The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West.

In an interview with the BBC in Damascus, he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted.

“Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way,” he said.

Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime less than two weeks ago. He is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, and was previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

He said HTS should be de-listed as a terrorist organisation. It is designated as one by the UN, US, EU and UK, among many others, as it started as a splinter group of al-Qaeda, which it broke away from in 2016.

Sharaa said HTS was not a terrorist group.

They did not target civilians or civilian areas, he said. In fact, they considered themselves to be victim of the crimes of the Assad regime.

He denied that he wanted to turn Syria into a version of Afghanistan.

Sharaa said the countries were very different, with different traditions. Afghanistan was a tribal society. In Syria, he said, there was a different mindset.

He said he believed in education for women.

“We’ve had universities in Idlib for more than eight years,” Sharaa said, referring to Syria’s north-western province that has been held by rebels since 2011.

“I think the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%.”

And when asked whether the consumption of alcohol would be allowed, Sharaa said: “There are many things I just don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues.”

He added that there would be a “Syrian committee of legal experts to write a constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president will have to follow the law”.

Sharaa was relaxed throughout the interview, wearing civilian clothes, and tried to offer reassurance to all those who believe his group has not broken with its extremist past.

Many Syrians do not believe him.

The actions of Syria’s new rulers in the next few months will indicate the kind of country they want Syria to be – and the way they want to rule it.

At least 13 people have died after an Indian naval speedboat lost control and hit a passenger ferry off the coast of Mumbai, a navy spokesperson said.

Three navy personnel are among the dead, while more than 100 people have been rescued, Maharashtra state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said.

Footage of the incident posted online shows the speedboat circling before smashing into the ferry, which later capsized.

The Indian navy said there had been an “engine malfunction”.

The privately owned ferry was making its way to the Elephanta Caves, a popular tourist destination, when it was hit by the speedboat.

“A Navy craft undergoing engine trials lost control and collided with a passenger ferry,” the navy said in a statement, adding that it regretted the “tragic loss” of life.

A passenger on board the vessel told ABP Majha news channel: “The speedboat crashed into our boat and water started entering our boat and it overturned. The driver asked us to wear lifejackets.”

“I swam for 15 minutes before I was rescued by another boat,” said the passenger, who did not identify himself.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted: “The boat mishap in Mumbai is saddening. Condolences to the bereaved families. I pray that the injured recover soon.”

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 2022.

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 People’s Republic of China has a “magic weapon”, according to its founding leader Mao Zedong and its current president Xi Jinping.

It is called the United Front Work Department – and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing’s growing military arsenal.

Yang Tengbo, a prominent businessman who has been linked to Prince Andrew, is the latest overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised – and sanctioned – for his links to the UFWD.

The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-old and well-documented arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in controversy before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple espionage cases, often accusing Beijing of using it for foreign interference.

Beijing has denied all espionage allegations, calling them ludicrous.

So what is the UFWD and what does it do?

The United Front – originally referring to a broad communist alliance – was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party’s triumph in the decades-long Chinese Civil War.

After the war ended in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.

Xi’s version of the United Front is broadly consistent with earlier incarnations: to “build the broadest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant”, according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

On the face of it, the UFWD is not shadowy – it even has a website and reports many of its activities on it. But the extent of its work – and its reach – is less clear.

While a large part of that work is domestic, Dr Ohlberg said, “a key target that has been defined for United Front work is overseas Chinese”.

Today, the UFWD seeks to influence public discussions about sensitive issues ranging from Taiwan – which China claims as its territory – to the suppression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.

It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures.

“United Front work can include espionage but [it] is broader than espionage,” Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.

“Beyond the act of acquiring covert information from a foreign government, United Front activities centre on the broader mobilisation of overseas Chinese,” she said, adding that China is “unique in the scale and scope” of such influence activities.

China has always had the ambition for such influence, but its rise in recent decades has given Beijing the ability to exercise it.

Since Xi became president in 2012, he has been especially proactive in crafting China’s message to the world, enouraging a confrontational “wolf warrior” approach to diplomacy and urging his country’s diaspora to “tell China’s story well”.

The UFWD operates through various overseas Chinese community organisations, which have vigorously defended the Communist Party beyond its shores. They have censored anti-CCP artwork and protested at the activities of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The UFWD has also been linked to threats against members of persecuted minorities abroad, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.

But much of the UFWD’s work overlaps with other party agencies, operating under what observers have described as “plausible deniability”.

It is this murkiness that is causing so much suspicion and apprehension about the UFWD.

When Yang appealed against his ban, judges agreed with the then secretary of state’s report that Yang “represented a risk to national security” – citing the fact that he downplayed his ties with the UFWD as one of the reasons that led them to that conclusion.

Yang, however, maintains that he has not done anything unlawful and that the spy allegations are “entirely untrue”.

Cases like Yang’s are becoming increasingly common. In 2022, British Chinese lawyer Christine Lee was accused by the MI5 of acting through the UFWD to cultivate relationships with influential people in the UK. The following year, Liang Litang, a US citizen who ran a Chinese restaurant in Boston, was indicted for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the area to his contacts in the UFWD.

And in September, Linda Sun, a former aide in the New York governor’s office, was charged with using her position to serve Chinese government interests – receiving benefits, including travel, in return. According to Chinese state media reports, she had met a top UFWD official in 2017, who told her to “be an ambassador of Sino-American friendship”.

It is not uncommon for prominent and successful Chinese people to be associated with the party, whose approval they often need, especially in the business world.

But where is the line between peddling influence and espionage?

“The boundary between influence and espionage is blurry” when it comes to Beijing’s operations, said Ho-fung Hung, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University.

This ambiguity has intensified after China passed a law in 2017 mandating Chinese nationals and companies to co-operate with intelligence probes, including sharing information with the Chinese government – a move that Dr Hung said “effectively turns everyone into potential spies”.

The Ministry of State Security has released dramatic propaganda videos warning the public that foreign spies are everywhere and “they are cunning and sneaky “.

Some students who were sent on special trips abroad were told by their universities to limit contact with foreigners and were asked for a report of their activities on their return.

And yet Xi is keen to promote China to the world. So he has tasked a trusted arm of the party to project strength abroad.

And that is becoming a challenge for Western powers – how do they balance doing business with the world’s second-largest economy alongside serious security concerns?

Genuine fears over China’s overseas influence are playing into more hawkish sentiments in the West, often leaving governments in a dilemma.

Some, like Australia, have tried to protect themselves with fresh foreign interference laws that criminalise individuals deemed to be meddling in domestic affairs. In 2020, the US imposed visa restrictions on people seen as active in UFWD activities.

An irked Beijing has warned that such laws – and the prosecutions they have spurred – hinder bilateral relations.

“The so-called allegations of Chinese espionage are utterly absurd,” a foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday in response to a question about Yang. “The development of China-UK relations serves the common interests of both countries.”

Some experts say that the long arm of China’s United Front is indeed concerning.

“Western governments now need to be less naive about China’s United Front work and take it as a serious threat not only to national security but also to the safety and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens,” Dr Hung says.

But, he adds, “governments also need to be vigilant against anti-Chinese racism and work hard to build trust and co-operation with ethnic Chinese communities in countering the threat together.”

Last December, Di Sanh Duong, a Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese community leader in Australia, was convicted of planning foreign interference for trying to cosy up to an Australian minister. Prosecutors argued that he was an “ideal target” for the UFWD because he had run for office in the 1990s and boasted ties with Chinese officials.

Duong’s trial had centred around what he meant when he said the inclusion of the minister at a charity event would be beneficial to “us Chinese” – did he mean the Chinese community in Australia, or mainland China?

In the end, Duong’s conviction – and a prison sentence – raised serious concerns that such broad anti-espionage laws and prosecutions can easily become weapons for targeting ethnic Chinese people.

“It’s important to remember that not everyone who is ethnically Chinese is a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. And not everyone who is involved in these diaspora organisations is driven by fervent loyalty to China,” Dr Wong says.

“Overly aggressive policies based on racial profiling will only legitimise the Chinese government’s propaganda that ethnic Chinese are not welcome and end up pushing diaspora communities further into Beijing’s arms.”

Russia is moving a large amount of military equipment in Syria, signalling preparations for a partial withdrawal, analysts say.

Satellite images reveal a build-up of military vehicles at a Russian-controlled port and airbase in western Syria.

Transport aircraft also appear to have arrived and departed the country in recent days.

BBC Verify has also geolocated videos showing extensive columns of Russian military trucks moving north towards these bases.

The Institute for the Study of War suggests this indicates preparations for a reduction or complete withdrawal of Russian forces.

The Washington-based think tank added that moving military vehicles to its bases may be a precautionary measure while Moscow negotiates with the new government in Damascus.

Russia had a significant military presence in Syria during Bashar al-Assad’s rule – helping him stay in power after the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

Its two most significant bases are the port at Tartous, established by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and then expanded and modernised by Russia in 2012, and the airbase at Hmeimim, which has been operational since 2015 and was used to launch air strikes across Syria in support of Assad.

Both have become key strategic bases for Russia – giving it easier access to the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.

However, the fall of Assad has raised questions about Russia’s future presence in Syria. Moscow is seeking to negotiate with the new regime.

On Monday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said there have been “no final decisions” and that Russia was “in contact with representatives of the forces that now control the situation in [Syria]”.

BBC Verify has been monitoring Hmeimim air base activity by using Planet Labs satellite imagery. There are signs of sustained activity, involving sizeable military transport planes. Two large Antonov An-124 aircraft, which may be used to move assets out of Syria, were seen at the base on Friday. They had left by Tuesday, but two large planes were again in the base by Wednesday morning.

Further imagery taken by Maxar Technologies on Sunday shows dozens of military vehicles parked at the airfield near a Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane, which could be used for evacuations.

BBC Verify tracked one large Russian Antonov An-124 from Tuesday on plane tracking website Flightradar24. Its publicly available tracker showed it in Russian airspace, travelling in the direction of Syria. It then disappeared from Flightradar24 off the Syrian coast, west of Hmeimim air base, likely because its public tracker was switched off. It can next be seen heading back north six hours later.

David Heathcote, intelligence manager at McKenzie Intelligence, said the rapid collapse of the Assad government meant it was unlikely Russia had a plan to evacuate resources.

He described the activity at Hmeimim air base as “unusual”, suggesting that Russia was storing some resources in the base and preparing to withdraw some equipment and personnel from Syria.

Tayfun Ozberk, a former naval officer and defence analyst, agreed that the imagery indicated “early stages of a Russian withdrawal from Syria, with clear signs of an air-based evacuation.”

“The presence of Il-76 aircraft, the absence of Russian vessels at Tartous, and the organised pre-staging of vehicles and equipment support this conclusion,” Mr Ozberk said.

BBC Verify reported last week how Russian warships had left the port at Tartous, with analysts suggesting they were being stationed in international waters for the time being.

Those vessels have not returned – but more than 100 military vehicles have arrived at the base in recent days, satellite images show.

Mr Heathcote said it was likely the vehicles were being prepared for evacuation, although this was unlikely to be immediate due to the absence of loading ramps and cranes.

Recent footage also showed large columns of Russian vehicles on the move – indicating they’ve been redirected from other Russian outposts across the country.

BBC Verify geolocated the videos to a major highway, suggesting they were moving north towards the bases.

An 80-second video published on X shows a long line of Russia vehicles, geolocated to 30km south of Homs. Another video showed a column of Russian vehicles on the same highway further south, 70km outside Damascus.

“Russia is now withdrawing units and military equipment that were deployed in nearly a hundred strongholds across the country before the fall of Damascus,” said Anton Mardasov, a non-resident scholar in the Middle East Institutes Syria programme.

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Judges in the French city of Avignon will hand down verdicts on 51 men on Thursday in a mass rape trial that has turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who then invited dozens of men he had recruited online to have sex with her in her bed at home while she was unconscious and unaware.

It was her decision to waive her anonymity and throw this trial into the open – in her words, making “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist.

Although he admits the charges against him, most of the other men on trial deny what they did was rape.

Prosecutors have asked for jail sentences ranging from four years to 20 years, the maximum sentence for a charge of aggravated rape.

One of the defendants, who has admitted the charges, has said the trial was rushed and “botched”.

Campaigners say this case proves the need for consent to be built into France’s rape laws, as in other European countries.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot plied his wife with tranquilising drugs and sleeping pills without her knowledge, crushed them into powder and added them to her food and drink.

Gisèle Pelicot suffered memory loss and blackouts because of the drugs and she has spoken of 10 years of her life that have been lost.

He was eventually caught because a security guard reported him to police for taking photographs under women’s skirts in a supermarket.

“I thought we were a close couple,” she once told the court. Instead, her husband was going on a notorious but now banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to their home to have sex with her while she was comatose.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisèle Pelicot said early in the trial.

Since the start of September, Judge Roger Arata and his four colleagues have heard how 50 men, now aged between 27 and 74, visited the Pelicots’ home in the village of Mazan.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted all the charges against him – drugging and raping his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her. Prosecutors want the judges to hand him the maximum 20-year jail term for aggravated rape.

“I am a rapist,” he has told the judges. “I acknowledge all the facts [of the case] in their entirety.” He has begged his ex-wife and three children for forgiveness, but his actions have torn the Pelicot family apart.

The other defendants come from all walks of life and most of them are from a 50km (30-mile) radius of the Pelicots’ village of Mazan. The fact they are firefighters, security guards and lorry drivers has earned them the name Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman). Most of them have children too.

Fifty of the 51 are accused of aggravated rape and attempted rape.

Romain V, 63, is facing 18 years in prison if found guilty. He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions while knowing he was HIV-positive. His lawyer says he could not have passed on the infection as he had years of treatment.

Another 10 men could face sentences of 15-17 years, and prosecutors are seeking jail terms of 10-14 years for 38 of the others.

Ahead of the verdicts, one of the few men who has admitted rape told the BBC through his daughter that many people had made up their minds right away: “There was not enough time. For me it was botched work.”

The average jail term for rape in France is 11.1 years, according to the French justice ministry.

One man is accused of aggravated sexual assault rather than rape. Prosecutors say Joseph C, a retired sports coach and grandfather of 69, should face the lightest sentence of four years in prison.

Some of them have apologised for their behaviour, but many have not.

Cyril B said he was sorry to Gisèle Pelicot.

“I’m ashamed of myself, I’m disgusted,” said Jean-Pierre M this week. His lawyer hoped that the judges would take account of his contrition.

Not only has this case been held in full view of the public, but the evidence against all the accused was recorded on video by Dominique Pelicot at the time and then played out in court.

Gisèle Pelicot, who has divorced her husband, said the men “treated me like a rag doll”. “Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes,” she said.

Therefore none of those accused has been able to challenge the allegation that they were in Gisèle Pelicot’s room while she was comatose.

Their defence has relied on the definition of rape, because it currently involves any kind of sexual penetration “by violence, coercion, threat, or surprise”. That means prosecutors must prove intent to rape.

Public prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court that no-one could say any more that “since she didn’t say anything, she gave her consent – that belongs to a bygone age”.

Thousands of people have joined protests in support of Gisèle Pelicot in France. And women have stood outside the court every day chanting one of the phrases her lawyers said in court: “Shame is changing sides.”

Gisèle Pelicot has attended almost every day of the trial, appearing at the court in her sunglasses just before nine o’clock.

Her decision to waive her anonymity is highly unusual, but she has stood firm at every moment. “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too.”

But she has been clear that behind her facade of strength “lies a field of ruins” and despite the widespread acclaim for what she has done, she is a reluctant hero.

“She keeps repeating, ‘I am normal,’ she does not want to be considered as an icon,” her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau has told the BBC’s Emma Barnett.

“Women generally have a strength in them that they can’t even imagine and that they have to trust themselves. That’s her message.”

Lawyers for the 51 defendants have highlighted the ordinary lives they led, although a court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Layet testified that they were neither ordinary nor “monsters”.

In the early weeks of the trial, the then mayor of the village of Mazan told the BBC that the case could have been far more serious as nobody died.

But those remarks provoked an outcry across France and the mayor quickly apologised. He has since said he is withdrawing from public life.

The fact the trial has been held in public has meant every session has been reported at length and in detail.

Elsa Labouret of activist group Dare to be Feminist told the BBC: “[Gisèle Pelicot] decided to make this bigger than herself. To make this about the way we, as a society, treat sexual violence.”

Crouched alone on the floor, in a tiny, windowless cell, Nasim could hear what sounded like other prisoners being tortured. The guard would bang on the door and say: “Can you hear that beating? Get ready, you’re next.”

She was “interrogated for 10 to 12 hours every day” and repeatedly threatened with execution.

The bare cell, no more than two metres across, had no bed or toilet. Four months in solitary confinement was the 36-year-old hairdresser’s introduction to Iran’s notorious Evin prison. The only people she saw were her interrogators. She thought that she would “die and no-one would know”.

We have pieced together accounts from multiple reliable sources to build a picture of everyday life for Nasim and other women, who are currently being held in Evin prison.

Many were among the tens of thousands of people arrested in connection with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Mahsa had been arrested for allegedly breaking Iranian laws that require women to wear the hijab and she died in police custody.

While people have spoken about conditions in Evin after they have been released, it is rare to get details of inmates’ lives while they are still inside.

What we have heard reveals not only brutality, but a place of complex contrasts where the prisoners continue to campaign for women’s rights and defiantly challenge restrictions imposed on them. There are surprising moments too – one inmate, occasionally allowed time alone with her husband, has even got pregnant.

Nasim – who loves rap music and make-up – was taken into custody in April 2023 after joining protests with her friends, one of whom was killed in the government crackdown. She survived interrogations “by thinking about those who died on the street”. People who saw Nasim when she came out of solitary confinement have described cuts and bruises on her body and how she was tortured to make false confessions.

Rezvaneh was also arrested following the protests, along with her husband, in 2023. They both ended up in Evin, which has separate sections for men and women. Her interrogators said they would kill her husband and “hit him so much that he would turn black like coal, and purple like an aubergine”.

After solitary confinement, interrogations and humiliation, Nasim was moved to the women’s wing, that houses about 70 people, including Rezvaneh, most of whom were arrested on political charges.

It is where the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcilffe, who was allowed to return to the UK in 2022, spent nearly four years of her sentence.

Most of the women there have been sentenced because of their activism, for offences including spreading propaganda, drawing arms against the regime, and endangering national security.

They live in four crowded cells with up to 20 people in each one and bunk beds stacked three- high.

Living together in cramped quarters often causes friction, and sometimes fights – both physical and verbal – break out. But the women also forge tight bonds.

In winter, “everyone is freezing” and the women “walk around with hot water bottles” to stay warm. In summer, they swelter in the heat.

There is a small kitchen area with a couple of hobs where – if they have enough money to buy food from the prison shop – they can cook for themselves to supplement the basic prison meals that are brought to their cells.

A dark, dirty area at the end of a corridor serves as a place to smoke. A small cemented yard with a little area for plants and a volleyball net provides a bit of outside space.

They can wear their own clothes and are free to move around their living quarters which have two bathrooms. Every evening, they queue to use the toilet and brush their teeth.

It was here, after she had been in prison for about four months, that Rezvaneh found out she was pregnant.

She had struggled with infertility for years and had given up on ever having a baby. But according to Evin’s rules, she and her husband – who is still a prisoner in the men’s wing – were occasionally allowed to meet in private and, on one of these occasions, she conceived.

When she realised she was pregnant she “cried for several days”.

She found “the worst thing was the mental pressure and tensions inside the prison”. Finding a quiet place in the crowded cells, where people spend most of their days sitting on their beds, was a constant challenge.

The prison food left her craving apple juice, bread, and meat, which were hard to get hold of. When she could get some meat from the prison shop it was at least twice the price of meat on the outside.

The prison eventually allowed her to have an ultrasound scan at four months, and doctors told her she was having a girl.

As she listened to “each heartbeat the sense of hope became stronger”. But she was afraid that the conditions in prison would endanger the baby’s health. Rezvaneh was not just concerned about her diet – she has epilepsy and needed to avoid stress. Prison doctors told her she had a high risk of miscarriage.

Vida, a journalist, loves to paint. She uses bedsheets for canvases and paints portraits of the other women.

One, which was smuggled out of Evin, is of Kurdish prisoner Pakhshan Azizi who travelled to Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria to help victims of the Islamic State group. Pakhshan has been sentenced to death, following charges of using arms to fight the Iranian regime, and there is great concern this sentence could be carried out soon.

Vida has been warned not to draw anything with a hidden meaning. On one of the walls in the yard she painted crumbling bricks with a green forest behind them. The authorities sprayed over it.

In a corridor she painted a picture of an Iranian cheetah running. Some of the women “kept saying how much good energy they got from it”. But one night the authorities “went and painted over it” and restricted Vida’s access to painting supplies.

One of her murals has been left intact though – huge, blue ocean waves on the walls of the corridor where the women go to smoke.

Getting medical care has been a constant battle for the women. One of the inmates, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, has life-threatening heart and lung conditions.

But in prison she has had to fight long and hard for access to a doctor. Relatives said that officials repeatedly blocked treatment because she refused to wear a headscarf to a medical appointment. The authorities only relented after fellow prisoners went on hunger strike for two weeks. Narges was released for 21 days at the start of December on medical grounds.

Behind bars, she and the others have carried out protests, pushing the boundaries and continuing to fight for their rights. Although the law requires them to wear headscarves, many refuse. And after a long fight with the authorities, the women were allowed curtains around the beds so they could have some privacy, out of view of CCTV cameras.

One of the toughest things for the women is waiting to hear their sentences. Nasim’s interrogators had threatened her with the death penalty and she had to wait nearly 500 days to find out her fate.

She found solace in her fellow prisoners – who she has described as sisters who give her life and act as “a balm on the wounds” of her wings.

Every morning, one of her friends pulls aside the bed curtain and makes her get up for breakfast.

“Each day we think of something to do, so by the end of the day we can tell ourselves, ‘We lived today,'” one of our sources explains.

Others spend their time reading poetry, singing, playing homemade card games and watching TV – there are two televisions where they can watch Iranian channels showing drama, documentaries and football.

It is these small things that kept Nasim going while she waited for her sentence, under the constant threat of execution. When the sentence finally came, she was given six years in prison, 74 lashes and 20 years in exile in a small town far from Tehran. She had been charged with distributing propaganda and drawing arms against the Islamic Republic.

Despite the severity of the sentence, Nasim felt she could breathe again, and embrace the life she thought she had lost.

Three other women in the wing have been sentenced to death for drawing arms against the regime or affiliation to armed groups. However one of them has had her sentence overturned.

More than 800 people were executed in Iran last year – the highest number in eight years, according to Amnesty International. Most were for crimes involving violence and drugs. A handful were women.

So every Tuesday, the women protest against executions, chanting in the prison yard, refusing to move all night and staging hunger strikes. The campaign has spread through jails across Iran, gaining international support. On the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death the women in Evin burned headscarves.

There have been repercussions – sometimes the guards raid their cells and women have been beaten and injured. They can also be taken for further interrogations, put back in solitary confinement or have phone calls and visits blocked. Most of the guards are women and “sometimes they are kind, sometimes they are cruel and hard-hearted, depending on what orders they receive from a higher authority”, says one of our sources.

The Iranian government routinely denies allegations of human rights violations, saying conditions inside Evin prison meet all necessary standards and prisoners are not mistreated.

As Rezvaneh’s due date approached, the prison authorities allowed her to temporarily leave prison for the birth. In October, she had a baby girl.

But her joy and relief at the safe arrival of her daughter is mingled with fear, sadness and anger. Her husband was not allowed out of prison with her, although she has been able to take their daughter to visit him in Evin.

And because of the stress, Rezvaneh has struggled to produce breastmilk. She is expecting to be recalled to Evin prison soon with her baby daughter to serve the rest of her five-year sentence – if she’s not granted an early release, that could be nearly four years.

Babies are usually allowed to stay with their mothers in jail until the age of two. After that they are often sent to a close relative, or if that is not possible, they might be placed in a children’s home.

But rather than stop the inmates, one prisoner has said the challenges they face have made her “braver and stronger,” supporting their belief that “the future is clear: to fight, even in prison”.

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram, external and Facebook, external. Join the conversation using #BBC100Women.

You can watch the BBC 100 Women on the BBC World Service YouTube channel.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear last-ditch legal arguments from TikTok as to why it should not be banned or sold in the US.

The US government is taking action against the app because of what it says are its links to the Chinese state – links which TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have denied.

The Supreme Court justices did not act on a request by TikTok for an emergency injunction against the law, but will instead allow TikTok and ByteDance to make their case on 10 January – nine days before the ban is due to take effect.

Earlier in December, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt to overturn the legislation, saying it was “the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.

The Supreme Court is the highest legal authority in the US, and the decision to take on TikTok’s case is significant as it only hears 100 or so cases a year out of the more than 7,000 petitions it receives.

TikTok had previously argued that the attempt to ban it was unconstitutional because it would impact the free speech of its users in the country.

TikTok said Wednesday it was pleased with the Supreme Court’s order.

“We believe the Court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to the BBC.

The appeal sets up a clash between free speech and national security, according to University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias.

“The appeals court found that national security was stronger than the First Amendment contentions. However, the Justices will scrutinize the potentially conflicting, but significant, values,” Mr Tobias said in an email.

While it is difficult to predict the outcome, Cornell professor Sarah Kreps said it would be surprising to the court to overturn the prior rulings and go against the wills of both congress and the White House.

“The case has already gone through the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the lower court, all of which upheld the argument that TikTok’s ownership by China-based ByteDance poses a national security risk,” Dr Kreps said.

TikTok’s future does not just hang on the legal process, however – Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election may also hand it a lifeline.

He met TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported, citing sources familiar with the meeting.

Trump has publicly said he opposes the ban, despite supporting one in his first term as president.

But he will not take office until 20 January, the day after the deadline for TikTok to be banned or sold.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he claimed at a press conference on Monday – though a majority of 18 to 29-year-olds backed his opponent Kamala Harris.

“There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” he said.

But despite Trump’s support, senior Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, urged the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s bid.

In a brief filed to the court, he called the firm’s arguments “meritless and unsound.”

TikTok has the backing of some civil liberties organisations however.

A group of them have made a joint filing to the court urging it to block the banning of a platform which they argue “millions use every day to communicate, learn about the world, and express themselves.”

El Salvador has struck a $1.4bn (£1.1bn) loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after agreeing to scale back its controversial bitcoin policies.

The IMF said risks related to the adoption of the world’s largest cryptocurrency had eased now that businesses will be allowed to decide whether or not to accept bitcoin.

In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin acceptance mandatory.

The decision to change the policy comes just days after the cryptocurrency hit a record high of more than $108,000.

“The potential risks of the Bitcoin project will be diminished significantly in line with Fund policies,” the IMF announcement said.

“Legal reforms will make acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector voluntary. For the public sector, engagement in Bitcoin-related economic activities and transactions in and purchases of Bitcoin will be confined.”

The deal, which is aimed to help support El Salvador’s economy, still needs to approved by the IMF’s executive board.

The IMF had opposed the Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele’s crypto-friendly policies, warning they could become an obstacle to it offering financial assistance.

Still, Mr Bukele celebrated on social media as bitcoin rallied after Donald Trump’s US election victory in November.

Earlier this month, as the price of bitcoin topped $100,000 for the first time, Mr Bukele said in a social media post that his country’s holdings in the cryptocurrency had more than doubled in value.

He also blamed his political opponents for causing many Salvadorans to miss out on bitcoin’s rise.

The cryptocurrency has rallied since Donald Trump’s election victory on the 5 November.

The incoming Trump administration is seen as being far more friendly towards cryptocurrencies than President Joe Biden’s White House.

On Thursday, the cryptocurrency retreated along with global stock markets after the US Federal Reserve signalled a slower pace of interest rate cuts next year.

Bitcoin is currently trading just below $100,000.

Model and actress Cara Delevingne has taken on the role of Elton John in a new video for his song Step Into Christmas.

In a reimagining of the 1973 track’s original video, Delevingne dons oversized glasses and a colourful waistcoat – striking an uncanny resemblance to the music legend.

The model said playing the 77-year-old musician was “a dream I didn’t know I had until it happened”.

“I wish I could pretend to be Elton every day.”

More than 50 years since the original, Wednesday’s recreation takes viewers behind the scenes as producers try to make the set suitably festive.

It opens as Delevingne, in full costume including a wig, tells unimpressed producers that she will be playing Sir Elton.

Switching between near-identical shots of the two videos, the model sings along to the iconic Christmas tune while playing the piano, imitating Sir Elton’s original moves.

• The Christmas number one race – and how to win it

Sir Elton said he had seen Delevingne at Glastonbury music festival over the summer, where the pair had discussed how they would love to work together “if the right idea came up”.

“She’s hilarious to spend time with, we both have quite a self-deprecating sense of humour,” Sir Elton said.

When the idea of Delevingne playing him in the original music video came along, the pop star said it was “the perfect opportunity”.

“Thank God Cara thought the same, because it came out great.”

• Elton John returns to stage at Dua Lipa show

Delevingne, 32, said Sir Elton had “always been an idol of mine”.

“To say his music has had a deeply profound effect on me is an understatement.

“I hope that Elton may one day return the favour and agree to play me in my not yet developed, written, pitched or funded biopic. Fingers crossed.”

Step Into Christmas reached number 24 in the UK top 40 on its release in November 1973, and the top of the Billboard Christmas Singles chart in the US.

The song is currently number 15 in the UK singles chart.

Last month, Sir Elton said he has been unable to finish his new album due to his vision issues.

He told ABC’s Good Morning America he lost his vision in his right eye due to an infection and his left eye “is not the greatest”.

“I can do something like this [interview] but going into the studio and recording, I don’t know, because I can’t see a lyric for start,” the singer said.

But on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Sir Elton said he was still going to make records and have a “musical future”.

A puzzling flurry of apparent drone sightings along the US east coast is “nothing nefarious”, says President Joe Biden.

The sightings in recent weeks have occurred in New Jersey and a number of neighbouring states, sometimes around air bases. The phenomenon has prompted a number of conspiracy theories about foreign involvement.

Authorities have not given many definitive answers, other than to say the sightings are not always of drones, and that they do not believe there is a threat to national security or that a foreign power is at work.

Members of the US House Intelligence Committee, who were given a closed-door briefing on Tuesday, joined Biden on Wednesday in trying to reassure the public.

Among the committee members who spoke to reporters afterwards were Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat.

“To date, they haven’t found anything that would indicate that there’s foreign influence, foreign actors, or even little green men who are working on the American people,” she was quoted as saying by The Hill.

Another lawmaker, Connecticut Representative Jim Himes, said “there is zero evidence of laws being broken” by the drones.

He added that the “vast majority” of sightings were normal aircraft or drones being operated lawfully.

Himes said that “millions” of unregistered drones were operating across the US, in addition to 800,000 registered drones that weigh more than half a pound.

In his own comments to the media, Biden said: “We’re following this closely, but so far, no sense of danger.”

He stressed that the sightings were not evidence of any wrongdoing. “There’s a lot of drones authorised up there,” he said. “I think one started it and they all – everybody wanted to get in the deal.”

• What we know about the mystery sightings
• ‘I don’t buy it’: Americans demand answers over possible drones
• Drone detection system deployed to New York

On Wednesday, a motion to expedite a federal bill aimed at giving more resources to local law enforcement to identify and neutralise drones failed in the Senate.

The bill required unanimous consent in order to be rushed through. Despite support from New York Senator Chuck Schumer, it was voted down by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who had concerns over privacy.

In recent days, the sightings have led to the temporary closures of a Stewart International Airport in New York and of Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Government agencies previously said they had “not identified anything anomalous”. They agreed with Biden that many drones that had been sighted were lawfully flown by hobbyists and law enforcement – adding that people were also spotting “manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones”.

But questions from the public remain. Earlier in the week, New Jersey man Noel Thomas described to the BBC his experience of spotting a mystery object in the sky. He said it was the size of a school bus, rectangular with blinking lights, and “definitely something I’ve never seen”.

A police officer in the same state said: “We’re just looking for some sound, reasonable answers so that people could go about their life and not live in this hysteria that we have going.”

As the mystery persists, state governments are calling for more power to deal with the small, uncrewed aircraft being spotted in the skies. Earlier this week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said officials were sending her a drone detection system.

Among those who have voiced their suspicions are President-elect Donald Trump, who has said the government “knows what it happening”, but “for some reason they don’t want to comment”. However, he said he “can’t imagine it’s the enemy”.

The Pentagon earlier denied the suggestion of one New Jersey lawmaker that the possible drones came specifically from an Iranian “mothership”, while an FBI official said there may have been “a slight overreaction” on the topic.

A Google Street View image of a man loading a large white plastic bag into the boot of his car has helped unravel a murder case in a northern Spanish town, police say.

The Google app allows users to see images of streets around the world – filmed by cars mounted with cameras.

It captured the exact moment the body of the victim was allegedly being removed.

Two people were arrested last month, accused of being responsible for the disappearance and murder of a man in October last year. His dismembered remains were found in a cemetery last week.

This was the first time in 15 years that the Google car had been to the town of Tajueco, in the northern province of Soria.

Officials say another photo sequence shows the blurred silhouette of someone transporting a large white bundle in a wheelbarrow.

However, police said the images were not “decisive” in solving the case.

The male victim, said by El Pais newspaper to be a 33-year-old Cuban national, was reported missing in October 2023 after a relative received text messages from the victim’s phone which he found suspicious.

The relative told police they said the victim had met a woman, was leaving Spain and would be getting rid of his phone.

On 12 November this year, police arrested a woman said to be the missing man’s partner and a man said to be her ex-partner.

Earlier this month, a severely decomposed torso, thought to be the victim’s, was dug up in a nearby cemetery.

The accused have been remanded in custody and the investigation continues.

Angelina Jolie is notoriously private.

But in a new interview with BBC News, the Hollywood star spoke candidly about her experience of working on set with her eldest sons, saying they saw “the pain” she usually hides from them.

The actress is starring in a new biopic, titled Maria, about opera singer Maria Callas.

Two of Jolie’s six children with ex-husband Brad Pitt, Maddox and Pax, took on roles as production assistants on the film.

“The character [Callas] has a lot of pain and they’ve of course seen me go through a lot of things, but they hadn’t experienced me expressing a lot of the pain that usually a parent hides from a child,” she said.

“So they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug or they would bring me cups of tea.”

Jolie added that it was “a new way” of finding out how to be honest with her children about her feelings, “in an even greater way”.

Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the film focuses on Callas’s final years, in the 1970s, when she was living in Paris.

With Jolie taking on acting roles relatively infrequently in recent years, the film has provided something of a comeback narrative for her and could lead to an Oscar nomination for best actress.

Callas was a US-born Greek soprano, and one of opera’s best-known singers.

In Maria, a blend of Jolie’s own voice and original recordings by Callas are used in the singing scenes.

The actress learnt to sing opera for the role, something she describes as “very physically demanding”.

Training took around seven months, she said.

“We started with regular singing classes and it was challenging in many ways, but when the opera classes began, what it requires with your breathwork and your body and just the force of what you push through yourself, it’s just a very different physicality.”

Jolie, whose previous film credits include Changeling, Maleficent, Salt, and Mr & Mrs Smith, said she hasn’t sung before, and was “actually quite shy about singing”.

“It was probably one of the areas in my life that I was hesitant,” she said.

But she indicated that it was also something she enjoyed.

“One of the greatest privileges of being an actor is you often are supported by a crew to try something and explore something you’ve never done and this certainly was most challenging,” she said.

Jolie’s sons Maddox, 23, and Pax, 21, have worked on a number of productions with her before, including her film Without Blood.

Both of them accompanied her at the New York City premiere of Maria in September, alongside their younger sister Zahara.

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016. The pair were engaged in a custody battle that resulted in Pitt being awarded joint custody in 2021.

The Hollywood stars also share daughters Shiloh and Vivienne, and another son Knox.

On the set of the film, both Maddox and Pax were “very busy”, director Pablo Larraín said. “They were good professionals,” he added.

Jolie said that during filming, Pax recorded a lot of her singing practice “so he was with me in my early horrible days,” she laughed.

“It’s always good for your children to watch your mum not do something easily, but swear and fight and fail and have to try again,” she said.

“So that’s an important and beautiful thing.”

Maria is the third in a trilogy of films about high-profile, complex women from Larraín, following his movies about Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana.

The film has received mixed reviews, although critics have generally praised its central performance.

“Jolie is absolutely spellbinding as Maria Callas, imbuing her with grace and resolve,” said Sophia Ciminello of AwardsWatch. “She doesn’t disappear into the role, she transcends.”

Time’s Stephanie Zacharek was less keen on her performance, however, saying Jolie “plays her subject as haughtily cool and deeply insecure, but captures none of her imperious charisma”.

Hailed as La Divina, “The Divine One”, Maria Callas began singing at 14 years old.

One of her most famous performances was as Tosca, in Covent Garden, in 1964.

But vocal decline, possibly caused by dramatic weight loss, led to the premature end of her career.

She spent her last years living largely in isolation, and died of a heart attack aged 53.

Larraín said he hoped his film honoured Callas’s desire to popularise the art form.

“If this movie bring attention to opera from one to hundred to a million, it will be a success,” he said.

“I don’t know if there is an art form as strong as opera,” Jolie added.

“The way it connects to the soul and the body, so of course it’s for everybody.”

As the ink was drying on one of the world’s biggest trade deals, signed in Uruguay this month, and hailed as a milestone for the global economy, anger was brewing thousands of miles away in France.

Under the agreement between the EU on one hand, and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay on the other, tariffs will be greatly reduced and the amounts of imports and exports allowed will be increased.

The deal would affect almost 800 million people.

It comes as a marked contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to greatly increase protectionism when he returns to the White House next month.

The deal still needs to be approved by the 27 EU member states, and France is planning to block it, due to fears that it will harm its farming sector.

Alix Heurtault, a 34-year-old French farmer, says she is worried about her future if the planned agreement goes ahead.

“I fear that the deal will mean making ends meet becoming even more difficult for farmers like me,” she says.

As a result, she is crossing her fingers that the French government will be able to stop it.

The planned trade agreement will mean more South American beef, chicken and sugar coming to the EU, and at lower prices. While in the opposite direction, the likes of European cars, clothing and wine would have more access to the Mercosur zone.

For France to block the deal it will need to persuade at least three other EU countries, representing at least 35% of the total population to join it. Ireland, Poland and Austria are also opposed, but Italy will likely need to also come on board to achieve the required population quota.

And with the media giving very conflicting reports about Italy’s position, we’ll have to wait and see which way the Italians go when the vote is held some time in 2025.

In the meantime, French farmers are continuing to put pressure on Paris to not back down. French President Emmanuel Macron is listening, and has described the trade deal as “unacceptable in its current form”.

Ms Heurtault grows sugar beet, wheat and barley on a 150-hectare farm in the small village of Villeneuve-sur-Auvers located 60km (37 miles) south of Paris.

She says that the deal would see French farmers badly hit in order to help EU manufacturers. “It feels like we’re a bargaining chip. Farmers in the Mercosur countries [the name of the Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay block] have less restrictions regarding pesticides and lower labour costs.”

Ms Heurtault’s view is widely held across the French farming sector, which has been holding regular protests in recent months.

A few weeks ago some 200 farmers dumped bales of straw in front of the Grand Palais museum and exhibition centre in Paris.

They lit up red flares, and chanted slogans like “We are feeding you, show us some respect”.

The protest was held to coincide with an annual meeting of commodities importers and exporters taking place at the venue.

Stéphane Gallais, a cattle farmer and the national secretary of farmers’ union Confédération Paysanne, which had organised the event, explained why it was being held.

“Today’s demonstration is a stance against free trade, especially the EU-Mercosur agreement that we’ve been opposing since it was first discussed in the late 1990s,” he said.

While France is opposed to the trade deal, other EU nations, such as Germany, Spain and Portugal are strongly in favour of it.

Proponents welcome the fact it would be a marked contrast to Trump’s threats of increased protectionism.

“It would be a good signal at a time when we have movement in the opposite direction towards economic fragmentation and protectionism, especially with free-trade sceptic US President Donald Trump re-elected,” says Uri Dadush, a research professor for trade policy at the University of Maryland in the US.

Prof Dadush adds that while European farmers will be negatively impacted, he says this will be very limited.

“The deal is a threat for European farmers, as the world’s most competitive agricultural sector gets access to their market, but we’re talking about a tiny amount of liberalisation spread out over a long period of time,” he says.

He points out that under the agreement the Mercosur nations would still have limits on what they can export to the EU. Such as their proposed initial increased annual quota of beef exports still only accounting for less than 1% of EU consumption of the meat.

Prof Dadush adds that “the deal is an opportunity to push for much needed market-orientated reform in the heavily-subsidised EU agricultural sector, and Mercosur’s highly-protected factory sector”.

Chris Hegadorn, adjunct professor for global food policies at Paris-based university Sciences Po, and former secretary of the UN’s Committee on World Food Security, says the agreement would overall be beneficial to Europe – including its farmers.

“It obviously depends on the subcategory you’re looking at, but French cheese and wine producers will benefit,” he says.

He adds that it will also improve health and environmental standards in the Mercosur countries, and increase ties with the EU at a time when “China is also trying to get a foothold in Latin America”.

But David Cayla, lecturer for economics at Angers University in western France and member of the left-wing collective “The Dismayed Economists”, doubts the EU will be able to enforce higher standards in Latin American countries.

“It’s impossible to control their implementation,” he says. “Our farmers will only face increased competition from countries with a better climate and more fertile soils.

“But we need to protect European agriculture – that’s also a question of food sovereignty,” he emphasizes, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic showed how quickly worldwide supply chains could collapse in times of crisis.

Antoine Gomel, who in 2017 took over his family’s 24-hectare chicken and beef farm in a small village near Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, says that opposing the trade deal is about saving the French countryside.

“Farms keep disappearing leaving our villages deserted – the deal will only accelerate that,” says the 42-year-old.

“But farms are crucial to cohesion in the countryside, not least as they create jobs. People in France and abroad increasingly vote for the far right because they feel disorientated and alone.

“Farms can contribute to bringing them back together, by literally anchoring them.”

Back in front of the Grand Palais in Paris, cleaners were sweeping away the remaining straw from the protesters.

Farmer Stéphane Gallais was still nearby, watching them. “The EU-Mercosur deal is highly detrimental and it would be really symbolic if EU member states didn’t ratify it,” he said.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

France’s highest court has upheld a corruption conviction against former President Nicolas Sarkozy, brushing aside his appeal.

Wednesday’s ruling by the Cour de Cassation means that Sarkozy – who was in power from 2007 to 2012 – must now wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for a year.

Sarkozy, 69, reacted by saying he was not prepared to accept “the profound injustice” and would now turn to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the verdict.

He was originally sentenced to three years in jail in 2021, but two of those years were suspended and the third converted to electronic monitoring instead of prison.

Sarkozy was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014, after he had left office, by suggesting he could secure a prestigious job for him in return for information about a separate case.

In the 2021 ruling, Judge Christine Mée said the conservative politician “knew what [he] was doing was wrong”, adding that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public “a very bad image of justice”.

The crimes were specified as influence-peddling and violation of professional secrecy.

Speaking after Wednesday’s verdict by the Cour de Cassation, Sarkozy’s lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, said his client would comply with the conviction terms.

Sarkozy has now exhausted all his legal options in France, and his planned appeal to the European Court of Human Rights will not delay the verdict from being carried out.

The 2021 conviction was a legal landmark for post-war France.

The only precedent was the trial of Sarkozy’s predecessor Jacques Chirac, who got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for having arranged bogus jobs at Paris city hall for allies when he was Paris mayor. Chirac died in 2019.

Ghana’s Supreme Court has unanimously decided to dismiss two legal challenges to new anti-LGBT legislation that has been criticised by rights groups.

Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a bill imposing three years in prison for people identifying as LGBT and five years for forming or funding LGBT groups.

Fear and uncertainty has gripped Ghana’s LGBT community, already facing limited rights. The bill, considered one of Africa’s most draconian anti-LGBT laws, has been condemned by the UN.

Amanda Odoi and Richard Dela-Sky filed separate challenges to the bill to declare it illegal and prevent President Nana Akufo-Addo from signing it into law.

President Akufo-Addo delayed signing it following the challenges to the bill. He said he would wait for the Supreme Court’s decision.

But after several months of consideration, the judges said the case couldn’t be reviewed until the president had signed it into law.

“Until there’s presidential assent, there is no act,” said Justice Avril Lovelace-Johnson as quoted by Reuters news agency.

The two cases were “unanimously dismissed”, Justice Lovelace-Johnson added.

Ms Odoi and Mr Sky’s lawyers told Reuters they weren’t happy with the ruling and would explore their options after reviewing the full judgment.

• Ghana’s LGBT terror: ‘We live in fear of snitches’
• Being gay in Ghana: LGBT community is ‘under attack’

The proposed new legislation – The Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values bill – was backed by both of Ghana’s main political parties.

But Mr Sky said there were not enough MPs in the chamber when the vote took place.

With his two-term presidency ending on 7 January, President Akufo-Addo has not yet revealed what he will do.

Opposition leader John Mahama, who won this month’s presidential election, has expressed support for the bill.

If it becomes law, it is likely to face further challenges in court.

Gay sex is already punishable by up to three years in prison in the conservative West African country.

But this new legislation has already had implications for the LGBT community, said Abena Takyiwaa Manuh, senior fellow of Accra-based Centre for Democratic Governance.

“Even without the passage of the bill, people have been attacking members of a certain community,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“This kind of formalism actually put at risk the life and health of certain members of the community, and of course some of us who are human rights defenders.”

The bill was first introduced to parliament in 2021 but faced many delays.

When it was passed, the controversial bill sparked criticism from the finance ministry, which warned that Ghana could lose about $3.8bn (£3bn) in World Bank funding over the next five to six years if it was passed.

• Why are different African countries passing anti-LGBT laws?
• Ghana IMF loan: Will $3bn solve the economic crisis?
• Ghana Cardinal Peter Turkson: It’s time to understand homosexuality

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.”

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.

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

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

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.

• Andrew Tate and brother Tristan can be extradited to UK, Romanian court rules

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 Duke of York will not be attending the traditional Royal Family pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace on Thursday, according to royal sources.

He had already pulled out of attending the Christmas gathering at Sandringham in Norfolk.

It comes after Chinese businessman Yang Tengbo, who had links to the prince, was revealed to have been barred from the UK after concerns about national security risks.

Prince Andrew has said that he had ceased contact with Mr Yang.

Royal sources suggested the prince felt staying away from the lunch at Buckingham Palace was the right thing to do – and that his ex-wife, the Duchess of York, had helped to advise him in that decision.

It is understood the King welcomed the duchess’s help in recognising it was not the time or place for them to attend.

It also suggests the duchess remains an important influence on Prince Andrew, who is no longer financially supported by the King.

The prince had previously agreed not to attend the traditional festive royal gathering in Sandringham, which means he will not be in photographs of the Royal Family going to church on Christmas morning.

It followed suggestions he had been advised to keep a low profile during Christmas events, rather than allowing his public attendance to overshadow the occasion.

It now appears he has withdrawn from all of the Royal Family’s Christmas celebrations this year, and is expected to spend the festive season with the duchess at their Royal Lodge home in Windsor.

The lunch on Thursday is a private occasion, but it is likely there would have been photographers waiting to get a picture of those attending, and after some uncertainty, it has now emerged Prince Andrew will not be joining the annual event for the extended family.

The prince’s latest controversy follows a court hearing in which a Chinese business contact, Yang Tengbo, was alleged to have been cultivating links with senior figures in the UK, in a way that could be used to gain political leverage.

Court papers showed Mr Yang had documents which described Prince Andrew as being in a “desperate situation and will grab on to anything”.

Mr Yang has rejected claims he was spying or had done anything unlawful, saying such claims were “entirely untrue”. He had sought to challenge the decision to bar him from the UK, but a court had upheld the ban.

Prince Andrew’s office had issued a statement saying nothing of a sensitive nature had ever been discussed in his dealings with the Chinese business contact.

But the court case had raised wider political issues about Chinese attempts to gain influence. It had also once more raised questions about the prince’s finances, his dealings with international contacts and his judgement.

Prince Andrew is no longer a working royal and Buckingham Palace has not commented.

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The People’s Republic of China has a “magic weapon”, according to its founding leader Mao Zedong and its current president Xi Jinping.

It is called the United Front Work Department – and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing’s growing military arsenal.

Yang Tengbo, a prominent businessman who has been linked to Prince Andrew, is the latest overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised – and sanctioned – for his links to the UFWD.

The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-old and well-documented arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in controversy before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple espionage cases, often accusing Beijing of using it for foreign interference.

Beijing has denied all espionage allegations, calling them ludicrous.

So what is the UFWD and what does it do?

The United Front – originally referring to a broad communist alliance – was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party’s triumph in the decades-long Chinese Civil War.

After the war ended in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.

Xi’s version of the United Front is broadly consistent with earlier incarnations: to “build the broadest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant”, according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

On the face of it, the UFWD is not shadowy – it even has a website and reports many of its activities on it. But the extent of its work – and its reach – is less clear.

While a large part of that work is domestic, Dr Ohlberg said, “a key target that has been defined for United Front work is overseas Chinese”.

Today, the UFWD seeks to influence public discussions about sensitive issues ranging from Taiwan – which China claims as its territory – to the suppression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.

It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures.

“United Front work can include espionage but [it] is broader than espionage,” Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.

“Beyond the act of acquiring covert information from a foreign government, United Front activities centre on the broader mobilisation of overseas Chinese,” she said, adding that China is “unique in the scale and scope” of such influence activities.

China has always had the ambition for such influence, but its rise in recent decades has given Beijing the ability to exercise it.

Since Xi became president in 2012, he has been especially proactive in crafting China’s message to the world, enouraging a confrontational “wolf warrior” approach to diplomacy and urging his country’s diaspora to “tell China’s story well”.

The UFWD operates through various overseas Chinese community organisations, which have vigorously defended the Communist Party beyond its shores. They have censored anti-CCP artwork and protested at the activities of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The UFWD has also been linked to threats against members of persecuted minorities abroad, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.

But much of the UFWD’s work overlaps with other party agencies, operating under what observers have described as “plausible deniability”.

It is this murkiness that is causing so much suspicion and apprehension about the UFWD.

When Yang appealed against his ban, judges agreed with the then secretary of state’s report that Yang “represented a risk to national security” – citing the fact that he downplayed his ties with the UFWD as one of the reasons that led them to that conclusion.

Yang, however, maintains that he has not done anything unlawful and that the spy allegations are “entirely untrue”.

Cases like Yang’s are becoming increasingly common. In 2022, British Chinese lawyer Christine Lee was accused by the MI5 of acting through the UFWD to cultivate relationships with influential people in the UK. The following year, Liang Litang, a US citizen who ran a Chinese restaurant in Boston, was indicted for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the area to his contacts in the UFWD.

And in September, Linda Sun, a former aide in the New York governor’s office, was charged with using her position to serve Chinese government interests – receiving benefits, including travel, in return. According to Chinese state media reports, she had met a top UFWD official in 2017, who told her to “be an ambassador of Sino-American friendship”.

It is not uncommon for prominent and successful Chinese people to be associated with the party, whose approval they often need, especially in the business world.

But where is the line between peddling influence and espionage?

“The boundary between influence and espionage is blurry” when it comes to Beijing’s operations, said Ho-fung Hung, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University.

This ambiguity has intensified after China passed a law in 2017 mandating Chinese nationals and companies to co-operate with intelligence probes, including sharing information with the Chinese government – a move that Dr Hung said “effectively turns everyone into potential spies”.

The Ministry of State Security has released dramatic propaganda videos warning the public that foreign spies are everywhere and “they are cunning and sneaky “.

Some students who were sent on special trips abroad were told by their universities to limit contact with foreigners and were asked for a report of their activities on their return.

And yet Xi is keen to promote China to the world. So he has tasked a trusted arm of the party to project strength abroad.

And that is becoming a challenge for Western powers – how do they balance doing business with the world’s second-largest economy alongside serious security concerns?

Genuine fears over China’s overseas influence are playing into more hawkish sentiments in the West, often leaving governments in a dilemma.

Some, like Australia, have tried to protect themselves with fresh foreign interference laws that criminalise individuals deemed to be meddling in domestic affairs. In 2020, the US imposed visa restrictions on people seen as active in UFWD activities.

An irked Beijing has warned that such laws – and the prosecutions they have spurred – hinder bilateral relations.

“The so-called allegations of Chinese espionage are utterly absurd,” a foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday in response to a question about Yang. “The development of China-UK relations serves the common interests of both countries.”

Some experts say that the long arm of China’s United Front is indeed concerning.

“Western governments now need to be less naive about China’s United Front work and take it as a serious threat not only to national security but also to the safety and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens,” Dr Hung says.

But, he adds, “governments also need to be vigilant against anti-Chinese racism and work hard to build trust and co-operation with ethnic Chinese communities in countering the threat together.”

Last December, Di Sanh Duong, a Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese community leader in Australia, was convicted of planning foreign interference for trying to cosy up to an Australian minister. Prosecutors argued that he was an “ideal target” for the UFWD because he had run for office in the 1990s and boasted ties with Chinese officials.

Duong’s trial had centred around what he meant when he said the inclusion of the minister at a charity event would be beneficial to “us Chinese” – did he mean the Chinese community in Australia, or mainland China?

In the end, Duong’s conviction – and a prison sentence – raised serious concerns that such broad anti-espionage laws and prosecutions can easily become weapons for targeting ethnic Chinese people.

“It’s important to remember that not everyone who is ethnically Chinese is a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. And not everyone who is involved in these diaspora organisations is driven by fervent loyalty to China,” Dr Wong says.

“Overly aggressive policies based on racial profiling will only legitimise the Chinese government’s propaganda that ethnic Chinese are not welcome and end up pushing diaspora communities further into Beijing’s arms.”

The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West.

In an interview with the BBC in Damascus, he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted.

“Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way,” he said.

Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime less than two weeks ago. He is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, and was previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

He said HTS should be de-listed as a terrorist organisation. It is designated as one by the UN, US, EU and UK, among many others, as it started as a splinter group of al-Qaeda, which it broke away from in 2016.

Sharaa said HTS was not a terrorist group.

They did not target civilians or civilian areas, he said. In fact, they considered themselves to be victim of the crimes of the Assad regime.

He denied that he wanted to turn Syria into a version of Afghanistan.

Sharaa said the countries were very different, with different traditions. Afghanistan was a tribal society. In Syria, he said, there was a different mindset.

He said he believed in education for women.

“We’ve had universities in Idlib for more than eight years,” Sharaa said, referring to Syria’s north-western province that has been held by rebels since 2011.

“I think the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%.”

And when asked whether the consumption of alcohol would be allowed, Sharaa said: “There are many things I just don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues.”

He added that there would be a “Syrian committee of legal experts to write a constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president will have to follow the law”.

Sharaa was relaxed throughout the interview, wearing civilian clothes, and tried to offer reassurance to all those who believe his group has not broken with its extremist past.

Many Syrians do not believe him.

The actions of Syria’s new rulers in the next few months will indicate the kind of country they want Syria to be – and the way they want to rule it.

Crouched alone on the floor, in a tiny, windowless cell, Nasim could hear what sounded like other prisoners being tortured. The guard would bang on the door and say: “Can you hear that beating? Get ready, you’re next.”

She was “interrogated for 10 to 12 hours every day” and repeatedly threatened with execution.

The bare cell, no more than two metres across, had no bed or toilet. Four months in solitary confinement was the 36-year-old hairdresser’s introduction to Iran’s notorious Evin prison. The only people she saw were her interrogators. She thought that she would “die and no-one would know”.

We have pieced together accounts from multiple reliable sources to build a picture of everyday life for Nasim and other women, who are currently being held in Evin prison.

Many were among the tens of thousands of people arrested in connection with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Mahsa had been arrested for allegedly breaking Iranian laws that require women to wear the hijab and she died in police custody.

While people have spoken about conditions in Evin after they have been released, it is rare to get details of inmates’ lives while they are still inside.

What we have heard reveals not only brutality, but a place of complex contrasts where the prisoners continue to campaign for women’s rights and defiantly challenge restrictions imposed on them. There are surprising moments too – one inmate, occasionally allowed time alone with her husband, has even got pregnant.

Nasim – who loves rap music and make-up – was taken into custody in April 2023 after joining protests with her friends, one of whom was killed in the government crackdown. She survived interrogations “by thinking about those who died on the street”. People who saw Nasim when she came out of solitary confinement have described cuts and bruises on her body and how she was tortured to make false confessions.

Rezvaneh was also arrested following the protests, along with her husband, in 2023. They both ended up in Evin, which has separate sections for men and women. Her interrogators said they would kill her husband and “hit him so much that he would turn black like coal, and purple like an aubergine”.

After solitary confinement, interrogations and humiliation, Nasim was moved to the women’s wing, that houses about 70 people, including Rezvaneh, most of whom were arrested on political charges.

It is where the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcilffe, who was allowed to return to the UK in 2022, spent nearly four years of her sentence.

Most of the women there have been sentenced because of their activism, for offences including spreading propaganda, drawing arms against the regime, and endangering national security.

They live in four crowded cells with up to 20 people in each one and bunk beds stacked three- high.

Living together in cramped quarters often causes friction, and sometimes fights – both physical and verbal – break out. But the women also forge tight bonds.

In winter, “everyone is freezing” and the women “walk around with hot water bottles” to stay warm. In summer, they swelter in the heat.

There is a small kitchen area with a couple of hobs where – if they have enough money to buy food from the prison shop – they can cook for themselves to supplement the basic prison meals that are brought to their cells.

A dark, dirty area at the end of a corridor serves as a place to smoke. A small cemented yard with a little area for plants and a volleyball net provides a bit of outside space.

They can wear their own clothes and are free to move around their living quarters which have two bathrooms. Every evening, they queue to use the toilet and brush their teeth.

It was here, after she had been in prison for about four months, that Rezvaneh found out she was pregnant.

She had struggled with infertility for years and had given up on ever having a baby. But according to Evin’s rules, she and her husband – who is still a prisoner in the men’s wing – were occasionally allowed to meet in private and, on one of these occasions, she conceived.

When she realised she was pregnant she “cried for several days”.

She found “the worst thing was the mental pressure and tensions inside the prison”. Finding a quiet place in the crowded cells, where people spend most of their days sitting on their beds, was a constant challenge.

The prison food left her craving apple juice, bread, and meat, which were hard to get hold of. When she could get some meat from the prison shop it was at least twice the price of meat on the outside.

The prison eventually allowed her to have an ultrasound scan at four months, and doctors told her she was having a girl.

As she listened to “each heartbeat the sense of hope became stronger”. But she was afraid that the conditions in prison would endanger the baby’s health. Rezvaneh was not just concerned about her diet – she has epilepsy and needed to avoid stress. Prison doctors told her she had a high risk of miscarriage.

Vida, a journalist, loves to paint. She uses bedsheets for canvases and paints portraits of the other women.

One, which was smuggled out of Evin, is of Kurdish prisoner Pakhshan Azizi who travelled to Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria to help victims of the Islamic State group. Pakhshan has been sentenced to death, following charges of using arms to fight the Iranian regime, and there is great concern this sentence could be carried out soon.

Vida has been warned not to draw anything with a hidden meaning. On one of the walls in the yard she painted crumbling bricks with a green forest behind them. The authorities sprayed over it.

In a corridor she painted a picture of an Iranian cheetah running. Some of the women “kept saying how much good energy they got from it”. But one night the authorities “went and painted over it” and restricted Vida’s access to painting supplies.

One of her murals has been left intact though – huge, blue ocean waves on the walls of the corridor where the women go to smoke.

Getting medical care has been a constant battle for the women. One of the inmates, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, has life-threatening heart and lung conditions.

But in prison she has had to fight long and hard for access to a doctor. Relatives said that officials repeatedly blocked treatment because she refused to wear a headscarf to a medical appointment. The authorities only relented after fellow prisoners went on hunger strike for two weeks. Narges was released for 21 days at the start of December on medical grounds.

Behind bars, she and the others have carried out protests, pushing the boundaries and continuing to fight for their rights. Although the law requires them to wear headscarves, many refuse. And after a long fight with the authorities, the women were allowed curtains around the beds so they could have some privacy, out of view of CCTV cameras.

One of the toughest things for the women is waiting to hear their sentences. Nasim’s interrogators had threatened her with the death penalty and she had to wait nearly 500 days to find out her fate.

She found solace in her fellow prisoners – who she has described as sisters who give her life and act as “a balm on the wounds” of her wings.

Every morning, one of her friends pulls aside the bed curtain and makes her get up for breakfast.

“Each day we think of something to do, so by the end of the day we can tell ourselves, ‘We lived today,'” one of our sources explains.

Others spend their time reading poetry, singing, playing homemade card games and watching TV – there are two televisions where they can watch Iranian channels showing drama, documentaries and football.

It is these small things that kept Nasim going while she waited for her sentence, under the constant threat of execution. When the sentence finally came, she was given six years in prison, 74 lashes and 20 years in exile in a small town far from Tehran. She had been charged with distributing propaganda and drawing arms against the Islamic Republic.

Despite the severity of the sentence, Nasim felt she could breathe again, and embrace the life she thought she had lost.

Three other women in the wing have been sentenced to death for drawing arms against the regime or affiliation to armed groups. However one of them has had her sentence overturned.

More than 800 people were executed in Iran last year – the highest number in eight years, according to Amnesty International. Most were for crimes involving violence and drugs. A handful were women.

So every Tuesday, the women protest against executions, chanting in the prison yard, refusing to move all night and staging hunger strikes. The campaign has spread through jails across Iran, gaining international support. On the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death the women in Evin burned headscarves.

There have been repercussions – sometimes the guards raid their cells and women have been beaten and injured. They can also be taken for further interrogations, put back in solitary confinement or have phone calls and visits blocked. Most of the guards are women and “sometimes they are kind, sometimes they are cruel and hard-hearted, depending on what orders they receive from a higher authority”, says one of our sources.

The Iranian government routinely denies allegations of human rights violations, saying conditions inside Evin prison meet all necessary standards and prisoners are not mistreated.

As Rezvaneh’s due date approached, the prison authorities allowed her to temporarily leave prison for the birth. In October, she had a baby girl.

But her joy and relief at the safe arrival of her daughter is mingled with fear, sadness and anger. Her husband was not allowed out of prison with her, although she has been able to take their daughter to visit him in Evin.

And because of the stress, Rezvaneh has struggled to produce breastmilk. She is expecting to be recalled to Evin prison soon with her baby daughter to serve the rest of her five-year sentence – if she’s not granted an early release, that could be nearly four years.

Babies are usually allowed to stay with their mothers in jail until the age of two. After that they are often sent to a close relative, or if that is not possible, they might be placed in a children’s home.

But rather than stop the inmates, one prisoner has said the challenges they face have made her “braver and stronger,” supporting their belief that “the future is clear: to fight, even in prison”.

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram, external and Facebook, external. Join the conversation using #BBC100Women.

You can watch the BBC 100 Women on the BBC World Service YouTube channel.

Russia is moving a large amount of military equipment in Syria, signalling preparations for a partial withdrawal, analysts say.

Satellite images reveal a build-up of military vehicles at a Russian-controlled port and airbase in western Syria.

Transport aircraft also appear to have arrived and departed the country in recent days.

BBC Verify has also geolocated videos showing extensive columns of Russian military trucks moving north towards these bases.

The Institute for the Study of War suggests this indicates preparations for a reduction or complete withdrawal of Russian forces.

The Washington-based think tank added that moving military vehicles to its bases may be a precautionary measure while Moscow negotiates with the new government in Damascus.

Russia had a significant military presence in Syria during Bashar al-Assad’s rule – helping him stay in power after the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

Its two most significant bases are the port at Tartous, established by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and then expanded and modernised by Russia in 2012, and the airbase at Hmeimim, which has been operational since 2015 and was used to launch air strikes across Syria in support of Assad.

Both have become key strategic bases for Russia – giving it easier access to the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.

However, the fall of Assad has raised questions about Russia’s future presence in Syria. Moscow is seeking to negotiate with the new regime.

On Monday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said there have been “no final decisions” and that Russia was “in contact with representatives of the forces that now control the situation in [Syria]”.

BBC Verify has been monitoring Hmeimim air base activity by using Planet Labs satellite imagery. There are signs of sustained activity, involving sizeable military transport planes. Two large Antonov An-124 aircraft, which may be used to move assets out of Syria, were seen at the base on Friday. They had left by Tuesday, but two large planes were again in the base by Wednesday morning.

Further imagery taken by Maxar Technologies on Sunday shows dozens of military vehicles parked at the airfield near a Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane, which could be used for evacuations.

BBC Verify tracked one large Russian Antonov An-124 from Tuesday on plane tracking website Flightradar24. Its publicly available tracker showed it in Russian airspace, travelling in the direction of Syria. It then disappeared from Flightradar24 off the Syrian coast, west of Hmeimim air base, likely because its public tracker was switched off. It can next be seen heading back north six hours later.

David Heathcote, intelligence manager at McKenzie Intelligence, said the rapid collapse of the Assad government meant it was unlikely Russia had a plan to evacuate resources.

He described the activity at Hmeimim air base as “unusual”, suggesting that Russia was storing some resources in the base and preparing to withdraw some equipment and personnel from Syria.

Tayfun Ozberk, a former naval officer and defence analyst, agreed that the imagery indicated “early stages of a Russian withdrawal from Syria, with clear signs of an air-based evacuation.”

“The presence of Il-76 aircraft, the absence of Russian vessels at Tartous, and the organised pre-staging of vehicles and equipment support this conclusion,” Mr Ozberk said.

BBC Verify reported last week how Russian warships had left the port at Tartous, with analysts suggesting they were being stationed in international waters for the time being.

Those vessels have not returned – but more than 100 military vehicles have arrived at the base in recent days, satellite images show.

Mr Heathcote said it was likely the vehicles were being prepared for evacuation, although this was unlikely to be immediate due to the absence of loading ramps and cranes.

Recent footage also showed large columns of Russian vehicles on the move – indicating they’ve been redirected from other Russian outposts across the country.

BBC Verify geolocated the videos to a major highway, suggesting they were moving north towards the bases.

An 80-second video published on X shows a long line of Russia vehicles, geolocated to 30km south of Homs. Another video showed a column of Russian vehicles on the same highway further south, 70km outside Damascus.

“Russia is now withdrawing units and military equipment that were deployed in nearly a hundred strongholds across the country before the fall of Damascus,” said Anton Mardasov, a non-resident scholar in the Middle East Institutes Syria programme.

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Judges in the French city of Avignon will hand down verdicts on 51 men on Thursday in a mass rape trial that has turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who then invited dozens of men he had recruited online to have sex with her in her bed at home while she was unconscious and unaware.

It was her decision to waive her anonymity and throw this trial into the open – in her words, making “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist.

Although he admits the charges against him, most of the other men on trial deny what they did was rape.

Prosecutors have asked for jail sentences ranging from four years to 20 years, the maximum sentence for a charge of aggravated rape.

One of the defendants, who has admitted the charges, has said the trial was rushed and “botched”.

Campaigners say this case proves the need for consent to be built into France’s rape laws, as in other European countries.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot plied his wife with tranquilising drugs and sleeping pills without her knowledge, crushed them into powder and added them to her food and drink.

Gisèle Pelicot suffered memory loss and blackouts because of the drugs and she has spoken of 10 years of her life that have been lost.

He was eventually caught because a security guard reported him to police for taking photographs under women’s skirts in a supermarket.

“I thought we were a close couple,” she once told the court. Instead, her husband was going on a notorious but now banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to their home to have sex with her while she was comatose.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisèle Pelicot said early in the trial.

Since the start of September, Judge Roger Arata and his four colleagues have heard how 50 men, now aged between 27 and 74, visited the Pelicots’ home in the village of Mazan.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted all the charges against him – drugging and raping his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her. Prosecutors want the judges to hand him the maximum 20-year jail term for aggravated rape.

“I am a rapist,” he has told the judges. “I acknowledge all the facts [of the case] in their entirety.” He has begged his ex-wife and three children for forgiveness, but his actions have torn the Pelicot family apart.

The other defendants come from all walks of life and most of them are from a 50km (30-mile) radius of the Pelicots’ village of Mazan. The fact they are firefighters, security guards and lorry drivers has earned them the name Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman). Most of them have children too.

Fifty of the 51 are accused of aggravated rape and attempted rape.

Romain V, 63, is facing 18 years in prison if found guilty. He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions while knowing he was HIV-positive. His lawyer says he could not have passed on the infection as he had years of treatment.

Another 10 men could face sentences of 15-17 years, and prosecutors are seeking jail terms of 10-14 years for 38 of the others.

Ahead of the verdicts, one of the few men who has admitted rape told the BBC through his daughter that many people had made up their minds right away: “There was not enough time. For me it was botched work.”

The average jail term for rape in France is 11.1 years, according to the French justice ministry.

One man is accused of aggravated sexual assault rather than rape. Prosecutors say Joseph C, a retired sports coach and grandfather of 69, should face the lightest sentence of four years in prison.

Some of them have apologised for their behaviour, but many have not.

Cyril B said he was sorry to Gisèle Pelicot.

“I’m ashamed of myself, I’m disgusted,” said Jean-Pierre M this week. His lawyer hoped that the judges would take account of his contrition.

Not only has this case been held in full view of the public, but the evidence against all the accused was recorded on video by Dominique Pelicot at the time and then played out in court.

Gisèle Pelicot, who has divorced her husband, said the men “treated me like a rag doll”. “Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes,” she said.

Therefore none of those accused has been able to challenge the allegation that they were in Gisèle Pelicot’s room while she was comatose.

Their defence has relied on the definition of rape, because it currently involves any kind of sexual penetration “by violence, coercion, threat, or surprise”. That means prosecutors must prove intent to rape.

Public prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court that no-one could say any more that “since she didn’t say anything, she gave her consent – that belongs to a bygone age”.

Thousands of people have joined protests in support of Gisèle Pelicot in France. And women have stood outside the court every day chanting one of the phrases her lawyers said in court: “Shame is changing sides.”

Gisèle Pelicot has attended almost every day of the trial, appearing at the court in her sunglasses just before nine o’clock.

Her decision to waive her anonymity is highly unusual, but she has stood firm at every moment. “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too.”

But she has been clear that behind her facade of strength “lies a field of ruins” and despite the widespread acclaim for what she has done, she is a reluctant hero.

“She keeps repeating, ‘I am normal,’ she does not want to be considered as an icon,” her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau has told the BBC’s Emma Barnett.

“Women generally have a strength in them that they can’t even imagine and that they have to trust themselves. That’s her message.”

Lawyers for the 51 defendants have highlighted the ordinary lives they led, although a court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Layet testified that they were neither ordinary nor “monsters”.

In the early weeks of the trial, the then mayor of the village of Mazan told the BBC that the case could have been far more serious as nobody died.

But those remarks provoked an outcry across France and the mayor quickly apologised. He has since said he is withdrawing from public life.

The fact the trial has been held in public has meant every session has been reported at length and in detail.

Elsa Labouret of activist group Dare to be Feminist told the BBC: “[Gisèle Pelicot] decided to make this bigger than herself. To make this about the way we, as a society, treat sexual violence.”

A New York resident has unearthed a mastodon jaw protruding out of the topsoil in the backyard of their home, the first such find in more than 11 years.

Researchers, who were alerted to the jaw-dropping scientific discovery in Orange County, spent about two and a half days digging at the home, uncovering more mastodon bone fragments and a complete adult jaw.

Mastodons are related to the modern day elephant and now-extinct mammoths. Historians say the ancient beasts lived across the Earth, but only fossils found in North America have been strictly identified.

“I’m thrilled that our property has yielded such an important find for the scientific community,” the homeowner said in a statement.

“When I found the teeth and examined them in my hands, I knew they were something special and decided to call in the experts,” he said.

The mastodon jaw recovered by the staff from the New York State Museum and the State University of New York is well preserved and can help provide insight as to which creatures inhabited the area during the Ice Age.

“This mastodon jaw provides a unique opportunity to study the ecology of this magnificent species, which will enhance our understanding of the Ice Age ecosystems from this region,” Dr Robert Feranec, director of research and collections and curator of Ice Age Animals at the New York State Museum, said in a statement.

Over 150 mastodon fossils have been found in New York with one third of them specifically from Orange County, according to the New York State Museum.

“While the jaw is the star of the show, the additional toe and rib fragments offer valuable context and the potential for additional research,” said Dr Cory Harris Chair of SUNY Orange’s Behavioral Sciences Department. “We are also hoping to further explore the immediate area to see if there are any additional bones that were preserved.”

Mastodons went extinct around 13,000 years ago.

The creatures are related to the modern-day elephant, but had flatter skulls and smaller ears.

Mastodons also resembled now-extinct mammoths with their long upper tusks, but were shorter and stockier.

US share prices slumped after the central bank cut interest rates for the third time in a row but its economic projections signalled a slower pace of cuts next year.

In a widely expected move, the Federal Reserve set its key lending rate in a target range of 4.25% to 4.5%.

That is down a full percentage point since September, when the bank started lowering borrowing costs, citing progress stabilising prices and a desire to head off economic weakening.

Reports since then indicate that the number of jobs being created has been more resilient than expected, while price rises have continued to bubble.

Stocks in the US fell sharply as Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell warned the situation would likely result in fewer rate cuts than expected next year.

“We are in a new phase of the process,” he said at a press conference.

“From this point forward, it’s appropriate to move cautiously and look for progress on inflation.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 2.58% lower, suffering its 10th session of declines in a row and marking its longest streak of daily losses since 1974.

The S&P 500 lost almost 3% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.6%.

In morning trade in Asia on Thursday, Japan’s Nikkei 225 was around 1.2% lower, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong was down by 1.1%.

Inflation, which measures the pace of price increases, has proven stubborn in recent months, ticking up to 2.7% in the US in November.

Analysts have also warned that policies backed by president-elect Donald Trump, including plans for tax cuts and widespread import tariffs, could put upward pressure on prices.

Analysts say lowering borrowing costs risks adding to that pressure by making it easier to borrow and encouraging businesses and households to take on credit to spend.

If demand rises, higher prices typically follow.

Mr Powell defended the cut on Wednesday, pointing to cooling in the job market over the last two years.

But he conceded that the move was a “closer call” on this occasion and acknowledged there is some uncertainty as the White House changes hands.

Olu Sonola, head of US economic research at Fitch Ratings, said it felt like the Fed was signalling a “pause” to cuts as questions about White House policies make it more unsure about the path ahead.

“Growth is still good, the labour market is still healthy, but inflationary storms are gathering,” he said.

Wednesday’s rate cut – formally opposed by one Fed policymaker – is the last by the central bank before president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

He won the election in November promising to bring down both prices and interest rates. But mortgage rates have actually climbed since September, reflecting bets that borrowing costs will stay relatively high.

Forecasts released by the Fed on Wednesday showed policymakers now expect the bank’s key lending rate to fall to just 3.9% by the end of 2025, above the 3.4% predicted just three months ago.

They also anticipate inflation staying higher next year than previously forecast, at about 2.5% – still above the bank’s 2% target.

John Ryding, chief economic advisor at Brean Capital, said he thought it would have been wiser for the Fed to hold off on a cut at this meeting, despite the likelihood it would upset markets.

“There has been enormous progress made from the peak in inflation to where the US is now and it risks giving up on that progress, possibly even that progress being partially reversed,” he said. “The economy looks strong… What’s the rush?”

The Fed announcement comes a day before the Bank of England is due to make its latest interest rates decision in the UK, where price inflation has also recently ticked higher.

It is widely expected to hold its benchmark rate steady at 4.75%.

Monica George Michail, associate economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said the Bank of England was facing rates of wage growth and price increases for services that are hotter than in the US.

Some of the government’s plans, which include hikes to the minimum wage, will also put pressure on inflation, she added.

“The Bank of England is trying to remain cautious,” she said.

But she warned that inflation risks are present in the US as well, pointing to Mr Trump’s tariff plans.

Mr Ryding said he thought the Bank of England – which unlike the Fed, does not have to consider unemployment as part of its mandate – was more clearly responding to the reality of the situation in front of it.

“The Bank [of England] is being more of a prudent central bank than the Fed is right now,” he said.

The possibility of a US government shutdown has grown more likely after President-elect Donald Trump called on Republican lawmakers to reject a bipartisan funding bill.

Trump urged Congress to scrap the deal and pass a streamlined bill. His intervention followed heavy criticism of the bill by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Congressman Steve Scalise, the Republican House Majority Leader, indicated on Wednesday night that the bill was dead after Trump denounced it.

The short-term funding bill will need to be passed by Congress by the end of week to prevent many federal government offices from shuttering beginning on Saturday.

The bill, known as a continuing resolution, is required because Congress never passed a budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which began on 1 October.

Unless Congress acts, government services ranging from the National Parks Service to Border Patrol will begin closing this weekend.

In posts on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump threatened to help unseat “any Republican that would be so stupid as to” vote in favour of the current version of the bill, which was unveiled on Tuesday by House and Senate leaders.

“If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF,” he said.

He also called, in a joint statement with incoming vice-president JD Vance, for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, which determines how much the government can borrow to pay its bills, and limit the bill to focusing just on temporary spending and disaster relief.

• Why government shutdowns seem to only happen in US
• What happens during a US government shutdown?

The 1,500-page bill included more than $110bn (£88bn) in emergency disaster relief and $30bn (£23bn) in aid to farmers. It also included the first pay raise for lawmakers since 2009, federal funds to rebuild a bridge that collapsed in Baltimore, healthcare reforms, and provisions aimed at preventing hotels and live event venues from deceptive advertising.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement after Trump came out against the bill, saying: “Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country.”

“Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families,” President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman continued, adding: “A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.”

When asked by CNN on Wednesday night whether the existed deal had officially been scrapped, Congressman Scalise said: “Yes”.

He added that “there is no new agreement right now” and that “there’s still a lot of negotiations and conversations going on”.

It is not clear how Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to proceed.

Mr Musk, who Trump has tasked with cutting government spending in his future administration, lobbied heavily against the existing deal.

On Wednesday night, Mr Musk posted on X: “Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed.”

There have been 21 US government shutdowns or partial shutdowns over the past five decades – the longest of which was during Trump’s first term when the government was shuttered for 35 days.

As the ink was drying on one of the world’s biggest trade deals, signed in Uruguay this month, and hailed as a milestone for the global economy, anger was brewing thousands of miles away in France.

Under the agreement between the EU on one hand, and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay on the other, tariffs will be greatly reduced and the amounts of imports and exports allowed will be increased.

The deal would affect almost 800 million people.

It comes as a marked contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to greatly increase protectionism when he returns to the White House next month.

The deal still needs to be approved by the 27 EU member states, and France is planning to block it, due to fears that it will harm its farming sector.

Alix Heurtault, a 34-year-old French farmer, says she is worried about her future if the planned agreement goes ahead.

“I fear that the deal will mean making ends meet becoming even more difficult for farmers like me,” she says.

As a result, she is crossing her fingers that the French government will be able to stop it.

The planned trade agreement will mean more South American beef, chicken and sugar coming to the EU, and at lower prices. While in the opposite direction, the likes of European cars, clothing and wine would have more access to the Mercosur zone.

For France to block the deal it will need to persuade at least three other EU countries, representing at least 35% of the total population to join it. Ireland, Poland and Austria are also opposed, but Italy will likely need to also come on board to achieve the required population quota.

And with the media giving very conflicting reports about Italy’s position, we’ll have to wait and see which way the Italians go when the vote is held some time in 2025.

In the meantime, French farmers are continuing to put pressure on Paris to not back down. French President Emmanuel Macron is listening, and has described the trade deal as “unacceptable in its current form”.

Ms Heurtault grows sugar beet, wheat and barley on a 150-hectare farm in the small village of Villeneuve-sur-Auvers located 60km (37 miles) south of Paris.

She says that the deal would see French farmers badly hit in order to help EU manufacturers. “It feels like we’re a bargaining chip. Farmers in the Mercosur countries [the name of the Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay block] have less restrictions regarding pesticides and lower labour costs.”

Ms Heurtault’s view is widely held across the French farming sector, which has been holding regular protests in recent months.

A few weeks ago some 200 farmers dumped bales of straw in front of the Grand Palais museum and exhibition centre in Paris.

They lit up red flares, and chanted slogans like “We are feeding you, show us some respect”.

The protest was held to coincide with an annual meeting of commodities importers and exporters taking place at the venue.

Stéphane Gallais, a cattle farmer and the national secretary of farmers’ union Confédération Paysanne, which had organised the event, explained why it was being held.

“Today’s demonstration is a stance against free trade, especially the EU-Mercosur agreement that we’ve been opposing since it was first discussed in the late 1990s,” he said.

While France is opposed to the trade deal, other EU nations, such as Germany, Spain and Portugal are strongly in favour of it.

Proponents welcome the fact it would be a marked contrast to Trump’s threats of increased protectionism.

“It would be a good signal at a time when we have movement in the opposite direction towards economic fragmentation and protectionism, especially with free-trade sceptic US President Donald Trump re-elected,” says Uri Dadush, a research professor for trade policy at the University of Maryland in the US.

Prof Dadush adds that while European farmers will be negatively impacted, he says this will be very limited.

“The deal is a threat for European farmers, as the world’s most competitive agricultural sector gets access to their market, but we’re talking about a tiny amount of liberalisation spread out over a long period of time,” he says.

He points out that under the agreement the Mercosur nations would still have limits on what they can export to the EU. Such as their proposed initial increased annual quota of beef exports still only accounting for less than 1% of EU consumption of the meat.

Prof Dadush adds that “the deal is an opportunity to push for much needed market-orientated reform in the heavily-subsidised EU agricultural sector, and Mercosur’s highly-protected factory sector”.

Chris Hegadorn, adjunct professor for global food policies at Paris-based university Sciences Po, and former secretary of the UN’s Committee on World Food Security, says the agreement would overall be beneficial to Europe – including its farmers.

“It obviously depends on the subcategory you’re looking at, but French cheese and wine producers will benefit,” he says.

He adds that it will also improve health and environmental standards in the Mercosur countries, and increase ties with the EU at a time when “China is also trying to get a foothold in Latin America”.

But David Cayla, lecturer for economics at Angers University in western France and member of the left-wing collective “The Dismayed Economists”, doubts the EU will be able to enforce higher standards in Latin American countries.

“It’s impossible to control their implementation,” he says. “Our farmers will only face increased competition from countries with a better climate and more fertile soils.

“But we need to protect European agriculture – that’s also a question of food sovereignty,” he emphasizes, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic showed how quickly worldwide supply chains could collapse in times of crisis.

Antoine Gomel, who in 2017 took over his family’s 24-hectare chicken and beef farm in a small village near Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, says that opposing the trade deal is about saving the French countryside.

“Farms keep disappearing leaving our villages deserted – the deal will only accelerate that,” says the 42-year-old.

“But farms are crucial to cohesion in the countryside, not least as they create jobs. People in France and abroad increasingly vote for the far right because they feel disorientated and alone.

“Farms can contribute to bringing them back together, by literally anchoring them.”

Back in front of the Grand Palais in Paris, cleaners were sweeping away the remaining straw from the protesters.

Farmer Stéphane Gallais was still nearby, watching them. “The EU-Mercosur deal is highly detrimental and it would be really symbolic if EU member states didn’t ratify it,” he said.

At least 13 people have died after an Indian naval speedboat lost control and hit a passenger ferry off the coast of Mumbai, a navy spokesperson said.

Three navy personnel are among the dead, while more than 100 people have been rescued, Maharashtra state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said.

Footage of the incident posted online shows the speedboat circling before smashing into the ferry, which later capsized.

The Indian navy said there had been an “engine malfunction”.

The privately owned ferry was making its way to the Elephanta Caves, a popular tourist destination, when it was hit by the speedboat.

“A Navy craft undergoing engine trials lost control and collided with a passenger ferry,” the navy said in a statement, adding that it regretted the “tragic loss” of life.

A passenger on board the vessel told ABP Majha news channel: “The speedboat crashed into our boat and water started entering our boat and it overturned. The driver asked us to wear lifejackets.”

“I swam for 15 minutes before I was rescued by another boat,” said the passenger, who did not identify himself.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted: “The boat mishap in Mumbai is saddening. Condolences to the bereaved families. I pray that the injured recover soon.”