to be published on 14 January.

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters news agency.

A Nigerian man who has spent 10 years on death row for stealing some hens and eggs has been promised a pardon by the governor of the south-western Osun state.

Segun Olowookere was 17 years old in 2010 when he was arrested along with his accomplice, Morakinyo Sunday.

They were said to have attacked the home of a police officer and another person with an old-fashioned wooden gun and a sword but only got away with the poultry.

In 2014, Justice Jide Falola of the Osun State High Court sentenced the two to death by hanging after finding them guilty of forcefully breaking into the police officer’s house and stealing his belongings.

There was an outcry across Nigeria at the time as many felt the sentence was too harsh.

The duo were subsequently moved to the notorious Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos state where they’ve been in the death row wing.

In a statement on Tuesday, governor Ademola Adeleke directed that Olowookere should be pardoned as it was important to protect the sanctity of life.

“I have directed the Commissioner for Justice to initiate processes to grant prerogative of mercy to the young man.

“Osun is a land of justice and equity. We must ensure fairness and protection of the sanctity of lives,” the governor posted on X.

The fate of Morakinyo Sunday, who was sentenced alongside Olowookere, is unclear as his name wasn’t mentioned in the statement.

For years, Olowookere’s parents, human rights groups and other Nigerians have fought for his release.

His parents were recently on a podcast where they cried and begged for their only child to be pardoned.

He is expected to be freed early in 2025.

Nigeria has not carried out an execution since 2012 but there are currently more than 3,400 people on death row.

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The embattled boss of Swedish fashion brand Djerf Avenue has apologised again after claims she mistreated staff, blaming her lack of leadership experience as the firm’s growth exploded.

“I wasn’t ready,” Matilda Djerf wrote in a post on Instagram, days after a report in Swedish news outlet Aftonbladet sparked backlash against the brand.

In the message, the 27-year-old said the firm was working to improve its work culture, which included hiring managers with more experience and introducing monthly anonymous surveys of staff.

Ms Djerf, who started her online influencer career in 2016, said she was committed to “getting it right”.

“When I started Djerf Avenue I never expected that the company would be what it is today, with so many team members and so much responsibility,” she wrote.

“I’ll keep learning and working to ensure Djerf Avenue is a safe, inclusive space for everyone.”

Launched in 2019, Djerf Avenue rapidly gained a following among young women for wardrobe staples such as oversize button-down shirts and trousers.

The brand, which reported around $35m (£27.5m) in revenue last year, is known for its size inclusivity and diverse model representation.

But it has been facing outcry from customers after Aftonbladet reported claims bullying and body-shaming. It said that some models were told they did not fill out a pair of jeans, while others were called fat.

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

Journalism student Evie Summers, who attended the pop-up to write a report, said the allegations against Ms Djerf were “incredibly disappointing and discouraging to the young, impressionable people who adore her”.

She said the apology was the only route available to Ms Djerf, who has won a following not just for her designs, but for her “lifestyle and values”.

“With this in mind, it’s especially important for her to reflect the brand values of kindness and inclusivity towards her staff,” the 19-year-old said.

In her message, Ms Djerf said she hoped to rebuild trust with her fans.

“I had never built a company prior to this, and under a lot of stress, high tempo and naivety I failed to be the leader and colleague I wish to be along the way,” she added.

London resident Samantha Rogers said the controversy was a reminder that brands had to live by their values.

“I’m definitely sad about what’s happened, but I also think it’s great that brands are being called out when they don’t stick to the values they promote,” the 32-year-old told the BBC.

“If your brand doesn’t feel real, it won’t stand the test of time.”

Luigi Mangione has been charged with first-degree murder in the killing of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the New York district attorney said on Tuesday.

Mr Mangione faces various charges, including first-degree murder, and two counts of second-degree murder, one of which describes the killing as an act of “terrorism”, Bragg said.

“The intent was to sow terror,” New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, calling the shooting a “frightening, well-planned and targeted murder”.

Mr Mangione is scheduled to appear for a court hearing on 19 December over whether he will be extradited to New York on the charges, though Mr Bragg suggested the suspect may not fight extradition.

“We have indications the defendant may waive that hearing,” Mr Bragg said.

The extradition proceeding is scheduled for the same day as Mr Mangione’s preliminary hearing on gun-related charges in Pennsylvania.

Appearing at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, both Mr Bragg and New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch lambasted the public for praising Mr Mangione in the wake of the 4 December shooting.

“In the nearly two weeks since Mr Thompson’s killing, we have seen a shocking and appalling celebration of cold-blooded murder,” Ms Tisch said. “We don’t celebrate murders and we don’t lionise the killing of anyone.”

In addition to murder, the suspect also faces weapons and forgery charges. If he is convicted on the most serious charges placed against him – first degree murder and second degree murder as an act of terrorism – Mr Mangione could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Asked about the specific terrorism charges, Mr Bragg replied that “in its most basic terms, this was a killing that was intended to evoke terror”.

Five days after Mr Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was shot and killed, Mr Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, with a fake ID and so-called “ghost gun”, police said.

His lawyer, Thomas Dickey, has said he has not seen evidence that links Mr Mangione’s gun with the crime.

New York prosecutors began to share evidence in their case against Mr Mangione with a grand jury last week.

If extradited, the 26-year-old is likely to be held at Riker’s Island or another New York prison.

The evidence against Mr Mangione includes a positive match of his fingerprints with those discovered at the crime scene, Commissioner Tisch said.

According to District Attorney Bragg, the suspect arrived in New York City on 24 November, staying in a Manhattan hostel using a fake ID before carrying out the attack against Mr Thompson 10 days later.

In addition to the ghost gun – a gun assembled from untraceable parts – and fake ID, a passport and a handwritten document indicating “motivation and mindset” also were found on Mr Mangione when he was arrested, police said.

During Tuesday’s news conference announcing the New York charges, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny also described an interaction with the suspect’s mother, who in November filed a missing person report for her son in San Francisco.

After the manhunt for the shooting suspect had begun, that report was flagged to authorities, who contacted Mr Mangione’s mother. According to Mr Kenny, his mother said she did not identify her son as the suspect, but said “it might be something that she could see him doing”.

Mr Mangione was formally charged in Pennsylvania with forgery, carrying firearms without a licence, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of crime and providing a false identification to police.

While Mr Mangione awaits his fate in the New York court system, he remains under maximum security at Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.

He has been denied bail.

Caver Ottavia Piana has been airlifted to hospital after a painstaking rescue deep underground in a cave system in the Bergamo area of northern Italy.

Piana, 32, had been exploring an uncharted area of the Abisso Bueno Fonteno cave on Saturday afternoon when a rock gave way beneath her feet and she fell 5-6m (16-19ft), sustaining injuries to her vertebrae, ribs, face and knee.

More than 150 volunteers, led by Italy’s Alpine and cave rescue corps, took part in the operation, and her stretcher was brought out at about 03:00 (02:00 GMT) on Wednesday.

Piana is an experienced speleologist, and this was the second time in 17 months that she was rescued from the cave system.

“She’s tired, exhausted and in pain…We have succeeded,” said Giorgio Pannuzzo, a rescue volunteer who was with her at the time of the accident on Saturday.

“There was a freezing wind right by the entrance [to the cave] and if we’d stopped she would have suffered even more from the cold. So we were in a rush,” he told Italian media.

Piana was taking part in a project to map a previously unknown area of the Abisso Bueno Fonteno cave system when she fell.

The area between Lake Iseo and Lake Endine comprises a network of caves, tunnels and underground galleries, the majority of which have never been explored.

Rescuers spoke of a race against time to get her out because of her injuries. Dozens of volunteers took turns to carry her stretcher and clear the many obstructions that got in their way.

They had to navigate narrow tunnels and at times use small explosive charges to get her out.

The CNSAS Alpine rescue service said 159 volunteers from 13 Italian regions took part in the operation. “The injured woman was constantly monitored and assisted by a total of six doctors and eight nurses,” it said. “The rescue operation went on uninterrupted for 75 hours.”

During the operation, Piana told her doctors that she never wanted to set foot in the cave again.

An Indian woman who says she was trafficked to Pakistan more than two decades ago has finally returned home – 18 months after her grandson spotted her in a YouTube video.

Hamida Banu said she had spent the last 22 years “as a living corpse”, trapped in the neighbouring country and unable to contact her family.

Ms Banu was tricked into going to Pakistan after accepting what was supposed to be a job in Dubai back in 2002.

Both India and Pakistan – which share a frosty bilateral relationship – conducted extensive checks on her identity before her Indian nationality was confirmed in October.

“I was deceitfully taken to Pakistan by promising Dubai. I tolerated [the separation] for 23 years,” the 75-year-old told journalists after crossing into India at a land border.

• Hamida Banu: Missing India woman found in Pakistan ‘can’t wait to go home’

Back in 2002, Ms Banu financially supported her four children after her husband’s death by working as a cook in Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

She was approached by a recruitment agent who said she could help arrange a job in Dubai. The agent asked her to pay 20,000 rupees ($250; £200).

But, as Ms Banu recalled in her 2022 video interview, instead of Dubai, she was brought to Hyderabad city in Pakistan and was detained in a house for three months.

She later married a street vendor in Karachi, who died during the Covid-19 pandemic. She told BBC Punjabi that her husband never troubled her.

Her story made headlines in July 2022 after Indian journalist Khalfan Shaikh happened to watch the YouTube interview conducted by Pakistani social media activist Waliullah Maroof and shared it on his platform.

It reached Ms Banu’s family in India when her grandson – who she had never met – saw it.

Mr Shaikh and Mr Maroof then arranged a call between Ms Banu and her Indian family.

“How are you? Did you recognise me? Where were you all these years?” Ms Banu’s daughter Yasmin was seen asking in the video call.

“Don’t ask me where I was, and how I have been. I missed you all so much. I didn’t stay here willingly, I had no other choice,” Ms Banu replied.

After she reached India on Monday, Ms Banu recalled the 2022 video that helped her connect with her family after years.

“My video was shared two years ago. I was not sure if I would reach India,” she said. “But the Indian embassy called me one year ago, saying you can go back.”

Speaking to BBC Punjabi, Ms Banu said she was happy to be back with her children and siblings. “I have brothers, sisters, children there [in India], but I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

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.

The road to Idlib, a remote corner in north-west Syria, still has the signs of the old front lines: trenches, abandoned military positions, rocket shells and ammunition.

Until a little more than a week ago, this was the only area in the country controlled by the opposition.

From Idlib, rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, launched an astonishing offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad and ended his family’s five-decade dictatorship in Syria.

As a result, they have become the country’s de facto authorities and appear to be trying to bring their way of governing to the rest of Syria.

In Idlib’s city centre, opposition flags, with a green stripe and three red stars, were flying high in public squares and being waved by men and women, old and young, in the wake of Assad’s removal. Graffiti on walls celebrated the resistance against the regime.

While destroyed buildings and piles of rubble were a reminder of the not-so-distant war, repaired houses, recently opened shops and well-maintained roads were testament that some things had, indeed, improved. But there were complaints of what was seen as heavy-handed rule by the authorities.

When we visited earlier this week, streets were relatively clean, traffic lights and lamp-posts worked, and officers were present in the busiest areas. Simple things absent in other parts of Syria, and a source of pride here.

HTS has its origins in al-Qaeda but, in recent years, has actively tried to rebrand itself as a nationalist force, distant from its jihadist past and intent on removing Assad.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians. It is, however, still described as a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK, the UN and others, including Turkey, which backs some Syrian rebels.

The group took control of most of this region, home to 4.5 million people, in 2017, bringing stability after years of civil war.

The administration, known as the Salvation Government, runs water and electricity distribution, garbage collection and road pavement.

Taxes collected from businesses, farmers and crossings with Turkey fund its public services – as well as its military operations.

“Under Assad, they used to say that Idlib was the forgotten city,” said Dr Hamza Almoraweh, a cardiologist, as he treated patients in a hospital set up in an old post office warehouse.

He moved from Aleppo with his wife in 2015 when the war there intensified, but was not planning to return, even with the city under rebel control.

“We’ve seen a lot of development here. Idlib has a lot of things that it didn’t have under the Assad regime.”

As it moderated its tone, seeking to obtain international recognition amid local opposition, HTS revoked some of the strict social rules it had imposed when it came to power, including dress codes for women and a ban on music in schools.

And some people cite recent protests, including against taxes imposed by the government, as proof that a certain level of criticism is tolerated, in contrast with the repression of the Assads.

“It’s not a full democracy, but there’s freedom,” said Fuad Sayedissa, an activist.

“There were some problems at the beginning but, in the last years, they’ve been acting in a better way and are trying to change.”

Originally from Idlib, Sayedissa now lives in Turkey, where he runs the non-governmental organisation Violet. Like thousands of Syrians, the fall of Assad meant he could visit his city again – in his case, for the first time in a decade.

But demonstrations have also been held against what some say is authoritarian rule. To consolidate power, experts say, the group targeted extremists, absorbed rivals and imprisoned opponents.

“How the government will act in the whole Syria is a different story,” Sayedissa said. Syria is a diverse country and after decades of oppression and violence perpetrated by the regime and its allies, many are thirsty for justice. “People are still celebrating, but they’re also worried about the future.”

We tried to interview a local official, but were told all of them had gone to Damascus to help in the new government.

An hour’s drive from Idlib, in the small Christian village of Quniyah, the church bells rang for the first time in a decade on 8 December to celebrate Assad’s removal.

The community, near the Turkish border, was bombed during the civil war, which started in 2011 when Assad crushed peaceful protests against him and many of its residents fled.

Only 250 people remained.

“Syria is better since Assad fell,” said Friar Fadi Azar.

The rise of Islamists, however, has raised fears that minorities, including Assad’s Alawites, could be at risk, despite the messages from HTS reassuring religious and ethnic groups that they would be protected.

“In the last two years, they [HTS] started changing… Before, it was very hard,” Friar Azar said.

Properties were confiscated and religious rituals restricted.

“They gave [our community] more freedom, they called on other Christians who were refugees to come back to take their land and homes back.”

But is the change genuine? Can they be trusted? “What can we do? We have no other option,” he said. “We trust them.”

I asked Sayedissa, the activist, why even opponents were reluctant to criticise the group.

“They’re now the heroes… [But] we have red lines. We’ll not allow dictators again, Jolani or any other,” he said, referring to Ahmed al-Shara, the HTS leader who dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani after coming to power.

“If they act as dictators, the people are ready to say no, because they now have their freedom.”

Russia’s authorities say a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan has been detained over the killing of senior general Igor Kirillov and his assistant in Moscow.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when an explosive device hidden in an electric scooter was detonated remotely, the authorities say.

Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) says the suspect – who has not been publicly named – has admitted he was recruited by Ukrainian special services. The SK provided no evidence to back its claim.

Ukraine’s security service SBU had already claimed it was behind the killing, a source told the BBC on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian source said Kirillov, 54, was “a legitimate target” and alleged he had carried out war crimes.

On Monday, the day before the killing, Ukraine charged the Russian general in absentia, saying he was “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons”. Moscow denies the allegations.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin “expresses deep condolences” over Kirillov’s death, Russian state-run news agency Tass reported.

In a statement on Wednesday, the SK said the detained man – born in 1995 – was a citizen of Uzbekistan.

It said he was “suspected of committing a terrorist act” and that during interrogation, “he explained that he was recruited by the Ukrainian special services”.

The explosive device had been placed on the scooter parked near the entrance to the residential building where Kirillov lived, the SK said.

To monitor the location, the suspect had rented a car, where he installed a video camera that was livestreaming to the attack organisers in Ukraine’s city of Dnipro, the investigative committee added.

When Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov left the building, the explosive device was remotely activated, the statement said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) published a video of the suspect’s interrogation.

In the footage, a dark-haired man wearing handcuffs with what appears to be a visible rip in his coat is seen speaking directly to the camera.

He is heard saying in Russian that he had been offered a reward of $100,000 and a European passport in exchange for killing Kirillov.

The FSB added that on Ukraine’s instructions, he arrived in Moscow and received a homemade explosive device.

It is unclear whether the suspect’s confession was made under duress.

Kirillov is thought to be the most senior military figure assassinated inside Russia since President Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024.

As well as being charged by Ukraine, Kirillov had previously been sanctioned by the UK over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

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

Moscow denies this and says it destroyed the last remainder of its vast chemical weapons stockpile in 2017.

Pictures from the scene outside Kirillov’s apartment block in south-eastern Moscow on Tuesday showed the badly damaged entrance, with scorch marks on the walls and a number of windows blown out. Two body bags could also be seen on the street.

Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia would raise Kirillov’s assassination at the meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday.

Russian officials have vowed to find and punish those involved in the killing.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s future looks uncertain following the sudden resignation of his most senior cabinet member, a once close ally.

Chrystia Freeland – the former deputy prime minister and finance minister – quit her posts on Monday with an open letter to Trudeau, in which she outlined disagreements she had with him on spending and “the best path forward for Canada”.

These disagreements, she said, were underscored by the threat of tariffs on Canadian goods from incoming US President Donald Trump – tariffs that economists say could deal Canada a devastating economic blow.

Questions are now being asked on Parliament Hill, including by some members of his own Liberal Party, about whether he is able to lead at this critical juncture.

He faces a few options on how to move forward.

Trudeau has been leader of the Liberal Party of Canada since 2013, and Canada’s prime minister for just over nine years, since 2015.

Under the party’s constitution, the leader can tender his or her resignation at any time. If it is effective immediately, an interim leader is appointed until party members can convene and vote on a new permanent leader.

Trudeau could also choose to stay in his post until that new leader is elected.

Once a new leader is appointed, Trudeau would have to relinquish his prime ministerial powers and hand them over to his successor.

Trudeau is not signalling that he will voluntarily resign any time soon.

In an emergency meeting with his caucus following Freeland’s departure, Trudeau told fellow Liberal members of parliament (MPs) – including some who had directly called for him to step down – that he would take time to reflect, according to multiple reports.

And in a holiday speech to Liberal Party faithful on Tuesday, he acknowledged politics came with “big challenges” but said: “In difficult times, it’s not time to stop. It’s time to be ambitious, audacious.”

Trudeau has been under pressure since the summer, due to his plummeting approval ratings and a series of special election losses of once-safe Liberal seats that suggest major troubles for his party.

In October, he faced a small caucus revolt, with 24 MPs signing a letter calling for his exit.

Polls indicate that if a Canadian federal election were to be held today, the official opposition Conservative Party would be handed a decisive victory.

Trudeau has held on despite these troubles and has repeatedly vowed to run again as Liberal leader in the next election.

Only 13 out of 153 Liberal MPs have so far openly called for him to leave – nearly half of them are not seeking re-election themselves, according to tracking by CBC News.

Still, under the party’s constitution, the leader’s position can only be formally put to a vote by members following an election loss.

Riding high in opinion polls with a double-digit lead, the Conservatives have tried for months to trigger an election by tabling a series of no-confidence votes in the House of Commons.

If a government loses a confidence motion or vote in the House, it is expected to resign or seek the dissolution of parliament, triggering a federal election.

The government needs the backing of a majority of the 338 members of parliament in a no-confidence vote. The Liberals are 17 seats shy of that.

The Conservative efforts failed after either the NDP or the Bloc Québécois backed the Liberals in return for support pushing forward their own respective political priorities.

With parliament adjourning for the holidays on Tuesday, Trudeau will not be facing the threat of another confidence motion until at least late January.

On Monday, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh for the first time called on Trudeau to resign, making the Liberal hold on power look increasingly shaky.

The NDP’s House leader told broadcaster the CBC that its members would vote in favour of a no-confidence motion if the prime minister was still leader in the New Year.

One way Trudeau could avoid the vote is by proroguing parliament – essentially a suspension that would stop all proceedings, including debates and votes, without dissolving parliament.

While a routine part of parliamentary procedure, it is sometimes used by governments to buy time during a political crisis.

Parliament was most recently prorogued by Trudeau in August 2020, when his government was facing an ethics scandal over its handling of a contract with a charity.

It was also used to avoid a no-confidence vote by Trudeau’s predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who prorogued parliament in December 2008 when federal opposition parties sought to form a coalition government.

Parliament resumed in January 2009. By then the coalition had fallen apart, allowing Harper to remain in power.

Whatever Trudeau decides to do, an election in the coming months is inevitable.

Canada must hold its next election on or before October, and ultimately, it may be voters who end up deciding his future.

An Indian woman who says she was trafficked to Pakistan more than two decades ago has finally returned home – 18 months after her grandson spotted her in a YouTube video.

Hamida Banu said she had spent the last 22 years “as a living corpse”, trapped in the neighbouring country and unable to contact her family.

Ms Banu was tricked into going to Pakistan after accepting what was supposed to be a job in Dubai back in 2002.

Both India and Pakistan – which share a frosty bilateral relationship – conducted extensive checks on her identity before her Indian nationality was confirmed in October.

“I was deceitfully taken to Pakistan by promising Dubai. I tolerated [the separation] for 23 years,” the 75-year-old told journalists after crossing into India at a land border.

• Hamida Banu: Missing India woman found in Pakistan ‘can’t wait to go home’

Back in 2002, Ms Banu financially supported her four children after her husband’s death by working as a cook in Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

She was approached by a recruitment agent who said she could help arrange a job in Dubai. The agent asked her to pay 20,000 rupees ($250; £200).

But, as Ms Banu recalled in her 2022 video interview, instead of Dubai, she was brought to Hyderabad city in Pakistan and was detained in a house for three months.

She later married a street vendor in Karachi, who died during the Covid-19 pandemic. She told BBC Punjabi that her husband never troubled her.

Her story made headlines in July 2022 after Indian journalist Khalfan Shaikh happened to watch the YouTube interview conducted by Pakistani social media activist Waliullah Maroof and shared it on his platform.

It reached Ms Banu’s family in India when her grandson – who she had never met – saw it.

Mr Shaikh and Mr Maroof then arranged a call between Ms Banu and her Indian family.

“How are you? Did you recognise me? Where were you all these years?” Ms Banu’s daughter Yasmin was seen asking in the video call.

“Don’t ask me where I was, and how I have been. I missed you all so much. I didn’t stay here willingly, I had no other choice,” Ms Banu replied.

After she reached India on Monday, Ms Banu recalled the 2022 video that helped her connect with her family after years.

“My video was shared two years ago. I was not sure if I would reach India,” she said. “But the Indian embassy called me one year ago, saying you can go back.”

Speaking to BBC Punjabi, Ms Banu said she was happy to be back with her children and siblings. “I have brothers, sisters, children there [in India], but I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

Nasa says that the astronauts stuck on the International Space Station will have to wait even longer to get home.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were due to be back after just a week when they blasted off in June.

Their stay was extended to February next year because of technical issues with the experimental spacecraft, Starliner, built by Boeing.

Now – following a delay in launching a new capsule to the ISS – the pair won’t be back until late March or possibly April.

Nasa said the delay posed no risk to the astronauts.

In a statement Nasa stated: “The International Space Station recently received two resupply flights in November and is well-stocked with everything the crew needs, including food, water, clothing, and oxygen. The resupply spacecraft also carried special items for the crew to celebrate the holidays aboard the orbital platform.”

Most space station missions last six months, with a few reaching a full year. So the extension to Butch and Suni’s already overdue stay in space should not be a problem, according to Dr Simeon Barber, from the Open University.

“I’m sure that they are already disappointed that they were going to miss Christmas back home with the folks. But this is only another two months on an already quite long mission, and I’m sure if you ask them, I’m sure they would tell you that the space station is where they love to be,” he said.

A new crew needs to launch before Wilmore and Williams can return and the next mission has been delayed by more than a month, according to the space agency.

Nasa’s next crew of four for the ISS was supposed to have been launched in February 2025. The capsule carrying that crew was due to be the one bringing Butch and Sunni home, as well as NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as part of the normal crew rotation.

But there has been a delay by the private sector firm SpaceX in preparing a brand-new Dragon capsule for the mission. That is now scheduled for flight readiness no earlier than late March.

Nasa said it considered using a different SpaceX capsule to fly up the replacement crew to keep the flights on schedule.

But it has now decided the best option is to wait for the new capsule to transport the next crew.

The BBC has seen evidence the multinational corporation that owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) arranged for a whistleblower to be sacked for raising concerns about the safety of electric cars it designed.

Confidential emails between executives at Tata Group reveal they retaliated against mechanical engineer Hazar Denli for posting concerns on Reddit that lives were being put at risk. He was then blacklisted.

US authorities are now investigating an earlier model of the same car after 28 reports of safety defects and a crash in which a family-of-four were killed.

In response to a detailed right of reply letter from the BBC, both JLR and Tata Group declined to comment.

Mr Denli, from Milton Keynes, first raised concerns internally while working at a different division of Tata Group, its global engineering consultancy Tata Technologies.

He told the BBC that in test-driving prototypes, designed by Tata Technologies for Vietnamese car maker Vinfast, he identified improperly designed components in the car’s chassis, including its suspension system.

At low mileages, some of them were snapping off, he said.

That created a risk that under stress, such as hitting a pothole at speed, the wheels could become misaligned, causing the car to veer to the left or right without prompting, and the driver could lose control, Mr Denli added.

“We saw, for example, the front strut-to-knuckle connection was loosening, which could be extremely dangerous,” he said. “It could cause a loosening of the entire structure that could cause wheels to come off.

“In a crash scenario, it could be completely unsafe. It could cause the vehicle to lose control.”

Mr Denli, a specialist in chassis design, was appointed to lead the engineering team working on the car’s front suspension and chassis from September 2022, halfway through a design and testing phase he says had an unusually tight timetable.

He soon became concerned VinFast was cutting corners with safety, keeping costs down by employing a small team of inexperienced engineers.

His concerns grew when he heard three of his predecessors had quit after short spells on the project.

He says in February and March 2023, while running vigorous testing on VinFast cars at the Mira Technology Park near Nuneaton, two components snapped off and another two failed.

He reported the “extremely concerning” incidents to colleagues at Tata Technologies Limited (TTL), the consultancy’s UK division, based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

In subsequent testing, he alleges further components failed.

Mr Denli said they were failing after fewer than 25,000 km (15,534 miles), when normally they would be expected to last for at least 150,000 km (93,205 miles).

“In the drive units, some of the brackets were completely failing and falling out on to the road,” he said. “We’re talking one or two kilograms worth of aluminium.

“These [incidents] started causing alarm bells to go off just a short time before we we went into production.”

He escalated his concerns to senior executives at TTL and VinFast and said he had recommended they redesign the faulty components and manufacture safer, higher quality parts.

That would have sharply boosted costs and required VinFast Group to postpone production of the car, he added.

But VinFast, which was preparing to sell shares in itself and raise funds by floating on the New York Stock Exchange, instead pushed ahead with production.

Mr Denli asked Tata Technologies to reassign him to another project but senior managers refused.

Unhappy to be associated with the VinFast car, he says, in May last year he resigned.

With his skills as a consultant engineer in demand, Mr Denli later found new work via an agency at JLR in Gaydon, also owned by the Tata Group.

But he said he kept seeing reports online appearing to show serious safety defects in earlier models of the same VinFast car – including a video that appeared to show a car reversing with no driver in it – and crashed cars where the wheels had come off.

In another report, a VinFast car at a showroom in Germany caught fire.

The same components he was testing in VinFast’s VF6 and VF7 models had been carried over from two earlier models already on sale in the United States, Vietnam and Europe – the VF8 and VF9.

Then on 24 April this year, a family-of-four was killed in a crash in Pleasanton, California. Police reported the vehicle lost control, veered off the road, hit a pole and caught fire.

The following month, US safety regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), announced it was reviewing the VinFast VF8. VinFast said it was cooperating with the investigation.

The reports of the crash prompted Mr Denli to publish the posts on a Reddit account saying he had worked on the design of the car and it was a vehicle he believed endangered lives.

“I would get into every other vehicle I have designed from other brands… and every vehicle has flaws… But Vinfast, I wouldn’t get into one… never will and I won’t let my loved ones get into one either,” he wrote.

Two months later, on 18 July this year, Mr Denli’s contract at JLR was terminated.

Internal documents obtained through a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) reveal a senior executive at his former employer Tata Technologies had been in touch with JLR executives to seek his dismissal.

After he saw the Reddit posts, Tata Technologies HR director Patrick Flood discussed his company’s wish to have Mr Denli’s new employment terminated with JLR’s HR director and board member Dave Williams.

Mr Flood told Mr Williams that Tata Group’s client VinFast had conducted its own investigation and identified Mr Denli as the author of the Reddit posts: “The concern is if he has done this now, he could do the same at JLR.”

The same day he was sacked, Mr Denli was blacklisted on industry recruitment platform Magnit, which told JLR he had been “red-flagged” so any applications from him for other work via the platform would be automatically declined.

On 19 July, Mr Flood emailed JLR corporate investigators: “I just wanted to check whether the individual’s services have been terminated with JLR?” The investigator confirmed they had.

The internal documents show another Tata Technologies engineer had also told JLR there were problems with components Mr Denli had warned about on Reddit.

Mr Denli said his bosses at JLR knew he had done nothing wrong in his JLR employment and told him he had been dismissed because Tata Group was embarrassed by his postings about its client, VinFast.

He is now taking JLR to an employment tribunal.

“I was distressed as to what was happening around the world where innocent people were paying the price – a very high price,” he said.

“I thought that if some people would start to speak up about it, they would actually be forced to make some changes. Unfortunately, their response was not to make these improvements, but, ‘Hey, who said this? Let’s go and shut him up’.”

On 12 September, the NHTSA launched an investigation into the Vinfast VF8.

It announced it was looking into 3,118 VinFast vehicles sold in the US after 14 drivers reported the Lane Keep Assist systems were flawed in VF8 cars bought in 2023 and 2024.

The NHTSA said the drivers reported the system “has difficulty detecting lanes on the roadway, provides improper steering inputs and is difficult to override by the driver”.

VinFast said it would cooperate fully with the NHTSA throughout this process.

“We take all safety concerns seriously and will continue to monitor the situation closely,” VinFast told Reuters, expressing the company’s confidence in its safety standards.

The number of reports of safety issues received by the NHTSA has now grown to 28.

In UK employment law, workers have some protection from employer retaliation if they disclose information they reasonably believe shows the health and safety of any individual is likely to be endangered.

Under the Public Interest Disclosure at Work Act 1998, any clause in a contract that seeks to bind them to silence is void.

However, there is growing pressure in Parliament for stronger safeguards for whistleblowers amid concerns existing protections are too weak.

A bill will be introduced on Wednesday proposing to set up an Office of the Whistleblower to protect workers who speak up.

Supporters such as Baroness Susan Kramer, a former transport minister, says Mr Denli’s case is not exceptional and underlines why the bill is needed.

“Whistleblowers very typically find themselves fired, blacklisted for future jobs and they pay a huge price in terms of their personal career,” she said.

“It is not acceptable, because we need whistleblowers to deter wrongdoing and to expose wrongdoing.”

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of Whistleblowers UK, said: “This story is one of hundreds we hear every year from whistleblowers who have been rewarded for doing the right thing with retaliation.

“Currently whistleblowers have to decide between speaking up and their personal wellbeing. The best incentive that MPs can deliver is to ensure whistleblowers are properly protected and that wrongdoing will be investigated.”

The BBC offered both Tata Group and JLR the opportunity to comment in detail.

Tata Group, the multinational corporation that owns JLR, did not respond.

JLR said it did not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

VinFast said: “We do not interfere in the recruitment or HR activities of the Tata Group or its companies. We have no further comment on the matter.”

The father of 19-year-old Holly Bowles, who died of suspected methanol poisoning in Laos last month, has said he was in “disbelief” when he realised his daughter would not pull through.

Speaking to the BBC, Shaun Bowles described Holly as “everything you’d want your daughter to be”.

The Australian teenager had been travelling across South East Asia with her best friend Bianca Jones when they fell ill after drinking alcohol thought to be contaminated with methanol, a toxic substance sometimes added to bootleg drinks.

They were among six foreign tourists to die over a few days in the small, riverside tourist town of Vang Vieng.

“They were having an unbelievable time, just having so much fun, doing what two 19-year-old girls should be doing,” Shaun Bowles told the BBC’s Today Programme.

The grieving process, he said, has been made more manageable by the fact that he is “best friends” with Bianca’s father, Mark.

Together, Mark and Shaun had travelled through Thailand on their own backpacking trip 25 years ago.

“It’s just bizarre to be going through the same thing with your best friend. Just being together and just talking helps us get through the days,” he said.

Holly and Bianca had planned their trip to celebrate their graduation from school.

Since they’d been away, Shaun had spoken to his daughter every few days, while Holly’s mother, Sam, had spoken to her “every second”.

“They were just having an absolute blast,” he said.

The two teenagers were taken to hospital after they failed to check out of the Nana Backpacker hostel, where they were staying, and were found unresponsive.

Shaun and his family received news they were unwell through a friend – and the two mothers flew out to Thailand that night.

“When you’re getting second hand information… it was really hard to process exactly what sort of condition that they were in,” said Shaun.

He and Bianca’s father, Mark, flew out the next day, by which point the girls were in a hospital in Udon Thani, over the border from Laos in Thailand.

Bianca died on 21 November, and Holly a day later.

“She was just full of life. She was confident, she was loving, she was just a true friend of people. She was everything you want your daughter to be,” said Shaun.

Now, Shaun says, his focus is on raising awareness of methanol poisoning to other young people backpacking through South East Asia.

“We absolutely want whoever is responsible for this brought to account and brought to justice, and we’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that is the case,” he says.

The other four victims have been named as Simone White, a 28-year-old lawyer from the UK; James Louis Hutson, a 57-year-old American; and Danish citizens Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, 21.

Eight people have been arrested in connection with the case.

A driver who was filmed inhaling laughing gas behind the wheel before a high-speed crash has been jailed for killing three teenage friends.

Thomas Johnson was travelling at speeds of up to 100mph before his car hit a tree in the village of Marcham, Oxfordshire, killing passengers Ethan Goddard, Daniel Hancock, both 18, and Elliot Pullen, 17.

Johnson, 19, was jailed for nine years and four months at Oxford Crown Court after pleading guilty to three counts of causing death by dangerous driving.

The victims’ families called Johnson a “cocky teenage boy” who was showing off and urged others “not to be that driver who shows such disregard for their friends’ lives”.

Mr Hancock’s family also begged people not to be “a passenger of such a driver”.

“Please learn from this, an opportunity that the boys were not fortunate enough to be given,” they said.

Mr Goddard’s father, Robert, said: “He’s ruined everyone’s life, he’s taken three, ruined his own life, devastated ours, just for showing off.”

Elliot Pullen’s sister, Mia, 20, added: “I know he’s just a cocky teenage boy, I know he’s not an awful person but he made some awful decisions and I really hope that he feels guilty for what he’s done.

“This is his fault, he’s done this, he’s killed them and I hope it stays with him forever.”

His parents, Kate and Giles Pullen, they said they had been “sucked into a world of grief, sadness and pain that we still cannot begin to process”.

They added that Elliot had suffered such significant injuries they were not able to see him.

“As his parents, we feel a physical longing and pain that we never got to hold Elliot and say our goodbyes,” they said.

Johnson had held his licence for less than a year when he was driving his BMW 3 Series at speed along the A415 towards Abingdon just after midnight on 20 June 2023.

Detectives said as he entered a 30mph (48km/h) zone, he lost control of the vehicle going into a bend, the car skidded and hit a lamp-post before hitting a large tree.

All three passengers died at the scene. Johnson suffered life-threatening injuries and spent several months in hospital.

Two sisters told police they had heard a car skidding or drifting nearby shortly before they were overtaken by a silver BMW.

Moments later, as they entered Marcham village, they discovered the wreckage and called 999.

Police said data from a mobile phone recovered from the scene suggests that in the 30 seconds before the crash, the car reached a peak speed of 97mph (156km/h).

Three videos recorded by the young men, moments before the collision, show the driver and some of the passengers with inflated balloons in their mouths and the vehicle being driven at excessive speed.

The final video, taken within a minute of the crash, shows the car accelerating away from a red light while the driver appears to be attempting to skid the vehicle.

A crash scene investigator concluded Johnson had been driving aggressively and had deactivated the car’s dynamic stability control and traction control systems.

Ethan Goddard was the only one in the vehicle wearing a seatbelt.

Judge Emma Nott said Johnson’s actions were “all for teenage thrills” but as a result “three passengers will never see beyond their teenage years and you move out of yours significantly and permanently disabled”.

Det Sgt Tony Jenkins, of Thames Valley Police, said: “It’s tragic, I’ve got a son the same age and you just hope that they don’t put themself into positions of vulnerability, you hope they don’t drive excessively, you hope they don’t use any drugs, it really is a tragic case.”

Johnson was interviewed by police voluntarily in November 2023.

During the interview he said he could not remember the crash or events leading up to it.

He said he did not drive fast and would not use nitrous oxide, however, he did not dispute that he was the driver at the time of the crash.

Melanie Goddard, Ethan’s mother, said the crash had left a “massive hole” and the loss had affected their whole family.

Daniel’s father, Alex Hancock, said Johnson’s “reckless, dangerous behaviour” had been “an accident waiting to happen”.

“It’s very very painful, it’s 18 months on now and it never leaves you,” he added.

Mia Pullen and her aunt, Laura Oakes, previously ran a half marathon to raise money for charity Roadpeace, which supports crash victims and bereaved families.

She said: “[Elliot’s] room’s not his room anymore, he’s not there it’s just a very empty feeling, it doesn’t feel like a family anymore it’s very difficult.

“In a split second this could be your reality so don’t drive dangerously and don’t consume drugs while driving because it’s never worth it for this outcome.”

Kate and Giles Pullen said they were determined to join Forget-me-not Families Uniting, which campaigns alongside Brake, RoadPeace and the Road Victims Trust, for graduated driving licensing for young novice drivers.

They said: “There is overwhelming evidence that these licences will save lives.

“Lives, like Elliot’s, Ethan’s and Daniel’s, who were killed at the hands of a young, inexperienced, reckless driver.”

Johnson was handed sentences of nine years and four months for each death – to run concurrently – and disqualified from driving for 11 years and 11 weeks.

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Could this egg-shaped structure be what the future home of Indian astronauts in space looks like?

The Hab-1 – short for Habitat-1 – is Indian space agency Isro’s first-ever “analog mission” which means simulation of space conditions to prepare astronauts for real space missions. It was recently tested for three weeks in the high Himalayan mountains of Ladakh.

Space architect Aastha Kacha-Jhala, from Gujarat-based firm Aaka, told the BBC that these simulations help identify and address issues astronauts and equipment might face before space missions.

Built with space-grade Teflon and insulated with industrial-use foam, Hab-1 has a bed, a stowaway tray which can be pulled out and used as a workstation, storage space to keep supplies and emergency kits, a kitchenette for heating meals and a toilet. An astronaut in simulation spent three weeks holed up in the facility.

“Hab-1 is designed keeping in mind that space is going to be very limited on the Moon or Mars,” Ms Kacha-Jhala says. “The astronaut will also have very limited water so we designed a dry toilet. We also put in place a system for a proper disposal of waste and ensured that the habitat remained odour-free.”

She is now in talks with Isro to build India’s first permanent simulation space facility in Ladakh.

The mission comes at a time when India is preparing to send its first astronauts into space.

Isro’s Gaganyaan mission plans to place three astronauts into low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 400km (248 miles) for three days. If all goes according to plan, the mission will launch sometime next year. India also plans to set up its first space station by 2035 and send a man to the Moon by 2040.

Nasa, European Space Agency, Russia, China and other countries and private firms with space programmes run dozens of simulation missions and two of the four Indian astronauts selected for the Gaganyaan mission are being trained at Nasa at the moment.

“Once we have our own simulation mission, we won’t have to depend on foreign space agencies to train our astronauts,” says Prof Subrat Sharma, Dean of Research Studies at Ladakh University which collaborated on the project.

• Gaganyaan: India names astronauts for maiden space flight

Ladakh, he told the BBC, was chosen for the experiment because “from a geographical perspective, its rocky, barren landscape and soil have similarities with the material and rocks found on Mars and some parts of the lunar terrain which make it ideal for space research”.

The soil samples collected during the mission are being tested by the university to see if astronauts will be able to use locally-sourced materials to build homes in space.

The Himalayan region on the India-China border is located at a height of 3,500 metres (11,483ft) and has extreme climatic conditions and thin air. In a day, the temperature here can shift from a maximum of 20C to a minimum of -18C.

It’s no match for Mars (where temperatures can go below -153C) or Moon (where -250C is the norm in some deep craters), but still, it’s a test of human endurance. And as Prof Sharma says, “since you can’t go to space to test every time, you need these facilities where space-like conditions can be created”.

Also, he adds, Ladakh is one region of India where barren land stretches for miles and miles, “giving you the feeling of being alone on the planet”.

And that’s exactly how the simulation astronaut, who spent three weeks confined in the capsule in the icy cold desert, felt.

• Chandrayaan-3: India makes historic landing near Moon’s south pole

“I was isolated from the human environment. Every move that I made was scheduled, when to wake up, what to do when and when to sleep? A 24×7 camera monitored every move and sent data about my activities and health to the back office,” the 24-year-old who did not want to be named told me.

“The initial few days,” he said, “were great, but then it began to feel repetitive and it started to get to me. It started impacting my daily performance. My sleep schedule was affected a little and my concentration deteriorated.”

The simulation astronaut wore biometric devices to monitor his sleep pattern, heart rate and stress levels. His blood and saliva were tested daily to see how he was coping.

Scientists say simulating psychological factors to see how they would impact humans in space is one of the most important parts of the mission.

With space agencies from across the world aiming to send astronauts to the Moon and set up permanent bases there in the coming years, simulation missions are expected to play a crucial role in research and training.

• Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars
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In April, a team of scientists and engineers began trials in Oregon to prepare Nasa’s robot dog – Lassie – to walk on the Moon’s surface. In July, four volunteers emerged after spending a year at an “analog” facility, specially built in Texas to simulate life on Mars.

And according to the Economist magazine, Nasa hopes to 3D-print a base using only materials found on the Moon’s surface, while China and Russia are collaborating on their own plans.⁠

India doesn’t want to be left behind. Prof Sharma says once the data gathered in Ladakh is analysed, it “will help us develop medical technology to deal with the needs of our astronauts when they face a problem in space”.

“We need to know how our bodies will function on the Moon where days and nights are a lot longer than on Earth. Or in space where there’s not enough oxygen” he says.

It’s a frustratingly familiar experience for many a fair-goer: just as the coveted plushie makes its way towards the chute of a claw machine, the claw slackens, letting go of the prize.

But now one city has had enough. On Wednesday, Hong Kong’s consumer watchdog announced it was mulling regulations on claw machines after rising complaints.

One man had spent HK$500 ($64.4; £50.7) over 45 minutes to win a waffle maker but got “nothing more than a few trinkets”, the Consumer Council said.

It said these machines “capitalise on consumers’ enthusiasm for testing their luck” and warned people to “spend rationally and be mindful of addiction”. But it did not say how it would regulate them.

Forty-two complaints were filed in the first 11 months of this year, up from 16 in 2023 and seven in 2022, the Consumer Council said on Monday.

“The industry often modifies claw settings or introduces obstacles inside claw machines to make winning more challenging… Excessive difficulty or unfair settings could aggravate consumers,” the council said in a statement on Monday.

“We believe it’s about time to review whether we should regulate claw machine businesses,” said Gilly Wong Fung-han, the council’s chief executive, said reports.

But Jayden Chen, the founder of a claw machine rental company in Singapore, tells the BBC that programmed claw machines are “actually part of the fun”.

“The players then feel the excitement and adrenaline, and will keep going. If they are winning most of the time, who would try for a second or third time?

“Regulations will kill off the fun element,” Mr Chen said.

In Hong Kong, claw machine operators do not need a license to set up shop.

In the case of the man who bided for the waffle maker, he had used a claw machine that promised “instant prizes” – the waffle maker was among the array of prices displayed and he had believed that consumers should have the right to select their reward.

A woman, who played another claw machine, complained that each time she was about to move her desired toy towards the chute, the claw would slacken, letting go of the toy.

The machine featured a “guaranteed grab” mechanism for players who had spent at least HK$100 without winning – only in their next try would the claw maintain its grip until the toy is extracted. The woman lamented that this was a “dishonest trade practice”.

Reports have shown that claw machines can be programmed to have a strong grip for only part of the time, or for it to drop a prize only after a certain number of tries.

In yet another example given by the council, a third complainant had wanted to break his HK$100 bill into HK$5 coins inside a claw machine arcade. After inserting the bill, however, he received only one HK$5 coin. His request for a refund was denied, and he was instead “compensated” with an equivalent value in play rounds.

The man protested, calling this a case of “forced consumption”, but the operator upheld its decision not to issue a cash refund, saying the coin exchange “incurred operating costs such as bank fees”.

“Consumers should assess whether the total amount spent is worth the value of the desired prize,” it said.

It also advised consumers to video-record their gameplay so that they have some evidence on hand in case of any disputes.

It added that some claw machines are suspected to have been used for gambling activities and urged consumers to exercise caution.